My Website is a Bystander-Free Zone
In 1986 I joined Men Stopping Rape (MSR). MSR was a community-based men’s activist anti-rape group in Madison, Wisconsin founded in 1983. Our prime focus was on educating teen boys and men since it is males who commit the vast majority of sexual assaults. This I learned was primary prevention—intervening preemptively to address the problem at the source—by educating potential perpetrators before sexual assaults are committed. Educating all boys and men was necessary since all of us grew up in and live in a rape culture. Rape culture? You might say that in the past there were victims of rape but no perpetrators of rape. Of course there were perpetrators but there were multiple institutional, religious, cultural and legal mechanisms set up to allow and even promote rape by defending and exonerating perpetrators for whom there was no punishment or preemptive education.
If Most Men Were Indeed Bystanders
My website is a bystander free zone. Initially this may feel strange and unfamiliar to you. While I am sure that there are well-meaning and possibly effective educators who are practitioners of the bystander philosophy, I have little respect for the analysis which “proves” their theory. In the past, school administrators, parents, teachers, police, in fact almost all adults said some sort of variant of “Not our boys” or “Not here.”
My Vulva art (!) and Wooden Art Shelves
shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FoundSubjects
Hi, welcome to my shop. I've been collecting vulva art for years. I've been making these vulvas (vulvae?) for four years. I can't remember the day or the specific inspiration that birthed my vulva art. But after sculpting a few solo pieces (those on Etsy that are painted), I saw a heart shaped candy dish for sale at a wonderful local thrift shop St. Vincent de Paul. “What a wonderful backdrop for a vulva!” I may have thought. Being me, a compulsive lad, I eventually bought hundreds of "found objects.” Mostly at the great St. Vinnies, but also at garage sales, other thrift shops, online. I presently have 230 up on Etsy. I also have hundreds more found objects ready to be used as the holders/ backdrops of more vulvas.
I had thought of naming this shop "Joe's Floral Profusion" or "Joe's Floral Extravaganza" but decided on a different tack. Then I thought I would call this shop “Found Objects.” But that didn’t sit well for me. It just did not sound right. You might say I objected to the word object. Now, I am just a pioneering, community activist rape prevention educator and carpenter, and don't know from French deconstructionists (unless they're in building demolition, too) so "Found Subjects" it is.
Something about terminology: referring to female genitals as "vagina" seems to me to be just like calling a face—a nose. Nice but incomplete. In our patriarchal system, the fullness, the complexity, the beauty and magnificence of the vulva has been reduced to their reproductive function as a “sheathe” for the penis, a “negative space.” I'm not mansplaining or telling people with vulvas what they should call their genitals, but I have long used “vulva” and will continue to do so.
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