"I Had Never Thought About It That Way Before" Talking about Pornography and Patriarchy at a High School

http://revcom.us/a/262/correspondence-from-high-school-en.html

Revolution received the following letter from a high school student:

During my lunch break at school, I announced to my fellow high school peers—many of them had bought IWD shirts last year from me—that International Women's Day was approaching once again and I began to describe what was being done in response to that. I had briefly mentioned the critical issue in defending abortion and all reproductive rights. My friends all seemed to agree wholeheartedly on the importance to have such access. However, what sparked the most interest and what really got the discussion going was the idea of having a demonstration at strip clubs in the city where we live. Some of my friends were surprised or curious at what that meant. I made it clear that we were not going against the women in these institutions but the institutions themselves. One of my friends couldn't grapple with such an idea. Such a thing had never been introduced to us before! It was then that I realized how normal, how accepting, how prevalent this issue is but rarely questioned. She argued about the individual's right to choose and if women were willing to do it, then it's okay. In response, I gave a small anecdote of a woman I knew who either had to choose between being on the streets or stripping for the money. In the Revolution newspaper #261, Bob Avakian's quote really states it true: people don't choose what their choices are. After I said that, I noticed that a big majority were listening. Some of them didn't know what to think. Others agreed and were ready to hear more. Some were hesitant.

I began further describing the extreme pornification of the world we live in and A LOT of people had something to say about that. The conversation drifted toward the issue of the sexualization of women to sell commodities. My hesitant friend from earlier definitely agreed on that. She slammed American Apparel and described it as "full porn." My other friend jumped in and started talking about the "sex sells" philosophy that followed that kind of advertising. We had talked so much we hadn't even noticed the bell had rung for class. My friend expressed her thanks for such a discussion and told me, "I had never thought about it that way before. We definitely need to talk about the porn more!" The overall experience was quite a lesson. If anything, this conversation shows how normalized the sexual subordination of women is and how urgent it is to bring this movement to the front of this society. "End Pornography and Patriarchy!!"

Report On Taking Out Our Amazing "War on Women" Display and Building for the Intenrational Women's Day Protest March 10th

Over and over again a group of us who have been working to mobilize people to stand up for International Women's Day, have marveled at how little people know about the war on women. We've been very struck by how deeply people react and share their visceral feelings of upset, distress and righteous anger over the conditions facing women broadly and themselves personally. Mostly, these are people who seemed surprised themselves how strongly they reacted, but once they heard the whole war on women called out in its entirety, once they heard such sober truth telling and certitude, this drew out their own convictions. At the same time, largely because we recognize how deeply this connects with people who weren't already “looking for” this effort to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women which we are launching, we've struggled with how to get people who aren't already thinking about the attacks on women be open enough to engage what we are saying and doing.

So, during a meeting a couple weeks ago we spent some time and we put ourselves to this. Through many hair-brain permutations and brainstorms along the way, what we came up with was the following. We got enormous paper (about 12 feet by 6 feet) and laid it out on the ground. On it we drew a couple of chalk outlines of women's bodies, the kind that the police do after someone has been murdered. Over the bodies of these women we placed big boot prints with various words which concentrate the hatred and enslavement of women: patriarchy, pornography, sex slavery, burkha, “beauty” standards, church, etc. Then, around that whole display we placed a collection of stunning facts about the level of hatred and violence against women. Different people volunteered to pull together different parts of the display and we assembled the whole thing on the spot the first time we took it out.

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