Posted by Devin on Sat Mar 3 18:42:44 2001: IP Address: 64.12.103.171
There's something about men writing material about what rape is like for women that really bothers me. It came up once at a gallery opening - there was one particular artist who had a drawing titled "Rape from a Woman's Point of View" and it showed her screaming, veins poppping through her skin. This wasn't his. It feels sort of like cheating or stealing - so you think you can describe this event and make art about it and everyone will think your such a sensitive man and blah blah - and in the meantime we're writing about it for survival, we're making pictures to retain our sanity, we're writing autobiography and struggling to "break the silence". And I understand the way fiction works, but certain things are just about sacred - people who have never experienced the Holocaust should probably not write as if they had been, people who have never experienced racism shouldn't claim to know what it's like; even if they have reached maximum capacity for understanding, it is still different from having lived it. Especially if your intending your art to make a comment on our culture - how fucking infantilizing of you - in your position of white boy never-sexually-assaulted priviledge - to claim to speak for or describe what being a woman in this culture oppressed society through sexual violence is. You want to be really radical and progressive and really value women? Listen to our experiences and allow us to be the authorities on our own sexual assaults - don't claim to know what it is like.
Follow Ups:
- Re: .. angela 05:03:54 03/07/2001
(1)
Post a Followup
