34,047 notes &

No one wants to be the person who is made fun of for caring too much about something, who treats in earnest a situation that everyone else considers absurd. Even in personal relationships, feeling too heavily invested while simultaneously understanding that the other person couldn’t be more detached is one of the most profound feelings of embarrassment we can experience. Because it isn’t simply the embarrassment of making a mistake or a poor choice, it’s a shame over the kind of human being you are and how you see the world around you. To be shamed for your sincerity is to be reminded that you are dependent on something which is not dependent on you — that you are, once again, vulnerable.

13 notes &

The reason it’s nearly impossible for the prosecution to pursue these charges, even though there’s no evidence that she lied about anything related to the actual events surrounding the alleged crime, is because we live in a culture where rape victims need to be flawless in order to be believed. We live in a culture where it’s damn near impossible for any woman, when her life is held up to the light, to be considered innocent. We live in a culture where we think it’s even reasonable to question a rape victim’s “innocence” in the first place. We live in a culture where accusers of high-profile men undergo even more scrutiny than usual from a media hungry for a story and playing by an old rule book. And we live in a culture where the public destruction of every woman who makes a rape accusation is used as fodder in subsequent rape cases, establishing a cycle where we believe that women must be lying because the women before her were lying, so we feel justified in going out of our way to find any scrap of evidence that might indicate she has ever done anything ever in her life that we might find unsavory even if it has nothing to do with the case at hand, and then we use that to determine that she’s not credible, and then we use has as another example of how women lie about rape. And then powerful men are even more emboldened and feel more justified in treating women like garbage.

16 notes &

Much of the media criticism of SlutWalk centers around the notion that its central purpose is to reclaim the word “slut.” I have my doubts that “slut” is ever going to be a compliment, since its history has always been negative and associated with uncleanness, whether literal or figurative (originally, a slut was a dirty kitchen maid). But who knows? Political struggles have affected language in unexpected ways before: “queer” and “gay,” once slang, are now standard; “black” used to be crude and “negro” and “colored” polite; “redneck,” once dismissive, is now a badge of pride; “kike” may be unredeemable, but there’s a Jewish magazine called Heeb. Maybe someday people will get it through their heads that sexually active females are not demons, morons, destroyers of men or fair game for rapists, and “slut” will either fade from the language or mean something else, like “woman who sleeps with people she wants to sleep with, and only those people.”

In any case, redeeming the word is a side issue. What matters is the central message: rape is not the victim’s fault. What she wears. What she drinks. How late she stays out. If she’s on a date. Walkers aren’t saying, “Please call me a slut, big boy”; they’re saying, “I am Spartacus”—the molested hotel worker, the murdered prostitute, the student whose rapist is protected by her college because he’s a star athlete. Even more, they are attacking the very division of women into good girls and bad ones, madonnas and whores. Don’t be misled by the fishnet stockings and miniskirts. These women are making a radical challenge to foundational ideas about women’s sexuality—and men’s.

4 notes &

I think stories tend to be better than truths, than aphorisms. If I say to you, “Slay three oxen and you will be forgiven.” Well, once you live in an oxen-free society, this is a meaningless piece of wisdom for me. If I tell you that there was a man and he only had three oxen, but he thought that if he gave them to his God, his God would favor him—if I tell you that story instead of what to do, then you might say, “This is a story about a guy who really stepped out on faith, about a guy who was willing to give more than he had, or more than he could afford to give to express his gratitude at having anything at all.” That’s a meaningful story. I think that’s why this stuff for me is meaningful. It’s couched in stories, and stories never lose meaning. Stories just generate new meaning forever.

AVC: Do you think that love of a story is the basis for your use of storytelling songwriting?

JD: We’re comparing gods and ants here with my little songs. [Laughs.] I tell stories that point out that even in the lowest trench, something’s funny. Everyone’s experienced that. You break an arm and you say, “Wow! This is hilarious! I’m lying on the floor with a goddamned broken arm.” I think that’s kind of what I do, is try to find more complex emotional scenes and locate the bitter drop of humor in them somewhere.

2 notes &

Tell me about your involvement in the movement to save libraries back home. Are they in danger of closing down?

Oh for fuck’s sake, yeah, I mean, it seems ridiculous from an outsider’s point of view. There are huge cuts going on in the UK and one of the penny-saving things that lots of councils are doing is they’re trying to shut down the smaller libraries within the borough. These libraries are really important because they tend to be in areas where it’s run down, they need the community space, and maybe they’re not the flashiest looking or have the best books…

They’re the communities that need them the most?

Yeah, they really have a purpose. And if you look at the numbers, they save money in the short run, but think of all the people that are losing their literacy programs, their access to learning, access to books, and to other people who can help them with that kind of stuff. In the long run, those are the people that will be depending on the state even more in 10-15 years.

They’re creating a situation where people will make less income, which means less tax revenue, and increased dependency on the state.

Yeah, we’re all very confused at home. Why, why is this happening? Why target libraries? That’s like, who is the most loved person in the world?

Emmaroids?

Me? -laughs- No, it’s like trying to fix the zoo by getting rid of the penguins. “Oh, not enough people are coming to visit the zoo. Let’s get rid of the cutest animals with absolutely no unredeeming features.

Bye bye penguins, so long monkeys.

Let’s just keep this weird rat that only comes out at night and the children hate it.