Resist dehumanising

In further acknowledgement of VP Day (Victory in the Pacific) and the 75th anniversary of the end of WW2 this morning I listened to this great podcast on Australias Radio National. I'm an avid fan of host James Carleton and his weekly program God Forbid. 

PODCAST

After WW2 - grief, loss and change

The price of love is grief, and the price of grief in war is especially high. For those who lost loved ones in the WWII conflict, how did they come to terms with the loss and grief that ensued?

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Below is a link from another Radio National podcast from the Religion and Philosophy show. This dovetails neatly into why and how our species can hate on each other to the extent of justifying all out war. The violence and aggression we do to each other is a spectrum starting from low level bullying to murder on an industrial scale. David Livingstone Smith addresses climate change, the international rise of authoritarian politics, reflects on the current president of the USA and how "dehumanisation" is a weapon of propaganda that disinhibits groups of people and gives permission to identify others as less than human.

PODCAST

Inhumanity

Radio National podcast. Host David Rutledge interviews philosopher and writer Professor David Livingstone Smith discussing his new book.

THE BOOK

On Humanity: on dehumanisation and how to resist it.

I had to buy the book of course!

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Something old, something new

This is a coat I upcyled a few years ago. It was a plain black polyester $6 jacket from Vinnies. As ever, I had to open the side seams to be able to work on the surface flat and this was tricky because the jacket was lined and had a drawstring cord at the waist. Direct painted and stenciled onto the surface. Stenciled and stitched on on offcut fragment of yellow teeshirt knit. That fabric was cut into various size patches there were sewed on. 

The jacket is displayed over one of my PDF sewing patterns - The Rings of Saturn

I made the bead necklace too.

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How not to do intersectional feminism

I shared in a blog a couple of weeks ago how I'd signed up to be a Patreon for fashion influencer/advocate Aja Barber. In that closed group I made a comment on a discussion thread she started and when she saw my name appear she was angry to find I'd joined and asked me to go away. So I did. First, she demanded an apology from me because of how I've offended her and I did so in writing immediately. 

Being excluded is very hurtful to me as she is one of the highest profile anti-fast fashion advocates internationally and that is a community I feel I have a place in.

She was so outraged at my attempt to be involved and to add my voice to the conversation that she made a video condemnation describing my unacceptable behaviour and attitudes publicly available for her nearly 200,000 followers to see. So far its been seen by 42,000+ people. Many 100s of comments were made agreeing that I'm a terrible person. A racist. A stalker who intends to harm Ms Barber. I read them all and the one that really still stabs me in the gut is that I'm "vile". I've only watched the video once. Its been on her Instagram page for 6 weeks.

At some time in the future I might be able to watch it again and make some dispassionate analysis why she thought it was necessary. About 5 minutes into watching it my brain kind of fogged up, body went jelly and I was shaking all over and nearly vomiting. The only sensible response I had that I can recall before fuzzing out was being confounded by her saying that my behaviour was exactly as if I'd come into the lounge room of her home and rudely insulted her. I really don't get the parallel how an advocate with 100s of 1000s of followers, who asks for people to support their work on Patreon, whose daily work is devoted to advocating for rights for clothing workers - feels that her audience must be strictly controlled to only people who listen, not question. Don't ask anything nuanced or too hard for a cookie cutter answer....or maybe you'll get subjected to a similar hatchet job?

Last night I was removed from IG @rememberwhomadethem as a Patreon and removed/blocked from the Instagram group. I joined the group 5 days ago and had posted one comment in the Patreon thread congratulating them on doing a great job investigating Loststock. 

What distressed me the most was getting this notice that my removal was due to BULLYING and HARASSMENT.

@rememberwhomadethem  is a great advocacy platform and they are entitled to keep out people they don't want to speak to. During the 5 days I was part of the group I listened to their 3 published podcasts and all were excellent. Their second podcast featured Aja Barber being interviewed and I wonder if she recommended they should eject me?

I recently became a Remake ambassador and now that it seems Aja has declared war on me I hope she doesn't use her influence to get me thrown out of there too. Remake has invited me to submit an article describing how my art to wear garments have been appropriated and mass manufactured by a China based company. I've already spent many hours researching and writing it up so it will be a blow if I lose the opportunity to use that platform to alert fashion consumers about another unethical fast fashion practise. 

 

This post is getting too long. Hardly anybody will have had the patience to get this far. 

I want to remind the women who are trying to silence me on social media of the words of Sojourner Truth. Think about why she said this. I think she was agonised by women dividing women into imagined categories of the more and less privileged and dismissing the integrity of a persons voice based on skin colour? 

Ain't I a woman?