{"id":45479,"date":"2011-06-20T02:49:56","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T06:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/45479\/means-solstice\/"},"modified":"2011-06-20T02:49:56","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T06:49:56","slug":"means-solstice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/45479\/means-solstice\/","title":{"rendered":"No Means No – My Solstice Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

What an intense, active, Solstice weekend is wrapping up right now.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve noted previously, come this week, I am no longer a full time student and now begin a renewed search for a job to replace the one I lost in April of 2010. In years past, I would have used an excuse like this to indulge in lots of intoxicants; one last party before having to get back down to business.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"Not to toot my own recovery\u00a0 horn or anything, but the weekend started off with a particular occasion that I was mildly concerned with as it was at a similar occasion, a cast party, that I forewent my last significant period of sobriety (although in that instance, I was throwing away 3 weeks of being sober as opposed to my current 14 months).\u00a0 At this gathering of the cast and crew of The Miser, alcohol was promised to be a big part of it, and if the old Joko had been there, I would have made it thus.\u00a0 Instead, I learned how non-alcoholics party.\u00a0 Although there was alcohol there in sufficient quantities, nobody got really drunk.\u00a0 In the past, I would never have noticed this as I would have been the one really drunk.<\/font><\/p>\n

I brought my camera, but didn\u2019t record much.\u00a0 There was only one really video-worthy moment.\u00a0 Our host got really embarrassed regarding his barbequing skills, or lack thereof.\u00a0 He totally burned a few things, including one hamburger which he decided, even though we had many mor uncooked burgers,\u00a0 to eat himself.\u00a0 He explained it as a product of his Jewish-Christian upbringing in that he felt lots of guilt and\u00a0 needed to pay penitence.\u00a0 Consequently, he felt the need to withdraw to the fringes of the party to eat his burger of shame.\u00a0 Had I not also been exiled to the shame-fringes of the party smoking a cigarette, I never would have noticed.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Saturday Morning, I posted a blog showing excerpts from my journey last year to the Fremont Solstice Fair.\u00a0 I also had made plans, having discovered the night before that despite my sobriety, I had negligently left my video camera at the party.\u00a0 Becca and Michael, two people at the party whom I have come to know a little through the theatre scene, were also\u00a0 planning on attending the Solstice Fair.\u00a0 They were a bit late, so I didn\u2019t get the entire parade on vid, but if you caught the version I put on FriendBurst yesterday, you might have been disappointed in its brevity.\u00a0 I realized today that I MUST have mis-edited it because I KNEW there were things I recorded that didn\u2019t end up in that first version.\u00a0 This one has an extra minute of footage\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n

Good fun celebrating the return of the sun\u2026 in the rain.<\/p>\n

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And after watching the parade, the three of us checked out the Fair. Awesome was the “Art Car” exhibit. Funny enough, an acquaintance of mine thorugh the Seattle ukulele scene was setting up to perform a song with his new band. Witness the Howlin Hobbit and the Snake Suspenderz!<\/p>\n

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Lastly, let me talk to you about SlutWalk.\u00a0 I only heard about it when a friend said she was going to this in lieu of attending the Solstice Fair, and although this was the first of its kind, I get the feeling this is likely to become a regular event here in Seattle.\u00a0 This town is very receptive of sluts.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sluts?\u00a0 See, the first point of this demonstration, in it\u2019s very name, is to reclaim power over that word from those who have used it as a label on women to deprive them of certain rights.\u00a0 First and foremost, the right not to be fucked against your will.\u00a0 Recent comments by law enforcement about the clothing of rape victims, in that if they weren\u2019t dressed like sluts, they wouldn\u2019t have been raped, has set off continent-wide demonstrations against this pervasive blame-the-victim attitude.<\/p>\n

Anyone and everyone was invited to dress in the sluttiest outfits they could wear and march today to point out one simple and what would seem to be simply evident fact: what a person is wearing does not give anyone license to fuck them against their will.\u00a0 I myself did not understand this anachronistic blame the victim attitude.\u00a0 I did not need convincing, nor was I either a victim nor advocate for this cause.\u00a0 What was I doing at SlutWalk?<\/p>\n

\"\"Okay, I\u2019ll admit.\u00a0 Seeing a bunch of women marching in scanty clothing held some appeal, but I was also going there to meet a friend (who was ill and didn\u2019t show up in any case).\u00a0 When I heard that there was going to be a counter-demonstration, lead by the Westboro Baptist Church, oooh, I got all excited about the video making possibilities.<\/p>\n

Despite my suspicious motives, I was nonetheless moved by what I heard at the rally.\u00a0 It was very powerful to hear people talk about their rape stories.\u00a0 Bikinis do not promote rape.\u00a0 Burkhas do not prevent it.\u00a0 It is a societal problem, but any and all blame MUST fall on the rapists.\u00a0 This \u201cwell, dressed like that, she was asking to be raped\u201d crap has got to stop.<\/p>\n

Alas, there was no counter-demonstration at all, although the Westboro Baptist Church got mentioned a few times, they didn\u2019t show.\u00a0 Their threat of them being there probably drew more people to come hear the message.<\/p>\n

Some very powerful testimonials, great messages and scantily clad people in the video below…<\/p>\n

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I was still feeling only mildly motivated by all of this until I got home tonight and posted something on Facebook asking my friends for suggestions of songs for the background music.\u00a0 In the debate that followed, I got the response below from a guy who is more often than not overboard in his misogynistic attitudes for comedic affect. If you can think sophisticatedly enough, you\u2019ll realize he is making fun of the male dominant mindset by being so that way that he is mocking himself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen too many people fall into the trap of actually believing what he is saying and being laughed at for their inevitable derision.\u00a0 Yet, here I am deriding him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 It is wrong.\u00a0 Joking about rape is all well and good if it is done so over the top that there is no chance that the idiots of the world would mistake you for being serious.\u00a0 Heck, we can hear that in my video above when the advocate sarcastically tells all the rape victims who raised their hands that they actually wanted it.\u00a0 Telling us that saving the whores from being raped is akin to saving pi\u00f1atas from being beaten, that it is too subtle.<\/p>\n

Your humor, sir, has gone too far in it\u2019s subtlety.<\/p>\n

I mean, I\u2019ve song songs on my ukulele about raping dead corpses.. But no one would believe I was serious, right?<\/p>\n

Ooo\u2026.\u00a0 I just got a text message from my friend at the mortuary.\u00a0 Gotta go.<\/p>\n

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Sluts? See, the first point of this demonstration, in it\u2019s very name, is to reclaim power over that word from those who have used it as a label on women to deprive them of certain rights. First and foremost, the right not to be fucked against your will. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,2,1428,840],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyles","category-other","category-politics-2","category-religion-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}