The Living Artist

I am getting uncomfortable with some of the sweeping statements being made by participants in the #mooreandme campaign.

(If you’re not sure what #mooreandme is, go read this post. It’s a good, basic rundown of the whole mess, with quotes, facts, and timeline. Tl;dr summary: #mooreandme is a Twitter campaign, led by Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, to call some people out for engaging in some really horrific rape apologism.)

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment behind the campaign. Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann have behaved appallingly, even more with their refusal to acknowledge their spreading of misinformation and endangerment of the women involved.

HOWEVER -

I have seen statements floating by to the effect of “Never trust anyone who talks about women making false rape claims”.

In addition to the many people I know who have been raped, I know someone who has been damaged by a false rape claim. These people do exist. Should they be used to discredit the vast majority of true rape claims? Absolutely not. But don’t erase them; don’t erase the damage done by them. Don’t make generalized, sweeping statements that make people feel unsafe to even mention their own experience.

Think of it this way; all rape claims are no more true than they are all false. Just like it is ridiculous to say that all women (or no women!) regret their abortions.

Part of what social justice is about is acknowledging and respecting the individual, and not erasing a person or their experience because it doesn’t fit with your ideology.

The pervasiveness of rape culture does indeed mean that it is far more likely for a true rape claim to be disbelieved than for a false rape claim to be believed; but, again, this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, nor does it make it somehow okay to erase a smaller group in the name of helping a larger one.

I know Twitter leaves little room for nuance. But there are a million valid ways to state the points behind the #mooreandme campaign without resorting to erasure and sweeping statements that cannot possibly be true.

Today is your LAST chance to get my original artwork “Give Help, Not Blame” for as little as 26% of the retail price in the BARCC auction. As of this writing it’s going for $50 – were I to sell it outright, I would charge at least $200, so this is dirt cheap! The auction’s been extended a couple of times due to technical difficulties, but this is really truly it: the auction ends for good at 5pm EST!

Bid on my artwork here.

There are lots of other beautiful things there, too, some without any bids at all!

Auction winners, or people who just want to donate to a good cause, can make their donation online to the BARCC and email their receipt to Shira.

Support Shira. Support women. There is nothing normal, or natural, about rape. The support and outreach BARCC provides saves women’s lives. You can help.

After writing my thoughts on art about rape yesterday, and reading what meloukhia wrote today (short version of my revelation: if I don’t feel right creating work about rape when I haven’t been raped, that shifts the burden onto survivors, which isn’t fair), I have my idea.

And this is the point where I don’t tell you about it, lest it kill the potential.

Of course, I’m leaving Sunday for a week in Pittsburgh, then a weekend in Indianapolis, then coming back to pack for the whirlwind move, so who knows how long it will be before I can work on it! But it’s there, I’ve got notes on it, and it will be done. In time for Shira’s blogathon, even.

Right, then. Off to work.

I don’t usually talk about the specifics of my idea generation process. In part because large bits of it are subconscious, but also in part because talking about it seems to kill it a lot of the time. It’s like if I describe a half-formed idea in words, the magic goes out of it and it stops developing. I usually have to put it on the back burner and come back to it after I’ve forgotten the conversation.

Right now, though, I have a project I’ve committed to and NO IDEAS AT ALL. So I might as well talk about it, right?

Anyway. My friend Shira does Blogathon every year for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. This year she’s incorporating an auction of donated pieces by artists and craftspeople who have been affected by rape.

That’s right up my art/activism alley. I’ve never been raped, but I have close friends who have been, and I’ve sure as hell been harassed, objectified, and otherwise diminished by rape culture.

But I still can’t get past the barrier of feeling like I have no right to make art about rape.

Also, most of my art (as you may have noticed) involves naked women. The reasons for this are many and layered, but suffice it to say that I’m generally not comfortable drawing clothes. Either it’s technically tedious and annoying, or it interferes with the lines, or it feels like it’s getting in between the viewer and the idea, or…. But drawing a person naked in a piece about rape when I haven’t been raped…. feels like exploitation.

Add to that that I don’t want to do a piece on “this is what rape looks like”. Not that that isn’t valuable – it places a human face on those society usually wants to ignore – but that, to me, feels like work that should be done by survivors. I don’t want to appropriate their experiences and feelings, or warp them with my biases. I’m drawn to a different focus. Pointing towards a necessary shift in attitude. Examining assumptions that we make because of rape culture. Pointing out that men are raped, and women are rapists, too. A different perspective, maybe one that will resonate personally with someone who thinks they haven’t been affected by rape, or who thinks they aren’t part of the problem (hint: we all are part of the problem. The culture brainwashes us into not seeing it.). But how to do this?

These are all issues I’ve read about over and over in print, but they’re nuanced and layered and I can’t seem to find that pure core statement of “PAINT ME”. Many of my pieces incorporate text, but the emotional punch, the shining center, comes from the figure. The text just provides context, and a reason for the viewer to keep looking until they’ve absorbed it all.

So I’m kind of lost. I volunteered for this months ago, thinking I had tons of time. The time is ticking away, and I’m no closer than I was then. The scope is so wide that I feel lost. I want to trust that ideas will come, but with an actual deadline and a topic that I so desperately want to do well by, I’m getting twitchy. Maybe that’s a sign that the idea I need is right around the corner. Or maybe it’s a sign that I need to change my approach. Or maybe it’s a sign that my clothes are making me itch, and lizards are invading from Mars.

I suppose I shouldn’t say I have no ideas. Rather, I have too many, but none of them seem to be any good. Much like turning to the Internet for medical advice, there must be something valuable in there, if I can figure out how to identify it buried in muck.