#NUD at Women's March

I'll be #NakedUglyDancing at

The Victoria Women's March
Saturday, January 20, 2018
11am-1pm
Centennial Sq (Victoria City Hall)

"We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Anyone welcome to join me dressed or un.
#NUD at Women's March Facebook event


Also, I'll be in Herstory presented by Riot Grrrls Burlesque Revue on Saturday, Feb 3. Tickets at Eventbrite  
Herstory Facebook event

Last month's action. 6th anniversary of Vulnerability Vigils/monthly actions. Photo by David Howell.

Another Explanation for My Kids

Several years ago I wrote this letter to my daughters. I know they haven't read it.

Like many people in our culture (including myself) they don't often have the patience to listen to an explanation or even ask for one.

And, of course, I do understand that an old, chunky mother is embarrassing enough, even without parading her weirdness and nakedities around town and social media! They're also irritated, no doubt, by the thought that I might have a good reason.

Recent #uglydancing. My upcoming Victoria Fringe show is entitled Naked Ugly Dancing.

Now they are 10 and 15 and, even though I think it's still a pretty good letter, I'm going to attempt to add to the explanation.

I got Stage 4 cancer almost 2 years ago. I was really overwhelmed by a lot of things but especially working as a university instructor. I think that made me get really sick. For me, as a teacher, it was important to share certain understandings about how humans need to think differently. But I made people afraid. No one was interested in supporting me or willing to believe I had good reasons. (Does that sound a little familiar? Haha!)

An example of a difficult thing to learn that you might recognize is how in your schools you have learned about residential schools and how our Canadian government and churches hurt First Nations children very badly and caused harms to First Nations people that continue. For instance, many of those children who grew up abused have turned to addiction and abuse themselves; and, because the children were forced to speak English or French, many First Nations languages have been lost.

This is very difficult for us to understand. Because we want to trust our government and our country. We want to believe that everyone gets the chances we get.

The problems in our world are caused, in many ways, by what people believe. So when we believe we have a trustworthy country, for example, we might not look to see things that happen that are actually very harmful.

Or we might blame another group for those harms.

Unfortunately, the way we live and believe in richer countries like Canada is the cause of most of the difficulties on earth... like global climate change, poverty, weapons, war, etc. 

One example is shopping and poverty. We get many things like clothes and toys and food and things for our house. Almost everything we buy involves people in poorer places being paid very little to make it or grow it or dig up the materials for us. 

This example is very tough to swallow. Because we need some of that stuff and because our society expects us to look or live a certain way. We are pretty stuck. And there are many more examples that show how we are stuck. Another is how we need to drive but we don't want oil (which needs to be sent all over the world so people can put gas in their cars and heat their homes) to pollute our oceans and land.

I think that's why people want to believe we are nice and don't want to look at how not nice we are. Because in a way, we are not being un-nice on purpose. We are in a culture and a system that surrounds us and no one can just step out of it.

So, one of the reasons I do what I do, is to make people think about what "is normal."

I have started to do ugly dancing in the street and for my upcoming fringe show because I think of it as a kind of action to create healing. I'm dancing out some of the ugliness. For the health of our culture and my body.

I also think of it as a cultural antidote. An antidote is something that removes poison. So if there is some not nice stuff going on but people aren't seeing it, maybe doing something the opposite of normal can help remove some poisons. 

One thing about our culture that is interesting is that when women aren't young anymore, they are considered ugly. But I'm not poisonous. I'm a caring, loving person. I'm a wise person. I'm a person who shouldn't be ignored.

So if I show up as an "ugly" dancer on the street, I am doing something very non-harmful and expressive. Why should that be a problem?

A lot of my performance art is about giving people the opportunity to question their beliefs.

It's embarrassing for me too. You have no idea. But, as I've tried to tell you guys, some things are more important than embarrassment.

(REVISED) FIRE: A #VulnerabilityVigil, Sun, May 8, 1pm, Gov't & Yates, Victoria

Announcing...

A #VulnerabilityVigil responding to the FIRE in Fort McMurray

Sunday, May 8

1 pm

Corner of Government and Yates

Victoria, BC

All welcome.

I have revised the theme of this month's #VulnerabilityVigil in response to the fire and mass evacuation in Fort McMurray.

I will stand naked on the street with a sign that says: FIRE. 

(See http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html for more info about #VulnerabilityVigils)

Why would a shy, cranky, basically misanthropic, not to mention dumpy, mother of two be doing this work? On Mother's Day even? For more than 10 years?

The answer to me is so obvious: I feel such a strong sense of URGENCY!!!

My sense of urgency and vulnerability has been heightened because of the fire. I have to address the terrible awareness that this kind of disaster is probably part of the "new normal."

I feel solidarity with the people of Fort McMurray. If I had a son, he might be working there, like so many other sons, brothers and dads who need to make a living. 

I feel solidarity with the people of Fort Chipewyan and other First Nations people on the front lines whose lands and rivers have been badly harmed by the extraction of oil. 

It's obvious to me that both "groups" have been brutally hurt by consequences of a global oil economy. 

None of us has the ability to remove ourselves from this economy. 

You don't believe in it? Neither do I. But I'm asking you to understand that you're still part of it.

You do believe in it? Probably because it works for you? I'm asking you to understand the harm it does, not just to others who you'd prefer to forget, but all of us.

Do you use money? Do you have a paycheque? Do you work at a job? Where maybe what you're doing contributes to the marginalization of others? (If you don't, please let me know where this type of job exists.)

Do you shop at stores? Do you eat food that wasn't grown in your neighborhood? Do you have material goods that don't come from a faraway land? Do you have a pension? Do you invest? Do you go places in motor vehicles? Have you been on a plane lately? Et fucking cetera. 

We are all connected and complicit--and, at least currently, stuck with a broken system. To pretend the Fort Mac fire is a "natural disaster" or, conversely, "just desserts," helps no one. 

We are all in this together. The sooner we get that, the sooner we move forward.

The ethos of the Human Body Project and #VulnerabilityVigils has always been about how we are all in this together. I use my body and my own vulnerability to, on a small level, walk the talk. 

People are always welcome to join, dressed or not.

Thanks, Tasha

P.S. I still encourage everyone to see Rape is Real and Everywhere at a city near you: http://www.rapeisreal.com/shows

Here is the info for the show in Victoria:

Rape is Real and Everywhere 

Victoria Event Centre

May 17, 8pm

Tickets $15 plus service charges

Website: rapeisreal.com

RIR&E Victoria show tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/rape-is-real-everywhere-a-comedy-show-in-victoria-tickets-24792306456

RIR&E Victoria Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585960195027541/

The sign for this month's #VulnerabilityVigil will say RAPE. For a #VulnerabilityVigil I stand naked on the street (often with supporters, dressed or undressed) holding a sign with a word that draws attention to our mutual vulnerability as humans.

I use nakedness as a way to embody vulnerability.

As a mother of two daughters, I think about how rape is real and everywhere at least daily. I created the work of the Human Body Project and #VulnerabilityVigils because of my kids (see http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2012/10/to-my-beautiful-daughters-attempt-to.html). 

Our culture would like to be blind to rape in all its forms. The unfortunate truth that most sexual assault is committed by men in positions of trust parallels the way our institutions create and uphold the structures that threaten humanity's survival. 

Why do the perpetrators think it's ok? Because, on some level, they feel entitled. Way too often--as the news stories and statistics show, and as survivors know--they are.

#VulnerabilityVigils are part of an ongoing art/activism project and were created:

-To "be the change"

-To share / express / create space for vulnerability

-To stand in some solidarity with those who are most vulnerable

-To hold ourselves in some accountability for the atrocities our culture perpetrates and perpetuates

See http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html for more info

Other artists who are working to get conversations started about rape include Emma Cooper and Heather Jordan Ross, co-producers of the comedy show Rape is Real and Everywhere. It features seasoned stand-up comedians who are rape survivors. They use humour as a celebration of resiliency, an antidote to violation. This explosive show puts faces and stories to a taboo epidemic with nameless victims and is coming through Victoria on a national tour.

-30-

Human Body Project 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil

10th Anniversary of the Human Body Project
"Retrospective" Vulnerability Vigil
All welcome.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
1:00 PM
Revised location: Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge
South end of Beacon Hill Park (near flagpole and Camas Circle, across from Dallas Rd.)
Victoria, BC
If you've ever wanted to take part in a public performance project or a flash mob or a Vulnerability Vigil, please consider coming out for this one!! (Dressed or undressed.)

___________________
I started the Human Body Project ten years ago, as a performance art event, in a very conservative place, Lethbridge, Alberta. An undercover officer came to the first performance because a concerned citizen had called. (The cop left saying, "That was very beautiful.") I had the idea two years earlier but it took me those two years to get the courage up to be naked.
People like to say nakedness isn't a big deal. Ha. You try it. On the street. In any case, it's a big deal to me. It's very challenging for me to show up naked.
I do so in the Human Body Project, which is an ongoing performance art/activism project, to provoke a serious consideration of individual and humanity's vulnerability. Nakedness is a metaphor for and embodiment of vulnerability. I use my naked body and naked self. I also use this blog/website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as other spaces to share.
When I started I was the mother of a 4-year-old whose birth changed my life more than anything before or since. Her presence in my life awakened me to the denying I'd been able to do before she was there. I had responsibilities, to her and to myself. I felt so much opening, love, and pain. I finally felt like an earthling.
I couldn't and still can't explain it all. Or that's not right. I have explained, in many different ways, in my writing and in performance. It's difficult, however, to explain succinctly and in a way that many people can access. I'm pushing against so many dominant narratives and vulnerabilities. People react very personally.
Still, after 10 years of viscerally and publicly coming up against our culture's ideas of vulnerability. And after becoming a woman with gynecological cancer, yes, I will connect misogyny, fear of femininity, and our culture's need to place ego above love to what I'm slogging through.
My mother self couldn't accept that the world was going to treat my daughter like it treated me and so, not logically or rationally, but with a sense of calling that has been a burden and a challenge, I embarked.
It has been too hard and I don't doubt that the toll it's taken on my body has been a reason I have cancer. Some of us process the shit of a damaging culture. I'm one of those people. It does not come with pay.
Now I'm 54. Because of chemo, I look 74. I have two daughters now. One is 9! My oldest is 14! I'm alive!
I use the word vulnerability as a key to entering this work. All of us have vulnerabilities, all of us are living at the most vulnerable time for humanity that has ever existed in history. This is directly related to how we treat women, children and feminine energy. To shift this WE as a culture have to shift. It has to be a visceral, non-verbal shift because we need to waylay the ego self, which is very attached to words.
It can only happen with experience. "Be the change" is a useful phrase, one that continues to simplify the reason I do this.
I must repeat this though: I don't pretend to be good at it.
On Saturday, March 26, 2016, at 1 pm, in Victoria, BC, which is where I expanded the Human Body Project work to include Vulnerability Vigils, I am holding the 10th Anniversary Vigil along the Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge.
Over the more than four years since I started holding vigils, I have stood naked on the street more than 50 times (behind a sign as a gesture of gentleness to those who are deeply affronted by nudity). In solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. To share and express vulnerability. As a creative antidote to the isolation and detachment of our society. Etc. I'm doing more than one thing!
For the 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil I will place all of the signs I have used on the slope of the hill. Words like: VULNERABLE, PRIVILEGE, SYSTEMIC, HEAL, FIX, PARADIGM, MOTHER. Also the Extinction Symbol.

Keith Jenkins and I holding the Extinction Symbol, February 2015.

It would be thrilling if lots of people came (dressed or not) and joined me. As an art project, people holding the signs (there are more than 20) would be such a beautiful statement!

Links to the event on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/229958677341052/

https://www.facebook.com/events/506020046252691/

An Article from an Audience Member a Few Years Back

A few years ago, an author tried to sell this story but, shock of shocks, couldn't so she recently allowed me to post it on my blog – which is, of course, followed by mainstream news outlets and Woody Allen fans everywhere. (Not.)

People think I'm brave to deal with cancer. But cancer gives no one a choice. Every cancer sufferer is forced to be brave. 

As the person in question, I'd like to point out that I'm much braver to be the Human Body Project lady for the last 10 years. I mean, read the first paragraph.

I'd also like to connect a couple of dots. How women are supposed to look is a place of projection in a male-dominated culture, it is a way of devaluing the feminine and the necessity of dealing with vulnerability. This is at the heart of every problem we face: power and ego over love and cooperation.

Thanks to Thelma Fayle for sharing this article.

The Human Body Project

by Thelma Fayle

When she slowly steps in front of the audience, without even wearing shoes, Tasha Diamant reveals herself to be a plain-looking, naked woman with a couple of C-section scars and plenty of hair in places where the Prada girls have none. She has small sagging breasts and dimpled thighs and a pear-shaped, sturdy-looking body. 

The 49-year-old visual and performance artist seems slightly nervous in the way one might be before doing a high-dive off a cliff.  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath and captures a dignified, but still tentative, composure. She explains to the three-dozen audience members of the Fringe Theatre Festival on an island off of the West Coast of Canada – how she came to create the Human Body Project.

“In so many facets of our lives, we forget how vulnerable we humans are,” Diamant says, “and this project reminds me.”  The mother/artist/educator explains that in spite of her discomfort, she is determined to give this unscripted 90-minute presentation at least once a year for the rest of her life. Unscripted, as she is determined to maintain an open heart and a healthy dialogue with the audience in her effort to use her body to create a visceral experience of shared vulnerability.

Before Diamant arrives on stage, a 5 ft tall cardboard cutout, depicting a naked Diamant from her first Human Body Project presentation six years ago, gives the audience a chance to stare at the life-size photo and to climatise themselves before being faced with an excruciatingly bare presence on stage.

The artist welcomes the audience to look closely at her body. She speaks quietly but with strength and walks up and down the center aisle of what was once a church and is now a venue for community presentations. “Please feel free to look at my body,” she coaches. 

Given permission, timid eyes that have been respectfully focused mostly on Diamant’s face, begin to peek below.  Diamant is everywoman – not remotely proportioned to any Barbie doll ideal.

When someone asks a question, she approaches them and warmly shakes hands.  She puts people at ease.  She helps the audience to become comfortable with a plain old, magnificent, aging body.

Her well-documented project shows her foray on stage during her full-bellied pregnancy – an experience that re-affirmed her need to talk about the collective vulnerability that our culture denies and hides in the shadows of life’s many little 21^st Century femme façades of hair-dye and implants and face-glitter and push-up bras and tattoos – just to name a few.

The more she talks the more refreshing it is to listen to her. She mourns what she sees as the “amputation of empathy and connectedness in our society”.

She talks about the impact of having children in her life. Motherhood was a powerful catalyst; only unlike many parents who quite naturally become focused on their own children to the exclusion of all else, Diamant was moved to have a larger discussion with the world through her art.

“How do you feel about your body?” an audience member asks.

“I just try not to go to that place of judgment,” she responds. The way she responds with hesitation reveals her tenuousness bordering on insecurity about her body and also her decision to direct herself away from that same insecurity that plagues almost all women who have been trained to self-hate by years of looking at magazine pictures of what women are supposed to look like but never do.

Watching Tasha Diamant’s 90-minute Fringe Festival presentation reminds me of a line in a movie called Kamataki, where a young man asks an old man if the elder thinks the woman in a magazine is beautiful. The wise elder man slowly looks at the picture and then at the young man and says:  ”I don’t know if she is beautiful”.

The Human Body Project offers its audience a chance to answer the same question as they examine a naked, intelligent and articulate 49-year-old woman.

"Is she beautiful?”

Absolutely. And unlike the Emperor who got fooled, this Empress knows she is naked and she wants you to look at her.

Diamant is a genuine, un-altered woman.

Skin in the Game at the Victoria Fringe Cancelled and Vulnerability Vigils on hold

UPDATE: Skin in the Game at the Victoria Fringe cancelled.

I'm very disappointed to announce that I've had to cancel Skin in the Game at the Victoria Fringe.

A little about what's going on in my vulnerable human body/self right now.

I share for many reasons and, yes, I do realize my truth can be interpreted as "unprofessional." 

One main reason I share is to stand in solidarity with others who struggle invisibly.

In late July I was walloped with severe depression. The worst in more than 15 years. I have dealt with depression my whole life pretty much but mostly I have dealt with it spiritually and, I'll admit, by isolating and just fucking functioning.

The work of the Human Body Project has been in some ways an outlet for me to work with my depression. But I am at the point where I have an intake booking with a psychiatrist because, after more than 15 years of not trusting pharmaceuticals (my previous experience has been bad), I'm going to give it another try.

I crashed. I still managed to finish two classes, probably taking 3 times as long as usual to get my marking done, my head was so messed up. I did not tell my students or the people I work with. I'm a contract instructor.

While that was going on I menstruated for 10 days straight. Did you know it's quite normal for menopausal women to bleed buckets for 10 days? I didn't either, but it is. Menstruation has been extreme for me my whole life.

I have rarely mentioned this to anyone. Menstruation is "private."

Then, as that was tapering off, I began to be ill with a stomach illness. I have been experiencing incredibly severe nausea, coughing, and exhaustion. It's been going on for more than a week. My competent, kind doctor has me doing several tests. 

I am so ill I can barely walk around my house. So I can't show up for the fringe and Vulnerability Vigils are also on hold.

Tasha

Skin in the Game 
At the Victoria Fringe
Wood Hall
907 Pandora
Fri, Aug 28, 7:15
Sat, Aug 29, 4:15
Mon, Aug 31, 7:30
Tue, Sep 1, 6:00
Sat, Sep 5, 12:15
Sun, Sep 6, 2:45

As a student of pain, Tasha Diamant devised a performance and activism project to inquire into the origins of disconnection. Purposefully creating space for vulnerability, Diamant is now in the tenth year of her ongoing Human Body Project, for which, among many other things, she shows up literally and emotionally naked in performance and in public.

In this new show, through improvised facilitation, story telling, and disrobing, Diamant has a lot to say and reveal about the body and embodiment in a disembodied culture. Spoiler: she gets dressed at the end.

What audiences and reviewers have had to say about the Human Body Project:

“I am not sure what this exquisite piece of ‘art’ is but it’s all yours. Thank you so much, you have empowered me so much.”--note left by audience member

“You hit the tear ducts. BOOM like a bullet.”--note left by audience member

"….the experience is both powerful and empowering, pushing participants to question their own physical, psychological and social positions. The result? Both humbling and inspiring, The Human Body Project urges us to recognize the power of a single human body.”--The Ubyssey

"This is the most relevant and powerful work at the Fringe and Tasha Diamant is deserving of a full audience every night.”--Monday Mag

“The Human Body Project impacted me. Please go see it. It’s the definition of sincerity.”--note left by audience member

"I dug it. The Human Body Project slowed me down, and all sorts of stuff about shame, safety, and joy came up... Naked, emotionally and literally. Simply audacious.”--The Georgia Straight

Recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist

Link to Skin in the Game Facebook event

Tickets, program information, etc: victoriafringe.com

The Destruction of the Earth is a Crisis of Masculinity: Next Vigil Oct. 24, 4:30-5:30 PM #yyjstreet

Human Body Project Vulnerability Vigil #39
Friday, October 24, 2014
4:30-5:30 PM
Douglas St. near Queens Ave., Victoria

For a Human Body Project Vulnerability Vigil, I stand naked on the street once a month for an hour. I use my own naked body to share and create space for vulnerability.

I hold a sign in front of my body in a gesture of gentleness to those who are affronted by nudity.

It is worth reminding any readers that I also do not feel comfortable with presenting myself naked. It's not about comfort.

I invite people to join me, dressed or un-. If you are interested in holding a vigil at the same time in another city, please email me at tashadiamanthuman@gmail.com

I am constantly making efforts to explain how this work can be understood, please read on if you are interested.

I have come to understand that the destruction of the earth, often viewed as a crisis of modernity, must also be viewed as a crisis of masculinity (as can most of the world's violence). 

I think examining the mechanics of masculinity can help us understand how we got here and why it's so difficult to move out of it.

Tourists enjoying the June 14, 2014 vigil.

In The History of Men, masculinity scholar Michael S. Kimmel observes that:

"masculinities are constructed in a field of power: 1) the power of men over women; 2) the power of some men over other men. Men's power over women is relatively straightforward... Men's power over other men concerns the distribution of rewards [in society] among men by differential access to class, race, ethnic privileges or privilege based on sexual orientation... The constituent elements of 'hegemonic' masculinity, the stuff of the construction, are racism, sexism and homophobia." (p. 6-7)

Jackson Katz is also a masculinity scholar and anti-sexist educator/activist. In his documentary, Tough Guise, we see many young men answer a simple question: what does it mean to be masculine? The answers are obvious: tough; don't show emotion; don't be a pussy; strong; mean; powerful. Then he goes on to share statistics showing that men commit ~95% of every violent crime. 

Kimmel relates an experiment from several years ago: 

"groups of college students were asked to write down the 10 most important words that describe their identities... Invariably, women all listed "woman" in the top three, gay people listed their sexuality, and African Americans almost always placed "black" as their number one... not one man listed 'male'" (p. x)

Kimmel himself describes the moment it dawned on him that he was white, middle-class, and male. Until he had taken a feminist seminar in the 70s it had never occurred to him to identify himself in this way because those aspects of who he is had never been an issue. "I enjoy the privilege of invisibility," states Kimmel. Men, he observes, are "ubiquitous in positions of power everywhere" and thus, paradoxically, "invisible to themselves." (p. 5) 

When I read this, I was reminded of Gertude Stein's prescient observation of emerging suburbia, "there is no there there," and novelist Richard Ford's portraits of lost, numbed-out, middle-aged white guys.

Katz makes a compelling point about masculinity as performance. He shows how white, middle-class, suburban boys imitate black rappers who themselves imitate Italian gangsters in the movies. One of Kimmel's points is that masculinity is about constantly having to prove oneself. Not too long ago, someone shared with me the Kickstarter video for The Mask You Live In,  a proposed documentary about American masculinity and the follow-up to Miss Representation. I remember thinking that my upbringing and understanding of how to be in the world was in many ways very similar. I was brought up to suppress emotion and sensitivity. I was supposed to never show weakness and be "successful," which, in my milieu was very much equivalent to what Kimmel describes as the "very specific construction" of the "generic man," which is, like Ford's characters, "a white middle-class entrepreneur" (p. 8).

Kimmel points out that a "version of white, middle-class, heterosexual masculinity emerged as normative" (p. 7) and, from there, the normative became the normal. In other words, the experience of having to perform masculinity and always prove oneself is a function of culture; about maintaining privilege; and not limited to men.  In many ways, the Human Body Project is about removing the mask I live in.

The opposite of tough? Vulnerable. One way to begin to understand this concept is to purposefully place yourself in a publicly vulnerable position in a culture where this knowledge is invisible. So I can call upon my own knowledge. I often describe the Human Body Project as being about making the invisible visible. 

Like, Kimmel, I only began to really, viscerally understand my privileged position as a white, middle-class, non-LGBTQ Canadian through my work in the Human Body Project. When I started I knew I was choosing vulnerability and that it would be challenging. I knew I was going against the culture, doing the opposite of proving my worth. But the commitment to and practice of the work has opened my eyes day after day to the ways our damaging culture is created by experiencing it through my own embodied self. For me, my privilege and its corresponding invisibility has exacerbated my emotional pain, while keeping me in ignorance of the ways I am complicit in creating pain for others.

To be vulnerable in modern culture means to be un-masculine and, correspondingly, to be unsafe. The key point I take from Kimmel and Katz is that masculinity is a performance performed to be safe. But the very performance is creating the lack of safety in an exhausting, self-perpetuating circle. In the meantime: battering is the number one cause of injury among American females (Jean Kilbourne, Killing Us Softly 4); some statistics cite that 1 in 4 women will be raped during their lifetime; men may kill their female partners at more than 20X the rate that women do but, still, men kill more men than women (US stats from Katz); ~75% of the victims of homicide (~95% of which are committed by men) are men (Katz); more people die every year from poverty than died in the Holocaust; the North Pole melts; California dries up; the manmade 6th mass extinction is upon us; etc. I.e.--how long until this sinks in???!--no one is safe.

Kimmel's description of invisible masculinity parallels my understanding of the missing spiritual element in contemporary culture. "That men remain unaware of the centrality of gender in their lives perpetuates the inequalities based on gender in our society" (Kimmel, p. 6). The dominant culture of the earth is skewed by norms, and institutions built upon those norms, that have no relationship to the expression or understanding of ways of being that are the opposite of tough/mean-looking/pussy/vulnerable; i.e., in the realm of compassion/emotion/heart/sensitivity/intuition. Just as Kimmel observes that men are invisible to themselves, so is anyone who has never had much reason to question their entitlement, and, for many, including myself, its corresponding exhaustion (so often pathologized rather than seen as a function of 21st C culture). So off the cliff we go, blindly continuing to drive, buy, drug, cocoon and entertain ourselves.

Here are just a couple of examples from our culture of entitlement. I was 14 when my family went to Greece in 1976. It was my Greek father's first trip back since he had immigrated as a teenager. I was used to having hot baths and showers. So my Greek aunt, the one who lived with her old parents in a peasant home that still had a cellar built to hold animals; the one who made the cheese, slaughtered the goats, grew the vegetables and cooked; also gathered and chopped wood, started a fire and warmed up water for me. I watched her and thought nothing of it... for decades. 

I have also used the example of an Elizabeth Renzetti column in the Globe and Mail about Bashar al-Assad's British-born wife and her appalling behaviour as her husband waged war on his citizens: she went online shopping. When I read that article I was still getting the actual paper, I recall ads on the exact same page for several hundred dollar shoes and pricey crystal. The whole Western world (and its satellite consumerlands) is allowed to shop at the expense of the rest of humanity. We get a socially sanctioned pass, one of many. 

Kimmel: "The very processes that confer privilege to one group and not to another group are often invisible to those upon whom that privilege is conferred" (p. 5). Not that it's doing any of us much good.

In my opinion, the biggest problem humans are facing is a world of there is no there there. The destruction of the earth is a crisis of modernity is a crisis of masculinity is a crisis of entitlement.

How are you? Fine? Me? I never feel safe.

Note: Both Katz and Kimmel rightly give much credit to the decades of feminist/gender/race/queer studies work, conducted mostly by women, gay men and other minority scholars/activists under often hostile circumstances, that they build upon.