Collaborative consciousness raising
A wonderful thing just happened.
It started with a terrible thing. Late last night, Tom Daley, a guy about to open his shoestring bike-repair business in Southeast Portland, had his location broken into and most of his tools and inventory stolen.
A friend of the bike community, Roger Mallette of Retro Image Apparel, posted an ad on Craigslist describing the crime and asking for help. In this ad, Mallette called the theft a rape of Tom Daley's livelihood.
The crime was picked up and Twittered by various Portland bike bloggers, and that's how I heard of it.
I re-Tweeted it. nwhepcat saw my Tweet and Tweeted back, saying, "That's a shame about the bike shop. (Gotta say, though, the comparison of stolen bikes to rape irritated the crap out of me.)"
She was so right. I replied to the Craigslist ad as follows:
As a Portland bike-rider, I am so very sorry this happened. I'll go to the donation site in a moment or two and contribute what I can.
Meanwhile, I must ask you to reconsider your use of the word "rape" in the Craigslist listing. Rape is the sexual attack of one person on another without the second person's consent. What happened to Tom Daley is certainly a crime, and a terrible one. It's robbery. It's theft. It's grand larceny. It's a felony. It's especially anger-inducing because it has made an aspiring and struggling person a victim of someone's greed, and probably their drug addiction.
But it was a crime of property. It wasn't rape. He has no concerns about disease transmission or forced pregnancy. He is unlikely to spend the rest of his life overcoming the physical and emotional trauma of a violent assault on his body. What was stolen from him can be replaced.
Out of respect for the way-more-than-you-probably-think-there-are rape victims out there, please consider removing that term.
Thanks.
[my real name and address]
Not a quarter of an hour later, I got this reply:
Thank you Anne for re-directing my sensibilities to the truest context of the word. You are right. I've changed it. I find it so refreshing that folks put energy into their base ideas, values and beliefs. Thank you for demonstrating this and helping me learn to be more sensitive with that topic.
Cheers!
Roger W. Mallette
Founder/Art Director
The Retro Image Apparel Co.
The offending term was already gone from the Craigslist ad, too.
Small steps, small steps. Thank you nwhepcat for making me aware, so I could pass it on. And good luck to Tom Daley, who is just trying to open a microbusiness in hard times.
This entry is cross-posted from DarkEmeralds on Dreamwidth.
It started with a terrible thing. Late last night, Tom Daley, a guy about to open his shoestring bike-repair business in Southeast Portland, had his location broken into and most of his tools and inventory stolen.
A friend of the bike community, Roger Mallette of Retro Image Apparel, posted an ad on Craigslist describing the crime and asking for help. In this ad, Mallette called the theft a rape of Tom Daley's livelihood.
The crime was picked up and Twittered by various Portland bike bloggers, and that's how I heard of it.
I re-Tweeted it. nwhepcat saw my Tweet and Tweeted back, saying, "That's a shame about the bike shop. (Gotta say, though, the comparison of stolen bikes to rape irritated the crap out of me.)"
She was so right. I replied to the Craigslist ad as follows:
As a Portland bike-rider, I am so very sorry this happened. I'll go to the donation site in a moment or two and contribute what I can.
Meanwhile, I must ask you to reconsider your use of the word "rape" in the Craigslist listing. Rape is the sexual attack of one person on another without the second person's consent. What happened to Tom Daley is certainly a crime, and a terrible one. It's robbery. It's theft. It's grand larceny. It's a felony. It's especially anger-inducing because it has made an aspiring and struggling person a victim of someone's greed, and probably their drug addiction.
But it was a crime of property. It wasn't rape. He has no concerns about disease transmission or forced pregnancy. He is unlikely to spend the rest of his life overcoming the physical and emotional trauma of a violent assault on his body. What was stolen from him can be replaced.
Out of respect for the way-more-than-you-probably-think-there-are rape victims out there, please consider removing that term.
Thanks.
[my real name and address]
Not a quarter of an hour later, I got this reply:
Thank you Anne for re-directing my sensibilities to the truest context of the word. You are right. I've changed it. I find it so refreshing that folks put energy into their base ideas, values and beliefs. Thank you for demonstrating this and helping me learn to be more sensitive with that topic.
Cheers!
Roger W. Mallette
Founder/Art Director
The Retro Image Apparel Co.
The offending term was already gone from the Craigslist ad, too.
Small steps, small steps. Thank you nwhepcat for making me aware, so I could pass it on. And good luck to Tom Daley, who is just trying to open a microbusiness in hard times.
This entry is cross-posted from DarkEmeralds on Dreamwidth.