Crush

To crush is the way of the world
crush and conquer
and judge and malign
and empower
and we thought
equality and giving and protecting
not crushing
was respect
to make the small big
to give hope
and love
was joy
was abused
by those who crush
who could crush
and conquer
for all the small they were
and will still be.

And now we will crush
not to win
but to stand besides
equal, again
because we don't
want to be bigger,
We are,
and know
that bigness is not love
is not respect
is not relating
it is thwarting,
and being alone
for all the bigger we are than all the small
who must crush
to be.

While you seek your rise in
their lows
when the waves of high and low
escape no one
we will not see anyone fall,
nor make much of your or our rise,
but,
we will crush those who crush.

Hope

We hope and die
and hope and break
and hope is shaken
and hope again,
and we know we are not to hope
because we are meant to die
in the hands of hope.

unseen

All curves and looks and hair and flair
and all you can give
and the more in you to know,
is more reason to be hurt
means nothing
and all that matters is protecting
who you are,
and never being seen.

Choice

All the breaking can

free the fear of breaking

as much as have us fear life and love
and all,
forever forsaking.

Can we know

without falling,

or let hurt make us appreciate more the smallest flicker of light

befalling?

Significant

He matters and

she matters

he has a voice

she has a photo

he has a cause

she has a battle

he has his thoughts

she her judgements,

he his opinions

she her tastes

he wants to find his place

and she wants to fit in

while I have been

insignificant

and worthy of nothing.

I was nothing and

I am with nothing

I seeked nothing

and received nothing

I was causeless

and wordless

and exhibit nothing

and sacrifice my significance

to save the world of noise,

But I must

play my part too now,

and find my place and 

fight the noise

and be a noise

with answers

and fewer questions.

Respect

Love can't exist
with confines

and without,
it abuses

for we are clever
not to fall for what we chase

we will wish every emotion away
for that which confines,
and reveal later and not sooner,
once we un-confine,
that we want to be confined,

and I cannot let confines down,
and I have nothing to offer,
though that's all I am worth
while we will seek respect, elsewhere
and continue chasing
to let confines down.

Pressure

Everytime I meet you
for work
for leisure
there is the pressure to interest you
sexually
compromise the body
seduce
They touch
kiss
serve you a drink
and you have to be cool enough to enjoy it and
seduce back
to prove you have something to you
to be called interesting.

Heal

You keep hurting

coming in from every corner and after every time I heal

only to hurt

not to love
or ask if I want to be hurt

and never to be a companion

and I keep healing

you hurt

I heal

and the next from the next corner

will hurt too

before I heal from your hurt

until I heal again

you will not stop hurting

raping, touching or kicking

and I will not stop healing quietly

There is only one me who heals

and many who hurt

so I must be to blame,

You will not stop hurting

Asking me to give you something mine alone

again and again

without my choosing you

treating me like a machine

or a toy

or a public toilet

and I cannot even tell you I'm healing

because I wouldn't be an object of your appreciation anymore

and I can never tell you you hurt me

because I will be scaring you

because it's your right to hurt to seek your pleasure if I'm close

and a woman's duty to bare pain and provide pleasure
again and again without scaring a fly
and without vanity
so I will continue to provide to you
while hurting
by being a public bus handle
you all hold
only to not be abused by you
if I say no.

If I hide

I will heal but not live

but if you see me

you will hurt me 

and you will never learn to care or love
or respect my privacy
or that I am a woman who chooses who I want close
and not choosing you -
does not mean I am not alive or living.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/us-election-result-misogyny-america-panel-woman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7e3QKKOp50

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/michelle-obama-steals-show-democratic-8497702
 A beautiful speech

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/there-are-6-types-ugly-american-and-donald-trump-all-them

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8305157/designer-sophie-theallet-will-refuse-to-dress-melania-trump/

Confused

In cars and buses and between work
pieces of poems come to mind and
turn away confused just like
My body is
confused
from the hands that grope it
and the mouths that touch it
and the legs that caress it
everyday with everyone I meet
in bits and pieces of my conversation with them
when the body is mine alone and no one
has a right over anyone else's
and with it,
I don't know what is mine
and what I love
Who I can call my own?
and how to make room for a hand I want on me
and how to value a hug anymore
or a kiss anymore
because of you
And I don't know how to turn these hands and mouths away
and how away do I keep
to avoid them
or be respected.

What this victory means for women

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/donald-trump-victory-means-women-161110080920686.html

What the trump victory means

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/donald-trump-victory-means-women-161110080920686.html

water

flowing
uncertain
unnamed
unbound
we wear flesh
to contain us
raging like
wild horses
we hold the mind
with reins..

Thankyou

Thankyou
for connecting with me without having to ask,
Thankyou for
that beautiful gift you've left me with,
Thankyou for becoming a part of me
Thanyou for letting me know you
Thankyou for leaving something with me
Thankyou for liking me enough
Thankyou for choosing me
for claiming me
for penetrating me
for tearing me apart
for devouring me
and for then blaming me.
You'll always owe me for receiving mischief
so gracefully,
for keeping your secret.

Pyaar

Pyaar ki neev par duniya khadi hai
jab tak pyaar hai
aakhir sab pyaare hain -

Doosra galti kare toh
bhi main pyaar dikhaoon
doora haath uthaaye toh doosra gaal de doon
balatkaar kare - toh phir karne doon?

Leikin sawaal yeh hai ki
kahan tak ka pyaar pragya hai aur kab woh pyaar moorkhtaa,
aur
aadmi ko pyaar dikhaana kyon nahi aata hai?
usko pyaar ki ehimiyat kyon nahi pata hai?

Woh sirf dabaav jaanta hai
zhor, tej, bal, jaanta hai
jo pyaar ka virodhi hai.

How does the mother link to the lover?

Respect

Our every word, touch, interaction with the world changes the way it sees us permanently, on every moment, which defines the respect that one establishes with the other.

That respect is the most sensitive line to tread in human interaction.

It takes the most precarious rope-walking to not just maintain your respect in the eyes of those who know you, but theirs' in yours as much as they may push and pull the strings.

I have tried to retain the respect of everyone who touches my life as far as I can as that of my associations and interactions - to keep them innocent and new for as long as I can, but failed often enough to understand the lack of sensitivity with which people find it so easy to lose theirs to you in the pleasure they often seek in disrobing you of yours - so that they compel you to speak up and lose your respect in their eyes further till relationships lose their newness, their innocence, completely. Relationships change in moments- every touch, every word spoken between two individuals changes the way we perceive each other..

I hope more than to ever be respected, to never lose respect for anyone who touches my life, which I believe is in my hands too - because it is in every person to raise the other rather than suppress them.

I'm Willing

If you want to rape
I'll be raped
If you want to supress
I'll be supressed
If you want to feel good about yourself
I'm willing to be walked upon
If you think rape is cool
I'm willing to be cool
If you want to violate me of my dignity
I'll be violated
If you want to shame me
I'm willing to be shamed
If you want to be the greater one
I have no respect to fight for
If you want to dirty me
I'm not lessened by anything you do
If you want to intrude in my privacy,
grab my body all you want
If you want to win
I'm willing to lose, lose, lose
I'm willing to be raped again and again and again
if you feel better doing that
till there's nothing left for you to take away
and I have done that
Yes I'm
misleading you
and your sense of you,
I may die,
I may end up un-healthier
I may cry alone
I become no one 
And if you want to lie after raping me,
I'm even willing to admit you are right
that it was my doing
if it makes me not suppress you
because I don't want to be a cause
for anyone's fall,
because I'm no one to change you,
the change must come from you..
which it never can,
because you are too dirty for even repentence.

fear

the snake came slithering into

what could've been

an option

chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc

The Clever Fool

Cool survived, moral was cornered

cool hangs with plenty and moral sat alone
cool is calm, the moral seething
cool continued the party, moral has no one
cool is a liar and the moral is true
cool survives
the moral fades
but knows he wins for himself
and lives for the few that deserve him
with a pride the cool can't command
but what I love is the

strong who is cool -

in his compassion
for the week

the strong that takes charge of the self yes
but slips into the world
and it's ways,
at every step.

On my struggle in expressing my discomfort and inability to define the various situations I have and continue to encounter socially :

Talking Philosophy

The Philosophers' Magazine Blog

Some thoughts on ‘groping’: naming uninvited touching

Posted by Rebecca Reilly-Cooper on October 11, 2012 Leave a comment (55) Go to comments

 

Thank you Jeremy for the welcome, and thank you for having me at Talking Philosophy. I’m looking forward to joining in the discussion! For my first two posts, I’m going to talk about my own personal experiences of the phenomenon that philosopher Miranda Fricker calls ‘epistemic injustice’. This is the injustice that occurs when someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a bearer of knowledge. There are two main types of epistemic injustice – hermeneutical, and testimonial. In this first post I’m going to talk about the former, and in my next post I’ll discuss the latter.
Just over a year ago, at an academic conference, something unpleasant happened to me. I would like to be able to tell people about it. I wanted to tell people about it at the time, as it seemed like the kind of thing that should probably be reported to the conference organizers. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what it was that had happened. Thirteen months and a great deal of pondering the incident later, and I’m still not. As you can imagine, that makes telling people about it rather difficult.
I can describe the incident in detail, of course. Over a period of perhaps twenty minutes, another delegate at the conference – repeatedly and without my consent – touched my head, hair, neck, lower back, inside of my forearms, all the while indifferent to my distress and discomfort. (I want to go into lengthy detail here to try to explain why I didn’t tell him not to touch me or otherwise put a stop to it, but I’m going to resist.)
There have been many other incidents like this in my life, and I would be so bold as to claim that all women have several of their own versions of this story – most far worse than mine. I can give you a pretty accurate physical description of the incident. And I know that what this person did was wrong, because it is wrong to touch someone without consent. But what I am not sure about is what type of incident this was; what label to give it, what category to assign it to.
Once I had extricated myself from the situation I tracked down the conference organizers and tried to tell them what had happened. But I found myself lost for words. I didn’t possess any vocabulary to accurately report what had happened to me. I was upset and angry, which won’t have helped. But in the time that has elapsed since, I still haven’t figured out what I should have said. After much stopping, starting and stuttering, I eventually told them that the man in question had ‘sexually harassed’ me. I didn’t think that was right at the time, and I still don’t. I just didn’t know what else to say.
The other possibility that immediately springs to mind is ‘sexual assault’. My knowledge of the law and its correct interpretation is not good enough for me to comment on whether incidents like this are legally regarded as sexual assault. The UK Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that intentional touching is sexual assault if the touching is sexual, the person being touched does not consent, and the person does not reasonably believe that they have consented. The issue here would be whether stroking someone’s neck, back or inner arm constitutes ‘sexual touching’. I don’t know, and don’t want to speculate, because it’s not really the legal situation that I’m most interested in here. Rather, what I’m concerned with is the social meaning of events such as these – the label we collectively give them, the category to which we as a moral community assign them.
I didn’t describe this incident as sexual assault to the conference organizers, and whether or not legally it would be regarded as such, it feels to me that it would be inaccurate to use that term. To me – and I think to most people who hear that phrase – sexual assault denotes something much more serious and traumatic than the mildly obnoxious unwanted touching I experienced. If this person had touched the more obviously sexual areas of my body, then I would consider that to be sexual assault. But it just doesn’t seem correct to call unwanted touching of my arm, neck and back to be sexual assault. Not only does it feel overly dramatic and an exaggeration to refer to it in such terms; it also seems to me that to call it sexual assault is to diminish the experiences of other people who have been victims of serious sexual assaults. To equate the mild distress of someone stroking my neck with the trauma and shock that must accompany serious sexual assaults feels attention-seeking, and somehow disrespectful.
Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe it’s symptomatic of how widespread such incidents are, and how acceptable our culture considers them, that even their victims resist labelling them as sexual assault. But even if that’s true, the fact remains that I am uncomfortable with that label. It just doesn’t feel accurate to describe these incidents as sexual assaults, and I feel pretty confident that most other people would share that intuition – if I were to say I had been sexually assaulted, and then describe what happened in detail, they would think I was being misleading and melodramatic. The other possible remaining terminology is to say I was ‘groped’, a phrase that’s being employed rather a lot in the popular press just now. But I am not sure if that is correct either – ‘groping’ is a very vague and ill-defined term and I’m not sure exactly what it refers to. Must groping involve only the obviously sexual areas of the body, or can you grope someone’s neck, arms or legs? Is groping different from stroking? Although I have some vague hunches myself about how to answer these questions, the fact I’m asking them suggests there is no clear consensus on what groping is.
So what follows from all this is that I don’t have any label to give to this incident, and others like it. I know what happened; but I don’t know what type of thing happened. And this is a further harm to suffer – not only has an unpleasant thing happened, but I am also unable to name what that unpleasant thing was.
The problem of lacking terminology by which to identify these kinds of minor assaults seems to be a paradigm case of what philosopher Miranda Fricker calls ‘hermeneutical injustice’. This is the injustice that occurs when ‘some significant area of one’s social experience [is] obscured from collective understanding owing to hermeneutical marginalization’. Hermeneutical marginalization occurs when members of a particular disadvantaged group – in this case, women – are prevented from participating as equals in the creation of social meanings. Members of powerful social groups are in a privileged position with respect to the construction of our collective hermeneutical resources. That is, they have more influence over the creation of the social frames of reference by which people make sense of their lives and their experiences, while members of less advantaged social groups have less influence. The result of this marginalization is that there is a gap in our collective frameworks for interpreting and making sense of the social world, a gap which prevents some people – in this case, women – from being able to understand and make sense of their experiences. Historically, women have been under-represented from those jobs or roles that are central for the construction of social meaning – jobs in politics, law or the media, for example. They have therefore been marginalized from the processes whereby we come to recognize and label certain practices or events and place them within a framework of meaning. As a result, they are prevented from understanding or communicating the things that happen to them. As Wittgenstein famously said: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
The very fact that our collective hermeneutical resource – that is, our shared frameworks of meaning and reference – lacks vocabulary for describing the kind of thing that happened to me at this conference suggests that this form of injustice has taken place. It is startling that we do not have the language to adequately capture this kind of event, when it is such a commonplace feature of women’s lives. Most, if not all, women will experience this kind of uninvited physical contact several times in their lives; and yet we don’t have any terminology with which to discuss it. And the crucial claim is that this is an additional injustice – in addition to the wrong of being touched without one’s consent, a further wrong occurs when the victim of this touching is left without the interpretive resources to describe and make sense of what has happened to her. Not only is she unable to accurately report her experience to others. She is unable to understand it herself, and in interpreting it has to rely on the existing set of social meanings – which, in the case of unwanted touching, often represents this as harmless flirtation. This can lead to confusion and distress, as well as a sense of being alone in our experiences, when in fact they are examples of a wider pattern of behaviour for which we currently have no name. Indeed, lacking the interpretive resources to make sense of our experiences can be extremely damaging to our selfhood and identity. On a plausible account of personal identity, we are all engaged in a process of self-understanding, trying to make our actions, beliefs and emotions coherent and intelligible – first to ourselves, and then to others. If the existing set of social meanings – and of course, this is the only set we have to draw on – lacks the resources for us to make sense of the things that happen to us, it denies us the capacity to work our how it is appropriate for us to respond, and denies us the ability to render our own behaviour and emotional responses intelligible. This has a dramatic impact on our identities and sense of self.
So how can we remedy this injustice? I’m not sure, but one possibility (as some feminist bloggers have suggested) is to insist upon calling these incidents sexual assaults, and to try to raise consciousness among both men and women that this is what uninvited touching is. While I am happy with the implication that both men and women ought to be encouraged to take these incidents more seriously, I still worry that calling these minor incidents sexual assault may have the consequence of diminishing the seriousness of other, more obvious cases. So I don’t claim to have the solution. But I’m happy enough here to have highlighted the double injustice that these forms of uninvited touching involve –  first in the wrongness of the touching itself, and second in the effective silencing of those who suffer it.

defining sexual harrassment and assualt

Defining Sexual Assault and Consent - northwestern university, women's center

The term "sexual assault" covers behavior from unwanted touching to rape. Each state has its own legal definition and criminal code, and thus definitions of acts that constitute sexual assault vary. These definitions are gender neutral because sexual assault happens to both females and males, although the vast majority of sexual assault victims are females.
Northwestern University defines sexual assault as:
Any intentional or knowing touching or fondling by the accused, either directly or through the clothing, of the victim's genitals, breasts, thighs, or buttocks without the victim's consent. Sexual assault includes touching or fondling of the accused by the victim when the victim is forced to do so against his or her will. Sexual assault also includes any nonconsensual acts involving penetration of the sex organs, anus, or mouth. (Northwestern University Student Handbook 2009-2010)
Illinois State law defines sexual assault as:
Sexual penetration by force or threat of force or an act of sexual penetration when the victim was unable to understand the nature of the act or was unable to give knowing consent. (720 ILCS 5 Criminal Code of 1961 §12-13)
Illinois law defines sexual penetration as:
Any contact, however slight, between the sex organ or anus of one person by an object, the sex organ, mouth, or anus of another person, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of the body of one person or of any object into the sex organ or anus of another person, including but not limited to cunnilingus, fellatio, or anal penetration. Evidence of emission of semen is not required to prove sexual penetration (720 ILCS 5 Criminal Code of 1961 §12-12(f)).
What is consent?
Sexual activity requires consent, which is defined as voluntary, positive agreement between the participants to engage in specific sexual activity.
Communicating consent:

• Consent to sexual activity can be communicated in a variety of ways, but one should presume that consent has not been given in the absence of clear, positive agreement.
• While verbal consent is not an absolute requirement for consensual sexual activity, verbal communication prior to engaging in sex helps to clarify consent. Communicating verbally before engaging in sexual activity is imperative. However potentially awkward it may seem, talking about your own and your partner's sexual desires, needs, and limitations provide a basis for a positive experience.
• Consent must be clear and unambiguous for each participant at every stage of a sexual encounter. The absence of "no" should not be understood to mean there is consent.
• A prior relationship does not indicate consent to future activity.

Alcohol and drugs:

• A person who is asleep or mentally or physically incapacitated, either through the effect of drugs or alcohol or for any other reason, is not capable of giving valid consent.
• The use of alcohol or drugs may seriously interfere with the participants' judgment about whether consent has been sought and given.

Sexual Harassment :

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that tends to create a hostile or offensive work environment.
Sexual harassment is a form of Sex Discrimination that occurs in the workplace. Persons who are the victims of sexual harassment may sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e et seq.), which prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.
The federal courts did not recognize sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination until the 1970s, because the problem originally was perceived as isolated incidents of flirtation in the workplace. Employers are now aware that they can be sued by the victims of workplace sexual harassment. The accusations of sexual harassment made by anita f. hill against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his 1991 confirmation hearings also raised societal consciousness about this issue.
Courts and employers generally use the definition of sexual harassment contained in the guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This language has also formed the basis for most state laws prohibiting sexual harassment. The guidelines state:

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when

1. submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment,
2. submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individuals, or
3. such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. (29 C.F.R. § 1604.11 [1980])

A key part of the definition is the use of the word unwelcome. Unwelcome or uninvited conduct or communication of a sexual nature is prohibited; welcome or invited actions or words are not unlawful. Sexual or romantic interaction between consenting people at work may be offensive to observers or may violate company policy, but it is not sexual harassment.
The courts have generally concluded that a victim need not say or do a particular thing to indicate unwelcomeness. Instead, a court will review all of the circumstances to determine whether it was reasonably clear to the harasser that the conduct was unwelcome. The courts have recognized that victims may be afraid to express their discomfort if the harasser is their boss or is physically intimidating. Victims may be coerced into going along with sexual talk or activities because they believe they will be punished or fired if they protest. Consent can be given to a relationship and then withdrawn when the relationship ends. Once it is withdrawn, continued romantic or sexual words or actions are not protected by the past relationship and may be sexual harassment.
The law prohibits unwelcome "sexual" conduct and words or actions "of a sexual nature." Some conduct, such as hugging, may be sexual or nonsexual and must be evaluated in context. Sexual harassment may be physical, such as kissing, hugging, pinching, patting, grabbing, blocking the victim's path, leering or staring, or standing very close to the victim. It may also be verbal, which may be oral or written and could include requests

Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence refers to behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimate_partner_violence

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/the-terrible-injury-often-overlooked-in-domestic-violence/story-fnu2q5nu-1227465704383

More on such issues, soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FdOWqTVvpc