Let’s get that out of the way first of all. I am not a pirate, I am, in fact, a potential victim of piracy. However, SOPA and PIPA are not the way to go about protecting those copyrights.

Because see, here’s the thing… that First Amendment? Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press? Those things are important to me, more important than making sure some doofus doesn’t go about copying my work. For one thing, these bills won’t work. Like DRM, they will do more to punish the legitimate consumer than to stop piracy, and in the process they will break fundamental aspects of the internet, endanger internet security, destroy the entire DNS structure, and do all sorts of things that will make it impossible to do business on the internet.

The sponsors of this bill are big entertainment corporations. They don’t care about the little guy, they don’t care that this bill will make the very tools I use to publish and advertise the content I create impossible to use, and could very well put those networks out of business. Twitter, tumblr, Facebook, Youtube, etc. – anywhere that depends on user generated content – could be completely destroyed by this bill. That means nowhere to notify my fans of a new story, nowhere to advertise my current projects, nowhere to announce that I’ve gotten something else published.

My income from writing would go from a steady stream to a barely existent trickle.

The worst part of it is, the thing that should make all freedom-loving Americans sit up and pay attention, is that this bill would make censorship even easier. Already, people have learned that they can have content they don’t like taken down by submitting a false report of copyright infringement. They don’t need proof. They just need to submit the report. With this bill, it wouldn’t just take down one small piece of content –  they could destroy entire websites, freeze funds, stop someone’s only source of income, even put them in prison for up to five years  –  just from one report of infringement.

Censorship. Someone being silenced just because of an unpopular opinion. Sounds like the Great Firewall of China, doesn’t it?

Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, and it’s here in the USA, unless we stop it.

– Jennifer L. Davis
Please see below for more information:

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I was a Girl Scout, once upon a time, and I have always been extremely proud of the Girl Scouts continuing moves to support equality and open-mindedness. Unlike Boy Scouts, which has banned participation of anyone who doesn’t fit into their narrow and bigoted world view, the Girl Scouts have actively supported inclusiveness of all girls and diversity among their membership, no matter what, and have done so from the very beginning of the organization. However, the Girl Scouts are now under attack for the very same supportive and welcoming policies that I have always praised, and from one of their own.

A Girl Scout is calling for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies in a youtube video. Why? Because Girl Scouts allows transgirls to join and participate. (Update: Looks like the Hate-Mongering Girl Scout has now set her video to private. Maybe she learned a bit of a lesson here?)

Here’s the thing. The Girl Scout Mission? This is it:

Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place.

And the girl in this video? She’s not making the world a better place, she’s spreading hate and bigotry and has become one of those people ensuring that the world is a more dangerous place for transwomen.  And all you have to do is read the news to know how dangerous a place it already is.  And here she is, wanting to stop one of the sources of income for an organization that has become one of the few safe places out there for a transgirl. For that, honestly, I think she should be the one banned from participating in the Girl Scouts.

Girl Scouts is all about empowering girls and turning them into strong, independent women. It’s just the sort of confidence-boosting organization and help that a girl in a particularly difficult situation might need.  Allowing transgirls to join and participate could very well save lives, by giving that child a community where she is welcomed and included.

So here’s what I propose: Let that boycott proposal have the opposite result, and let the GLBT community and our friends come out to support this organization that has been so supportive of us. So here’s the plan:

Buy All The Cookies.

I’m trying to eat healthier, but I’ll buy boxes as gifts and give them away all over the place if I have to. (While reserving one box of my favorite, Thin Mints, to stick in the freezer at home, of course.) I’ll buy what I can afford and do whatever I can to help.

To find a place where you can buy cookies, just go here: http://www.girlscoutcookies.org/ and they’ll give you the nearest cookie station, or alternatively you can contact your local Girl Scout Council to find out how to contact and help your local troop or how to donate, if you don’t want to buy cookies.

Help them out. They deserve it.

Today I am participating in the online protest against SOPA, the Internet Blacklist/Kill Switch bill.  That is why you see the popups and censorship tags all over my site.

Under the guise of fighting online piracy, SOPA will place tools for censorship into the hands of corporations and internet providers, while doing very little at all (and none of that to any real effect) to stop content theft.

As an independent content provider, you are very possibly looking at what could happen to my blog should I, perhaps, express some unpopular opinion. Or perhaps because I wasn’t big enough to be affiliated with a major corporation, I wouldn’t get preferential treatment by the ISPs and my blog wouldn’t load for you at all.

The Great Firewall of China – in the grand ol’ USA.

That’s the future we’re looking at, if SOPA passes. It lays down a foundation that could potentially lead to the blocking of websites for any reason at all, not necessarily copyright infringement. It would disable services that independent creators depend on for marketing and promotion of their work.  People have already used false accusations of content theft to silence their detractors, with web hosting services and ISPs taking down websites just based on the accusation without any proof. This bill would make such a thing easier to do.

Just as the majority of the newspapers in this country are controlled by a handful of corporations, so too would be the websites you’d visit.  Right now, the internet is the most democratic, absolutely free forum for speaking out available. That free speech could be silenced. The potential for innovation and for small independent creators of content to succeed would be effectively stifled, whether they are creators of written word, video games, webseries and movies, or music.

As a creator of content, I want to protect my intellectual property. However, I am not willing to trade my freedom of speech for what would be completely ineffective means to do so.

If you have a few minutes, send a letter to your representatives in Congress. Speak out against censorship.

I’m not sure I had just one big click moment where I realized or became a feminist. I had always had an “activist” nature, I suppose. I distinctly remember being met with amusement as a child when I tried to convince my grandparents to recycle, or my mom to donate to PBS. I always wanted to save the world.

But as far as being a feminist? There were little things that all lead up to an eventual realization of, basically, “This is bullshit, and I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.”  Little things that led up to my social activism, both as a GLBT activist and as a feminist (two things that I find are inseparable and intertwined).

There was being taught by my mother, at a very young age, that a woman cannot depend on the men in her life to take care of her.  She has to do that for herself.

There was the first pubescent realization, and subsequent shame, that I had a romantic crush on another girl.  And then getting over that shame and realizing there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

There was the moment as a young teenager that I allowed a boy to terrify me, and the certain and absolute knowledge that I would never allow any person to have that sort of control over me, or allow any person to frighten me that way again.

There was being treated as the “ignorant girlfriend” when I visited arcades, gaming stores, and comic book shops with my (mostly male) crowd of friends – at least, until I demonstrated that my knowledge of gaming and comics not only equaled, but surpassed, the knowledge of my male peers.

And coming on the heels of that was the moment when I realized that because of that knowledge of  these “masculine” things, I would be seen as less of a girl, no matter how I saw myself.

There was being asked by my grandfather, the first time I went to vote, if he needed to “tell me who to vote for” as if it was a perfectly normal thing for the male head of family to dictate such things to the women.

Then college, and women’s and gender studies classes, and learning of the feminists before me. By that point I already identified as “feminist” – but I hadn’t yet been pushed into activism.

For that, it took a failure – and being told explicitly that I would not have failed, had I been a man. If I had been a man, I would have been a better teacher. I could have kept discipline in a high school classroom made up almost entirely of juvenile criminals (literally). If I had been a man.

And then there was the gradually increasing horror of the political actions being taken and proposed that would push this country back into an era where women’s bodies were owned and controlled by their fathers, their husbands, their government – anyone but themselves.

There was no one “click” moment for me. For me, you could say that the road to feminist activism was paved with a handful of thrown stones – many of them tiny pebbles, and one or two huge boulders.  It was the bruises from those that created my determination to stand like a wall between those who would attack our rights and those who cannot yet stand for themselves. It was that which created my determination to be an activist – but not just for women’s rights.

Because if I am to stand up for women and for feminist equality, I must also stand up for equality for everyone else.

Written for the Feminist Portrait Project’s “Click Moment” blog-a-thon.

© 2011 – Jennifer L. Davis

Related articles

• What does a feminist look like? (introtowgs.wordpress.com)
• Am I a Feminist? (postgradpanopticon.wordpress.com)
• Coming Out Queer and Coming Into Feminism (pioneersblog.wordpress.com)

Words cannot express how angry and upset I am right now.

A new anti-choice bill introduced into legislation right now by John Boehner would redefine rape as only those cases that involve physical force.

In other words, just saying No isn’t enough to qualify it as rape anymore. No, you have to get beaten too.  This new definition would disqualify most date rape, any rape involving drugs, statutory rape, marital rape, incest for anyone over the age of eighteen. In other words, 90% of rape cases would no longer qualify as being rape.

You hear that, rape survivors? Under this legislation, your rape probably won’t qualify as rape anymore.

This new definition is intended to limit federal funding of abortions, but could have far-reaching impact for rape survivors in general, regardless of if they get pregnant. After all, if they change the definition of rape in one place, what’s to stop it from being changed everywhere?

I just can’t.  There are no words.  For things you can do to fight this, see the #DearJohn post at TigerBeatdown.  I need to go find a quiet place to calm down.

Fuck you, John Boehner.

Related articles

• #DearJohn, Do You Know What Rape Is? (pioneersblog.wordpress.com)
• “What you can do to stop the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” and related posts (feministing.com)
• Republicans in Congress Want To “Redefine” Rape (themoderatevoice.com)