The backlash to the #metoo movement is a crash course in the speed with which men will equate the discomfort of being confronted with their own violence with the endemic pain and dehumanization women feel as the recipients of it.
Tag: activism
From Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” (April 30, 1967, Riverside Church, New York)
He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth shall set you free.” Now, I’ve chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we’re always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Andrea Dworkin, from Letters from a War Zone
Andrea Dworkin in Letters from a War Zone
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Little Bristling Soul 