consent squadron

For my CSL placement, I have been working with a small feminist collective composed of students from our course, a design student, and a representative from GBVPP.  We’ve come together to form the ‘Consent Squadron’, and have been working to create on-campus light projects, and light-projection installations which carry consent-based messaging.  Our project will use messages similar to this campaign: (http://cantcatchthesloth.tumblr.com/post/62002002650/the-complete-set-of-posters-made-by-students-at). Once we have acquire all of our needed resources, and assemble all of our pieces, we will deploy light sources (projectors, lanterns and shadow boxes) to target and transform dark places on campus in a way that illuminates these spaces, and brings light to issues of gender-based sexual violence on campus. We hope that lighting up these spaces will make them feel safe(r) for women passing through them, and create a new dialogue about sexual violence at the U of A. 

I felt like Sharon Marcus’ article “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory of Politics of Rape Prevention”, was relevant to the activist work our art collective is carrying out. Marcus theorizes rape as a ‘linguistic fact’, and suggests that the “language of rape structures physical actions and responses” (390). For Marcus, rape is a social script transmitted through cultural artifacts which are embedded with the ideological assumption that  “men [are] the objects of violence and the operators of its tools, and women[are] the objects of violence and the subjects of fear” (393). Our projection projections will work to disrupt these social scripts which underpin systemically promoted sexual violence by projecting messages such as: “only an informed, sober, freely given, ongoing, enthusiastic ‘YES!’ is consent”, “flirting is not consent” and “silence is not consent”. Through our project we are disrupting, refusing, and speaking back to the rape script. I believe that Marcus would agree that as three female-identified humans this project is both socially and politically significant, by producing and sharing anti-rape messaging we are “refusing to take [the rape script] seriously and treating is as a farce (…) resisting the physical passivity which it directs [women] to adopt” (392). 

I think our collective also challenges patriarchy and rape culture on another level. We came together to begin this project shortly after MRA’s posted “Don’t be that Bigot”  hate propaganda in the area around the University. These posters suggested that sexual assault is not a gendered issue. We know from this class that this is wrong, sexual violence is a product of sexist, patriarchal beliefs. Our group members all echoed feelings of vulnerability and fear, our own community felt unsafe after these posters were put up. Our light installations and projection projects are a product of responsiveness, speaking back to patriarchy – taking back space, and making it feel safe(r). This project has been an act of “verbal self-defense” (396) , a refusal to be subjects of fear in our community, and an act of feminist solidarity in challenging rape culture.

Work Cited

Marcus, Sharon. “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” in Judith Butler and Joan Scott, eds., Feminists Theorize the Political, (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 385-403 (Oct. 17).