Ranorudo

“Countless studies have since shown that exposure to pornography desensitizes men to violence against women, often shaping their sexuality in such a way that they become unable to experience arousal without some element of dominance or violence. The evidence has been so damning that, at times, universities have refused to allow further research on the topic. When a study shows detrimental effects that cannot be reversed, ethics boards will often refuse similar studies to go on. This has happened repeatedly with research on the effects of pornography.”

then there's the things that don't even have machines at all. crochet (unlike knitting) does not have any machines capable of replicating it so whenever you see something that has been crocheted even if it's a small part of a larger piece that was done with a crochet hook by hand. it's the same with basketry - machines cannot weave baskets. no machines were involved in making any woven basket you see, that was 100% a human being putting the entire thing together so it could be sold for $2 at dollar tree. you ever have a piece of furniture with woven rattan on it, that was also made by a person, no machine involved.

"Actively dating" in the same-sex side of things means you'll average about 1 new date a year. Make it count.

If you're serious about finding a woman somewhere, you need to prepare yourself for long stretches of being single. A long stretch in straight time is 6 months. A long stretch in gay time is 3 years.

What do you do during those 3 years? You fix your life. You figure out what went wrong in your past relationships. You get comfortable with yourself.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

i also know that men have rape fantasies, that they fantasize about hurting and abusing women, that they seek to hurt their sexual partners. and i know why every argument goes, “but she likes being hurt!”, so that they can put the onus of men’s violence against women on women. it’s because they know that saying instead, “but he likes hurting women!”, means that they have to defend man’s desire to torture and commit violence against women. it’s because then they can’t pretend that the pain and brutality is coincidental, that it comes from a vacuum, that women are doing it to themselves.

The only way to completely pull yourself out of that mindset is to stop, but there are motivators that can help you. One of the biggest ones for me was medical, shaving creates micro cuts on your skin and that can be an entry point for bacteria, waxing is extremely irritating and can causes severe burns (happened to my grandma last summer), and having body hair (especially pubic hair) is an important physical defence mechanism your body has. Plus, shaving/waxing usually creates a ton of plastic waste that’s completely unnecessary (and makeup too). And, this is something you’ll have to experience to understand the weight of it, you don’t actually realise how much time and money you spend on these things. I was able to buy my partner an iPad for our anniversary by saving up my ‘hair removal supplies’ money for a few months.

The pandemic and being indoors all the time definitely helped, and once I’d gone a few months without shaving, I completely lost the urge to do it. It’s conditioning, and the first steps are always the hardest, but it’s ultimately so much better for your mental health, for women, for your time, and your wallet.