I don't know how to publicly empathize with victims of natural disasters. I think that's because there is nothing I can suggest or support to change the situation. I can't join a stand-in against the ferocity of Hurricanes Harvey or Iris. I can't call a slew of Congresspeople and demand they deal with fault lines in California. I can't carry a poster to Union Square to protest natural devastation.
What is possible is pushing legislators to finally rebuild infrastructure; insurance companies not to enable building in areas likely to get swept up (i.e. much of Florida); Congress to wake up. Science is a real live thing and they know it. They just like the feel of sand in their ears. This may or may not connect with what follows.
I was moved to post today after reading an article about porn. David Simon and George Pelecanos have created a new t.v. series on the porn industry that sprang from Times Square when the center of Manhattan was skeevy. I neither love nor hate Simon and have mixed feelings about The Wire. I have no mixed feelings about porn and Simon has illuminated aspects which have had a deadly and long-lasting effect on women.
The article is: "If you're not consuming porn, you're still consuming its logic." Some of Simon's and Pelecano's thoughts, as quoted in this article.
He admits: “I don’t have any real way to prove that, but certainly the anonymity of social media and the internet has allowed for a belligerence and a misogyny that maybe had no other outlet. It’s astonishing how universal it is whether you’re 14 or 70, if you’re a woman and you have an opinion, what is directed at you right now. I can’t help but think that a half century of legalised objectification hasn’t had an effect.”
On women and the latest election: "The code words that were used against not just her but female journalists and everybody that was involved peripherally in the campaign was awful. Never seen anything like it.”
George Pelecanos, 60, thinks about the two sons he raised and the conversations he overheard when their friends came to the family home. “The way they talk about girls and women is a little horrifying. It’s different from when I was coming up. It’s one thing what was described as locker-room talk, like, ‘Man, look at her legs. I’d love to…’ – that kind of thing. But when you get into this other thing, calling girls tricks and talking about doing violence to them and all that stuff, I’d never heard that growing up, man. I just didn’t.
