I am dismayed and saddened by all that Erin relates here. I wish I were more surprised. I also wish I had anything constructive to offer other than commiseration and indignation at the lack of support from the police and the city. I fear that the city will take Maiden Phoenix's negative experience not as a reason to provide better support and security for similar projects, but instead as a reason to prohibit future such productions (or require private security, which for some budgets amounts to the same thing). I hope I am wrong about this.
In these last months of campaigning, I have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting alone in Davis Square. Ostensibly i was registering voters, or raising visibility, or flyering, but in practice that involved many long stretches of just being a woman sitting alone in a public square. As a result, I have had lengthy conversations with many of the people who live in or spend their days in the square. At no other point in my life have I made the time to really get to know any of the homeless people in my neighborhood, and I am glad the campaign gave me an opportunity to change that. I was also very lucky: I only had a very few interactions that felt unsafe, and all were pretty quickly de-escalated. After a certain point, having gotten to know the familiar faces around the square, I actually felt more generally safe, because I'd learned that the Davis Square regulars were pretty insular and would notice if I was being hassled by someone they didn't trust or who was unfamiliar. But of course, these relationships grew out of being in "candidate mode" -- a not-too-distant relative of the reflexive flirting that Erin described. In candidate mode, as a public figure in a public space, I had no choice but to be pleasant and open to everyone who wished to speak with me; I didn't have the option of declining to engage. I chose to be a public figure, of course. Erin and the other members of Maiden Phoenix, in putting on a show, were not choosing to be public figures. Nor is any woman who walks down the street or sits in a square. Yet these experiences are, for almost all of us, all too familiar.
I am aware that I could never have run the kind of campaign I did -- one in which my lean "staff" (I had no staff, only the occasional volunteer) meant many hours standing or walking around the neighborhood, alone, through dusk -- would have been impossible for me, as a woman, in a city less safe than Somerville. I'm grateful for the sense of safety that I did have, and pissed as hell to realize this is not at all true for potential female candidates (or street performers, or activists, or others whose business takes them to the streets) in other cities, or even in other parts of this city. And I'm pissed that for Maiden Phoenix this wasn't true even on the other side of Ward 6.
Maiden Phoenix, thank you for your bravery in persevering with your performances, and your bravery in sharing what difficulties you faced. I look forward to your next production.
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commiseration, and some of my own experiences
Date: 2015-11-05 08:41 pm (UTC)In these last months of campaigning, I have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting alone in Davis Square. Ostensibly i was registering voters, or raising visibility, or flyering, but in practice that involved many long stretches of just being a woman sitting alone in a public square. As a result, I have had lengthy conversations with many of the people who live in or spend their days in the square. At no other point in my life have I made the time to really get to know any of the homeless people in my neighborhood, and I am glad the campaign gave me an opportunity to change that. I was also very lucky: I only had a very few interactions that felt unsafe, and all were pretty quickly de-escalated. After a certain point, having gotten to know the familiar faces around the square, I actually felt more generally safe, because I'd learned that the Davis Square regulars were pretty insular and would notice if I was being hassled by someone they didn't trust or who was unfamiliar. But of course, these relationships grew out of being in "candidate mode" -- a not-too-distant relative of the reflexive flirting that Erin described. In candidate mode, as a public figure in a public space, I had no choice but to be pleasant and open to everyone who wished to speak with me; I didn't have the option of declining to engage. I chose to be a public figure, of course. Erin and the other members of Maiden Phoenix, in putting on a show, were not choosing to be public figures. Nor is any woman who walks down the street or sits in a square. Yet these experiences are, for almost all of us, all too familiar.
I am aware that I could never have run the kind of campaign I did -- one in which my lean "staff" (I had no staff, only the occasional volunteer) meant many hours standing or walking around the neighborhood, alone, through dusk -- would have been impossible for me, as a woman, in a city less safe than Somerville. I'm grateful for the sense of safety that I did have, and pissed as hell to realize this is not at all true for potential female candidates (or street performers, or activists, or others whose business takes them to the streets) in other cities, or even in other parts of this city. And I'm pissed that for Maiden Phoenix this wasn't true even on the other side of Ward 6.
Maiden Phoenix, thank you for your bravery in persevering with your performances, and your bravery in sharing what difficulties you faced. I look forward to your next production.
-Liz-