Kyneton Art Grotesque was drawn for the 2020 publication Force Fields, a retrospective document of the inaugural Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial in 2018. The typeface takes cues from KCAT 2018’s reclaiming of post-industrial space. Originating from a 1964 Stellar Press type specimen, early sketches captured the inky, manufactured sturdiness of the Grotesque 150. This base was then ‘reclaimed’ with adjustments that focused on balancing contemporary agreeableness with robust functionality and understated eccentricity.
Force Fields was designed by Hope Lumsden Barry, Ryley Lawson and Dennis Grauel.
Started: March 2019
Last Update: February 2022
You can download and use this typeface for testing purposes, student work, or explicitly non-commercial, local-scale community organising work. For commercial applications, licenses can be arranged via email.
▤ License Pricing ⤓ Download v1.43Mudlarks
Infinite Hospitality
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
C4 Envelope
Reclamation
Impressario
Mechanic’s Institute
Active Forms – Forest (Klein Blue), 2018. Wood, acrylic paint, fixings.
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Highway exit
Site-specificity
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
local butcherbird duet
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Primary School
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Torque Wrench
Custom-built packing crate
Stained cement
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Local Knowledge & Practice
Beauchamp St
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Site-specificity
C4 Envelope
Clever Dripper 3 minute brew
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Chapel interior
Infinite Hospitality
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Reclamation
Post-Industrial Irony
Highway exit
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Robusta
Torque Wrench
Beauchamp St
Stained cement
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Active Forms – Forest (Klein Blue), 2018. Wood, acrylic paint, fixings.
Oil Rag
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Mechanic’s Institute
local butcherbird duet
Local Knowledge & Practice
Impressario
Mudlarks
Post-Industrial Irony
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
Infinite Hospitality
Robusta
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Oil Rag
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
C4 Envelope
Torque Wrench
Mechanic’s Institute
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Reclamation
Highway exit
Local Knowledge & Practice
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Custom-built packing crate
Site-specificity
Primary School
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
Chapel interior
local butcherbird duet
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
Site-specificity
Mechanic’s Institute
Torque Wrench
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Beauchamp St
Custom-built packing crate
Mudlarks
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
Oil Rag
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Active Forms – Forest (Klein Blue), 2018. Wood, acrylic paint, fixings.
Robusta
Highway exit
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
Post-Industrial Irony
Reclamation
Stained cement
Primary School
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Local Knowledge & Practice
local butcherbird duet
Impressario
Infinite Hospitality
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Robusta
Post-Industrial Irony
Custom-built packing crate
Torque Wrench
Mudlarks
Reclamation
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Clever Dripper 3 minute brew
Active Forms – Forest (Klein Blue), 2018. Wood, acrylic paint, fixings.
local butcherbird duet
Primary School
Stained cement
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
C4 Envelope
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
Site-specificity
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Mechanic’s Institute
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
Impressario
Post-Industrial Irony
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Robusta
Reclamation
Local Knowledge & Practice
Beauchamp St
Active Forms – Forest (Klein Blue), 2018. Wood, acrylic paint, fixings.
Stained cement
local butcherbird duet
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Mechanic’s Institute
Infinite Hospitality
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Chapel interior
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Mudlarks
C4 Envelope
Highway exit
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
Primary School
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
Impressario
Chapel interior
C4 Envelope
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
Site-specificity
local butcherbird duet
Local Knowledge & Practice
Post-Industrial Irony
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Impressario
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Robusta
Primary School
Mechanic’s Institute
Stained cement
Highway exit
Beauchamp St
Oil Rag
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Torque Wrench
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Reclamation
Custom-built packing crate
Robusta
Torque Wrench
Site-specificity
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Beauchamp St
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
Reclamation
Impressario
Stained cement
Mechanic’s Institute
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Clever Dripper 3 minute brew
Infinite Hospitality
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Local Knowledge & Practice
Primary School
local butcherbird duet
Chapel interior
C4 Envelope
Custom-built packing crate
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Highway exit
Mudlarks
Robusta
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Sticking one’s nose over the fence
Clever Dripper 3 minute brew
Impressario
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Reclamation
Oil Rag
C4 Envelope
Chapel interior
Stained cement
Mechanic’s Institute
Active Forms – Forest (Klein Blue), 2018. Wood, acrylic paint, fixings.
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Post-Industrial Irony
Infinite Hospitality
local butcherbird duet
Custom-built packing crate
Torque Wrench
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
Mechanic’s Institute
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Impressario
Infinite Hospitality
Stained cement
Torque Wrench
Primary School
Highway exit
C4 Envelope
Clever Dripper 3 minute brew
Chapel interior
local butcherbird duet
Local Knowledge & Practice
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Salt, pepper, nutritional yeast
Mudlarks
Reclamation
The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street.
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Custom-built packing crate
Robusta
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
Post-Industrial Irony
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
Reclamation
The shit costume is an obvious disguise, I know. It’s actually me in there, beneath the brown, meandering aimlessly, self-promoting, self-effacing, both there and not there, a walking, smiling waving Artist’s shit. A mascot without obvious motive or campaign. And with what to do all day? Don’t you have a job? Oh, to be an animal!
Robusta
As we paint, we build a creative energy that helps draw out memories, stories and conversation. We paint and talk, drink tea and paint and talk.
Giraffe & Rhinoceros
Mudlarks
Highway exit
LEFTIST SALTY IRE
Impressario
Torque Wrench
Primary School
Neighbourhood Arts Grot
A memorial is a statue or structure created for a particular site.
Mechanic’s Institute
Post-Industrial Irony
Custom-built packing crate
Infinite Hospitality
Local Knowledge & Practice
Chapel interior
local butcherbird duet
Site-specificity
Beauchamp St
Clever Dripper 3 minute brew
Stained cement
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Imagine for a moment that you are a person who rides the subway to work on a daily basis. Imagine also having to walk to that subway in the morning and return home from it at night. Imagine this is a trip you have taken many times, and because this route is so familiar to you, you are aware of potential encounters that may take place along the way. So when you get up in the morning, there are decisions to make. Perhaps you will wear exactly what you want to wear, and this outfit reveals something of your body; your chest, your legs, your socially debated body hair. Perhaps this outfit — a short skirt, a collar, 4-inch heels — models your body in a light deemed by others (ads, tv, gossip, etc.) as sexual or deviant. Or, maybe, the outfit reveals an affiliation considered non-standard, such as a hijab, a kippah, or a mustache over a lipsticked mouth. Do you wear the selected outfit, the one you want to wear, or do you modify it? Neither of these options is a question of character but rather of strategy. Is your strategy invisibility, hypervigilance, or both? Do you anticipate protection?
The project of keeping women and queer people safe in public space is a complicated one, owing not least of all to the complex question of why we, as a society, believe that they need protection. When women and queer people report instances of abuse in public space, do the responses address the conditions of their vulnerability or merely characterize their identities as inherently vulnerable? When a person says ‘a man on the street followed me’, or ‘a teenager spat on me as I was waiting on a train platform’, or ‘he tried to put a hand up my skirt’, what does the redress for these experiences look like? Traditionally, it has been preventative surveillance, or if the perpetrator is found and the assailed party is believed, it might be incarceration. But these measures don’t necessarily make a space safer, nor are they capable of addressing all the threats of a public environment. However, the paternal approaches of surveillance and incarceration are the culturally normative response to insecurity. They offer the possibility of intimidation and vengeance.
‘Paternal protection assumes that, like a child, a woman or a queer person out in the world is naturally incapable of looking after themselves or that, no matter the context, they are a lure for predation. This assumption leads the paternal protector to both exact vengeance upon the perpetrator (if the report is believed) and to scold the assailed party: ‘do not go out too late’, ‘do not go out alone or in that outfit’, ‘do not go out in that part of town’, etc. This is how to stay safe, even if these precautions ensure women and queer people are barred from the full experience of public space. But, this list of precautions is often already the constant companion of any person who has experienced gendered violence. And vengeance does not prevent future violence or ensure safety in public space.’
For those demographics that experience high rates of gendered violence, it is important and even liberating to talk about what makes them feel unsafe, what strategies they developed to keep themselves safe, and where they look for protection and support. Through a series of interviews examining people’s experiences in public space, Here There Be Dragons podcast has revealed the many little adjustments and maneuvers that residents use to keep themselves safe. They wear turbans instead of hijabs, they place their keys in easily accessible pockets, they do not hold their partners’ hand, they shout at catcallers, they avoid bright colours, or they put their heels on at work. In other words, they take precautions and are careful readers of their environments. However, in the cities where the hosts conducted the interviews (New York, Paris, and Stockholm), the built environment is not always seen as an asset in the legislative response to public safety. Designed protections in the built environment are usually aimed at control and containment. Cities are quick to deploy anti-car barriers, fencing, security cameras, anti-homeless spikes, and other blunt technologies directed more at curtailing individual behaviors than making the space itself feel more welcoming or easeful. Furthermore, policing and surveillance of individual behavior often fall back on cultural stereotypes. Those who are culturally perceived as most vulnerable, people who present in a stereotypically feminine way, for example, are seen as most deserving of and subjected to paternal protection.
Sociologist Sara Farris and theorist Jasbir K. Puar’s concepts of femonationalism and homonatonalism are useful litmus tests for paternalistic safety measures that claim to fortify the rights of women and queer people. Initially framed to conceptualize certain national institutions’ use of queer and feminist movements to justify anti-muslim rhetoric, femo- and homo- nationalism, according to Sara Farris, “address the political economy of the discursive formation that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male) immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, some feminists, and neoliberal governments under the idea of gender equality.” Tying feminist and queer visions of safety to nationalism immediately creates a cultural hierarchy of behavior. It is a paternalistic surveillance approach that insidiously deputizes women and queer people of the most privileged classes (white, having the full benefits of citizenship, etc.) to further stigmatize marginalized members of their own communities. This approach severs the relationship between marginalized groups and the mainstream collective of feminist and queer movements, uses individual behavior as a greater threat than systemic oppression, and insists on using tools (e.g. state violence) that have long been wielded against women and the queer community.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
Last week, a curious exchange between a Chicago housing advocate and a local Chicago NBC reporter on Twitter caught my eye:
@cholent_lover @LisaParkerNBC For this story, we wanted to hear the POV from a small, affordable housing owner and his experience with accessing rental assistance $$. Many providers we talked to told us they no longer use “landlord” since it’s a “dated term” so we used both terms in our story.
Here’s a local reporter (who we won’t pick on here too much because he’s pretty low on the food chain) admitting he’s chosen to adopt a term preferred by landlords in the interests of fairness. And he’s not alone: Increasingly, reporters, pundits, and editors are allowing landlords to rebrand themselves “housing providers” in a troublesome and cynical trend of faux identity politics.
But landlords do not comprise a vulnerable or protected class; they are not dispossessed, historically marginalized, or a minority group in urgent need of reclaiming their humanity. The instinct to let groups of people define themselves is a good and liberal one, but the landlord lobby isn’t an Indigenous or transgender or homeless group; it’s not an oppressed class for whom reclaiming a narrative is a step toward rectifying a social wrong. It’s a bunch of extremely rich and cynical assholes who hire other rich and cynical assholes to spin its bad image to credulous media outlets.
Take a fairly brazen example from this summer, an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch headlined, “Opinion: 'Landlord' feudal, outdated term that help paint housing providers as villains.” It’s a useful object lesson in how PR and lobbying groups are increasingly adopting the language of liberal affect to serve the interests of the wealthy. It reads, in part:
First of its kind legislation has been proposed in Ohio to change references in state law from “landlord” and “tenant” to “housing provider” and “resident.”
Oddly, the proposal will prove controversial. It would mean feudal terminology would be replaced in order to reflect the real relationship between people who provide and who need housing. Often, housing providers in Ohio and the United states are small family-owned businesses, not powerful land barons. Updating language is an important first step to accurately reflect this in the law, and it should lead to better policy.
The piece is written by Roger Valdez, who is simply referred to as the “director of The Center for Housing Economics, a Seattle-based policy center researching progressive supply-side solutions to housing scarcity.” The vague disclaimer notes that “in Ohio, the center is working with the Ohio Real Estate Investors Association on a proposal to change housing terminology in state law.”
Not mentioned: The Center for Housing Economics is really Seattle for Growth, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group (lobbying front) funded by real estate developers, whose board of directors is a who’s who of Seattle real estate moguls. Lopez, our “progressive” board president, serves alongside bold progressive voices like Morris Groberman of First Western Properties, Keith Hammer of Northwest Investment Group, Scott Shapiro of Eagle Rock Ventures, Mark Knoll of Blueprint Capital, Dan Duffus of BluePrint capital, and Erich Armbruster of Ashworth Homes.
These are the bleeding hearts super concerned about the “feudal, outdated term.” Lopez insists he’s advocating on behalf of “small businesses” and “people of color serving other people of color,” yet strangely is funded by generic multimillionaire white men. As we documented in a recent episode of Citations Needed, the almost entirely white and male real estate lobby is increasingly attempting to paint itself as a champion of “landlords of color” to pass laws that disproportionately benefit rich, white real estate developers. This will, invariably, result in the eviction of people who are disproportionately people of color.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.
In the land where both “Corporations are People” and “All Lives Matter,” “Human Resources” may strike us as a thing we have somehow always lived with, as if measured productivity was an essential feature of human existence. But the invention of the term and its infiltration into the labor imaginary is a thoroughly modern development. The human resources project that unfolded in the twentieth century—from the marshaling of a civilian workforce in times of national crisis to the development of ever more employable individuals—is one that actively conflated the terrains of life and labor into a science. The paradigm of personnel management that emerged in prewar factory production became naturalized within late twentieth-century offices and institutions as “HR.” The acronym, a fixture of the corporate lexicon that has invaded the cultural imaginary of work, effectively collapses the objects and infrastructures of employment, such that the humanity of individual workers can be weighed against their quantifiable value to the organization that employs them, and in relation to an external pool of potential recruits that might replace them. In this frame, human resources are simultaneously reified as people and as capital—the live objects of social expenditure or personal investment, and the infinite reserves to power an ever-expanding market.
If it took the previous century for this concept to cohere, the first decades of the twenty-first would expose its precarity. The imbrication of global financial crisis, decreased social spending, and growing income inequality showed that HR wasn’t as fungible as it had seemed. Meanwhile, employment has retained its moral imperative, and it remains a measure of the health of the national economy. By this year—the long 2020—converging crises have thrown “valuable” human resources into much higher relief: who works the “front line,” who will remain at home, who qualifies for aid, who will have to assemble in the streets, who will do the work that lies ahead, and who has not been considered at all. As I write this text, friends working in architecture have been furloughed, let go, or asked to take pay cuts while their employers weather a pause in production and adapt to the economic and logistical fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. New graduates of design programs have found themselves plunged into an impossible job market, being invited in their apparent downtime to participate in ideas competitions about the new design problem of “social distancing” or an old favorite, the prison. These are the unsurprising activities of a majority-white profession that has tricked itself into thinking it can solve the world’s problems from without, while remaining beholden to a ruling class whose refusal to provide affordable housing, accessible public space, and other well-serviced public infrastructures has contributed to an untenable material reality for so many. The neoliberal drift of HR similarly divides the working world, reproducing racial disparities as it announces ever new diversity and inclusion measures to overcome them.
As the virus and rising unemployment have exacted asymmetrical burdens on Black Americans, subject to both social abandon and state-sanctioned violence, human contingencies have been reilluminated by burning buildings. From afar, talking heads debate the validity of demonstrations that engage in looting and the destruction of property, forcing a value comparison between architecture and Black lives. Up close, the proximity of masked demonstrators to one another registers as a risk willingly taken (a risk otherwise consigned to workers deemed essential)—dangerous but less so than the exposure to police forces outfitted in riot gear and decommissioned military equipment.
Activists have condemned police brutality and associated conditions of resource abandonment in explicitly architectural terms. Insufficiencies across the provision of housing, public transport, and street upkeep, among other urban improvements, are all the more obvious at the protest, when the full resources of city security are on display. In Chicago, this withholding of public infrastructure was mirrored in the raising of all but one bridge around its downtown Loop: a tactical maneuver to trap protesters just as Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a curfew during protests on May 30. Phalanxes of police, typically the primary beneficiaries of municipal expenditure, were deployed in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Lexington, and other cities across the country to manage assemblies, deeming them unlawful at the moment they appear to endanger property. Cable news images of shattered or boarded storefronts illustrate the distinctions made between a “peaceful protest” and the implicitly unjustified riot. When the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department was overtaken by protesters on May 28, a local journalist described the expropriation and destruction on Lake Street euphemistically as people “interacting with materials.” Architects scandalized by the immolation of a nearby construction site were less delicate in their appraisals of these actions (“Buildings Matter, Too”). The neighborhood where George Floyd was killed would sustain some of the greatest physical damage over the course of nationwide protests, but the events in Minneapolis would occasion the most immediate transformation of government, as the city council moved to defund its police force just weeks later.