#seeandsay

[ohtheplacesblog]

#Christmas #Circa1970s Now, you can't tell me nothing with my all blue everything outfit with polkadots and shiny white hightops! And I was unwrapping my first #SeeAndSay toy with the animal sounds! What! I was getting my holiday cute on! #ChildhoodMemories #ILoveThe70s https://www.instagram.com/p/Br0iZECla3T/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=o4v01ltxax81

[palomahgomez]

I came across this video today and thought it was suitable to illustrate this week’s term, Response-ability (or lack there of to prove the point of this video) by Kelly Oliver. Her definition states that “response-ability signifies the capacity to collectively respond to sexual violence and its cultures of racial, gendered and sexuality harassment. It is anactivist engagement of subjectivity based in networks of media production and distribution.” 

I thought this PSA to be extremely helpful in speaking to that act of taking response-ability (the ability to respond). We as people of society have should have a moral compass that point us in a direction of protecting others, but often this is damaged when thoughts of being ridiculed/hurt as a result of exposing the attacker. Good thing, social media platforms have created avenues of expressing harassment witnessed. 

In this video, the camera directing functioned as a witness to the harassment scene, but not engaging in the ability to respond, while the attackers thank the onlooker for concealing what he/she has seen/heard. At the end of the video it says that by not saying anything you are helping him (the attacker), which is true by seeing but not reporting. Luckily, as mentioned before we have the tools (video/blogs etc.) to express freely on witnessed sexual harassment with limited fear (anonymity has a lot to do with this). It takes less than 140 characters, a few seconds/minutes of footage, a click of a post bottom…Moreover this hashtag (#WhoWillYouHelp) provides another avenue to express these issues, and to spread the word of “response-ability”, making the public more comfortable with the word and its important role.