Commentary.
In February, I posted two pieces in Bed-Stuy on Tompkins and Halsey. These two pieces got the most attention of any pieces I’ve put up so far. Within a few days, someone had written his response to the work directly onto the posters. From there, a woman wrote a response to him. And it went on and, on with different hand-written comments creating this kind of interesting discussion. The pieces remained up until a week or so ago, when the phallic image was drawn. That’s when I decided to try to take them down.
The “Stop Telling Women to Smile” piece remained in tact enough for me to include it in the exhibition. I thought it was important to present in the show, so that people could view these written reactions.
I love when assertive women scare men to such an extent that they have to resort to infantile shit like this.
They think it will shut women up, but it really just fuels everything further, I hope they know that.
The “devolution” of the poster is more interesting to me than the originals, which I’ve reblogged before.
The fact that a man decided to comment on the poster physically, and was the first to do so, says a lot. Whenever women defend ourselves we get these counter arguments. We get people in general, and not just men, trying to cut down our personal initiatives. And when women, like on the poster, attempt to hold a real discussion we get the brunt of the “dick solution” where we are told that we hate men, we haven’t had a “dick that was good” or we get a penis drawn on the poster meant to make a social commentary about our “place.”
I’ve reblogged the individual posters before because I understand them as a victim of the suggestions. But I’m reblogging them now to show the attempt to keep women in their societal place in our culture.
An excellent example of men not getting the point about street harassment.
“You find our unwanted projections of our opinions of you to be bothersome? Well … well … well … DICKS, THAT’S WHAT! DICKS!!!”
Serious grade-schooler shit here. Grow the fuck up.
Sighs.
(Source: stoptellingwomentosmile, via all-about-male-privilege)
