It Takes a Village to Rape a Woman: a Workshop. 2008.

This video was of a workshop presented at the 2008 LA Social Forum by the my two peers/colleagues and I when we were on the board of the Women's Studies Student Association of Cal State Long Beach. It was graciously recorded and edited by the amazing visual artist Ricardo Silva (ricardosilva.com). The workshop is about reframing violence against women as a men's issue as well as explaining the concept of a rape culture.    Looking back on this video I am really excited about having the workshop recorded by a volunteer visual artist and realizing how much time and energy he spent on this.  I am also watching my 2-years-ago self and wondering how different the workshop we created might look today or if it would look different.  I remember that this was the first time we presented it so it did look different every time afterward depending on the audience, especially in relation to the media examples.  We actually never did the Tom Leykis, Howard Stern, and Rush Limbaugh example again because it was such a big topic and hard to reign in the discussion in relation to censorship, morality, normality, and consumption.  Discussing Beyonce and Usher in later workshops was a much easier example because it was less overtly about rape and more about gender.   Another thing about this video that bothers me is remembering the random Socialist guy who came in late, talked a bunch, actually answered  his phone during the workshop and tried to turn our conversation into one about socialism.  We were aware that the LA Social Forum was a Socialist space, but it was just rude to infiltrate our workshop and divert our thesis.    I wanted to post  this video on my blog more in terms of adding it to my body of work and less in terms of the Visual Research Methods class, though presenting a workshop and putting it on the internet is certainly using visual methods.