Hey Internet. Collective Member Colin here. SNY blog’s been pretty inactive for a while, but that’s life right? We still exist! We just neglected the internet for a while. We are punks. Please, forgive us.

I’m going to try and make a habit of posting a couple of links every Sunday or Monday. I’ll just try to aggregate links from the previous week that seem like they might be of interest to people who are interested in Support New York.

This week, I’ve got three readings pertaining to the mass murder committed by Elliott Rodgers. I was working a brunch shift at a restaurant while it was happening, so I wasn’t following the news live, but began to catch up on it last night after work and this morning.

I’m not sure what I can say about this tragedy and the ensuing media spectacle, that hasn’t already been said, and better, by others, but I will say this: I have spent the entirety of my life as a man, sometimes by coercion, lately by choice. I have spent the better part of my adult life working to dismantle and dissect the toxic elements of masculinity within myself, to varying degrees of success, and I’ve dedicated my time for the past ten years to trying to help others do the same. Doing work around sexual assault can be so grim, but there have been heartening moments too. Over the past ten years it feels like I’ve watched the framework through which many people view consent and assault shift incrementally for the better. I feel like even within the anarchist/punk milieu the notion of safer spaces or community accountability were side-eyed as wing nut-ish, fringe beliefs within the fringe. And that’s not the case anymore! And that is wonderful. That said, there is still SO MUCH work to do. The unhealthy way gendered behavior is structured in our fucked up culture makes events like yesterday’s feel almost inevitable and I think it’s important that we remember that Elliott Rodgers’s actions fit within a larger framework of structural violence and devaluation of women’s humanity. Rodgers is fully responsible for his actions, this is not about shifting blame, but let’s not forget the cultural forces that aided and abetted him.

So here are a few links. It goes without saying, but: trigger warning for heinous sexualized violence and reminders of the awful things humans are capable of.

A Rape a Minute, a Thousand Corpses a Year by Rebecca Solnit for Guernica Magazine
Elliot Rodger’s Fatal Menace: How toxic male entitlement devalues women’s and men’s lives by Katie McDonough for Salon
The Pick-Up Artist Community’s Predictable, Horrible Response to a Mass Murder by Amanda Hess for Slate

If you’d like to see an article you read or written in the weekly link drop, feel free to email supportnewyork at gmail with the subject line “ATTN: COLIN links for the blog” and I will make sure to read whatever is sent in.