pink loves consent

Happy V-Day Bitch Lovers!

• This V-Day, show your solidarity in ending gender-based violence by joining One Billion Rising – a worldwide anti-rape protest. To find a rising happening near you today, take a look at the handy dandy event finder. [One Billion Rising]
• Maybe being ‘single’ today is actually a site of radical queer resistance. Check out this post-colonial/queer Single’s Manifesto, it might make you not feel so bad. [Queer Libido]
• Meanwhile, in non V-Day related news, college health plans are finally starting to cover transition related surgeries.[NY Times]
• It’s not every day giant corporations such as Victoria’s Secret get hijacked by savvy feminist groups in an anti-rape campaign, so we felt it necessary to interview the brains behind operation Pink Loves Consent. Bitch web editor Sarah Mirk interviews Baltimore's FORCE collective. [Bitch Media]
• The beginning of a sexual revolution? Or more heteronormative, sexist shenanigans? Guess we should have seen this one coming - Facebook’s latest app: Bang With Friends. [DNA India]
• Judith Butler’s talk last week at Brooklyn College about using boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to protest the state of Israel’s policies toward Palestine spurs massive controversy. [The Feminist Wire]
• Good grief. North Carolina is actually considering passing a bill that could send women to prison for going topless in public.  [ABC News]
• To end on a more hopeful note, according to The Guardian, women across the globe are joining forces in unprecedented ways to combat sexual violence. [The Guardian]

That's all for today friends! Let us know if we missed anything in the comments.

Baltimore feminist group FORCE took the world by surprise last December when they launched a line of fake Victoria's Secret, dropping underwear emblazoned with phrases like "Consent is Sexy" and "Ask First" at Victoria's Secrets around the US and promoting the fake Pink Loves Consent line on the internet. The spoof came off brilliantly, using a well-coordinated "feminist Facebook army" to hijack Victoria Secret's social media and broadcast the a discussion of consent to millions of mainstream shoppers. Last week, I talked with FORCE organizers Rebecca Nagle and Hannah Brancato about what they learned from the Pink Loves Consent campaign, how Facebook and Twitter have censored their spoof, and the details on their next action, a Valentine's Day protest that will install a temporary monument to rape survivors in Washington DC. 

BITCH: What choices did you make while planning Pink Loves Consent that made it so wildly successful? 

HANNAH BRANCATO:  The big decision was that we couldn't sell the underwear. This is a spoof, we're using Victoria's Secret's trademark, so we couldn't legally sell anything. There was all of this intense energy around the project when it first launched but the only thing people could think of doing was buying the underwear. 

REBECCA NAGLE: The first thing they asked was, 'Where can I buy this?" And I think it was powerful to come back and say, "You can't buy it, it's an idea." Instead of sending people to a checkout cart, we're sending people to resources, to saying, "Here's a zine you can make."