1. Step 1: shock. “Oh my
God!”
Step 2: sorrow. “That’s so
awful. I can’t look, but I also
can’t turn away.”
Step 3: anger. “Who would do
such a thing? I want horrible
things to happen to them.”
These are the intended reactions
of Illuminating visual prac-
tice. The term, illuminating, as
explained by esteemed historian
Rebecca Adekman, is explained
as a movement where the logic
presumes that “once provided
with enough visual evidence of
state violence and the pains taken
to conceal it, informed citizens
will begin to hold their govern-
ment to accoount.” The goal is
to shock the viewer into getting
angry, thereby creating a desire to
get involved and do something
about it. The question remains,
is that what it does? The prob-
lem with Illuminating visual
practice is that people want to
see these images, we want to care,
we want to get angry, we want to
be “enlightened,” hence the term
Illuminating, but Americans have
been fed illuminating practices
so frequently with the accessi-
bility of the internet that they
are desensitized. They will only
care for as long as the picture is
in front of them, or maybe if
they are particularly moved we
will care long enough to share
the photo on Facebook with an
angry caption saying “Wake up!
This is what’s happening in the
world” or “This needs to end!”
but what are we really doing to
end it? By sharing the photo the
Illuminating practice is spread-
ing, but who is actually going
to suddenly pursue a career in
politics or law enforcement and
then work to rewrite the whole
system? This is not to say that
Illuminating practices should not
exist. It is simply critical that we
rethink what the result is. How
many Americas share a photo of
a bloody child screaming with a
Does the method of Illuminating
visual practice actually lead to change?
Illuminat
3. headline about military violence
murdering people in the Middle
East under the premise of the
‘War on Terror’ with the inten-
tion of rallying up a group of
people to take action? It is safe
to say that sharing these photos
makes Americas feel more social-
ly, politically, and globally aware,
despite a resounding lack of po-
litical following among teenagers
and young adults. Americans
choose Illuminating visual prac-
tices to quam their momentary
internal unease at being com-
pletely unaware of various events
going on abroad because they are
amazed that something was able
to shock and move them long
enough for them to really desire
a change. These feelings are
not dishonest, and it is not for a
lack of care or heart that many
Americans will never extend their
passion beyond a social media
outlet, it is simply that Illuminat-
ing tactics are a match being sold
as a light bulb.
Probably the most
common Illuminating visual
image is ‘Gilligan’ also known as
‘The Man on the Box” or “The
Hooded Man” from the deten-
tion center in Abu Gharib, Iraq.
The photo became famous after
circulating all over the Internet.
It shocked its viewers to know
that American soldiers were
conducting torture overseas.
The photograph shows an Abu
Gharib prisoner clocked and
hooded in a fashion that is all too
reminiscent of a blackened KKK
garb. The man has his arms
spread out and he is standing on
a small box with wires attacked to
his hands and neck, though they
do not appear to be hooked up
to anything. ‘Gilligan’ is under
a torture technique that is both
physically and psychologically
taxing. He has to stand on the
box for hours on end with the
false knowledge that he will be
electrocuted if he steps off the
box. Part of the shock factor of
the Abu Ghraib photos is that
‘Gilligan’ was not the only photo,
others show America soldiers
posing with a thumbs up over a
pyramid of naked detainees, or
an America soldier holding a dog
leash attached to
another naked d
juxtaposition of
American soldie
backdrop of tor
ceedingly distur
into question w
States governme
seemingly witho
edge of the Am
In recen
Garissa Univers
Kenya that claim
has gained little
nition on mains
channels. Howe
ing practice has
photos of gunn
students lying in
across social me
of these posts c
tragedy to the C
shooting in Fran
took place on Ja
Though the Heb
claimed twelve l
Garissa massacr
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rbing and calls
what the United
ent is doing
out the knowl-
merican people.
nt news the
sity massacre in
med 147 lives
to no recog-
stream news
ever, Illuminat-
sent several
ned down
n blood pools
edia. Many
compare the
Charlie Hebdo
nce, which
anuary 7th.
bdo shooting
lives, while the
re claimed 147,
student, lives,
oting made
nes and was
r weeks. The
if a change is to be made wide-
spread public blame, especially
American blame in the case of
Abu Gharib, is an unyielding
approach, just as placing blame
on Germans for Nazi action was
ineffective. Though there are
many cases against Illuminating
practices, one of them being
that it perpetuates Americans
right to “look” regardless of
the rights of the people in the
photographs, to outright dismiss
Illumination is equally ignorant.
Illuminating practices are uttered
with the intent of addressing
the responsibility of the viewer,
which ultimately creates a wall of
defense, which effectively perpet-
uates the harm Illuminati activists
seek to remedy. Is there a way
to be self-critical in a way that
leads to self-reflection rather than
defense? If so perhaps Illumi-
nating techniques would be more
effective, but to simply so easily
discredits the perhaps behind this
article, which is that it is not easy
and there is not a simple solution.
Does that anger you?
release of such grisly photo-
graphs was an attempt to gain
a reaction. Illuminati activates
who were angered by the lack of
news coverage for the Garissa
Massacre used Illuminating shock
tactics in order to get people fired
up in an effort to gain supporters
who are willing to make a change.
If Illuminating practices do not
result in people taking action
beyond an angry Facebook post
then perhaps it is time to consid-
er other methods of invoking a
lasting passion among Americans.
In highlights a few illu-
minating visual practices such as
the photos from Abu Ghraib and
the Garissa University Massacre
that are likely remembered it is
equally pertinent to acknowledge
the tens of thousands of events
and tragedies occurring daily
across the globe that may nev-
er receive recognition at all, by
Illuminating practices or other.
If the causes that are addressed
by Illuminati groups are gaining
such frivolous responses what
is to be said for the events that
are never heard about? Perhaps
6. CUT IT OUT
hair is a statement, not only to
other men, but to other women
and themselves; it says, I have
control over my appearance and
my body, and I will chose a look
that pleases me, rather than a look
that pleases another. Thus, the
outrage and backlash that women
are receiving from men as a result
of this look is a result of the patri-
archy. Their ridicule is misogyny,
and a fear of losing the carefully
are small ways in which women
are rewriting the standards that
have been placed on them.
Hair is such a small thing
that we place such high value on,
which also makes it an easy first
step for women to reclaim their
identities. The scissors clipped
the hair away and it fell, detached,
to the floor, as did the patriarchal
hold. For women, cutting off their
I
n recent years we’ve seen
a new trend that is not only
stylistic, but has also sparked
a revolutionary movement.
In the last four years girls have
traded in their long locks for
short, pixie cuts. While several
websites, name those centered
around fraternity brothers, such
as “Total Frat Move” and “Return
of The King”, have condemned
this style as “unfeminine” young
adult women in their late teens
and early twenties say that it
is preciously that attitude that
prompted the movement in the
first place. For centuries women
in the developed Western and
Eastern world have centered their
image around pleasing men, or
rather, the patriarchal idea of
what women should be. Accord-
ing to these arbitrary standards,
women should be thin and fragile
looking, with long hair, beautiful
soft features, and should readily
be smiling, at all times, since we
all know that women look better
when they smile. However,
patriarchal standards for women
go beyond physical appearance.
They include personality traits
that are “feminine” and are
“becoming” on a woman, such
as meek and fragile, soft spoken,
respectful, happy, desiring to
please a husband, chaste, etc.
It’s impossible to rewrite these
constructs overnight, but there
“For women, cutting off their
hair is a statement, not only to
other men, but to other women
and themselves; it says, I have
control over my appearance and
my body, and I will chose a look
that pleases me, rather than a
look that pleases another.”
knitted control that men have over
women by making those who do not
conform to male standards feel small
and obsolete.
I’m making men out to seem
like the bad guys, however, for many,
these ideals are so deeply rooted in
society that many men do not realize
that what they say is degrading and
harmful. Women are guilty of this,
as well, as men are expected to be
“manly”, which means sleeping around
with a lot of women, being physically
strong and muscular, being a leaders
who are assertive, protective, and
dominant. However, the alpha dog is
only one type of man and/or woman.
Those traits are part of a personality,
not a gender. The only way to correct
these poor standards is to rewrite the
history. The best way to summarize
the underlining role privilege plays
in our society is through this parable
about a dog and a lizard:
Today I’m feeling 101-y, I
guess, so let’s talk about privilege.
It’s a weird word, isn’t it? A common
one in my circles, it’s one of the most
basic, everyday concepts in social
activism, we have lots of unhelpful
snarky little phrases we like to use
like “check your privilege” and a lot
of our dialog conventions are built
around a mutual agreement (or at
least a mutual attempt at agreement)
on who has privilege when and how to
Cont. page 3
7. compensate for
that. But nonethe-
less fairly weird,
opaque even if
you’ve never used
it before or aren’t
part of those cir-
cles. It’s also, the
way we use it, very
much a cultur-
al marker – like
“Tolkienesque” or
“Hall-of-famer” or
“heteronormative,” you can feel
fairly assured that a large number
of people will immediately stop
listening and stop taking you seri-
ously the moment you use it.
The fact that people are stupid
isn’t news, however. And actually
that’s kind of why the concept of
privilege is important – because
privilege isn’t about being stupid.
It’s not a bad thing, or a good
thing, or something with a moral
or value judgement of any kind at-
tached to it. Having privilege isn’t
something you can usually change,
but that’s okay, because it’s not
something you should be ashamed
of, or feel bad about. Being told
you have privilege, or that you’re
privileged, isn’t an insult. It’s a
reminder! The key to privilege
isn’t worrying about having it, or
trying to deny it, or apologize for
it, or get rid of it. It’s just paying
attention to it, and knowing what
it means for you and the people
around you. Having privilege is like
having big feet. No one hates you
for having big feet! They just want
you to remember to be careful
where you walk.
At this point maybe I should
actually start talking about what
privilege is, huh?
Well, we’re right here online, so
let’s start with the Google defi-
nition. As per standard for goo-
gledefs, it’s hardly comprehensive,
but entirely adequate for our
purposes here, particularly the
second entry:
If you talk about privilege, you
are talking about the power and
advantage that only a small group
of people have, usually because of
their wealth or their high
social class.
This is the basic heart of
the idea. Privilege is an
edge… a set of oppor-
tunities, benefits and
advantages that some
people get and others
don’t. For example, if it’s
raining in the morning,
and you get up, get
dressed, climb into the
nice warm car in your
garage, drive to the closed parking
lot at work, and walk into the adja-
cent building, you don’t get wet. If
you go outside and wait at the bus
stop, then walk between busses for
your transfer, then walk from the
bus stop to work, you do get wet.
Not getting wet, then, is a privilege
afforded you by car and garage
ownership. So far, so straightfor-
ward, right?
Some examples of social privilege
work exactly the same way, and
they’re the easy ones to under-
stand. For instance, a young black
male driver is much, much more
likely to get pulled over by the
cops in America than an old white
woman. Getting pulled over less,
then – being given the benefit of
the doubt by an authority figure –
is in this case, a privilege of being
white. (I’m not getting into the
gender factor here, intersectional-
ity is a whole different post.)
Okay, again, so far so straight-
forward. And thus far, there’s not
much to be done about it, right?
You’re not going to, as a white per-
son, make a point of getting pulled
over more often, and nobody’s ask-
ing you to. (Well, I’m not, at least.)
So if someone says “check your
privilege,” if I tell you to watch
where you’re putting your feet,
what the hell does that mean?
Well. This is where things get a bit
tricky to understand. Because most
examples of social privilege aren’t
that straightforward. Let’s take,
for example, a basic bit of male
privilege:
A man has the privilege of walking
past a group of strange women
without worrying about being
catcalled, or leered at, or having
sexual suggestions tossed at him.
A pretty common male response
to this point is “that’s a privilege? I
would love if a group of women did
that to me.”
And that response, right there, is
a perfect shining example of male
privilege.
To explain how and why, I am
going to throw a lengthy metaphor
at you. In fact, it may even qualify
as parable. Bear with me, because
if it makes everything crystal clear,
it will be worth the time.
Imagine, if you will, a small
house, built someplace cool-ish
but not cold, perhaps somewhere
in Ohio, and inhabited by a dog
and a lizard. The dog is a big dog,
something shaggy and nordic,
like a Husky or Lapphund – a sled
dog, built for the snow. The lizard
is small, a little gecko best adapt-
ed to living in a muggy rainforest
somewhere. Neither have ever
lived anywhere else, nor met any
other creature; for the purposes of
this exercise, this small house is
the entirety of their universe.
The dog, much as you might ex-
pect, turns on the air conditioning.
Really cranks it up, all the time
– this dog was bred for hunting
moose on the tundra, even the
winter here in Ohio is a little warm
for his taste. If he can get the
house to fifty (that’s ten C, for all
you weirdo metric users out there),
he’s almost happy.
The gecko can’t do much to control
the temperature – she’s got tiny
little fingers, she can’t really work
the thermostat or turn the dials on
the A/C. Sometimes, when there’s
an incandescent light nearby, she
can curl up near it and pick up
some heat that way, but for the
most part, most of the time, she
just has to live with what the dog
chooses. This is, of course, much
too cold for her – she’s a gecko.
Not only does she have no fur,
she’s cold-blooded! The tempera-
ture makes her sluggish and sick,
and it permeates her entire uni-
verse. Maybe here and there she
can find small spaces of warmth,
8. but if she ever wants to actually
do anything, to eat or watch TV or
talk to the dog, she has to move
through the cold house.
Now, remember, she’s never known
anything else. This is just how the
world is – cold and painful and
unhealthy for her, even dangerous,
and she copes as she knows how.
But maybe some small part of her
thinks, “hey, it shouldn’t be like
this,” some tiny growing seed of
rebellion that says who she is right
next to a lamp is who she should
be all the time. And she and the
dog are partners, in a sense, right?
They live in this house together,
they affect each other, all they’ve
got is each other. So one day, she
sees the dog messing with the A/C
again, and she says, “hey. Dog.
Listen, it makes me really cold
when you do that.”
The dog kind of looks at her, and
shrugs, and keeps turning the dial.
This is not because the dog is a
jerk.
This is because the dog has no
fucking clue what the lizard even
just said.
Consider: he’s a nordic dog in a
temperate climate. The word “cold”
is completely meaningless to him.
He’s never been cold in his entire
life. He lives in an environment
that is perfectly suited to him,
completely aligned with his comfort
level, a world he grew up with the
tools to survive and control, built
right in to the way
he was born.
So the lizard tries
to explain it to him.
She says, “well,
hey, how would you
like it if I turned the
temperature down
on you?”
The dog goes, “uh…
sounds good to me.”
What she really
means, of course, is “how would
you like it if I made you cold.”
But she can’t make him cold. She
doesn’t have the tools, or the
power, their shared world is not
built in a way that allows it – she
simply is not physically capable of
doing the same harm to him that
he’s doing to her. She could make
him feel pain, probably, I’m sure
she could stab him with a tooth-
pick or put something nasty in his
food or something, but this specific
form of pain, he will never, ever
understand – it’s not something
that can be inflicted on him, given
the nature of the world they live
in and the way it’s slanted in his fa-
vor in this instance. So he doesn’t
get what she’s saying to him, and
keeps hurting her.
Most privilege is like this.
A straight cisgendered male Amer-
ican, because of who he is and the
culture he lives in, does not and
cannot feel the stress, creepiness,
and outright threat behind a catcall
the way a woman can. His upbring-
ing has given him fur and paws
big enough to turn the dials and
plopped him down in temperate
Ohio. When she says “you don’t
have to put up with being leered
at,” what she means is, “you don’t
ever have to be wary of sexual
interest.” That’s male privilege. Not
so much that something doesn’t
happen to men, but that it will
never carry the same weight, even
if it does.
So what does this mean? And what
are we asking you to do, when we
say “check your privilege” or “your
privilege is showing”?
Well, quite simply, we want you
to understand when you have fur.
And, by ex-
tension, when
that means you
should listen.
See, the dog’s
not an asshole
just for turning
down the tem-
perature. As far
as he knows,
that’s fine,
right? He genu-
inely cannot feel the pain it causes,
he doesn’t even know about it. No
one thinks he’s a bad person for
totally accidentally doing harm.
Here’s where he becomes an
asshole: the minute the gecko
says, “look, you’re hurting me,”
and he says, “what? No, I’m not.
This ‘cold’ stuff doesn’t even exist,
I should know, I’ve never felt it.
You’re imagining it. It’s not there.
It’s fine because of fur, because
of paws, because look, you can
curl up around this lamp, because
sometimes my water dish is too
tepid and I just shut up and cope,
obviously temperature isn’t this big
deal you make it, and you’ve never
had to deal with mange anyway,
my life is just as hard.”
And then the dog just ignores
it. Because he can. That’s the
privilege that comes with having
fur, with being a dog in Ohio. He
doesn’t have to think about it.
He doesn’t have to live daily with
the cold. He hasno idea what he’s
talking about, and he will never,
ever be forced to learn. He can
keep making the lizard miserable
until the day they both die, and he
will never suffer for it beyond the
mild annoyance of her complaining.
And she, meanwhile, gets to try
not to freeze to death.
So, quite simply: don’t be that
dog. If you’re straight and a queer
person says “do not title your book
‘Beautiful Cocksucker,’ that’s stupid
and offensive,” listen and believe
him. If you’re white and a black
person says “really, now, we’re all
getting a little tired of that What
These People Need Is A Honky
trope, please write a better movie,”
listen and believe her. If you’re
male and a woman says “this ma-
quette is a perfect example of why
women don’t read comics,” listen
and believe her. Maybe you don’t
see anything wrong with it, maybe
you think it’s oh-so-perfect to your
artistic vision, maybe it seems
like an oversensitive big deal over
nothing to you. WELL OF COURSE
IT DOES, YOU HAVE FUR. Never-
theless, just because you person-
ally can’t feel that hurt, doesn’t
mean it’s not real. All it means is
you have privilege.That’s not a bad
thing. You can’t help being born
with fur. Every single one of us has
some kind of privilege over some-
body. What matters is whether
we’re aware of it.
