Leslie Kern Quotes

Rape myths also have a geography. This gets embedded into the mental map of safety and danger that every woman carries in her mind. 'What were you doing in that neighbourhood? At that bar? Waiting alone for a bus?' 'Why were you walking alone at night?' 'Why did you take a shortcut?' We anticipate these questions and they shape our mental maps as much as any actual threat. These sexist myths serve to remind us that we're expected to limit our freedom to walk, work, have fun, and take up space in the city. They say: The city isn't really for you.

I'm not trying to say that women like being fearful, but that some of the pleasure of city life relies on its inherent unknowability and on one's courage in braving that unknowability. In fact, unpredictability and disorder can come to represent the 'authentically urban' to women who reject safe suburban conformity and repetitive rural rhythms.

La separación de los espacios en función del género significaba que la producción podía alinearse con el mundo de los hombres, y el consumo, con el de las mujeres.

Lorna Day, directora de Diseño Urbano en Toronto, se enteró hace poco de que los lineamientos de la ciudad para calcular los efectos del viento partían de una “persona estándar”, cuyo peso, altura y superficie corporal se corresponden con los de un varón adulto 22. ¿Quién hubiera dicho que el sesgo de género pudiera influir en la ubicación y altura de los rascacielos, o en el diseño de túneles de viento? Pero sí. Influye.

En esta línea surgió también el concepto de miasma moral: la idea de que la depravación podía contagiarse por sola proximidad con alguien que la portara. La presencia usual de mujeres “haciendo la calle”, que ejercían abiertamente el oficio e inducían a hombres buenos a entrar en el mundo del vicio, escandalizaba a los escritores de la época.

La figura del flâneur, famosa por su rol en la obra de Charles Baudelaire, remite a un caballero que es un “espectador apasionado” de la ciudad, que ansía “volverse uno con la multitud”, estar en el centro mismo de la acción y aun así ser invisible.

En su ensayo “Merodeo callejero: una aventura londinense”, de 1930, la narradora va imaginando qué sucede en las mentes de los extraños con los que se cruza mientras camina por las calles de Londres, y concluye que “escapar es el más grande de los placeres; merodear por las calles en invierno, la mayor de las aventuras” 35. En su diario, Woolf también escribió que “caminar sola por Londres es el mayor descanso

Keep the faith: Abolitionist activist and writer Mariame Kaba says “hope is a discipline.” It is not a feeling that we have or do not have, that appears or disappears. It is not simple optimism or relentless positivity. Rather, hope is a practice. You choose it every day by taking actions, however small, toward creating the world you want to live in. Just because we might not live to see it fully realized is no reason not to practise hope. Kaba says that she reminds young organizers: “Your timeline is not the timeline on which movements occur.” She finds freedom in letting go of the assumption that all of the work can and will be done on a knowable timeline, because then you can “do the work that’s necessary as you see it and contribute in the ways you see fit.

Girls must learn to make do with the limited spaces that they're offered. In my servant adolescence, that space was the mall. Easily accessed, inviting no probing questions from our parents, always warm and safe. I can't begin to count the hours spent wandering the convoluted corridors of ever expanding shopping centers in Mississauga. I suppose we were lucky that given Mississauga size and growth rate, we had choices. […] despite the mall's inherent homogeneity, we entertained ourselves by looking at things we couldn't afford, imagining the cool people we'd be if only we had the right clothes and shoes. We found ways to make our own spaces, and stairwells, corners, and service corridors. My best friend Erica and I didn't go to the same school, so the mall was the place where we could actually gather instead of talking on the phone. But as we got older, the mall didn't reflect our changing identities. We needed to find the space and styles and people that would let us start to define ourselves as more Jewish girls from the suburbs. […] If the mall was our default space – easy to access, parents happy to leave us there for a few hours – then downtown, as we called neighboring Toronto, was our aspiration. We could take a commuter train and in about 30 minutes we'd be at the foot of Yonge Street, one of Toronto’s central shopping and tourist districts. While we might venture into the enormous Eaton center mall, our targets were the vintage shops, used record stores, poster shops, and head shops of Yonge and Queen streets. […] Of course all of this feels like a cliche now. We weren't unique. Suburban girls all over seek out ways to push back against the pressures of conformity. Like with young people we were trying to figure ourselves out and “different” space has helped us create fresh moments for self-expression. Girls’ presence on city streets, a place where they have been deemed out of place, can and should be considered part of girls’ repertoire of resistance to varying modes of control within an adult-dominated, patriarchal society.

It's been over 20 years since the protests where I was arrested. Like all activists and politically-committed scholars I've had to learn the hard way (which is the only way, really) will encounter more contradictions than resolutions in your work, especially when your privileges become salient. […] I'd be the first to say that sometimes you just need to be a body out in the streets. Rights aren't won and defended in a classroom, on social media or even via electoral politics. The work has to happen on the ground. History is clear that social change doesn't happen without some form of protests, and indeed most of the improvements in women's lives and cities can be traced back to activist movements. Not every woman will participate in some form of protest; in fact, most never will. But all of our lives have been shaped by them. For me, activist spaces are my greatest teachers. I wouldn't be able to articulate what a feminist city aspires to without those experiences. I've learned a lot about how to protest over the years, but more importantly, I've learned that a feminist city is one you have to be willing to fight for.