To my Allies and LGBTQ+ comrades boycotting Russian Vodka: Just Stop.

I know that we all mean well when we collectively decided not to buy any more Vodka from Russian companies because of the decision of their President Vladimir Putin to actively endanger his own citizens because of their status (or allyship to) as sexual minorities.

But I suggest that you do not let this dictator's actions sway you to damage the economic integrity of long corporate allies to the LGBTQ+ community. Allies like the hard hit Stolichnaya Vodka (also known as Stoli) have had a long history of supporting Lesbian and Gay movements in the United States and abroad with campaigns such as Be Real: Stories from Queer America which explores the intersectionality of gender identity. Stoli CEO Val Mendeleev recently sent a letter to the American magazine The Advocate (whose audience is predominantly wealthy white gay men) reading as follows: 

Luxembourg, July 25, 2013
An Open Letter from the CEO of Stolichnaya Vodka to the LGBT community.
The recent dreadful actions taken by the Russian Government limiting the rights of the LGBT community and the passionate reaction of the community have prompted me to write this letter to you.
I want to stress that Stoli firmly opposes such attitude and actions. Indeed, as a company that encourages transparency and fairness, we are upset and angry. Stolichnaya Vodka has always been, and continues to be a fervent supporter and friend to the LGBT community. We also thank the community for having adopted Stoli as their vodka of preference.
In the US, the brand’s commitment to the LGBT community has been ongoing for years. Among the best examples, I can cite the series produced by Stoli in 2006 called “Be Real: Stories from Queer America” which featured short documentaries on real life stories depicting the challenges and accomplishments of the LGBT community in the United States (http://www.logotv.com/shows/dyn/be_real_series/series.jhtml)
Stoli is very proud of its current exclusive national partnership with Gaycities.com and Queerty.com in search of the Most Original Stoli Guy. This is a fantastic program that started as a local initiative in Colorado and became a national platform. Previous national initiatives included serving as the official vodka of the Miami Gay Pride Week as well as ongoing events with focus on Pride month.
Some great examples from other parts of the world are the support to the Durban Gay Pride, in South Africa (http://www.durbanpride.org), the Pride Parade in Vienna, in cooperation with HOSI and CT, the largest LGBT communities in Austria and the Tel Aviv Pride Parade, taking place this weekend.
This letter also gives me the opportunity to clear some of the confusion surrounding the Stolichnaya brand, based on facts found online that often inaccurately link our company to the Russian Government. The Russian government has no ownership interest or control over the Stoli brand that is privately owned by SPI Group, headquartered in Luxembourg in the heart of Western Europe.
Stoli’s production process involves both Russia and Latvia. Stoli is made from Russian ingredients (wheat, rye and raw alcohol) blended with pure artesian well water at our historic distillery and bottling facility Latvijas Balzams (www.lb.lv) in Riga, Latvia (formerly part of the Russian Empire and then of the Soviet Union). Latvijas Balzams did not recently become part of the Stoli heritage, but has been one of its main production and bottling facilities since 1948. This has allowed the brand to deliver the outstanding quality it is recognized for consistently across the years. What changed in the last years is politics, with Latvia becoming an independent state part of the EU.
We fully support and endorse your objectives to fight against prejudice in Russia. In the past decade, SPI has been actively advocating in favor of freedom, tolerance and openness in society, standing very passionately on the side of the LGBT community and will continue to support any effective initiative in that direction.
Sincerely yours
Val Mendeleev
Chief Executive Officer
SPI Group

which details the work the company has done for the American LGBTQ+ community in the past. It additionally attempts to highlight the company's corporate independence (as far as that can go nowadays) from Russia. However the company's subsidiary SPI Group is owned by Russian businessman Yury Shefler who won rights to continue privately produce vodka against re-nationalization attempts in 1999 by russian president Putin (details later in the article). SPI group is a Swiss based company with a board headed by predominantly American [USA] folks.

While receiving criticism from gay activist Dan Savage (known for his frequent outing of closeted youth during his talks and his trans*phobia) for lack of action in Russia, Stoli has made historical attempts at distancing itself from Russia since the 1999 nationalization attempts. However what Dan Savage [unsurprisingly] and others missed is that Vodka is not Russia's chief export.

According to the United States Government, the global market and the media Russia's largest export and money maker is - you guessed it - petroleum products! After petroleum products come natural gas, metals, wood and wood products, and then a whole list of chemicals that become a whole lot of other things. Last on the list is civilian based companies that do not make above products. Thus boycotting them is not going to do a whole lot of good. What will occur is that these companies (many of which are allies) will become easier and easier for a hostile government to buy. Once bought, say farewell to nifty LGBTQ+ awareness campaigns (even if they were only in the United States.

"But what should you do," you ask?

Well based on this data you should start contacting petroleum companies and inform them that you plan on boycotting their products as long as they continue to buy from Russian producers. Or, better yet, encourage companies to become green energy providers by buying credits, investing in them, or directing and electing representatives that support green energy initiatives. Contact paper product producers and inform them that you plan on boycotting Russian wood products and tell them that they should find other suppliers if they do not want to be hit hard. Buy local  to make sure that none of your capital goes to the Russian government. Follow Russian LGBTQ+ activist Nikolia Alekseev's advice and put Russian politicians on the visa ban list - effectively erasing their international sway. And perhaps hardest: stop putting Russian politicians in a place where they feel like they can act masculine, such as the Snowden incident, by reforming national laws that protect nationals so they do not need to seek protection overseas. 

I am not your Teacher: Why Disadvantaged Groups are not Responsible for Deconstructing Privilege

     So there is a lot of buzz around discussions of privilege and its implications in social settings. In more capable areas the discussion is occurring smoothly with people working cohesively to use privilege responsibly to shape a world where there are no underprivileged groups. In other areas the responses have been violent. One only has to look at the University of Texas where students launched balloons filled with bleach at students of color on several, separate, occasions. 

      The University also has received sharp criticism for the Greek organizations race themed parties with the article citing "The local chapters of Tri Delta and Zeta Tau Alpha have recently apologized for a fiesta-themed party where two party attendees wore shirts that read 'Illegal' and 'Border Patrol.'" But the University of Texas is not the only college homes to these travesties. Colleges and Universities across the nation are dealing with these problems from Tufts University to my own Allegheny College. The common response from people in these organizations to accusations of racism or apathy in the face of racism has been, "Please don't dismiss everybody because there are people out there who care and that want to help," as Mandy Stein from the article pointed out. At Allegheny College where a forum was called to address Greek life there was a lot of this apathy in the face of racism and defensiveness in the face of blatant, and repeated incidences of Black face and cultural appropriation of Native American culture and symbols. Some students stated that they felt attacked by minority students calling them out on their actions, saying things along the lines, "well I didn't mean it like that" or "I'm not racist" with the latter eerily reflecting tweets that appeared during the 2012 Presidential Election. 

     This pattern poises a question for us, whose duty is it to deconstruct privilege? Is it, as the trends show, the responsibility of minority groups (who are already tasked with preserving their cultural heritage) to educate larger society about the pitfalls of their actions, or is it the responsibility of the privileged to educate themselves and see the dangers of privileged attitudes and blatantly racist attitudes?


The answer lies in the following passage in Stigma; Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identities by Erving Goffman, that I have bulleted and italicized for added flair, on what the assumption that minorities be the teachers of privilege means to the privileged:

• the pain and unfairness of having to carry a stigma will never be presented to them;

• they will never have to admit how limited their tactfulness and tolerance is;

• they can maintain uncontaminated by intimate contact with the stigmatized
and;

• they can remain unthreatened in their identity beliefs.

The view that it is the responsibility of minority groups to teach the privileged groups is a method of protecting privileged classes in various ways from being shocked or their views being seriously challenged. In its base this view already devalues not only the teacher but also the lesson that is being taught so that it can dismissed without any serious form of consideration. 

A New Look at Cultural Group Identity

While looking around the internet for resources for my research on rights consciousness within the abled differently community in the United States and abroad I wandered upon a marvelous site called Exactitudes®.

Link to the site Here. 

Now before I say anything more, I want to preface this by saying that this site works to identifying various social groups that seek to set themselves apart from their conglomerate cultures. 

Below are some excerpts from their shows:

Museum of Photography, The Hague

"Photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 19 years.... Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element."

21_21 DESIGNSIGHT TOKYO

"Photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek classify random people whom they see in cities around the world according to particular characteristics of their appearances and attitudes. They create categories which comprise of people who share the same attributes, and give each catagory unique names. This is the artwork they developed together for more than 15 years. We always belong to some sort of groups. But when we are classified into a certain "tribe' by a third party, ignoring that reality, most of us shall be surprised to find out how different other people see us from the way we see ourselves, thinking "so this is me in other people's eyes". This gives us an opportunity to realize again how we are perceived in other eyes, irrespective of our will or intention, or reality.
What's more interesting is that despite the fact that our real selves are left behind, we find other people very satisfied with their classification, which was based on the appearance and attitude we have not necessarily been aware of before."

However, what I am interested in is how various groups are seen by cultures. Namely what are the characteristics that societies seek in order to distinguish these groups and how they shape group and personal identity. I am interested in the conceptualization of group identities as an objection of conglomerate culture that seems to be central to this project because many subcultures are the foundations of the cultures they oppose.
As seen within the United States, disadvantage cultures are often the fodder for entertainment, clothing, and other cultural aspects. One only needs to step into any clothing store to see the gross cultural appropriation of African, First Nation, and Latino cultures (with the first two being some of the biggest) within the American project. Along side these, though to a lesser problematic degree, is the adoption and appropriation of other subgroup cultures into the American project. Examples such as counter-culture movements like hippies, anarchists, environmentalists, and the Queer community have all become normalized, corporatized and absorbed back into the culture they were ostracized from (voluntarily or not) even as their core values and identities are still considered deviant. This photo collection highlights parts of this process, where group values are separated from their consumable culture, and serves as a good foundation for cultural study. 

Notre Dame's Reaction To The Te'o Hoax Vs. Its Reaction To Sexual Assault Allegations

TW: Discussion of Rape

Notre Dame’s response to Seeberg’s accusation:

• Police waited 13 days to interview the accused perp (that’s three days afterSeeberg died), who was eventually found “not responsible” for misbehavior by a disciplinary board. 
• The university president refused to meet with her parents, claiming it would undermine his impartiality in the event he had to make a decision related to the case.
• Coach Brian Kelly made light ofthe number of Chicago Tribune reporters asking him about the case.
• A university official and a trusteeallegedlyspread rumors that Seeberg was a liar who was in fact sexually aggressive toward the player she accused on the night in question.

Notre Dame’s response to Te’o’s allegation that he’d been falsely led to believe he had a girlfriend on the Internet:

• The athletic department hired private investigators to look into the matter.
• The school held a press conference the night the news broke at which it denied that its player was complicit in the hoax.
• The school held a press conference at which its athletic director called the situation “a really frightening experience” and “an incredible tragedy.”
•  The school held a press conference at which its athletic director called the situation “an incredible tragedy” and began crying.

Read More

Help The Animal Rescue Site

The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily so they can meet their quota of getting FREE FOOD donated every day to abused and neglected animals in their shelters.

It takes less than a minute (only about 15 seconds actually) to go to their site and click on the purple box titled, ‘Click Here to Give - it’s FREE!’. Every click gives about .6 bowls of food to sheltered dogs. You can also click daily!

Keep in mind that this does not cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Go to the website here.