American Reflexxx

[nessaniel]

I'm sure a lot of you have already seen this on tumblr but I just found out about this video today.
It's a performance art piece by Signe Pierce, directed by Alli Coates, where Pierce is walking down a busy street in a city in South Carolina. She is wearing highheels, a mini dress and a reflective mask.

Six minutes in it starts with the mistreatment and while no one is actually hitting her, a girl is pushing her and as you can probably see in the video still, people are pointing at her while she is helplessly lying on the floor after that girl shoved her.

As I was watching the vid I was making up a lot of excuses in my mind about the people reacting to her because let's face it if I had seen a woman with a reflective mask walking up to me I would have probably stared to (I am scared of masks anyway) but there is just no excusing the mob that forms around her or the violence or the crazy long time it takes for someone to actually go and help her.

That feeling of being horribly unsafe is incredibly nauseating. When I finished watching the vid, I let out a sigh and said "Alright, that was horrible, thank God I am not living in one of the 'most radically conservative states in the [USA]', this won't happen to me."

And then I remembered that I was walking down a fucking parking lot with pinku today, we were holding hands and some old fart on his bike drives by and says loudly  and to my face: "Igittigitt." (And I of course flew of the handle and screamed and made a scene. I am so not cool in these situations, sorry for that, pinku <3 She did the right thing by just laughing. One day, I will learn).
So of course nobody will throw water at me or scream at me or gang up on me or push me so I fall to the fucking ground and hurt myself, but the aggression is there and that is frigging terrible.