Skip to main content

Burning Man organizers stress the importance of consent



#MeToo #BurningMan #BurningManCulture #Burners

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The Me Too movement is making its way to Burning Man.

Organizers are reminding attendees that just because the counter-culture festival in the Nevada desert is known for occasional nudity and kinky landmarks like the "Orgy Dome," it doesn't mean it's a free-for-all when it comes to touching or nonconsensual sex, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported. This year's event started this weekend.

While the festival doesn't have official guidelines, it does have a set of informal rules.

Tex Allen, a 13-year Burner, doubts many newcomers to the playa are reading those.

The festival's on-site Sexual Assault Services department receives five and 20 reports of alleged sexual assault each year, said Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham.

Many of those reports involve leering or grabbing, which aren't considered sexual assault under Nevada law. A few reports each year require involvement from law enforcement.


Last year, two people were arrested on suspicion of sexual assault without substantial bodily harm.

No arrests related to sexual assault or rape were made the year before.

Despite the low arrests, Donna Rae Watson, director of the Bureau of Erotic Discourse, a large camp at Burning Man that teaches people about sex, still hears stories of harassment at the festival from dozens of people each year.

"Scandalous costumes and nudity might be considered inviting. (Others) automatically think consent is implied, but implied consent doesn't exist," she said.


The organization is doing more to educate participants about consent, what it means and what it applies to.

Watson said her group was founded in 2005 after a woman was sexually assaulted at the festival the previous year.

The camp, which is not a part of the Burning Man organization, tapes posters inside port-a-potties that define consent.

The group also passes out buttons with slogans such as "Consent is sexy" and "However you dress, wherever you go, yes means yes and no means no."


The camp has begun to visit other camps, especially those that host large dance parties and teach them about consent.

This year, ticket holders received an email reminding them that consent is needed not just for sex but for any kind of touching, gifting (including food and drink) and photography.



In recent years, many Burners have adopted consent as the 11th principle along with their other 10 principles that include self-expression and immediacy.

"Our purpose is to bring consent front and center and incorporate it into the ethos of the culture,

where boundaries are respected and our bodies are respected," Watson said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FLIGHT FACILITIES (Hugo) b2b TOUCH SENSITIVE in The Lab

#Deep_house #HouseMusic #HouseGrooves #Melodic #Electronic #djset #FlightFacilities #TouchSensitive An immaculate selection of disco and killer house grooves by Hugo (Flight Facilities) and Touch Sensitive. website: http://www.flightfacilities.com Youtube http://smarturl.it/SubscribeFF Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/flightfacilities Twitter: http://twitter.com/flightfac Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/flightfacilities Instagram: http://instagram.com/flightfac

Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé | Official Trailer | Netflix

#Beyoncé, #Coachella, #Homecoming, #Netflix, This intimate, in-depth look at Beyoncé's celebrated 2018 Coachella performance reveals the emotional road from creative concept to a cultural movement. Premiering April 17. Only on Netflix. Published on Apr 8, 2019

Kate Bush, The Dreaming : A Pitchfork Review

#KateBush # WutheringHeights # Lionheart # NeverforEver #TheDreaming In 1982, Kate Bush’s daring and dense fourth album marked her transformation into a fearless experimental artist who was legible, audibly very queer, and very obviously in love with pop music. In 1978, Kate Bush first hit the UK pop charts with “Wuthering Heights” off her romantic, ambitious progressive pop debut The Kick Inside. That same year, her more confident, somewhat disappointing follow-up Lionheart and 1980’s Never for Ever had a grip of charting singles that further grew her UK success without achieving mega-stardom—she barely cracked into American college rock. What is truly amazing between the first chapter of her career and the new one that began with 1982’s The Dreaming is how consistently Bush avoided the musical world around her, preferring to hone and blend her literary, film, and musical inspirations (Elton John, David Bowie, and Pink Floyd) into the idiosyncratic perfection that was 1985’s Ho