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I will not deal with “consumers” anymore.

Date: February 20, 2015

I make and sell buttons and zines, and I enjoy how they spread awareness and start conversations. But it has never been a major source of income, and I cannot prioritize filling orders promptly like a business would. So I give this disclaimer on my online store:

Please understand that this is not a real business per se; it’s just one girl manufacturing and distributing her stuff on her spare time. Thus, it may take a while before your order can be shipped. If you are worried that I might have forgotten your order, feel free to check the status of your order by email.

On January 18th, someone from Fargo, North Dakota ordered some buttons through my website. I usually dedicate one or two days per month to filling orders that came during the interval, but I had just made a shipment so I held the order for the next “shipping day.”

Then in about ten days, this individual filed a complaint to Paypal alleging non-receipt of the buttons, triggering Paypal to withhold his payment. I replied citing my shipping policy, and promised to ship the next week. No response. Then on February 2nd, I did ship his order, and sent him a photo of the U.S. Postal Service receipt that shows a shipment to Fargo, ND. Again, no response. I waited for a little while to allow the delivery to take place, and once again I sent him a message asking him if he had received the package, and if so please withdraw the complaint. No response.

Finally, without any response whatsoever from him, and despite the fact I sent them the photo of the Fargo, ND receipt, Paypal ruled in his favor “after careful consideration” and took my money and gave it back to him.

The payment was small, so the financial loss is not that great. But it left me regretting that I did not simply cancel his order when he first filed a complaint with Paypal without any discussion. I sell buttons because I want to connect with other activists, artists, and scholars who share my values, not because I want to run a business. If this guy does not understand that, he is just a consumer rather than a colleague/friend/fellow activists and I have no desire to deal with consumers of my “products.”

So I decided: in the future, it will be my policy that, if someone files a complaint to Paypal without having any conversations with me first and do not respond to me after I explain my shipping practice, I will immediately cancel the order. I am not interested in having a business-to-consumer relationship over my buttons and zines.

I feel silly, but I made a facebook author page for myself

Date: March 6, 2012

Here it is:
http://www.facebook.com/emigrl2

I’ve been getting lots of friend requests from people I don’t know, and most of them come without any message or introduction. I’m not a “purist” who wants to limit facebook connections to people I know elsewhere, but I also don’t want to add any people, so I’ve ignored these requests.

With the author page, anyone who is interested in following my work can do so without the need for me to approve them. This is not to discourage anyone who wants to make a more personal connection with me from sending friend requests, but please tell me who you are a little.

The author page will mostly have posts related to my activism, presentations, and writings. I’ve already started an album containing artifacts I’ve created in connection to my activism in the past, such as the flier I distributed as part of Sluts Against Rape contingency for Take Back the Night march in 2001, ten years prior to SlutWalk. More stuff to be added…

So anyway: if you are interested in my work and use facebook, do subscribe to the page :-)

Anti-trafficking group: let’s exploit women more!

Date: May 9, 2011

University of Oregon’s anti-trafficking student group Slavery Still Exists Oregon is promoting the upcoming talk by journalist Sheryl WuDunn, who co-authored Half the Sky: Turning Oppression in to Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

Unfortunately for the group, the presentation is titled: “The Greatest Unexploited Resource in the World Today Isn’t Oil or Gold or Wind. It’s Women.” So Slavery Still Exists now wants women to be exploited more rather than less? ;-)

Best. Fortune. Cookie. Ever.

Date: March 20, 2010

I’m so relying on this in my criminal trial.

Fortune: For a good cause, wrongdoing may be virtuous.

ALSO: my second-best ever.

Fortune: Now is a great time to broaden your scope of influence.

Speaking of NWSA…

Date: June 30, 2008

It looks like the stock of National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has been going down steadily over the past twelve months. Why am I not surprised?

graph for NWSA stock at NYSE.

Just kidding. NYSE:NWSA is the ticker symbol for the media conglomerate News Corp.