Picture it: Iowa City, March 2014. Laughter fills the women’s bathroom at Brothers, a huge sports bar that squats next to the University of Iowa. As undergrads line the mirror, fiddling with their lipstick and offering each other sloppy affirmations, my friend Annie and I stand in a stall, pulling ski masks over our faces.
I think it’s perfectly fine to spend hours sniffing bath bombs at Lush, and most folks I know could benefit from some solo time with a coloring book. But these calls for self-care are often actually calls for women in particular to buy something. We could all use a little extra self-care right about now, but glossy magazines have essentially medicalized what my mother used to call “retail therapy,” and now treat it as a salve to systemic oppression. Plus, bubble baths and meditation are typically acts of domesticity and solitude, leaving little room to publicly express anger or offer solidarity.
Kelly Gallagher, a filmmaker who was then an Iowa MFA candidate, was on my wavelength and wanted to take a more militant approach to challenging rape culture at the school. Using Facebook as the initial organizing platform, she brought together ROAR: Radical Organizing Against Rape. We had our first in-person meeting a few days later. There I pitched an idea for our first direct action. I wanted to go straight into the belly of the beast: Brothers.
But the spectacle of the event did spark a productive conversation. (It also made the local news.) The bar pledged to conduct new staff trainings regarding sexual assault and bystander intervention, all facilitated by the Iowa City Women’s Resource and Action Center. Other local bars followed suit, implementing similar policies. The moment marked a shift in how Iowa City’s bars understood their role in preventing sexual assault.
