Posts by Guest:
- Every woman has the right to freedom of speech
- Every woman should have the same legal rights as men
- Every woman has the right to an education
- Every woman has the right to own property
- Every woman should be able to find work that pays a living wage so she can provide for herself and her children
- Every woman should receive equal pay for equal work
- Every woman should be able to choose her own spouse, when and if she chooses to marry
- Every woman should be in control of her own family planning, which includes the right to decide whether or not to have children
- Every woman should have access to affordable health insurance
- Every woman should be able to go to a doctor when she is sick and obtain prescription medication when necessary
- No woman should be discriminated on the basis of her gender, age, income level, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability or other life circumstance.
- No woman or girl should ever be raped or sexual abused, period. Rape against women and girls should never be used as a weapon during war.
- No woman or girl should be subjected to genital mutilation.
- No woman or girl should be a victim of human trafficking, sold into sexual slavery or work in a sweatshop.
- No woman or girl should be forced into marriage without her consent.
- No woman should die in childbirth or as a result of pregnancy-related complications
- I call out people when they use “ism”-based language.
- I attempt to be an ethical consumer (and frequently fail, but I’m getting better! And it’s a feature of economic privilege that this form of activism is even possible for me).
- I try to centre marginal people/experiences/voices in any given situation.
- I engage with the world, and learn as much as I can about what I can do to make it better.
- I look into myself and work at unravelling oppressive ideas I have taken on as my own.
- I assist those around me with their activism where I can and should.
Guest Post: Waiting for the Engagement
August 11th, 2010This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
Jillian is a 25 year old graduate student studying Marriage and Family Therapy at Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago with her boyfriend, The Russian, where they enjoy everything from playing World of Warcraft together to planning trips back to their home in California. Jillian’s hobbies include reading, listening to Lady Gaga, being a bridesmaid (10th walk down the aisle coming this fall!), researching Ph.D programs, and blogging at Fulfillment of Fireworks… all while patiently waiting for The Russian to propose.
I’m a very meticulous person, especially when it comes to making decisions about the direction of my life. Sure, I take big risks, and from the outside, they may appear to be spontaneous; more often than not, I’ve been mulling over said decision for months, weeks, or years before putting a plan into action. I’m also an ardent feminist, which informs my decision making across many levels. It’s an enormous part of who I am and perhaps the number one reason why I find it so important to maintain control over decisions made in my life. So it’s been really difficult for me at times to accept that there’s a huge impending moment in my life that I have little control over – and that’s getting engaged.
Now, hear me correctly. The Russian and I have been together for just about two years, and marriage has been on the table pretty much since day one. When we began dating, I had just moved from California to Chicago, and despite the distance, we managed to build a relationship based on love, trust, equity, and friendship. Less than a year into our relationship, the Russian said to me that he believed we really had a shot at a life-long love together, but if that were going to happen, we would need to be in the same place. I agreed. He offered to sell his condo, leave his entire family, transfer his job, and come to Chicago… and he did. We moved in together just over a year ago, and while we struggled a bit initially (not unlike Ashley & Tim), we’ve settled into a lovely routine of cohabitating and caring for one another. Every single day we discuss our future, and marriage is almost always an explicit part of the conversation. In every sense, we’ve made decisions together about the future of our relationship.
Except for when to get engaged.
During the past year, the Russian and I have gone to look at engagement rings multiple times, met with the family jeweler to discuss our options, talked about venues and budgets and pre-marital counseling and honeymoons and registering and all the lovely and stressful aspects that can accompany the unique period of life leading up to marriage. We’ve done all of this together as a team.
Except for deciding when to get engaged.
I’m in the dark! Me, the meticulous planner, who has to know what’s happening and when, is completely in the dark about when we are getting engaged. It’s soon. It could be tomorrow. It could be in December. It could be any day between. And according to the Russian, I won’t know when it is until he’s down on one knee in front of me.
Here’s why: We’ve decided together that this is the next right step that we are privileged in so many ways to be able to take. I have been involved in every aspect of coming to this decision. And yet, it’s important to the Russian that he gets to do this part – the choosing the how and the when. The saving, the planning, the proposing with yes, the diamond ring we picked out together. I tease him daily, and he teases me back, about how difficult it is for me for this decision to be in his court solely. It goes against so many of my sensibilities to let someone else choose for me when we’re officially enfianceed. And yet, this is how we’re doing it.
It’s absolutely antiquated and sexist, something that he and I both acknowledge. Despite this, it’s important for him to show me that he can save and plan for our life together, that he can be financially responsible. The symbolism of saving for the engagement ring, purchasing it on his own, and asking me to share my life with him is important to him – and as his partner, it’s important to me.
We are equal partners in every sense. We are equitable and balanced, and when something is really important to me, he respects it. And when something is really important to him – like proposing – I respect it. Given that we’ve made all the decisions leading up to this together, I will let him enjoy teasing me while he saves and plans and I anticipate. And in the meanwhile, I’ll try to enjoy looking forward to what will be one of many loving and incredible moments in our life together.
Because we both know, after the proposal happens – it’s back to equity and teamwork. And neither he nor I would have it any other way.
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Guest Post: Crisis of Commitment
August 6th, 2010This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
Lacey is a 27-year-old college writing teacher and an editor for Equality 1o1. She also plays saxophone and will hopefully have a piano in her home soon. She believes that marriage isn’t for her, really, but that it works for lots of people. What follows is a post about her experiences with thinking about marriage and determining what works for her; these experiences shouldn’t be taken as commentary on anyone else’s decision to get married or not. She thinks that adults who want to be married should be allowed to marry whom they choose, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.
My boyfriend and I just celebrated three years of dating. Before we started dating, I had determined that I was not interested in getting married to anyone, ever. The way I saw it, the only significance marriage had for me was the potential to lower my taxes somehow. I didn’t, and don’t, understand US tax law well at all (I just hope that TurboTax churns out the numbers correctly), but I knew that was pretty much the only good reason I could see to get married. Otherwise, it would make no real, noticeable difference in my life and my relationships.
I saw plenty of good reasons not to get married, too, like, what if I get too comfortable and I forget how to support myself? What if we get divorced anyway and then we have to go through the state to break up? What if our families see our marriage as a reason to start hassling us about having kids (which we don’t want)? What if I – or, worse, my boyfriend – begin to see my title of “wife” as good reason for me to begin behaving like the stereotypical “wife”?
That last one probably scared me off marriage the most. For the most part, our cultural beliefs and stereotypes about marriage are thoroughly ingrained in us all, including me. I wasn’t sure if I could maintain my self as I wanted under the heavy mantle of marriage as we seem to understand it culturally. I wasn’t sure I could be an individual who happened to be married to another individual. The idea of marriage seemed to carry with it all these expectations that would necessarily change our relationship with each other and my relationship with myself – and not for the better. For whatever reason, the girlfriend-boyfriend situation seems less heavy, less laden with expectations about behavior and housework.
My boyfriend has been on the same page since the first day. His reasoning has been more about the inequity and unfairness of the institution of marriage in this country: why is it that he can get married just because he likes women, but his friends and co-workers who happen to be homosexual can’t marry the people they love? He also hasn’t found a really good reason to get married beyond the tax benefits. So, we’re a good match. We have a solid relationship and neither of us really sees a need to do more to prove or validate our relationship.
However, lately, I’ve been thinking about marriage. Not weddings or receptions, though those make cameos occasionally, but the idea of being married. This is odd for me. I haven’t been the type to daydream about weddings, engagement rings (I don’t like rings, period), or bridal gowns, and I haven’t given serious thought to actually getting married in probably three or four years. On top of that, this thinking is totally unprompted by my boyfriend – as far as I can tell, things are the same with us, and he feels as he always has about marriage. So, once I realized that I was thinking and talking about getting married more often than usual, and that these thoughts were accompanied by anxiety instead of desire or strength, I set about figuring out what had changed in my life, in myself, that was making me feel a heretofore non-existent need for marriage.
I’m no psychologist, but I think I’ve been feeling kind of insecure, both in my relationship and in my life situation. Three years is the longest relationship I’ve ever had, and the same goes for my boyfriend. We bought a house together last year. I’m no longer in school, and I work what should be my dream job, but isn’t in a lot of ways. I don’t make as much as I would like. I don’t have a lot of job security. I’m considering a career change. My boyfriend works a lot. I might need to buy a car soon. My sister’s engaged. I have what amounts to a mother-in-law, which I’ve never had, and I’m not very good at developing that relationship in a positive way.
Basically, I’m navigating a boatload of uncharted – and stressful – territory right now. And that scares the bejeezers out of me.
So, what am I doing? I’m looking for signposts, landmarks, places to tether, things to hold onto. The closest thing that I have tangible power to control is my relationship with my boyfriend. In my stress-addled brain, it seems that the logical thing to do is to get married to him. Because marriage is forever, right? It’s permanent. There’s a piece of paper that says you’re married. You can hold that out to people and say, “I’m married.” There’s evidence and paper-trails and causal links between you and the commitment that, before, had felt ethereal and vulnerable. Marriage is like a shield against all things unknown and unknowable.
But, you know, it’s not. It’s just a more formal version of what I already have, and it can end just as easily and quickly.
Yes, my life is changing, and my relationship with my boyfriend is changing as well. We’re growing up, both together and separately. I’ve realized that the way to navigate these changes is not to hold on tighter, not to grit my teeth and close my eyes and hope the changes go away and leave me unmarked. The way to navigate them is to believe in myself, to be confident in myself, and to know that whatever happens – if we break up, if we get married, if we simply cohabitate for the next 80 years – I will come out changed, yes, but still myself, still whole.
Guest Post: The 5 Year Itch
August 5th, 2010This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
Laura Smith is a student of BA Media, Culture and Society at the University of Hull in the UK. Laura writes for several publications and is the online editor of Hullfire.com. After university Laura plans to move into a writing career in New York, where she spent last summer travelling. Outside of university Laura is a social media enthusiast and organises local events for Twitter users in the Hull area. She is also due to begin a teaching a Twitter workshop this October and also enjoys updating her blog, www.notebookandpen.webs.com to exercise her writing skills.
The term ‘the seven year itch’ is usually used to describe a married couple stuck in a rut. They’ve trapped themselves in a boring routine and day to day life is becoming a chore. But there are some halves of couples that would love to have an itch to scratch in the first place. What I’m describing here is what I’ve discovered to be ‘the five year itch’, something else entirely. While the seven year couples have been there, tied the knot and got the monotonous routine to show for it, some of us would just appreciate having a knot to tie.
Cohabiting couples are a thing of the now, they’re as good as married, apparently. But what if some of us still want the shiny, diamond ring and want to spend as much time considering place settings, invitation designs and which family members you like best as we do wallpaper or Laura Ashley bed sheets? Many couples, myself included, set out in their relationship happy and sure they’d found the one. And their ‘ones’ had found their ‘ones’ too, cosy as can be. Until half of them decide they’re so cosy sitting on their joint-purchase furniture that they don’t see a reason to move from it, not even to go further forwards.
Marriage is a big step, there’s no denying it. But it’s more than just showing off you’re relationship to your friends and family too, it’s a bit like asking someone out again in a really official way. You go from ‘shall we try this out?’ to ‘shall we make this permanent?’, which is what marriage partly is. It’s a permanent view of your relationship, until then you’re two people who don’t have many ties to each other and as far as paperwork go, are pretty much unofficial (unless Facebook relationship statuses count for way more than that initial declaration). You’re in a relationship, yet you are constantly being told you’re not. Applying for financial products, completing surveys and various other depressing forms, we’re forced into ticking the box marked single, despite the fact we’ve been committed for half a decade. Recognition please?
Some say marriage can spoil a relationship, the pressure and worry can become too much, and plenty of women just don’t feel the need for it at all, playing the casual equal to their male counterparts, which is fine, but the point to note there is ‘equal’. Married or not, thinking on the same level as your partner is the vital bit, and while many of us are on the same horizons, half of the couple are slightly closer to the sunset. So what to do? It’s pretty simple: you should do whatever you feel comfortable doing in your relationship, and in your life, because ultimately, this is about you and your partner.
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Guest Post: The Dating Adventures of a Unapologetic Feminist
August 3rd, 2010This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
Not Guilty writes at her blog, Finding My Feminism. She is 25 years old, on the cusp of finishing her law degree, and has been a feminist her entire life, but just recently became active through blogging and organizing/attending rallies. You can follow her on Twitter @atheistincanada.
I responded to a post at Small Strokes, who was calling for guest posts on feminism and relationships. I have reached a point where I am ready to actively date and figured this would present the perfect opportunity to maybe run a little non-scientific experiment on the dating adventures of an unapologetic feminist. I am going to write a few posts on how things go. This first one is a bit of background on me and the plan and goal of this “experiment.” I hope to be funny and maybe a little bit informative. I am really looking forward to doing this and I hope you enjoy reading about it!
About Me
I am a 25 year-old straight, white female living outside Toronto, Ontario. I started law school in September 2007 and will complete my degree in December 2010. I go to school out of Province, but will be back in Ontario permanently in January. I have a job lined up, which I am very excited to start. I am a very focused person and I have always given 100% of my energy to my main goal. For the past 8 years, that has been my education. I am a long-term planner, so I’ve not really been interested in dating because I never knew where I would end up. Now that I have my articling job, I know where I am going to be so I am ready to give dating a real go.
Towards the end of 2009 I began identifying as a feminist and as the past 10 months have progressed, I have become more and more active. I am passionate about women’s issues in general, and I wear the feminist label proudly. Considering there are many stereotypes surrounding feminism, I figure using the word in a dating profile is going to elicit some interesting responses. I am not just a feminist. I have a few other traits that significantly narrow the field. I am what Dawkins calls a “militant atheist,” and I am a big and small ‘l’ liberal. I also have no interest in being a mother. So with each of these traits, I know I am starting with a very narrow dating pool. Upon actually using the word feminist in my dating profile, I am sure that will cut the pool back even further.
I have a small bias against online dating; I guess I really don’t like being judged by my pictures and a few paragraphs, perhaps because I am terribly un-photogenic. I am (as is everybody) a very complex person. Yes I am a feminist, but I buck every stereotype in the book. I have never been afraid to share my opinion, often loudly; I love hockey, the outdoors, dogs and techy stuff. I own all the Star Wars DVDs and watch everything from Lost to Grey’s Anatomy to Big Bang Theory. I have a wicked sense of humour and I talk. A lot. A few things have lined up in the last 6 months such that I have tonnes of self-confidence.
The Plan
I am going to sign up at the free dating website Ok Cupid, mostly because I know a few people who are using it and they like it. For now I’ll stick with the one. I am going to create a profile, put up some recent pictures and in the description section I am going to use the word feminist. Then, for now, I am going to sit back and wait and see what happens. I am going to cast a fairly wide net and I will talk to anybody who messages me. If I determine that they are not a creep, I will go out on a date with them.
I want to be clear: this is not “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” I have been considering online dating for a while, this was just the push I needed to do it. If we get past a 2nd date, I might mention this “experiment.”
Guest Post: Why I Don’t Hold Hands In Public
August 2nd, 2010This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
Ms. Wizzle founded her blog, feminsthemes.com just over a year ago as her feminist conscience outgrew her self-consciousness. After spending a few years in the west following a midwestern upraising, she realized how easy it is to take your beliefs for granted and began more closely examining her own understanding of what it means to be a young woman in America today. She is currently completing a masters program in psychology, and is constantly striving to integrate her investment in matters relating to women, gender and sexuality into her work.
Last week my partner and I went out to dinner to celebrate the six-year anniversary of our first date. I wore grey jeans and a black, short-sleeved blouse with my short dark hair up in a pompadour. He wore khaki shorts and a long sleeved pale-blue dress shirt. And after we finished eating, our waiter asked us if we wanted two checks or one. And I loved it.
Seated at the next table was a proudly married couple. She was dressed in platform wedge sandals, a pastel skirt past the knee, and a pale pink shirt. He was dressed in frat-boy plaid shorts and a navy blue polo. They held hands over the table, shiny wedding rings sparkling, and asked for an alcohol-free wine list. Ahh… I thought to myself, we are so different here.
You see, we are both midwestern transplants out here in Utah, and we don’t really blend in with the majority culture out here. I mention this because I think it’s relevant to the way that I am comfortable “displaying” my relationship in public. Which is to say, I’m not.
Along with “feminist,” one of the most important pieces of my identity is “ally.” And this means that I try to examine my apparent heterosexual privilege as much as possible. It wasn’t easy moving across the country with my partner and trying to find a place to live as an unmarried couple here, but it was a lot easier than it would have been if we weren’t One Man and One Woman. I am privileged by the fact that the person that I fell in love with portrays the opposite gender to the word, and so we look like people expect us to look. We could hold hands in public, we could snuggle at the movies, we could kiss outside the restaurant and most people wouldn’t comment. But I spend a lot of time wondering how different that would be if I happened to be partnered with a woman. I don’t think that it’s okay that I would suddenly have to consider my own safety and the safety of my partner just to express affection outside our home (which here, I would). So I don’t engage with that privilege in public. Maybe if I lived someplace where that didn’t feel like an in-your-face flaunt of hetero privilege things would be different. Maybe not.
Add to those two pieces of my identity “independent.” I am one person. I am one whole person. My partner loves that whole person that I am. He’s his own person, too. We’re committed to each other (three years long distance followed by three years living together and we’re still doing fine, thank you), but we’re not married. We don’t need to be in order for our relationship to be meaningful, in order for our promises of fidelity to be taken seriously, in order for our friends and family to recognize our commitment. I don’t wear a wedding ring, engagement ring, or promise ring and neither does he. For me, this is about the fact that my relationship status isn’t the business of, well, anybody. It’s not something I need or want people to know just by looking at me.
So when the waiter asked if we wanted separate checks, I felt a little proud in addition to greatly amused. We gave the impression of two independent people out to dinner to enjoy one another’s company and some good food. We weren’t one couple, we were two people.
Oh, and if you’re curious, my partner paid for dinner since I bought the tickets to the play we went to later.
This article is cross-posted today at feministhemes.com.
Guest Post: I advocate feminism; I will also take my future husband’s last name. So?
July 30th, 2010This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
Emily Heroy lives in Chicago, her home town. A city girl at heart, she moved to New York City in 2003 to attend college. In 2007, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Gender and Sexuality studies from New York University. While living in New York, she worked and volunteered with Women and Youth Supporting Each Other, Girls for Gender Equity, and NARAL Pro-Choice New York. Outside of the U.S., Emily has also worked at a home for people and children with HIV/AIDS in Salvador, Brazil (CAASAH); the Anganwadi School in Dharamsala, India; the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women in Bangkok, Thailand; and the Peace Corps in Morocco. Emily is the Executive Editor of Gender Across Borders, a global feminist blog that was founded by herself and other feminist bloggers in 2009. Currently she works in Evanston, IL for a HIV/AIDS research program and is studying for a master of science in secondary education. She is also a contributing writer for Equality 101. You can contact her at emilyheroy(at)gmail(d0t)com.
I have issues with feminism. Wait, let me re-phrase that: I have issues with feminists telling me what feminism is or isn’t. What feminism should or shouldn’t be. Telling me that I’m not a feminist or I am in fact a feminist because of certain actions and life choices that I make. Thankfully it was bell hooks who proclaimed “I advocate feminism” so that I don’t need to prescribe to feminist rules.
Sometimes my personal life does not run parallel to feminism. Not against it; it’s just a different entity. The relationship with my significant other is one of them, for many reasons.
First off: we have a very equal relationship which would be so-called “feminist.” In the past, I have been in relationships where one person is needier than the other (by means of more attention). I have been in relationships where I have been put on the pedestal and almost fawned over. But no, my significant other and I are different. We both respect each other deeply. We are considerate of each others’ feelings. We adore each other equally. We listen and communicate well.
On the flip side, though, our relationship is very traditional. He will be a medical doctor and I’ll be a teacher after we both finish school. That means he’s going to make more money, while also working long hours, and I’ll have a somewhat regular 9am-5pm job, not contributing as much to the family income, and taking care of the kids. This is a nuclear family-esque set-up, but that’s how we want it. We will do everything we can for each other to pursue our own individual careers while also having a family. If it’s traditional, then so be it.
This has actually somewhat played out in our current situation (no, I do not have children) because he has started his third year in medical school on a surgery rotation. That means he gets up at 4am to go to the hospital and comes back home anytime between 7pm-8pm. Not counting every fourth night where he is on call at the hospital all night. He also has to study in the very little free time he has. Compared to my own schedule, I work Monday-Friday 9am to 5pm.
Therefore, I’m the one doing the household duties around the house–cleaning, cooking, and doing laundry. Don’t get me wrong–my significant other is probably a better cook than I am (though I’m the better baker), and in [most situations] is cleaner than I am. But he just doesn’t have time for those household chores. So I don’t do those chores for him; I do it for us.
Another thing: we recently got engaged. He gave me a gorgeous ring which I love. Yes I know what the feminist implications of wearing an engagement ring. For me, though, I am reminded of our love and relationship every time I look at the ring.
We will also get married and probably have a big wedding.
“Oh no!” some of you feminists might be thinking, “She’s a feminist and going to get married?!?!”
I’m still not sure about the white dress (because after all, my skin is beyond pale and white just doesn’t suit me), but hey, Feministing founder, Jessica Valenti, wore a “gray” dress (come on, that dress looks white, it might as well be white!). I will probably take his last name so that our family will all have the same last name. Hyphenation is out of the question; I don’t think there would be space on my tax form for the last name “Heroy-Fillingham.” My last name is my father’s, so what difference will it make if I take my husband’s or my father’s? Either way, if you’re a woman and facing this name-change decision, you’re screwed. I haven’t really thought about anything else in regards to the wedding ceremony, but it shouldn’t matter to you.
But I’m writing this out there for those women who advocate feminism but have fought for a long time how to balance personal life with political life. You can be a feminist and be in a relationship, as I’ve shown by example above. I know that the “personal is political” but those choices that I’ve made in my relationship are my own. Because what I choose to do doesn’t make me a feminist or not; my choices are my choices and only I can be the judge of them.
This article is cross-posted today at Gender Across Borders.
Racism, Sexism, & Classism in Standardized Testing
January 15th, 2010Today’s guest post on teaching feminism comes from Emily Heroy. You can catch her on the Gender Across Borders Blog, or on twitter.
I took the GRE back in November after two months of studying. It was a gruesome two months of hard work, but it had to be done in order for me to apply for graduate school. I actually didn’t do so bad on the GRE—in fact, I’m going to take the GRE again in a week, for personal and professional reasons. Unfortunately that won’t be the end of standardized testing for me, given that I’ve chosen to get a master of education where testing will be key in order to be certified as a teacher.
Now that I’m in school, I have some more thoughts about the politics behind standardized testing. I first wrote about standardized testing about two months back on my blog here and also posted the same post on Feministing’s Community blog which received a ton of comments. I addressed blatant racism and sexism on the GRE and in test preparation material I used to study with. But I forgot to address something very important.
The last paragraph of my first post stated that “test prep courses cost a ton of money.” I did not delve into the class issue of standardized testing. The title of my first post was “Racism and Sexism in Standardized Testing,” but in reading the comments from the post, I realized that I completely overlooked class as an issue in standardized testing (a faux-pas in Intersectionality 101). One commenter pmsrhino stated that:
…because prep classes (and prep books which are often more expensive than the classes themselves) are so vital to achieving a high score on those tests (as you mentioned yourself, though sometimes it is less learning the material and more learning test taking strategies it still requires being taught to you somehow) it is an EXTREME disadvantage to anyone who is unable to do any preparation. So I think standardized tests are geared much more towards the upper class, with emphasis on opera music and sailing and other such upper class activities and a bigger advantage going to those people who have the resources to put into preparation for those tests. So it’s a nice triple whammy there, sexism, racism, AND classism. Woot.
Therefore, students have a better chance of receiving a higher score on any standardized test if they have the resources to pay for test prep books and take those expensive test prep classes, then someone who cannot afford those valuable resources.
I’m not going to get into whether or not there should be standardized testing, or more specifically, graduate school standardized testing (which was brought up in the comments of the Feministing Community post). However, it’s important to point out that especially young adults, who are preparing to take the SAT and ACT to go to college, are especially disadvantaged in taking these tests. Even more so, those students seeking the first college degree in her/his family must jump over many hurdles to get to the point where they can apply for college. Taking the SAT and/or ACT is another hurdle (which is an application requirement for many colleges) and if their family cannot pay for test prep material and/or a test prep course, their upper class counterpart (who has the same grades and teacher recommendations but a higher SAT/ACT score because they were able to afford test prep material) will have a higher chance of getting into a better college.
Humph, that’s frustrating. Some people want to see the SAT/ACT requirement dropped altogether from college admissions. Not surprisingly, if this requirement was dropped, the number of minority college admits and the number of admits from lower to middle classes would rise (see this interesting article about dropping the SAT).
Unfortunately, I do not think that would happen in the next ten years at least. I suggest that, if the SAT and/or ACT cannot be completely demolished, or revised to best suit all races, classes, and sexes; high schools should not only provide support for students seeking to take these standardized tests for admittance to college, but also provide test preparation material as well as free test prep courses for all students.
Another thing: I wonder about those high school students who have good grades and great teacher recommendations but do poorly on standardized tests—especially those who cannot afford to do better on those tests. In those many cases, I’d hope that their discouragement from the SAT/ACT does not deter them from applying to and attending college. After all, a test is just a test, but a college degree is forever.
The Undomestic Goddess on New Year Resolutions
January 8th, 2010Today’s guest post on body image comes from Amanda ReCupido. You can read more on her blog, The Undomestic Goddess, and you can follow her on twitter. This post is a cross post from her blog.
As mentioned, I’m doing some self-reflection this year thanks to the recovery of my childhood diaries. I came across this entry about making resolutions:
Dec. 30th 1995
It’s almost the turn of the year. Here are my resolutions:
1. Think before I say things and act.
2. Follow my diet. Hardly any sweets. Half my lunch. Run for at least 15 min. per day.
3. Listen at all times during school and do homework first thing when I get home from school.
*The bold is mine.
At the time of this writing I was 9 years old. For pages and pages before this I wrote about what and how much I ate at dinner and with friends like it was proof that I was happy. And I was always eating cake, be it birthday cake, Communion cake, Friday cake – you name it, I was eating it, and writing about it, joyously. I would list “I didn’t get dessert in my lunch” under “Bad Things That Happened Today.” Just a year before at my dance recital I had written self-affirming sentences like “I have a great smile” and “I look so pretty in my costume.” Why, at 9 years old, was I so obsessed with my weight?
An even better question, why, exactly 14 years later (at the time of this writing it’s December 30, 2009 – yay for auto-post!) do I still create the same mental lists? “Only one sweet per day. At least one workout per day. Walking 20 blocks can count as a workout. Not eating chocolate for a day can count as a workout. Skipping a meal can count as a workout.” I’m still bargaining, I’m still running that dangerous inner monologue that got me where I was in high school and college. As a friend once pointed out, those who dabbled in eating disorders are just like any other type of addict – the disease, the obsession never fully goes away. Sure, I’m not as self-destructive as I used to be, but for all the feeling happy with myself and talk about wanting to work out for my health (which is true!), I still want to get back the dancer body I had when I was exercising a minimum of 3 times a day, which is neither realistic nor healthy.
So how can we resolve to change? How do we hug our 9 year old selves, and our current selves, and tell both that they’re beautiful and that everything’s going to be okay?
I guess like any addiction, the journey away from self-hate and towards self-actualization starts with one small step. Here we go.
See all entries from The Journal Project here.
On Body Image: More of Me to Be Friends With
January 6th, 2010Today’s post is a guest post from Trelk. You can find his blog here and follow him on Twitter here.
Today I have decided to voice a problem I’ve had for some time. Body image. We all struggle with it. Not just overweight women, not just women. Everyone. Sure there are those who really are extremely happy in their own skin but honestly I think you’d have a very difficult job finding one of those people. I’m tired of hearing that guys don’t have to deal with the same weight and body image issues as women. We may not be as open and vocal about it but it’s there.
Typically guys don’t talk about such things openly. It usually amounts to biting comments about one another when we do. But honestly? I can’t rock the wife beater or bare chested look unless it’s meant for laughs.
I’ve spent most of my life as the friend. I’m not kidding. My life is a romantic comedy and I’m not even a main character. I’m not just talking about not getting up the nerve to ask a girl out and eventually becoming friends. I’m talking about expressly asking them on a date and they’re flattered that I think of them like that and then tell me we’re better as friends and tell me all about the football player they’re hoping will ask them to the dance I just asked them to. (I’m not kidding. I swear that has to be the plot of a billion teen movies.)
My point in telling you this is not to go into a sob story (I’ve done that often enough already), but rather to illustrate how I was quickly able to draw the conclusion that six pack abs was the ticket to a girl’s heart rather than my twelve pack of jelly rolls. Now it’s been brought to my attention through a number of conversations that there’s more media pressuring girls into getting thinner rather than boys. This is quite simply not true. Every time you see a conventionally attractive girl there’s a guy with washboard abs and hair that is just the right amount of messy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people crooning over Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and any number of other guys with similar physiques.
Some of you might say “There are plenty of overweight guys on the screen.” And which roles are those exactly? We’re the friends, the funny guys, the nice guys who don’t get the girl unless of course it’s a movie about a nice funny guy who does get the girl in which case we might get the role of the boss who’s let himself go and takes it out on the main character by demeaning him. That’s right. The moment the girl is allowed to fall for the nice guy they recast him to make sure he doesn’t cast a shadow. The only time the fat guys can get a kiss is when it’s funny.
There’s a problem with the way movies are cast today. Hollywood is convinced that washboard abs along with as much skin as the ratings will allow is what will sell movies. Apparently that’s the only way to decide what is and is not attractive. Forget all the people who show you otherwise like Queen Latifah or Kathy Bates, John Goodman, Nathan Lane. They’re just trying to get you to pay more money by telling you they can be attractive using a craft that’s useless today. No the attractiveness is all about the physically fit and muscles.
Well that’s my two cents. I’ve done my best not to ramble. I realize that there’s nothing too terribly cohesive here but I’ve realized that I have a lot more to say about this than I can put in a single blog. In the end there’s only one thing you need to remember is that you are beautiful. I don’t care who you are or what you look like there is always something beautiful about you.
Later days,
Trelk
On Body Image: Sara Jacobsen
December 11th, 2009This post comes from one of my former students, Sara Jacobsen, and I could not be more proud of her!
By no means would I consider myself a vain or pretentious person. I am, however, well aware that when based strictly on appearance, I am more fortunate than some.
Not-so fondly do I remember my entire grade school career. Usually, when people speak of their “awkward stage”, they speak of only a brief time when they were young. My “awkward stage”, on the other hand, lasted for most, if not all, of my grade school years. During adolescence, I was large for my age. I was abnormally tall, somewhere around a size 14 and wore glasses until about the eighth grade. My hair went from a short almost bob-like style to a horrendous curly mess and then on to long, straight, and shapeless. Although I cannot recall ever being ridiculed directly to my face, I know better than to believe that it did not happen. I did everything I possibly could in attempt to fit in with my classmates. I never felt like I was able to be myself because in my opinion, myself was not acceptable. I would see the “pretty” girls in class and wonder to myself why I was not one of them. It seemed that no matter what I did, I would never be what everyone seemed to consider “beautiful”.
It was not until I reached my freshman year of high school that some of those feelings started to subside. Around this time, I began to wear makeup and nicer clothing. Although I soon began to feel better about my personal image, I was still unhappy with the way I looked. I would feel intimidated when I would spend time with friends who I felt were “prettier” than I, thinking that if I looked the way they did, I would be happy. Eventually, I decided I would take matters into my own hands and work on portraying the image that I thought would be socially acceptable.
I am still unsure how, but I somehow managed to lose almost ten pants sizes. Although I am very proud of this fact, I still struggle daily with issues regarding body image. I still have thoughts of “I could be thinner.” I still have a hard time believing the words “you’re beautiful,” because it’s still not something that I am able to see in myself and I still feel that if I were to “fix” myself, I could be happy. Every day I look in the mirror and cannot help but pick out every last imperfection that I see.
The truth is that I know that losing weight or getting a new hairstyle will not make me happy. The concept of beauty is one that has been blown way out of perspective by the media and society. Who is to say that just because a person may be a bit heavier than another, that they too are not just as beautiful? The point that I am trying to make is not the cliché that “pretty” or “skinny” girls have issues with their appearance too, it is that everyone, no matter what their body type or physical appearance, has something about themselves that they would like to change. It’s similar to someone claiming that they “don’t care” how others perceive them. The fact is, everyone cares, and everyone has insecurities.
On Body Image: Danine Spencer
December 8th, 2009
Danine Spencer
This post on body image comes from the wonderful, talented, and beautiful Danine Spencer. You can find her blog at http://danine.net/ and follow her on Twitter at @DanineSpencer.
There are lots of reasons to hate my body.
I’m overweight.
I’ve had acne since I was seven years old.
I am prematurely graying.
I need a haircut and color, badly.
I’m short.
I could write an entire post about how any one of these things have decimated my self-concept. Any such post would have to be written in past tense, though. Whenever I look in the mirror lately and I feel bad because my skin isn’t clear or my roots are showing, I am reminded that I am standing up, looking in the mirror, without assistance from anyone or anything.
The simple act of stand in front of a mirror is a miracle.
I am amazed at what my body can do.
I am amazed that my legs can support my trunk (core) muscles, that my trunk can support my neck and shoulders, that my neck can support my head. I am amazed that I can hold my head up. I am amazed that when my brain tells my left foot to move, it moves, and when it tells my right foot to move, lo and behold, it moves, too. I am amazed I can walk.
Four and a half years ago, I couldn’t do any of these things. As a result of either a brain stem stroke or a spinal cord infarct (they’re not sure exactly what happened), I was paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors expected me to be a quadriplegic for the rest of my life, if I even lived. With a few miracles, some amazing therapists and a lot of hard work, I have regained most of my mobility.
I try really hard not to take that for granted. My self-concept changed with my illness. My relationship with my body changed, too. I am so incredibly grateful for what my body can do. My hands can type. My eyes can read. My legs can walk.
My advice to anyone with a body issues is think about what your body can do. What does your body allow you to do that you love? Are you a runner who uses her legs, feet, arms, lungs and heart? A painter who needs her eyes, hands, arms (and other extremities in some cases)? An avid reader who likes to turn the pages with her hands and read the words with her eyes? A musician who depends on her ears to stay on-key?
Love your body for what it can do because it does beautiful things. At the moment, I am thrilled to be typing this sentence because there was a time when I couldn’t have done so.
I’m not saying I don’t have my moments of body-hate. I do. I regularly wish I could get a new body. I hate the pain and fatigue I experience on a daily basis. I wish I had Nicole Kidman’s skin and a perfect size-2 physique.
I have to settle for what I have, though, and I am constantly reminded that I have is pretty amazing.
What Feminism Means To Me: Amanda ReCupido
October 22nd, 2009
Amanda ReCupido
Today’s post comes from Amanda ReCupido, and is part of a Salon of blog posts asking feminists to define what feminism means to them. You can follow Amanda on Twitter, read her blog, and check out her answers to the Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community interview.
It Takes a Village…To Raise a Feminist
or, What Feminism Means to Me
It’s that loaded question, “What does feminism mean to you?” that sparks thousands of thoughts, every which one of them equally important. I certainly have had no problem asking it, but the best way I can make sense of my own feminism is to revisit the experiences that have shaped it. There wasn’t one moment I remember where the feminist light bulb went off in my head – somehow I just always knew. But that doesn’t mean I was any less changed by the people who contributed to my feminist journey – for better or for worse. Here’s a look at the people who have made up my “feminist village” so far…
My parents, who told me I could be anything, who simultaneously signed me up for karate lessons and ballet, who suggested I work at Hooters and write an expose ala Gloria Steinem (spoiler alert: I didn’t), and who, in their own humanness, weren’t always perfect.
My Girl Scout leader, who handed me a journal and encouraged my story, who let me be a little rambunctious, who later would tell me, after her own divorce, to not live life dependent on a man.
My (female) elementary school teachers, who gave me a foundation of confidence, and my (male) high school teachers, who continued to push me to excellence.
The girls in high school who took one look at the first lunch I bought in the cafeteria with a sneer – it was the first time I questioned how much I ate.
My first boyfriend, who told me, after I had starved myself for over 36 hours, how skinny and great I looked.
My studio dance classes, which, for better or worse, forced me to accept the image staring back at me in the mirror and figure out how to move it in step. Contrasted with…
My high school dance group, who yearned for the whistles from boys in the audience.
My guy friend in high school, who called me a prude to my face and a slut in my yearbook.
The boys who, thankfully, took no for an answer.
The boy who finally deserved a “yes.”
The professor in college who handed me Carol Gilligan and Mary Pipher, and the other professors who didn’t mind that I analyzed nearly all assigned literature in terms of feminism.
My first experience seeing The Vagina Monolgues on V-Day my sophomore year of college. Meeting Eve Ensler at the Feminist Press Anniversary Gala a mere two years later.
The guy in college who told me I was “too independent and too much of a feminist to have a relationship with.”
The fact that the magazine I worked at right out of college had a woman publisher.
The cat-calls that I get on the street nearly every day.
The roommates who ate up every reality show stereotype Bravo was willing to throw at them.
The several, potentially dangerous nights that I came home safe.
The walk that I just participated in against human trafficking.
The smart, progressive (and feminist!) women and men who don’t see themselves as such and think feminism is “over.”
The wildly talented and driven feminist bloggers and activists who inspire me every day.
These are the reasons why I’m a feminist. In spite of, and because of it all. Why are you?
To read all of the What Feminism Means To Me Salon posts, click here.
What Feminism Means To Me: Danine Spencer
October 20th, 2009
Danine Spencer
Today’s post comes from Danine Spencer, and is part of a Salon of blog posts asking feminists to define what feminism means to them. You can follow Danine on Twitter, read her blog, and check out her answers to the Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community interview.
Feminism is the belief that women’s rights are human rights. No matter where they live, women and girls should have the same social, political, legal and economic rights as their male counterparts. Because women and girls have historically been marginalized by patriarchal societies worldwide, feminists have had to fight for every right men take for granted: the right to vote, work, go to school and oh yeah, make her own decisions.
I believe women’s rights are human rights because:
I also believe:
Feminism has been quite successful, particularly in the Western world. Many women today take it for granted that we can vote, go to college and work, all of which were unheard of one hundred years ago. We still have much to do. Pay equity, violence against women and health care are just a few issues of many we have to work on the United States. Still, we are incredibly fortunate to live in relative wealth in the U.S. “To those whom much is given, much is expected” applies here. We have to use our leadership to address issues like human trafficking, rape as a weapon of war, international family planning and women’s economic security.
I am proud to be a feminist. I think every woman and man should be. Feminism is making sure that every single woman and girl, half the world’s population, has the tools and resources to be the person she can be.
To read all of the What Feminism Means To Me Salon posts, click here.
Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community: Danine Spencer
October 1st, 2009
Danine Spencer
Bio:
Danine Spencer is a writer currently based in Rhinelander, WI. Born and raised in Eau Claire, WI, she graduated from Minnesota State University, Mankato, in 2002 with a B.S. in Computer Information Science. Her work has appeared in Bitch magazine (“Consumed” issue, Fall 2009) and she is a frequent contributor to the Women’s Rights blog at Change.org. She also blogs at http://www.danine.net and you can follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daninespencer.
1. Define the online feminist blogging community.
Feminists, particularly younger feminists, have exploited social media really well. We use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to network and exchange information with each other. Blogging allows feminists to network with each other like Facebook and Twitter but it’s more than that. Blogging allows us to contribute to the feminist (and sometimes national) dialogue as soon as we hit “publish.” By examining the world around us through a feminist lens and writing about it, we are participating in online and real-life activism.
I participate in the online feminist community through Twitter and blogging. Twitter has been really beneficial for me, helping me network with other feminists and writers. Twitter has helped me learn about new feminist blogs that I wasn’t aware of (including Small Strokes), find out what the important feminist issues and must-read blog posts are that day and promote my blog. I think it works similarly for other feminists.
2. Tell me about how you came to be a blogger.
I started blogging during the 2008 presidential election. I was so outraged by the insanity the Republicans were spewing that I felt it needed to be talked about. I wrote (sometimes snarky) news and commentary about the election, economy, bailouts, George Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, race relations, etc. Interestingly enough, my most popular post was called, “Top 10 Political Turkeys of 2008”. It was a Thanksgiving post and featured the likes of Norm Coleman, John Edwards, Ted Stevens and of course, John McCain, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. I discontinued that blog around New Year’s 2009.
3. Tell me about your blogging experience now.
My blog is really brand new and it hasn’t fully evolved yet. Ultimately, I’d like it to be about empowering women, particularly women with disabilities. by telling their stories stories (yes, possible interview series to come!) and advocating for those who cannot do it themselves.
I am also using this blog to advocate for myself: why I need health care reform and what it’s like to live with a disability and a chronic illness. Also, I fully believe “personal is political” so when the headlines hit home I try to write about that.
I am also a frequent contributor to the Women’s Rights blog at Change.org and have guest-posted for several other blogs. I hope to continue this.
4. Tell me about a time you were misread or misunderstood on your blog.
I recently wrote a review of the documentary Lioness for Change.org. The film follows five of the first women to see ground combat in Iraq and in U.S. history. I tried to convey that these women did an amazing job despite the fact that they had not been trained for combat. They were warriors. They also suffered the consequences of war and most exhibited signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I only had two comments on that blog, one of which likened the female soldiers’ service and resulting PTSD to what women and children go through with human trafficking. It was so inappropriate I decided not to respond. Still, I wondered if I had portrayed the women as victims. Where did she get that?
5. Describe your process of writing online.
For my personal blog, I decide on the topic, decide on a general thesis and make a few notes. Then I usually start writing and write until I think it has reached its logical ending. I edit, proof and publish.
For some reason, I put a lot more work into my contributor/guest posts. I think it’s because those posts feel more “published” and I know more people will read them. I find a topic, decide on a thesis and make a slew of notes. I write a rough draft from my notes and then edit, edit, edit. When I think it’s good enough, I proof and send it off.
Also, I always carry either my iPod Touch or Samsung BlackJack II with Windows Mobile (or both) with me wherever I go so I can jot down notes whenever the muse hits. If there are times when I think I’ll be writing a lot, such as at a conference or when I’m traveling, I’ll carry a small notebook. Some of my best writing has evolved this way.
6. Describe your online reading habits.
I subscribe to my favorite blogs in Google Reader. When I have something that needs to be shared, I’ll sometimes post it to my Twitter page.
However, I start with Twitter so I can find out what other feminists think is important to read that day. It’s the fastest way to tap into the feminist community: news articles, important blog posts, conference information, activism alerts, etc. Social media sites (Twitter especially) definitely help create an online community. By following different people on Twitter, I have become much more involved with the feminist community than I ever would have been just writing a little blog from my house in northern Wisconsin. Twitter has helped me learn about many well-written and influential blogs. It has helped me network professionally. Most importantly, I’ve even made some real-life friends by participating in the online feminist community.
For more information on the Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community project, and to see all of the interviews, click here. Have something to add? Comment or e-mail me at smallstroke (at) gmail (dot) com.
Feminism, Teaching, and Teaching Feminism
September 29th, 2009Today’s post is a cross-post from the Student Activism blog. This post was written in response to my
Student Activism
Teaching Feminism When You’re Not a Feminist post, so I thought it only right to ask if I could cross-post it here! Enjoy!
I came across a blogpost this morning (via @HappyFeminist’s Twitter feed) that asked what struck me as an interesting question, and I’d like to take a swing at answering it:
How do you teach feminism if you are not a feminist?
To answer this question, it seems to me, the first thing you need to do is to define your terms. If by “teaching feminism” you mean teaching about feminism as a movement, then you teach feminism the same way you teach Marxism, or existentialism, or surrealism — with as full and as sympathetic an understanding of the movement (and of its critics) as you can muster. If you’re going to talk about feminism in the classroom, you have an obligation to learn enough about it to talk about it intelligently, and that’s an obligation you have whether you’re a feminist or not.
In her post, Ashley says some teachers don’t teach feminism because they think they don’t know enough about it, or because they haven’t thought about teaching it, or because they don’t have time. She’s right, but those objections shift the topic a bit — from how you teach feminism to when.
So when should you teach feminism? When it’s part of the story you’re trying to tell, and when it’s part of the toolkit you’re trying to help your students assemble. More broadly, you teach about gender when it’s relevant … and when you’re talking about people, gender is almost always relevant.
You don’t need to “teach feminism” to talk about gender, of course, and you don’t need to teach from a feminist perspective to talk about gender. You do, though, need to have an understanding of how gender works. You need to have an analysis of gender, a perspective on gender. (More to the point, you need to have a considered perspective on gender, because by the time you can talk you have a perspective on gender, whether you realize it or not.) You need to know how you’re going to come at gender issues when they arise, you need to know why you’re taking the approach you’ve chosen, and you need to know how you’re going to work productively with students who are coming from a different perspective.
And of course that last paragraph applies as much to activists as it does to teachers.
Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community: Kate Rohdenburg
September 28th, 2009
Kate Rohdenburg
Bio
Name: Kate Rohdenburg
Age: 24
Location: NH
Occupation: Youth Violence Prevention Education and Community Outreach Coordinator (serious!)
Education: BA in Media Communications
Blog: http://www.theconsequencesofanakedfoot.blogspot.com/
1. Define the online feminist blogging community.
A common comment I get is that feminism is an academic term that unless people have taken classes (usually in college) they feel uncomfortable taking on because they don’t really know what it’s about. When I was first starting to claim the term for myself, I remember a friend challenging me and saying “what kind of feminist? Liberal? Radical? Lesbian? Womanist?… I remember feeling really unprepared to respond and really shaken about my newfound association.
I think that the presence of feminism and feminists online, particularly in the blogging world, can decrease these feelings of exclusion. People now have much broader opportunities to familiarize, personalize, and research about feminism, and can find similar sentiments, regardless of whatever types of feminism makes sense to them.
As I’ve progressed in my own definition, blogs have been helpful. I started with Feministing and Jezebel, found I Blame the Patriarchy, then Stop Porn Culture. As different things within feminism have become more important at certain times, I’ve been able to reach out to communities – Planned Parenthood, Sistersong, PreventConnect, and beyond to learn more. I think they’re all important – when I was starting out, the stories in Bitch and Feministing and Jezebel made sense to me, they were easy to relate to and fairly obvious in how sexism exists, but doesn’t hold these ladies back from being hip. I Blame the Patriarchy and Stop Porn Culture (and the late, great Angry Brown Beaver) went deeper with me – that these concessions we make in order to be hip are still harmful. It brought me back to the original sense of revolution in not just commenting on pop-culture, but looking at our own complacency in the pop-culture.
I think the idea of selling/marketing is interesting. I like to think of myself as sharing, but more power to people who can make money being feminist!
2. Tell me about how you came to be a blogger.
College was a huge growth period for me as ideas began to formulate and solidify around my sense of feminism. Unfortunately the feminist collective on campus didn’t feel like what I was looking for in my own exploration. I began blogging because my friends were only so interested in hearing and seeing the things that were blowing my mind. And I wanted to document the journey for myself, and anyone else who might be going along the same way. I wanted to write about all the things that were exciting to me.
3. Tell me about your blogging experience now.
I don’t think of myself as a writer – as a blogger, I think more of myself as a conduit for ideas. I find things that resonate with me, and want to pass them along for discussion. I am a facilitator by nature and may have some comments (and at times, rants), but I really thrive on the dialogue and continue to blog as a way to have those conversations with myself, with the articles or elements that I post, and with commenter or readers.
4. Tell me about a time you were misread or misunderstood on your blog.
My father LOVES to misinterpret things that I post. Mostly as instigation. I try to breathe deeply and let other people respond (some of my best comment threads are when people are fired up by my father). That’s been both activating and really inspiring. They help me to think more clearly.
5. Describe your process of writing online.
I try to save things of interest to delve more deeply into at a later time. These tend to sit around until they’re irrelevant. More successfully I have time and something to say that is quick and succinct and is posted to solicit thought whether readers share those thoughts in comments, or later in their private life.
6. Describe your online reading habits.
I overwhelm myself. I tend to read something and it’s linked to someone else that’s awesome and I feel myself inspired ALL THE TIME and want to keep track and remember and follow. I tried to add them all on all my networks, but when you’ve a reader that’s consistently over 1000 you’re never going to have the time to read them all and it was just adding to my sense that there was too much for me to keep up. I’m trying to be better in my process of organizing, triaging, and using the networks/blogs for my own purposes and my own self fulfillment, not because I feel responsible to do a post a day or read 1000 other posts. I have to remind myself that there’s learning to happen offline as well.
I like the idea of trusting others to highlight need-to-read things and I’m experimenting with letting some things go in order to improve the quality of what I can do.
You can follow Kate on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dancinggrapes
For more information on the Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community project, and to see all of the interviews, click here. Have something to add? Comment or e-mail me at smallstroke (at) gmail (dot) com.
This is what an activist looks like
September 26th, 2009
Zero at the Bone
Today’s post is thanks to Chally. She posted a link to this post in the comments of my Blogging for Social Good post, but I thought this post was so good, I had to share! Thanks, Chally!
Chally is a scary feminist. She’s also a non-white, cis, middle class, disabled woman. She lives in Australia and enjoys knitting, Doctor Who and cake. You can find her at Zero at the Bone.
I’m disappointed when I hear activists prescribing what other activists ought to do. I’m surprised it doesn’t all come from rich, white, etc, etc, men, and here’s why.
Traditional forms of activism are often not possible or difficult for a given individual. Is a single mother going to go to a rally for paid maternity leave when she can’t find someone to look after her kids? Is someone with chronic pain and/or fatigue going to take kindly to being told they ought to attend a protest? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone has the time, energy, resources and know-how to do research or a survey? Is someone struggling to get by going to have the money to pay to get into your event? Is your crowded, loud meeting held in a room up a flight of steps going to be accessible to everyone?
You see, if you’re claiming to be progressive, but your organising unthinkingly excludes chunks of vulnerable and oppressed people? You are not a progressive. And if you are nevertheless insisting that some other form of activism is not a proper one? If you’re low on resources, and really trying to include folks, that’s one thing. But if you think you have the one true way to save the world, that is quite another.
What I am suggesting is that there are a lot of forms of activism in the world, and looking down one’s nose at some of them is detrimental as well as being offensive to those of us working hard to make valuable contributions in any way we can. It goes beyond ‘well, everyone should do what they can’. It’s not even a case of ‘if you can only contribute a little, that’s fine’. It’s not even just about the privileging of particular modes of contribution. It’s this: I do not know where anyone gets off saying that what another person does to heal the world is less than proper.
Now, I sign petitions and write letters all that sort of thing. I buy badges and do bakesales, too. Right now I’m volunteering with the local government on a DVD aimed at crime prevention. (These forms of activism have various levels of “proper activism” quotient attached to them. Discussion questions: How much do they tie in with what you do? How traditional do they seem to you?) I do traditional activism – sometimes. I am disabled, and it is not always physically possible to do so. Here is a short list of some forms of activism in which I engage that traditional thinking doesn’t call activism:
We should be rethinking traditional methods of activism, because progress means rethinking the traditional to make sure we have the very best for ourselves and the world. Even where we’ve assured ourselves we’re progressive. We need to keep thinking, keep examining, not only the world but ourselves.
Because it’s not just pressuring governments that’s important, as important as it is. Central to my activism is what I do right here, right now, in my life and my communities. When it comes down to it, progress is not only in the big sweeping changes. It’s in our souls. It’s in relating to each other with kindness.
I just don’t get it when people say that blogging isn’t real activism, because it is a big deal to this activist. I’ve reached and been reached by so many people, sharing lives that would never otherwise touch! Because the Internet is not composed of individuals shouting into the void. The Internet is composed of people, and we use it to direct attention to issues and petitions and all sorts. And we take what we learn with us to the offline world. Even if this wasn’t so, there is important work to do inside our minds. We have to tease out the oppression we’ve stored in ourselves. We have to understand and learn. Blogs have given me tools to put language and frames to my experience. For instance, amandaw’s work at Three Rivers Fog and Lauredhel’s at Hoyden About Town gave me what I needed to talk about my experiences as a disabled woman. You know. Writing isn’t useless. Writing is a good part of humanity’s process and progress, how we connect, how we relate to ourselves. Whether you’re writer or reader – and how often those roles intertwine in a sphere such as blogging! – writing is not just valid, but vital.
Previously in this thought process: In which homework is assigned.
Guest Post by Sophia: Why feminism is necessary in today’s schools
September 10th, 2009Teaching feminism in schools is one of the most important feminist issues of our time. In order to empower young women, we need to teach them about women’s accomplishments through history, and we need to explore teaching methods that inspire girls to speak out and make a difference.
Today’s guest post in the Teaching Feminism series is from Sophia. You can find her blog at http://womenundefined.blogspot.com and you can follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sophiabiabia.
More than 300 years of major progress. Thousands of battles won, and yet the war still rages. Feminism isn’t dead; its use is not irrelevant. We the people are still fighting for the same “inalienable rights” that white, upper class men have enjoyed for years. One of our most fervent needs is to replace old notions about what it means to be a woman. To dispel stereotypes, combat gender discrimination, and attempt to overturn patriarchal social and gender constructs. One of the best ways to accomplish these goals is to integrate a new point of view into the consciousness of students, to re-imagine the standard American curriculum. To embrace the following ideas: that Feminism is relevant and necessary in American schools, that the lack of diversity in American literature contributes to the inability of women to define our own history, tradition, and form, and that integrating feminist theory into schools can contribute to achieving modern feminist goals.
As I mentioned above, great strides have been made to include women in the canon of classic literature taught in schools. Works from women such as Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen and even Mary Wolstonecraft have gained great popularity. This is due in part to their strong message of female empowerment and in part to their perhaps unconscious adherence to the traditional male manner of writing. As is described in an essay by Paul Lauter, the development of modern literature began taking shape in the 1920’s, developed by white men of significant social status, wealth and education.
The professors, educators, critics, and arbiters of taste of the 1920’s, were, for the most part, college-educated white men of Ango-Saxon or northern European origins. They came from the that tiny, elite portion of the population of the US which, around the turn of the century, could go to college.. . The old elite and their allies moved on a variety of fronts, especially during the and just after World Ward I, to set the terms on which these demands would be accommodated. They repressed, in actions like the Prohibition Amendment and the Palmer raids, the political and social, as well as the cultural, institutions of immigrants and of radicals.(Lauter)
At the same time that Lauter hypothesized how literature came to be, feminists also began to question the manner in which works were selected and then included. Their purpose was plain: to combat oppression against women in writing, reading and the very mode of literary criticism. Later, the feminists of the 60’s and 70’s fought against literature’s established norms, arguing for the greater inclusion of women authors. Their findings and motivation were based upon the evidence that the development of modern literature negatively influenced female artists, their work, and the manner in which it was criticized; in every sense, the canon of literature, and model for criticizing literature, was oppressing women by conveying the main themes feminists at this time were so desperately fighting against.
Certainly if we acquiesce in the patriarchal Bloomian model, we can be sure that the female poet does not experience the “anxiety of influence” in the same way that her male counterpart would.. Not only do these precursors incarnate patriarchal authority, they attempt to enclose her in definitions of her person and her potential, which by reducing her to extreme stereotypes (angel, monster) drastically conflicting with her own sense of her self-that is, of her subjectivity, her autonomy , her creativity. (Gilbert, Gubar)
Today the need for these efforts still rings true; the inclusion of a diverse array of authors of all race, class and sex is still blatantly missing from established curricula. As a result, the manner in which arguments, criticism and how we are taught to read this canon of literature, remains inherently sexist. (A further illustration: I have developed this very argument by following a model developed by Aristotle, a man who believed a woman to be “deformed’ and an “accidental” form of man.) Enough is enough: students should and can be taught from a more diverse literary canon and learn from more than the affluent white male.
How this definition of “woman,” in terms of literature, is important lies in how her work is read, taught and applied. One may question the realistic educational need and thereby use of a distinct definition of “woman.” My answer is that with the “woman” perspective, old texts (hitherto criticized by a male derived model of analysis and thus taught in this same way) are re-examined by student and teacher to get a truly diverse analysis and perspective of the literary subject in question.
The stakes remain incredibly high. If we succeed in establishing a completely diverse canon of literature, one result will be the development of a more concrete definition of “woman.” Not as an ‘other,’ thereby lesser, form of man, but woman- a being socially, economically, physically, emotionally, and intellectually as capable and equal as any man. A definition that includes her own history, tradition and world views completely independant of men, however respected within literary communities and whose ideas and works of art are instituted alongside men within the educational curriculum. “Such sociosexual differentiation means that.. women writers participate in a quite different literary subculture from that inhabited by male writers, a subculture which has it’s own distinctive literary traditions, even… a distinctive history”(Gilbert, Gubar). When women writers define “woman,” they provide an independent model upon which women and minority writers of the future can allude to, be inspired by and learn from. The work of women must, as Mary Eagleton puts it, “speak as woman,” rather than simply speak as man from a female body.
The importance of this definition of “woman” within the curriculum of schools cannot be underestimated. For learning purposes, students have a tradition, a sense of who “woman” is to base their work upon. Socially, this more definitive sense of “woman” provides another subconscious role model which young women and girls can look up to. This would be apart from the stereotypical image of the “perfect woman,” which is according to, and aimed towards, men. With a more concrete background of what “woman” is, perhaps some of the many negative effects of current patriarchial stereotypes and gender constructs will be blunted.
Modern feminist theory includes three major themes which pertain directly to education.
1. Reshape the canon of literature to include writers that are women, women of color, and minorities.
2. Define art and literature by women as woman; creating a history for modern writers to be inspired, and which disassociates completely with the male literary construct.
3. Use the woman’s perspective to analyze old and new literature.
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Guest Post by L: Best Practice, Feminist Practice
September 8th, 2009Today’s guest post in the Teaching Feminism series is from L, a feminist blogger and college composition teacher. You can find her blog at http://heartoffalsehood.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lazerbug.
The theme of this series, Teaching Feminism, is near and dear to my heart. I recently graduated with my master’s in English, and I spent much of last and this year researching feminist pedagogy to write my master’s thesis. In my thesis, I focused on creating a women-only, feminist developmental composition class for the community college setting. Despite the specificity of this focus, many of the issues I addressed have great import for the secondary classroom as well.
In my research, I found that there are broadly two ways to “do” feminism in the classroom. The first is by way of incorporating feminist/woman-centric content. Ashley — my gracious host — has demonstrated this in her post about teaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” and discussing its gendered themes outright. The other way is touched on by guest blogger Laura in her post about the importance of respect in feminist classrooms: instructional technique is another important way for feminist teachers to teach and do feminism in their classrooms. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be focusing on this second way of doing feminism in schools, with a few ideas for classroom activities to demonstrate or practice these techniques here and there.
But first, some theoretical background:
Feminist pedagogy is deeply rooted in the examination of power relationships in society. In its inception in the 1960s and 1970s (at least in the US), feminist pedagogy was primarily concerned with gendered power relationships; however, as feminist pedagogy has grown and adapted to our changing society, feminist pedagogy has become concerned with all kinds of power relationships. Really, feminist pedagogy keeps up with feminist activism at large: as mainstream feminists have redefined what it means to be a feminist — not just fighting male privilege, but calling into question white, class, able-bodied, and cis privilege — so has feminist pedagogy redefined its boundaries. Therefore, feminist pedagogy overlaps heavily with other liberatory pedagogies, such as critical pedagogy.
One power relationship that is called into question in feminist pedagogy, making it unlike other forms of feminist activism, is the teacher-student relationship. In traditional classrooms, especially those that use a “banking” approach, the teacher has complete control, complete power, and the student has none. The teacher is considered a benevolent dictator in such classrooms, and the persona of such traditional teachers takes on a bit of a colonialist air: they’re doing “what’s best” for the uncultured, blank-slate students.
In many ways, the public school system in the US promotes this sort of teacher-student relationship. You can see it in the way most classrooms are designed: blackboards on one side of the room make it easy for the teacher to stand there and pass down knowledge to the empty heads of the students, who are sitting individually in desks all facing the teacher. Even teachers who attempt to mitigate this by putting students in circles or desks in small groups face challenges and find themselves reverting to traditional techniques in order to pass knowledge on more efficiently. And it can be difficult to find the money to buy texts written by women and/or that address feminist concepts if your school has already sunk its dollars into “the classics” or into other textbooks.
Despite the many obstacles for feminist teachers, there are still many ways to enact a feminist pedagogy — because feminist pedagogy is so much about examining power: who has it and who doesn’t.
Again, the theme of the traditional classroom is the all-knowing teacher bestowing knowledge upon the student. This is a paternalistic conception of the classroom that disregards the knowledge that students already have and the fact that teachers are human and therefore flawed. Though the vast majority of teachers don’t actually teach this way and don’t actually believe their students know nothing, many, many students have experienced learning situations where their knowledge was ignored and they were treated as ignorant. Feminist pedagogy — even if it isn’t presented as such (which can be good in more hostile schools/districts or in classes where saying “feminist” would distract students more than help them) — can help all students, regardless of gender identity, feel more empowered in their learning.
What I think is excellent about instructional techniques associated with feminist pedagogy is that they’re just best practice when you get right down to it. Most of you reading probably already do a lot of these things in your classes. Now you have good reasoning for why it’s also feminist.
Small groups AND independent work
Obviously, we need to teach students how to work both independently and collaboratively: both are part of being human and, more practically, part of being a productive member of a workforce. (Having students work in small groups can also be a break for teachers who’ve been lecturing all day, and it gives students a chance to apply concepts hands-on.) However, we live in a patriarchal and therefore competitive society, one which devalues teamwork and collaboration and demands that each student be the best — at the cost of others’ success. Small group work has the potential to give students a chance to develop their teamwork skills, in addition to showing students that they, too, have the ability to create knowledge and to learn without the guidance of The Teacher. If implemented within a framework of authentic collaboration and student empowerment, group-work has the capacity to mess with all kinds of unfortunate and oppressive power relationships.
Authentic questions
Teacher educators call asking questions a way to gauge student understanding. I call asking questions a way for teachers to tell their students that knowledge is created and that they, too, can create knowledge — not just the teacher. The difference between gauging comprehension and empowering students, though, is in the question asked. There are “teacher questions” — the questions you already have the answer to — and there are authentic questions. Asking authentic questions — ones that you really don’t know the answer to and/or are aware that there are many possible answers to — allows students to play a useful role in the creation of knowledge. It also positions you, the teacher, as another learner, as someone who doesn’t have the answers and is engaging in the education process alongside students. You’re no longer the Holder of Knowledge: you’re a seeker of truths, your students have some of the answers, and you all have to talk it out to get the bigger picture.
Encouraging reflection in the name of student empowerment
As a composition teacher, I teach a lot of writing, and I assign a lot of papers. In the last couple of years, I have begun assigning reflective essays along with the typical essays students write in my class. This initially came out of a desire to show students that their learning is up to them, not me, that they can’t blame me for everything they don’t understand, that they earn grades rather than receiving them. (In other words, I was getting some disgruntled evaluations from students who thought they could get an A with C-level writing and no effort to improve their skills.) Even though the initial intent of these new reflective assignments was more practical in nature, I’ve come to see how fostering reflection is an important part of doing feminist pedagogy. My students generally see me as the Composition Expert who is going to pass down all of the “right” composition facts to them. Because I’m the “Expert,” they also see me as superior to them, which imbues my relationship with my students with a power differential. Reflective writing allows students to think about writing — or whatever other concepts they are addressing — in their own terms, to explain what they understand, and to see how it fits into their lives, either academically, personally, or both. My class becomes less about “doing what the teacher wants” and more about “this is what I learned and why it’s important to me” (especially because I don’t focus on grammar/mechanics/style as I read these papers). Creating an opportunity to see knowledge as constructed and to see their own personal role in how that knowledge is constructed helps students be empowered as individuals with agency in their educational lives.
Gender segregation
I commented on the first post in this series about the uses and misuses of sex/gender-segregation in the classroom. I think dividing classes into boys and girls has a lot of potential to benefit students. Not only does this allow for the discussion of sensitive topics without fear of shame from the “opposite sex,” but it allows both girls and boys to be more themselves without feeling the need to perform for each other. Gender segregation, however, can also inadvertently lead teachers and administrators down the “gender-based education” path, a path paved with gender stereotypes, sexism, and misogyny. I’m not sure that doing gender segregation within one classroom would be a good idea. But if your school has considered segregating genders into different classes, keep in mind that this can be a powerful way for students to examine gender — and it can also be damaging for them if classes are designed around gender stereotypes about how boys and girls learn. Basically, avoid people like when designing single-sex courses, and think about the many, many ways boys and girls benefit from typically masculine and typically feminine forms of instruction.
I could go on and on about this stuff, but I’ll stop there for now. I am planning a follow-up post that will touch on some of the stickier parts of doing feminist pedagogy — such as what happens when embracing the “feminine” stops being feminist, dealing with conflict in a feminist space, and being a female feminist teacher who questions authority in her classroom — because, let’s be honest, the ideas I’ve discussed here are pretty mainstream. The revolutionary thing about this is calling mainstream approaches like this feminist. Yes, it’s excellent that these things are mainstream and an expected part of educational culture; however, without naming these approaches as feminist in intent and in creation, feminist pedagogy loses its relevance, its educational edge, and its healing power. So go out there, get your kids into groups and ask them to work as a team to accomplish a shared goal, and continue being a feminist pedagogue.
Enjoy this series? Have something to add? Want to write a guest post? Leave your voice in the comments or e-mail me at smallstroke (at) gmail (dot) com.
Guest Post by Laura Sundstrom: On Not Silencing
August 28th, 2009Teaching feminism in schools is one of the most important feminist issues of our time. In order to empower young women, we need to teach them about women’s accomplishments through history, and we need to explore teaching methods that inspire girls to speak out and make a difference.
Today’s guest post in the Teaching Feminism series is from Laura Sundstrom. You can find her blog at http://youngfeministadventures.blogspot.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/YFemAdventures.
One thing that I have been thinking a lot about lately is silencing. So when Ashley asked me to write a guest post for her teaching feminism in schools series, I thought I would write about the effect silencing has in a school setting.
Just one thing to remember: this is coming from the perspective of a student, not a teacher.
Feminism and women’s studies were not taught in my high school. We’d have a unit on women’s history, a unit on books written by women, etc. But those were usually some of the shortest units of the class and nothing was incorporated into the rest of the class. It just seemed like something the teachers wanted to get through because they had to, not something they were actually interested in.
The high school that I went to was overwhelmingly white, upper middle class, conservative, and Christian. I fit the mold in kind of two of these demographics. I’m white and middle class — but by the standards of my fellow classmates, I was on the lower middle class end of the spectrum, though not by society’s standards. I am not, however, conservative or that religious.
When I was in high school I definitely had feminist values, because that was the way that I was raised, but I don’t remember ever calling myself a feminist during that time. I think a lot of this had to do with my high school atmosphere and the people that I associated with. While teachers claimed that the classroom was a “safe environment,” it wasn’t really true. Having an opinion that was different (and sometimes radically different) than most of the other people in the class was not an easy thing and the teachers didn’t really do a whole lot to encourage any type of discussion about it.
I really shouldn’t blame the teachers entirely. In high school, I wasn’t really the kind of person that raised their hand a lot. It wasn’t cool to be smart and it definitely wasn’t cool to have differing opinions. I didn’t really fit in anyway, but I was too shy to actually say anything in class. But I often wonder if my voice was encouraged to be heard more often, if I would have been more willing to share it. But there’s really no way of knowing.
Teaching feminism and women’s studies in high school comes with a lot of responsibility. I think it is a great idea and necessary to the development of well-rounded students that feminism and women’s studies be taught in middle school and high school. But where the responsibility comes in is making sure that you are discussing these topics in a truly safe environment for the students. It shouldn’t be about “preaching” your values as a teacher but about fostering discussion about these important issues.
Students who voice differing opinions are often silenced in a classroom setting, not only by fellow students out of peer pressure, but also sometimes from teachers. While teaching feminism and women’s studies, it is also important to teach about respect and practice respect yourself. It’s important to encourage all opinions, even anti-feminist ones if they are made in a respectful manner. Silencing opinions of students, whether you agree with them or not, is not what is going to build confident students who are ready for the “real world.” High schoolers can be cruel, but when the silencing comes from teachers, I think it might be even more damaging.
The incorporation of feminism and women’s studies into the curriculum has to be done in a way that avoids silencing. I don’t really have any concrete ways to go about doing this because I am not familiar with teaching techniques. All I can say is try to be respectful and encourage respect in your students. Teaching feminism and women’s studies should be about fostering discussion and bringing awareness to feminist issues, not only in the lives of students but in society as well. Silencing students who are respectful in their opinions is not the way to go about doing this.
Enjoy this series? Have something to add? Want to write a guest post? Leave your voice in the comments or e-mail me at smallstroke (at) gmail (dot) com.