Posts by Ashley:
- And, you know, there’s stuff I do that irks him, too, but this isn’t the place to talk about those things. 😉 ↩
- Marriage (a broad topic here; could include name changes, household chores, the patriarchal connotations behind marriage… anything!)
- Family (your mothers and fathers, your children, your siblings, etc.)
- In-laws
- Same sex partnerships
- Interracial relationships
- Long-distance relationships
- Moving in together
- Moving somewhere new together
- Boyfriend/Girlfriend relationships
- Weddings
- Friendships
- Body image and relationships
- And the list goes on and on – anything you come up with, I’d love to hear it!
- Moving (Which is happening next week.)
- Money (Which is definitely part of the moving that is happening next week, so these two might be tied.)
- Wedding (Not marriage, even though that would have added a nice alliteration to the list; I’m actually feeling really good about the whole marriage and partnership thing. Planning the big day, on the other hand? A wee bit stressful. Fun, yes! But stressful.)
- We decided to share almost all of the really annoying expenses that come with adulthood: rent, utilities, cell phone, student loans, car loans and maintenance and gas, groceries, gym memberships, insurance of all kinds, and medical expenses. Oh, and joint entertainment. We still need to have a little fun!
- We get paid pretty much twice a month – once every two weeks to be exact, which means twice a year, we get paid three times a month, and those two months are the best months of my life. One check a month will go to the joint checking account on the first of the month to pay the monthly bills stated under #1. That might not be quite enough, but we’ll have to just test it out and see.
- We both have some some savings. He’s been saving for a house since before he met me, and I’ve been saving for some distant future mostly because the media told me to and this recession has scared the crap out of me. He always assumed his savings would be for us, and I never really thought about it at all, so when I realized I’d have to part with a lot of that money between moving expenses and wedding expenses and, you know, trying to start a life together, that was really hard for me. I mean, it is, after all, my money that I’ve been saving since well before we even met. But, after a while, I realized that I wasn’t really saving it for anything more than a rainy-day fund, so I agreed to give up most of the savings in the name of mutual benefit. (Hey, I can keep a little, right? And he can keep some of his, too, if he wants.)
- With the second paycheck we get each month, we’re each going to put a set amount into the joint savings that we will eventually use for a honeymoon or a house or whatever. What’s left from that second paycheck is ours to use however we want for the month. If we want to save it for ourselves, fine. If we want to buy each other or our family and friends gifts or take someone out to eat or whatnot, even better. If we don’t use it for any of those things, we can spend all of it how we choose.
Name Changes and Privilege
July 31st, 2010Yesterday, Emily from Gender Across Borders graciously allowed me to cross post her article about changing her name for my series about feminism and relationships. You all, gentle readers, were very nice in the comments over here. Emily wasn’t so lucky with her commenters over at GAB. (Check out the comments here.) And, while I normally would not take the time to write a full-out post inspired by commenters, I do feel that this issue needs a little more attention.
Let’s be clear before we go any further: I have written before about how I’ve decided not to change my name when I get married. But – and this probably won’t surprise you – I’m not one of those feminists who thinks that any woman who does change her name is reversing decades of feminist activism.
There are people out there, though, who do believe that women should absolutely never ever change their names – apparently for any reason whatsoever. And some of those views were reflected in the comments on Emily’s GAB post yesterday.
Honestly, deciding to change one’s name isn’t just about “the feminist choice” versus “the traditional choice.” People change their names for a multitude of reasons, not just because they’re getting married. And those reasons, no matter what they are, are almost always intensely personal. To say that one should use that personal choice to make a larger, political statement because it would be “perverse” (taken from the comments of the original article) not to is, simply, ignorant of any variants of the man-and-woman-getting-married scenario.
Sure, you could argue that anyone has the choice to change one’s name, but what happens when real life kicks in and that option isn’t really viable anymore? What about someone like the woman who sat next to me in my grad class who couldn’t get a job and felt she had to change her surname to her middle name to avoid racial discrimination? What about any of the instances in this Tumblr discussion, which I’m linking to because I don’t think I could ever say it any better.
The fact of the matter is that simply having the choice to change one’s name upon getting married is a privilege, and the very discussion itself almost reeks of upper-middle class, heterosexual, cis, white privilege. Think about it: To even suggest that someone, anyone, should keep a name with which they do not identify – whether that is because they’ve married a man and want to take his name or because their family name was changed at Ellis Island before they were even born and they want to go back to the original family name or for any of the other plethora of intensely personal reasons out there to change one’s name – just to make a political statement is simply reciting dictum from a feminist textbook and ignoring the larger issues and nuances of life.
And, frankly, if a woman does decide to make that name change to her husband’s name, to say that she is “subservient to your husband’s needs” or “losing your identity” (again, from the GAB comments) are such gross over generalizations. And assumptions! You can change your name and still be your own person. Gosh, so many of us write under pseudonyms on the internet; do those pseudonyms make us any less us when we write? Absolutely not, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if we chose to legally change our names to our pseudonyms, either. It’s all about what you identify with, and, really, by changing your name to one that you identify with, you might just be gaining your identity rather than losing it – and isn’t that really what feminism is all about?
Personally, I identify with my last name, which is why I’m keeping it. It isn’t some broad, political statement. It’s simply because this name is who I am, and Tim loves me – all of me – as a whole person, and that love includes my name and my desire to keep it. And I feel the same way about him and his name, which is why, when he offered to change it for me, I said he shouldn’t do that unless he really identified with my name or a hyphenated/combo variant. (He decided he didn’t identify with my name or a variant of our two names. Hence, we are keeping our own.) But, again, the discussion was about identities, not traditions and politics.
OK, readers, that’s just my two cents. I welcome all points of view on this blog, and if you have a lot to say, please consider submitting a guest post on the subject. But, if you must comment here, please be mindful of the multitude of situations the name change debate affects, not just the man-and-woman-marry, woman-takes-man’s-name scenario.
Feminist Fights
July 30th, 2010Tim and I moved in together on July 1.
And we have been fighting ever since.
Don’t get me wrong; we haven’t been fighting 24/7. Not at all. No, it’s more of the silent tension every time I have to move the dining room chair back the way it was, or every time I have to put a renegade measuring cup back where it belongs. (Seriously, who would wash one measuring cup and then put it back in an entirely different drawer than all of the other measuring cups?! Come ON!) 1
Now, I’m not saying that I’m not the totally hyper-organized, everything-has-its-place-and-you’d-better-put-it-back-in-its-place type. Some might even venture to describe me as a control freak or seriously uptight about my organization. And this might be really, really annoying to some people. OK, most people. But, for the first time in my life, this isn’t just my apartment or my dorm room or my bedroom. This is our home. A place I’ve made for me and my family. A place I can take pride in because it is ours and however it looks and feels is something I designed. It isn’t good enough anymore to just throw the bed in the guest room wherever it fit at the time we moved in or to leave the bed unmade or the laundry undone or those empty bottles on the counter next to the sink.
Since I have never, EVER settled for good enough, I’m constantly rearranging furniture, putting kitchen utensils back where they belong, doing laundry, cooking, tidying up… and I feel like I might as well be a pearl-wearing, vacuum-cleaning effigy to Joan Cleaver.
And I said as much to Tim last night. Or this morning. I don’t know, really, because I woke him up at about 1 AM to share my frustrations with him. And, boy, did I share them. Down the last minuscule sloppily folded hand towel in the bathroom. I told him how frustrated I was that I was constantly cooking and cleaning and doing laundry and picking up after us and worrying about this wedding and OMG HOW COULD HE HAVE PUT THAT MEASURING CUP IN THE WRONG DRAWER?! Use your brain, man!
Some might call this nagging. I call it a crisis of faith.
And Tim, the ever patient, 8th wonder of the world he is, just listened to me talk and talk and talk. And when I was done, he said: “You know, I can pick up after myself and put things in the right place. I can work harder at that. But, you know, you’re really only worried about this because you’re a feminist, and feminists aren’t ‘supposed to’ fall into that ‘wife’ role of cooking and cleaning and staying at home with the kids. I mean, you like cooking and laundry! Was it not just you who made the most delicious farfalle pasta with vodka sauce totally from scratch and from memory? Or who just said: ‘I love folding laundry. It smells so good and feels so good to have clean clothes!’ And you like organizing! It’s your thing! So what is it about this that’s really getting to you? I think it’s that cooking and cleaning and tidying up are typically ‘women’s roles’ and you don’t like that you’re falling into them.”
I was speechless.
He… was… r…rrrr…..right. I like cooking. Love it, in fact. And I do really enjoy doing laundry – it’s one of the few chores you can do while you’re actually doing something else. And organization is my thing, man. It just makes me so happy when things are sorted and arranged properly!
So what was my problem? Was it Tim’s bachelor ways? Or was it a fear that I was turning in to everything I had fought against being – a contemporary Joan Cleaver if you will?
I don’t know if I will ever know. But I do know that Tim and I are focusing on equaling things out: he’ll do a little more cooking and cleaning and I’ll do a little less picking fights at 1 AM about little things that are really about larger moral issues. Underneath it all, though, we’re really just focused on getting this right. And, when it comes to relationships, what could be more feminist than that?
This post is part of an ongoing series about feminism and relationships. Have something to say? Submit a guest post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com! And, of course, you can always comment here!
How Important are the SAT and ACT? Really?
July 21st, 2010I came across an interesting article this week that makes the assertion that “Your SAT score has little to do with your life.”
Many colleges are catching on to this. They know that the SAT and the ACT are designed to do nothing more than predict first-year college grades. They also know that high school grade-point averages do that job about as well. So they are admitting students without any SAT or ACT scores at all. Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, said: “No test can measure the skills that matter most in life: creativity, perseverance, collaboration, vision, self-discipline and the like.”
And this article from Deeply Problematic dissects the studies showing that the SAT is biased against non-white students (read the whole article, it’s really good!):
According to Maria Veronica Santelices of the Catholic University of Chile and Mark Wilson of the University of California at Berkeley at the Harvard Educational Review:
[Our research] throws into question the validity of the test and, consequently, all decisions based on its results. All admissions decisions based exclusively or predominantly on SAT performance — and therefore access to higher education institutions and subsequent job placement and professional success — appear to be biased against the African American minority group and could be exposed to legal challenge.
Interesting that scientific studies and colleges are just catching on to this now; something that I had a sense of when I was in high school and taking these tests myself. I don’t usually go into the inherent racism behind these standardized tests with my students – most of my students are Black or Latino/a, so why stress them out about it unnecessarily before they take a test they’re already super nervous about? But I do tell my students that the score they will receive on the ACT is just a number, and they can always take it again if they need to. After all, it’s just a test!
Call for Guest Posts on Feminism and Relationships
July 20th, 2010You know, I’ve been writing a lot about feminism and relationships on here lately. Maybe because I’m getting married in less than 3 months? I don’t know, just a guess… But whatever the reason, I think it’s a really important topic to cover. There are lots of us out there who identify as feminist or who advocate feminism and who are also either facing a change in their relationships (moving in together, getting married, etc.) or are well within a relationship or family setting and work to advocate feminism within those relationships every day. I also find that many of us in this community are frequently combating the often negative, patriarchal connotations that come with marriage and family life and the various titles associated with that life. I’ve seen so much of this in the comments of this blog or in e-mails sent to me or in twitter responses to things I’ve written that I believe the topic of feminism and relationships cannot be ignored.
So, I want to hear from you. I’m announcing an open-ended call for guest posts on feminism and relationships. You can interpret the term “relationships” as loosely as you want, but some ideas for posts might include topics on “Feminism and…”:
What are my guidelines? As you may know from previous calls for guest posts, my guidelines, like all good things in life, are flexible and open to interpretation. But in general, I’d say posts should be about 400-800 words in length and spell-checked/grammar-checked to the best of your ability. Hyperlinks are OK in bios and in posts. Just make sure I have a list of all URLs in case something is lost in translation, so to speak. Also, please keep in mind that I am a high school teacher, so I cannot publish curse words, sexually explicit language, or anything overtly political. If you think you have a topic that might fall into one of these categories, go ahead and e-mail me a pitch and we can totally figure something out.
Of course you can cross-post something to your blog, as well, or submit something you’ve already written on the topic, but I’d appreciate a link back here from your blog. Also, you don’t have to be a blogger to submit a post! If you just want to write something for me but don’t necessarily write on your own, that’s swell, too!
All posts or pitches can be submitted to samsanator (at) gmail (dot) com along with a brief bio and a link to your blog if you’ve got one.
I look forward to hearing from you, and hopefully you all will find this new series interesting and helpful!
Quick Hit: 10 Things Feminism Could Do Better
July 20th, 2010With all the talk I do on this blog about my issues with portions of the feminist community, I wanted to share this article about 10 things feminism could do better. It’s a really comprehensive article that takes a look at feminism’s shortcomings, but in a really positive and hopeful way. So check it out!
And thanks to The Undomestic Goddess for tweeting it!
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A Feminist Wife
July 19th, 2010“Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.” – Lady Gaga (h/t mmmfeminism)
“I’m not much for the 9 to 5. I’m not much for the rules and frustrations of the working world, and for the endless willingness to bend your will and sell your soul that comes with a paycheck. I simply don’t work like that. But I excel at counsel, compassion, cleanliness, and mowing the lawn. Since I met my husband, we fell into rather traditional roles. Not because we had to but because that is the people that we are and it works for us. Surprisingly, I found that it doesn’t make us old fashioned or conformists, it makes us simply who we are and, honestly, my wild heart could use a little taming …” – Cindy
This post has been rumbling around in my head for a long time – since at least June 15 when Cindy’s post appeared on A Practical Wedding (which is, in my humble opinion, probably the best wedding blog around and has kept me going through all of the wedding planning experience). Perhaps it has been pushed to the front of my brain because of my new living situation – Tim and I just moved in together on July 1, and the realization that this truly is a sneak-peek of what the foreseeable future of my life will look like. And it looks a lot like “being a wife” in the stereotypically traditional sense of the phrase. It’s like the cleaning and the laundry and the picking up messes and the grocery shopping and the cooking and the paying bills and the home improvement projects never end. It’s summer! I should have the time I’ve so desperately craved to work on my blogging and my tan and knock of a few more books on that never-ending reading list!
I cannot see the rest of my life being like this. Once school starts, there will be even less time for reading, writing, and recreation. Will I just be constantly working and wife-ing with no time for much else? I look at this routine now, during the summer, and I think: I couldn’t possibly be the kind of wife that Cindy describes herself as being. I’m not the type of person who can sit in the house all day, which is why I never pursued a career as a writer. It may be because I love my job, but I love the routine of the 9 to 5 (well, in my case, it’s the 7:30-3:30), and I love the time it affords me to be in a different world for a while and think in entirely new ways. Don’t get me wrong; I am obsessively organized and, as such, I do like cleaning; I also really love cooking (but hate doing the dishes), but I couldn’t do these things full-time. I could really only do them as they fit in to my schedule.
I know being a wife is more than cooking and cleaning and supporting a husband – or is it? Traditionally, this is how the wife role has been viewed, which is why it doesn’t surprise me when feminists reject the tradition of marriage. And, honestly, isn’t that how the wife role still plays out? Women can be many things; in my life, I am a teacher, a daughter, an activist, a writer, a thinker, and I will soon be a wife. But in that wife role, is there room for anything other than supporting your husband? (And in the husband role, is there room for anything other than supporting your wife?) Sure, I go to school and teach teenagers about English and I sit in front of my computer and write blog posts and I sign petitions and donate money, but those things do not fall under my role of wife.
But if Tim and I just decided to live together as partners and spend our lives together that way, would our roles be any different? Other than stripping ourselves of titles that have historically held patriarchal connotations, the roles of supporting each other are still the same. And, let’s face it. Wife or not, the cooking and cleaning still need to get done! These things aren’t so much the role of wife as they are just life.
But, hey, Lady Gaga. You’re right. My career could never stop loving me and break my heart like Tim could. Probably because it never really loved me in the first place. I need my career and I need Tim, but I’d trade all the jobs in the world for the love we share. Maybe that’s following a man more than following my dreams, but true partnership happens when my dreams become his and his mine, and we follow them together. And that, my friends, is how I will be a feminist wife.
Quick Hit: The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut
July 15th, 2010If you have read any of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), you must read Nora Ephron’s parody for The New Yorker. It is hilarious! (Although there may be some spoilers if you read closely, so don’t read it if you haven’t finished the second book!)
To read this piece of comic genius, click here. But if you haven’t finished, bookmark it and come back later!
Also, check out these great posts about the trilogy by some of my fave feminists (but don’t read them if you don’t want spoilers!):
Lisbeth Salander and Social Perceptions by s.e. smith at this ain’t livin’
Why The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is So Important by Sophia at Women Undefined
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The CWWN Confernece 2010, or What I Learned About Academia
July 13th, 2010This past week, I had the good fortune of being able to not only attend, but present my paper on Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community at my first-ever international conference. The Contemporary Women’s Writing Network conference in San Diego was a great place to connect with fantastic women and those who write about women. It was great fun to present, as well, with a woman from York who is writing about feminist bloggers for her PhD dissertation! As you can imagine, we had much to talk about.
Although I attended many other panels and learned much about Margaret Atwood, women and adolescence, and other interesting female bloggers, I feel I learned more about the academic community than anything. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), this is still a community for which gender binaries still exist in full force. Every panel I attended discussed the differences between men and women, or how men appear in books versus how women appear in books, or how men write differently than women do. There didn’t seem to be much of a discussion about, say, how feminism or feminist ideas can help men better function in society, or what benefit men might get from reading women writers. There was also not much discussion about the trans community or anyone that may exist between the gender binary. Granted, I did not attend all of the panels, but from what I saw from the titles of the presentations, this conference was very much fitting of the title: Contemporary Women’s Writing Network.
This is also a community for which feminism does not seem as problematic as it does in the internet community. In fact, it is a way of being for many of these women and men, almost comically and overtly stereotypical. For example, Tim was there with me because we turned this trip into a little vacation. He, naturally, came to see me present since, you know, he was already there. Another man who was attending the conference asked him what he was presenting, and Tim informed him that he was my fiance and there to see me. The man proceeded to poke fun at us a bit, saying I wasn’t much of a feminist if I couldn’t even present a paper by myself. I wasn’t actually a part of this conversation, or I would have given him a piece of my mind, but this is just an example of the sorts of things I overheard throughout the conference.
Not only was much of the focus on women and only women, but privilege at this conference was obvious. Not so much white privilege or heterosexual privilege so much, but definitely economic privilege. This may seem obvious considering that this conference was academic in nature and, therefore, mostly professors and students from esteemed universities were in attendance, but this was so much so that I felt a bit out of place. This is not to say that I am not economically privileged; I am. I attended a small, private, expensive school for my undergraduate education and I also attended a small, private, expensive school for my graduate education. However, I felt as if I was the only person presenting at this conference who was not teaching in a university in some capacity – even as a TA – or working on her PhD. When asked what university I was affiliated with (as I was asked on more occasions than I can count), I said I had just graduated with my MA from [insert grad school here]. When asked where I was teaching, I responded [insert high school here]. I then received the typical shocked response from almost every participant: “You teach high school? And you’re here?” Why yes, why shouldn’t I be here?, I wondered. Why shouldn’t high school teachers work on other pursuits besides high school education and take pride enough in them to visit conferences and present papers?
I think there might also have been a bit of surprise that I was attending this conference without any affiliations, that is to say, without any university to support me or reimburse some of my expenses. Then it occurred to me: Do people do independent research? If I wanted to further my work about feminist blogging, would I have to re-affiliate myself with my university? Or would I need to continue on to a PhD? Would it be possible to continue the research and write papers and attend conferences on my own? It saddens me to think that I may not be able to fly solo and continue doing the sort of work I want. And it saddens me even more to think that there are many people out there who could be writing excellent papers and attending conferences and really changing the face of academia but who don’t necessarily have the means to attend colleges and work towards advanced degrees and fly cross-country to academic conferences.
But, all-in-all, it was a spectacular experience to be a part of this conference and to interact with so many wonderful writers and thinkers. Although I found it quite problematic on many levels, and felt the need to write about the problematic nature of it all here, it was more rejuvenating than anything. I found myself wanting to blog and tweet so much of what I learned while I was there (but made myself not do it so as not to waste valuable time in San Diego!), so you can look forward to some more blog posts about many of the interesting sessions in the very near future!
End the R-Word
July 11th, 2010Some time ago, in my Theory of Rhetoric graduate class, I left very upset over an argument that ensued over the use of the word “retarded.” It was brought up in one of my classmates’ weekly written responses inspired by Rahm Emanuel’s comments this past February. One of my other classmates actually said, upon hearing all of this: “You know, I was reading all of this stuff in the news, and the only thing I could think was: ‘How retarded is this?!’” And all I could think or say was: “How insensitive can you be?” Then, the typical arguments that people use when defending their right to use ableist language ensued. (For a rundown of those arguments and excellent responses to them, read this post.) I, of course, stood up for what I believe, which is that the use of the word “retarded” in this way is wrong, but it wasn’t enough, and the argument was cut short in the interests of time.
So, for the next week, I wrote my required written response on just this, and I mean it to serve as an argument against the use of the word “retarded” to mean undesirable or useless. What follows is my response, meant to use the readings from that week to support my position and extend my argument.
I’ve been looking for a way to write about our discussion at the end of last week’s class about the word “retarded” for an entire week now, but haven’t found the words. I think after reading I.A. Richards, I have a clearer sense of the argument that was posed.
Richards spoke quite a bit of words and their meanings in this reading. It was stated in the readings that “Much of Richards’s perspective on rhetoric is concerned with how words come to mean what they do. Richards sees meanings of words as central to a theory of rhetoric not only because they are essential components in the function of language but also because of the ways in which meanings serve the users of words” (Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric 24). In fact, he seemed to think that words and their meanings were at the root of rhetoric and his problems with it. He especially rejects the notion of several classical rhetoricians that there is one correct word with one correct meaning that is to be used for a given situation. In his lecture on “The Philosophy of Rhetoric,” he states:
Most words, as they pass from context to context, change their meanings; and in many different ways. It is their duty and their service to us to do so… We are extraordinarily skilful in some fields with these shifts of sense – especially when they are of the kind we recognize officially as metaphor. But our skill fails; it is patchy and fluctuant; and, when it fails, misunderstanding of others and of ourselves comes in. (Readings in Contemporary Rhetoric 5)
In other words, he argues that if we didn’t allow words to change their meaning if their contexts have changed, we would be doing language a disservice and allowing for more misunderstandings. Therefore, from this quote, it might be said that Richards would defend the use of the word “retarded” with a meaning of unappealing or useless or undesirable because, over time, that is what this word has come to mean. This is the root of the problem with the word “retarded.” There is a faction of people who want to allow for the meaning of the word to change from a name for a disability to another word for unappealing/useless/undesirable and there is a faction of people who say that this use of the word is offensive because people with this disability are not unappealing/useless/undesirable, and using this word in this way has negative implications toward people with this disability.
However, this argument only works if you can argue that the context surrounding the word has changed. Richards also says: “Some words and sentences still more, do seem to mean what they mean absolutely and unconditionally. This is because the conditions governing their meanings are so constant that we can disregard them” (Readings in Contemporary Rhetoric 4). The most important question, then, is this: Has the context around the word “retarded” changed enough to allow for a change of meaning? I would argue no; the only reason the word “retarded” came to mean unappealing/useless/undesirable in the first place was because people with this disability were seen as unappealing/useless/undesirable, and the word was then used to describe anything that was unappealing/useless/undesirable. The word is now widely used incorrectly in this way, and correctly used not only in a medical and educational context, but people and families do still choose to use the word when it applies to them. The context has not changed, just the usage of the word, and the context surrounding the word does not change just because it is widely used in the wrong way. Therefore, I believe Richards would argue that our contemporary use of the word “retarded” to mean unappealing/useless/undesirable is not correct. Rather, the contemporary use of the word “retarded” is in and of itself a misunderstanding; it has been used to denote an incorrect meaning for so long that people have been led to believe that the context surrounding it has changed, but that’s not how it works for Richards, or for the world as a whole. The context must change before the meaning can, not the other way around.
For more on the topic of ableist language, please refer to this excellent blog post written for a blog about disability: http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/11/23/o-language-again/
Works Cited
Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp. “I.A. Richards.” Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 2002. 19-49.
Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp. “The Philosophy of Rhetoric: Lecture I.” Readings in Contemporary Rhetoric. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 2002. 1-9.
Special thanks to meloukhia for help on this post!
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Off the grid
July 5th, 2010Hey, readers! I’ve missed you!
You may have noticed, but I’ve been a little off the grid lately. Tim and I moved in together this week, and that has been quite the adventure so far. AND, tomorrow through Sunday, we’re going on another adventure together to San Diego! So, I’ll be off the grid again until Sunday.
I’m really excited about this trip. It is a bit of a vacation, but I’ll also be presenting mymaster’s thesis at the Contemporary Women’s Writing Network conference through San Diego State University. This is my first time presenting at an international academic conference (not a local teacher one, those I’ve done before), so I’m a little nervous!
On top of that, I’ll also be seeing my cousin, Jamie, who recently moved out that way with her husband, as well as Selin, a friend I met on a tour of Europe in 2005 and haven’t seen since! AND I’ll be meeting fellow Equality 101 editor, Shelly, for the first time!
All in all, I think this will be a very exciting trip, but as you can probably imagine, I won’t be blogging much during this time. Don’t worry! Starting July 12, I’ll be back with a vengeance!
Summer Reading is Not an Extention of Curriculum
July 1st, 2010We all know that students experience a significant loss of their learning over the summer months, and to curb that loss, at least in the literacy department, many schools assign summer reading to students. As an English teacher, I do believe that summer reading is vital to a students’ success in school. It is painfully apparent in my classes from the very beginning of the year which students are readers and which are not. Students who read are often better with grammar, writing, access to information, and are more curious and willing to explore an assignment rather than do the bare minimum and turn it in.
However, I do believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to do summer reading. I don’t know about you, but when I get a break from teaching or taking classes of my own, I want to read something that is “easy” to read and that I don’t have to analyze. It’s being able to read so-called beach reads during the summer months that reminds me how fun reading can be. So, why is it that some schools and teachers assign deep, heavy texts that require quite a bit of analysis and maybe even some research to understand them? Read the rest of this entry “
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Is this really me?
June 24th, 2010And I thought this sort of stuff only happened in movies…
…or maybe it does happen in movies and I’m now socialized to believe it should happen to me, too, and that’s why it happens.
Chicken or the egg, eh?
Or maybe it is just “normal” for there to be a bit of an identity crisis when two lives are about to merge together into one. (I hate that language. “Two lives into one.” Am I not going to have my own life anymore? I suppose, in a way, I’m not. Not the same life I had before, anyway. It’s not just about me and my decisions anymore, but us and ours.)
I keep looking at this wedding, at this marriage, at this new partnership that isn’t all that new and wondering: Is this me? I was that “radical” kid who never thought she’d get married, never wanted a diamond ring or a big white wedding. Thought she’d meet a wonderful guy and fall in love and just live without all the pomp and circumstance. I don’t know why I thought that. I’ve always been a “girly-girl.” I thought about weddings, and did idly think about my own, but I just never thought I’d do it. Maybe it was being surrounded by people who so vehemently abhorred the concept of weddings and marriage and me wanting to fit in. Maybe I really believed it. I don’t know if I can ever be sure. (Am I that much of a chameleon?)
And then I met Tim, and things were different. “Shouldn’t we celebrate our love?” he said. Yes! Yes we should! And we should celebrate our love in whatever way felt right to us. And then, all of a sudden, I found myself (ourselves) making decisions about this celebration that were traditional. Elegant. White. And I was happy with these decisions. They felt right. For us. For our families and our family to be.
And then I started reading more blogs. Maybe it’s selective hearing, but I started seeing weddings everywhere. “Don’t give in to the pressure to have this huge wedding!” (Was I pressured?) “Don’t spend that much money!” (Is there a way not to?) “Have a short dress instead of a long one!” (Am I “uncool” if I have a long dress?) “Don’t, whatever you do, wear white!” (Does the age-old symbolism really mean more than what it means to me?) I started seeing pictures of all of these really “cool” weddings. No bridal party. A single table seating twenty in the woods somewhere. Or a cabin. Or a backyard. Simple. Hip. Delicate.
And here I am. With a 10-person bridal party. Black and white. 150 guests. A golf club, a reception hall. Simple, yes – in a way, but not hip. Elegant. Traditional.
Like all good things in life, there’s no one right way to do a wedding. But how do you know what’s right?
Our wedding is not going to be hip. But, the thing is, I’ll take earnest over hip any day. And we will be earnest in our wedding planning. In our vows to each other. In our lives each and every day. Doing what is right and what is right for us. Fighting the good fight. Defending each other. I’m not saying that hip cannot be earnest, but traditional and elegant can be earnest, as well, and I think that gets lost in the shuffle.
Many people think hip weddings are more earnest because they look simpler, and simple weddings show people with the “right priorities.” (“If you don’t spend that money on a wedding, you can spend it on a house!”) But who is to say that those priorities are right for everyone? Who is to say they are right for me? For us?
I hope to live this new part of my life elegantly and earnestly, just as I tried to live this past part of my life. I’ve failed at least as much as I’ve succeeded in this, to be sure, and I will fail again. But if a wedding is to be a symbol of the marriage to come, let this be our symbol. Elegant. Earnest. Happy.
A New Guide for Title IX
June 24th, 2010As you might expect, here at Equality 1o1, we’ve written about Title IX before. Title IX was a major milestone in legislation for equality in education. And it should be a tool for parents, teachers, and students to use to have the power to ensure access to an equal education.
Of course, most people involved in education know a little something about Title IX, but we lose more of that knowledge every year. I remember the first time my mom told me that Title IX had to do with all aspects of education, not just sports, and I was surprised! Which makes me wonder how much our students know about the legislation, and how much their young parents know, as well.
Luckily, the National Women’s Law Center has released a useful guide for parents, teachers, and students all about what Title IX entails, what rights students should have, and what they can do if they feel those rights have been violated. From the website: Read the rest of this entry “
Money and Partnership
June 22nd, 2010Ahh, the “marital budget.” Even when you’re young and poor and have few financial assets, merging finances – or deciding how not to merge finances – can be tough. Tim and I are relatively young, not all that poor, have several of our own assets already, and would really like to start saving to buy a house, so you can imagine how tough our conversations about money have been. If I were to order the stressers in my life right now from most stressful to least stressful, it would probably go like this:
I can’t really complain. I am on summer vacation and for the first time in 10 years, I don’t have a summer job at all, so it could definitely be worse on my end, but that doesn’t change the fact that these are some very real issues that anyone has to deal with when they enter into any type of partnership with someone else, including the partnership of marriage.
I mean, we could make this whole process SUPER easy and say “What’s mine is yours” and put all of our money together in one account and designate someone just to take care of the finances and online taxes, but advocating feminism as I do, I have a lot of philosophical-type trouble with the merging of two lives that inevitably happens when you, you know, get married. I’m a pretty private person – I know, it looks like I put my whole life on the internet, but you’d be seriously surprised by what I don’t share! (Makes you wonder, huh? 😉 ) – and I’ve been financially independent for a while now. And so has Tim! He and I have both lived with our parents for two years after undergrad and lived in our own apartments for two years and have had steady jobs for four years. We both paid for our own grad school, we both have loans from undergrad, we both bought our own cars at some point and set up our own retirement funds and… you can see how this all adds up to be quite a financial mess. Honestly, the only way I was able to take care of my own finances was to resign myself to the fact that the money that came in wouldn’t stay there, and couple that with some creative credit card use. How will I ever be able to account for the dreaded joint finances?! I mean, I budget like I diet: “Oh, I’m so going to start eating (spending) less. Right after this piece of cake (this really cute purse)…” I could just let him take care of it, but a control freak like me giving up the death-grip on my cash flow? No way.
Luckily, Tim is really good with money (And by good, I mean he doesn’t shop and can realistically create a budget. And stick to it.) and also understands my feminist-I-won’t-let-a-man-control-my-money-no-matter-how-much-I-love-him tendencies. Also luckily, we both made it through the teacher-cuts this year and have really good jobs for, well, at least next year. And SUPER luckily, because of my parents (especially my amazing mother who welcomed me back home for two years), I don’t have to start this new chapter of my life in debt.
So, over the past few weeks we’ve been able to sit down a few times to hash out our marital cash flow. The marital budget is another story and something that I will release my death-grip from in order to have the pleasure of not dealing with it. Anyway, what follows is an outline of what we’ve decided. Like all money situations, it wouldn’t work for everyone, but I’m putting it here as an idea for those of you struggling with the same issues right now.
I suppose this sounds a lot like the “put all your money in the joint pot, let someone take care of the bills and the savings, and then that person doles out what’s left as adult allowances” method of financial merging, and maybe it will eventually turn into that, but this seems like a nice way of easing into the money-sharing without feeling like either of us are losing too much of our independence. Also, I hate the idea of “adult allowances.” Maybe it’s just the syntax, but allowances are to be used as a positive reinforcement for children for doing what they’re supposed to do during the week or month or whatever. What would my allowance be for, cooking and cleaning like a good little wife? I don’t think so.
Will this all work out? Only time will tell.
Anyone want to share what works for them? I’d love to hear thoughts!
Also, check out two really great posts on marriage and money from one of my favorite wedding blogs: here and here.
Happy Birthday to Me!
June 14th, 2010It is my birthday today! As Tim said, I am officially closer to 30 than I am to 20! I think that’s great, personally. I can’t wait to leave the unrest of my early 20’s behind and move on to the fun and security of my late 20’s/early 30’s.
I’m not one to be bummed about getting older; I’m more excited for the adventures ahead!
So, happy birthday to me!
I Advocate Feminism
June 11th, 2010It came to my attention during my blogging break, courtesy of Emily Heroy – Founder of the Gender Across Borders blog and fellow Equality 101 writer – and Liza Donnelly – Cartoonist Extraordinaire – (If you’re not at least following these ladies on Twitter or reading their work, you should be. Now!) that maybe saying “I am a feminist” is maybe not the exact correct thing to be saying. It’s no secret that feminists throughout history have worked extremely hard towards equal rights for women. But it’s also no secret that they haven’t historically worked very hard towards equal rights for all women. bell hooks noted this (I can’t remember the exact essay in which she noted this, so forgive my lack of citation. If anyone knows, feel free to drop a comment.), especially in the way feminism tended to be for the white, upper-middle class women, not for poor women or women of color.
Today, we see people claiming to be feminists and actively working against women – see anything written about Sarah Palin in the past month. We see women actively excluding other human beings from the fight for equal rights (Emily didn’t exclude other people in this post, but I refuse to link to the post that did). We see women telling other women how to be feminists. Apparently, my feminist card was taken away from me when I chose to get married and have a big wedding. It’s going to be torn up into little pieces when I write later about the crisis we’re seeing with boys and education and how we need to work to catch them up. Or when I blog about how my future husband and I are going to share money.
I can’t remember the last time I was so disillusioned with a community of people. If you read through some of my earlier archives, you’ll see how enchanted I was with this blogging community; I even chose to write my Master’s thesis about it! It was so wonderful to finally be surrounded by women who supported one another. And now it seems like these women supporting one another are just doing it in the same way as they did in high school – they’ve formed little Twitter-cliques and feminist groups, only worried about who is tweeting whose links or who is saying things that can be attacked or disagreed with or about who to criticize next for voicing opinions. This isn’t activism. This is cattiness masquerading as activism, which, in my opinion, makes it even worse than just plain old nastiness.
It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty disappointed with this community for a while. But I don’t think I’m disappointed with feminism in general. In fact, there are some really great women out there writing some really great things, and over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to highlight some of those posts (let’s start with Sophia’s blatant sarcasm regarding the Rules of Feminism). I’m honored that these people even give this blog the time of day, but I’m not so much honored to call myself a feminist anymore. Saying “I am a feminist” makes being a feminist all that I am, and makes it tough to do anything that anyone might consider “not feminist.” So, like bell hooks, I’m no longer going to say I am a feminist, but more simply that I advocate feminism. I advocate lots of things: human rights in general, better treatment of teachers, equity in education…. and the list goes on. These things aren’t wholly what I am – although they can be all-consuming. They are simply things I stand for. I’ll stand for feminism, or for a feminism that is inclusive and intersectional. But I won’t let it become all of me.
Personalizing the Educational Experience
June 9th, 2010There has been quite a bit of talk in the educational world recently about the importance of personalizing the educational experience for students. As teachers, many of us are faced with an alarming rate of students who have somehow fallen behind on state standards, and with teacher pay almost certainly being tied to student performance on state tests in the near future – and teacher and administrative control already tied to these tests – we all know that we need to do something to get students who are not otherwise engaged and involved in their education for whatever reason to become actively interested in what is going on in the classroom and, by extension, to learn the material and, hopefully, perform better on the state tests. (Of course, the objective is not really to have the students perform better on state tests. It is to have the students become interested in the subject matter and, more importantly, interested in their own education. But, if you’re teaching in a struggling school, higher performance on state tests is a definite plus.) The most obvious solution to the problem of the less-than-captivated student, it would seem, would be to make the educational experience mean something to the student personally.
But how do we go about this? I, personally, teach five classes a day with at least 20 students per class (20 is the minimum; the actual number of students in my classes more often than not approaches 30). That’s roughly 125 students each and every day, and I’m supposed to personalize the educational experience for each and every one of those students? I’m supposed to know each student’s individual passion and talents and use that information to create meaningful assignments that will spark their interest in the educational experience?
The answer to this is, of course, an emphatic YES, and it’s something that good teachers have been intuitively doing for years. There’s a reason why teachers like Jaime Escalante and Erin Gruwell had such success turning apathetic, inner-city students into engaged and excited learners. They took the time to learn about their students. They went the extra mile and then some to figure out what each student needed and then provided it. Most of all, these inspirational teachers listened when their students spoke, and used the information students offered about themselves to tailor meaningful educational programs. Read the rest of this entry “
We are Strong, We are Powerful, We are Women – The AWBC 2010
June 7th, 2010
Iconic Avon Walk for Breast Cancer banners and signs
The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer is something my mom and I have done every year since I turned 18 and was old enough to walk. (Well, we took one year off, but that was because I was starting my very first teaching job and moving away from friends and family and needed to take a year off to focus on that.) It’s something that we work very hard for – we each have to raise at least $1,800 every year, and we must train to walk 39.3 miles over the two days – and something that we both really look forward to.
As you can imagine, the weekend is always very difficult. Think about it: We’re on our feet, walking, for at least 7 hours each day, maybe more. Our feet hurt, our muscles hurt, and we’re outside, so very often we’re subjected to some nasty Chicago weather. The majority of the years we’ve walked, we’ve been lucky to have very nice weather, but this year, we weren’t so lucky.
On Saturday, the weather report on my phone stated that, for the majority of the time we were
Me in a rain poncho, making a pouty face
walking, it was at least 85 degrees with 75% humidity. This meant that we were dripping in sweat and probably very dehydrated no matter how much water we drank, and it also made it very hard to breathe. Even though I was scheduled to walk 26.2 miles on the first day, I only made it 16 miles. Astoundingly, it took seven hours to get through 16 miles because of the weather, the amount of people, and the rough terrain (due to the massive rain, much of the sidewalk areas were flooded). After seven hours of walking and being on my feet and being rained on and trying to breathe in the humid air, I couldn’t go a step further. I really wanted to keep going, but my body had reached its limits.
It had stopped raining by the time we reached camp, but the bad weather stories don’t stop there. On the Saturday night of the walks, we always stay in tents in Warren Park. These tents aren’t the heaviest things in the world, but they’re good at keeping out rain. Usually. This Saturday night,
The tents that were later blowing around in the wind
there were very strong winds in the area – tornadoes touched down near the area where I used to teach, which isn’t that close to where we were, but close enough that the storms in Chicago were very strong. We were sleeping in our tent when heavy rains started. Then the winds started and the temperature dropped suddenly to about 50 degrees. Our tent was blowing around pretty violently in the wind, and all of a sudden, the rain cover blew off of the tent, leaving just a mesh top. The rain was so heavy that all of our gear – our clothes, our sleeping bags, everything – was soaked by very cold rain. We ran outside to try to secure the tent, which worked for a while, but the winds kept blowing and the top kept coming off. After about the sixth time we had gone outside to try to secure the tent, we were so cold and wet and defeated that we called Tim to come get us and bring us home.
It was 2:00 AM by the time we got back to our home in the suburbs. We were cold, wet, hungry, and all around defeated. We talked about it for a while and realized that there was just no way that we could wake up in two hours and drive all the way back to the north side of the city. We were forced to miss the second day of the walk. You can’t even imagine how sad we were; the second day is by far the best day, and this was something we had worked for and looked forward to all year.
Me and Tim - the wonderful guy who drove in to and out of Chicago 6 times this weekend
We both went to bed, but didn’t sleep much. At 6:30 in the morning, the sky was clear and the birds were chirping and we just felt awful. If it were pouring rain in the morning, I imagine we could have moved on; we would have been disappointed to miss day two, but glad to be out of the rain. But it was a beautiful day. So, having not slept at all, we decided to get back out there. Tim (who drove us to Saturday morning’s start at Soldier Field, picked us up from the camp at midnight on Saturday, and who also picked us up from the finish at Soldier Field on Sunday) raced us up to the second day’s start and dropped us off. We were a little late, but we were there, and we finished the full 13.1 miles on a beautiful day!
Now, I’m still exhausted and sore and I feel like I might never eat enough food to make up for the calories I burned this weekend, but I feel good – better than I usually feel after the walks. So many women and
Me and Adam (an Equality 101 Editor and longtime friend) - he meets us at lunch every year
men on this walk had survived breast cancer, or were battling it as we walked. What was some rain and a broken tent compared to a cancer diagnoses? These amazing women and men wake up every day and battle cancer, and the least we could do was finish the walk to raise awareness and money to help early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of this terrible disease.
I learned so much on this walk this year. I learned that, even when I feel I can’t go one step further, I can, and I will – both physically and metaphorically. I learned that doing this walk every year – and doing it with my mom – is more important than I had previously realized. I learned that I am more passionate about breast cancer research and treatment than I had previously realized. I learned that giving up is not an option. And, most importantly, I learned that, through doing this walk year after year, that we are more strong and more powerful than we often give ourselves credit for.
The Closing Ceremony - just before it started raining again
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Follow me on the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer 2010!
June 3rd, 2010
This weekend, my mom and I will be walking 39.3 miles over two days (Saturday and Sunday) around Chicago to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer treatment and research. This year, you’ll be able to follow me every step of the way with this really cool map that I’ll be updating from my phone. You’ll be able to see pictures from the route, and read how we’re feeling and what’s going on without even leaving your computer!
This map is so cool that it will automatically update my Twitter feed and my Facebook statuses! So, if you aren’t already, you can follow me @samsanator to get automatic updates. Make sure to leave your @ replies and comments on my various sites! Boosting morale helps a great deal when you’re walking that far for that long.
Virtually cheer me on! Every message keeps us going further!
If you’re in the Chicago area, you can also cheer me on in real life by visiting any of these cheering stations! It would be GREAT to see you all there!
And, of course, it’s never too late to donate!
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Arizona’s Immigration Law and its Effect on Education
June 2nd, 2010This is just a sneak peek of my first post at Equality 101 after our break. To read the whole article, go here!
I do not live in Arizona. In fact, I’ve never even been to Arizona. When I was in undergrad, though, it seemed like Arizona would be an oasis for teachers. There were superintendents and principals at job fairs that were offering contracts to teachers right then and there, without the strenuous interview process that teachers applying in the Chicago suburbs faced. How easy it seemed to be to get a job teaching in the Phoenix area, and how wonderful the weather would be without the stifling humidity in the summer and the snow in the winter. Now, however, I wonder if Arizona is the same sort of haven it used to be for budding graduates from teacher education programs. So much is going on in that state that it’s hard to believe anyone would move there now, in this climate.
I am the eternal optimist, or, at least, I really do try to see the best in situations. I have been told that Arizona legislators had reasons for passing SB1070. I have been told that the state of Arizona is in such a bad economic situation that they had to do something. I have been told all of these things, and more, but I can’t see any positive side to a law that creates such a culture of hatred and racism that people are comparing Arizona police to the Nazis. And now, this law and the culture surrounding it has opened up avenues to effect the education of students in the state and, by extension, the country and the world.
To read the rest, go here.