Posts by Ashley:
- My family and those who are about to become my family.
- My mom, in particular, for her help and love and faith in me.
- My fiancé, who treats me as an equal partner (and who listens to my feminist analysis of pretty much everything… and sometimes even comments himself).
- Living in a world in which women HELP women instead of try to tear them down.
- Friends. Enough said.
- My awesome job that I love more every day and great coworkers who help me keep my sanity.
- You, my loyal readers and commenters who keep me on my toes.
- Food to eat and a roof over my head and clothes on my body.
- My health and happiness overall.
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Thanksgiving
November 26th, 2009
Image by sparklemotion0 via Flickr
Unfortunately, my busy self missed the deadline to submit a post to the Feminists Give Thanks salon over at Danine.net. But I wanted to say that, first, you should definitely go read what my awesome feminist friends had to say over there. And second, I wanted to spend some time musing over the things I am really thankful for before I go and eat lots of food.
This year, I am truly thankful for:
This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but I think it sums up most of the major points nicely.
You are probably tired of being asked this, but what are you thankful for this year? Share in the comments!
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On Body Image
November 25th, 2009OK, in the interest of full disclosure (and I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again): I am skinny.
Ant Attack
I’m not saying this or showing you this for any reason other than just to set the stage for this post. There are quite a few people who know me personally who read this blog, and I guess I just want to jump the gun on a slew of comments that might say something like “Skinny people don’t know what it’s like to have a bad body image” or “What do you know about bad body image? I bet you have never had to think about your weight for your whole life.” Before you start leaving stuff like that in my comments section, go read this post (tweeted by @illusionists and written by @DaraChadwick) and then come back and see if you want to write anything like that.
The point here is this: Skinny people do experience bad body image. Everyone does! Well, maybe not everyone. That is a sweeping generalization and I do hate sweeping generalizations, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t at one point wish something was different about his/her body. For example, when I started the This is What a Beautiful Bride Looks Like website, I received several e-mails saying that the site was pointless because, even if these women didn’t like the way they looked on a daily basis, they obviously felt better about themselves on this one day because it was “their day.” I had someone tell me that no bride looked at her wedding pictures and saw anything other than beauty and happiness. The sad truth of it is that for every e-mail I received saying something like that, I also received an e-mail from a bride telling me that she didn’t even want to look at her wedding pictures because she hated herself that much.
To tell someone that he or she has no right to talk about body image is absurd and, really, just plain rude. To say that skinny people don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to body image or to tell a bride that she’s crazy to think anything less than she is beautiful or anything along those lines is just perpetuating the myth that images in the media and entertainment industries don’t affect us all, and that skinny people are always happy with themselves.
I want to be honest without getting too personal here. Food and I have not always had the best relationship. I remember being a bigger kid, and to this day I hate looking at my dance pictures – you know, those group portraits the studio has taken to advertise with all the kids in their costumes before the big recital. But then, around seventh grade, I grew tall and thin seemingly overnight. I got contacts instead of my big glasses. I got braces to straighten my crooked teeth. I was a different person. Well, not really. I was the same person with a different look. But I felt the same. And things pretty much stayed that way until just before I went to college. I don’t know if it was real or just in my head, but I felt like I was gaining weight, and I was so afraid of the dreaded “Freshman 15” that I became a vegetarian, ate two meals a day (well, that is if you can call a bagel or pasta and a granola bar a meal…), and hit the gym every day (sometimes twice a day) during my freshman year of college. I believe I lost 15 pounds. Even my mom said to me once when I was home over break that I didn’t look good. My friends told me that I was pale and unhealthy-looking and that my usual energy was gone.
Fortunately for me, that was enough to make me rethink my eating patters and, while I still visit the gym at least every other day and am still a vegetarian (although that has since morphed in to more of a political thing than a “health” thing), I do feel better and healthier because I eat more.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve completely stopped looking at myself in the mirror on some days, pinching this and wishing to be rid of that. It just means that I am doing my best to be healthy and love myself for who I am. But it seems it might always be somewhat of a struggle, no matter what anyone says.
Us feminists are always trying to get people to accept human beings for who they are and not judge a book by its cover, so to speak. Well, I would urge you to really do this, and know that just because someone is skinny, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have no idea what it means to hate their body.
And, with that, I’m off to eat copious amounts of delicious Thanksgiving food. 🙂
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Privilege
November 19th, 2009I just need to say something. Just to vent.
Privilege (white privilege, class privelige, male privilage, what have you) is not necessarily a bad thing. You don’t choose how or where or in what situatuon you’re born. I have privilege by accident of birth, and I do try to explore that privilege and what it means within the greater picture of society.
So, I don’t see being privileged as being a bad thing. What IS a bad thing, though, is entitlement. To expect certain things to be handed to you because of your privilege is wrong. To deny someone something that you expect to be handed to you just because they are less privileged than you is wrong. To pretend that privilege doesn’t exist is wrong.
I just read an article – of course, I can’t find it now, but will post it if I do – that said that the pay gap between women and men is a myth. And that is just one example, but I’m sure you can think of others. I’ll spare you from a list of them all here. And it just struck me then that we have such a long way to go. If people can’t even admit their privilege and admit that discrepancies exist, we have farther to go than I thought.
That is all. Thanks for letting me vent.
Literature Review: Works Cited
November 12th, 2009Because I must cite my sources! (To see the entire literature review, click here.)
Works Cited
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. “Potentials and Limitations of Discourse-Centred Online Ethnography.” Language@Internet, 5 (2008), article 9. 7 July 2009 <http://www.languageatinternet.de>.
Aronson, Pamela. “Feminists or ‘Postfeminists’?: Young Women’s Attitudes toward Feminism and Gender.” Gender and Society 17.6 2003. 903-922. Web. 7 Oct 2009. JSTOR. Retrieved at Elmhurst College Library. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594676>.
Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Amy Richards. ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Buschman, Joan K. and Silvo Lenart. “‘I Am Not a Feminist, but…’: College Women, Feminism, and Negative Experiences.” Political Psychology 17.1 1996. 59-75. Web. 7 Oct 2009. JSTOR. Retrieved at Elmhurst College Library. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3791943>.
hooks, bell. “Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression.” Feminist Theory From Margin to Center. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000. 18-33. –. “The Significance of Feminist Movement.” Feminist Theory From Margin to Center. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000. 34-42.
–. “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Among Women.” Feminist Theory From Margin to Center. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000. 43-67.
Kirsch, Gesa E. “Friendship, Friendliness, and Feminist Fieldwork.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Summer 2005: 2163-2172. MLA International Biography. Elmhurst College Library. Web.23 Jul 2009. < http://wf2dnvr17.webfeat.org:80/4nxUM1538/url=http://content.ebscohost.com/pdf10/pdf/2005/SIG/01Jun05/17328695.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=17328695&S=R&D=sih&EbscoContent=dGJyMNHr7ESeqLQ4yOvqOLCmrlGep7JSr6i4SbGWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGutlC1prBNuePfgeyx44Hy7fEA>.
Lindquist, Julie and David Seitz. The Elements of Literacy. New York: Longman, 2009.
Miller, Carolyn R. and Dawn Shepherd. “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.” The Norton Book of Composition. Susan Miller, ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. 1450-1473.
Miller, Hildy. “The Impact of Women’s Studies on Rhetoric and Composition.” Transforming the Disciplines: Women’s Studies Primer. Ed. Elizabeth L. McNabb, et al. New York: The Haworth Press, 2001. 17-22.
Rhodes, Jacqueline. “‘Substantive and Feminist Girlie Action’: Women Online.” College Composition and Communication Sep 2002: 116-142. JSTOR. Elmhurst College Library. Web.23 Jul 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512105>.
Szwed, John F. “The Ethnography of Literacy.” Literacy A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 421-429.
Literature Review: Theoretical Framework
November 11th, 2009This continues a series of posts that, all together, comprise my literature review for my Master’s thesis research. You can view all of the posts by clicking here.
What follows is a brief section about my theoretical framework for my project. Enjoy!
Feminist activists online use blogs and websites to disseminate information, and they use their unique experiences as women in order to write about woman issues, but how do they create a community of feminists online in order to share information and reach an audience? The easy answer to this is that they use literacy practices to connect with other feminist writers online. I plan to interview several feminist bloggers about their literacy practices and analyze their answers according to John F. Szwed’s five elements of a literacy event in order to find similarities and discrepancies between the bloggers’ answers, as well as gain a better definition of feminism and feminist blogging. Szwed uses five categories – text, or what is being written; context, or under what circumstances the reading and writing is being done; function, or what purposes and uses the reading and writing served; participants, or who is involved in their reading and writing process; and motivation, or what tensions, desires, or needs motivate the writers and readers – to analyze literacy events. By breaking up the information presented to me through interviews with bloggers into these five categories, I can analyze the information and look for patterns and discrepancies between the bloggers’ processes of reading and writing online. This, in turn, will help me come to conclusions about how communities are formed online through literacy events.
Completing an ethnography about several writers’ literacy practices online and deciphering how these writers create a community online will be a difficult task; each blogger’s style can be so different and it takes a community of people to spread the word about blogs in order to get the kind of readership needed for real change. Also, the nature of the internet is such that there is no one “site” to observe. Therefore, I have decided that this study of feminist bloggers must be a combination of a participant-observation research of a field site and ethnographic interviews in order to complete a discourse centered online ethnography. According to this article by Jannis Androutsopoulos, an online ethnography “combines the systematic observation of selected sites of online discourse with direct contact with its social actors” (2). I will be using several feminist blogs as sites and evidence of texts, and I will also conduct several interviews with the bloggers themselves to collect their ideas of literacy and how this burgeoning technology effects how they read, write, discuss, and share information. I will use Androutsopoulos’ definition and outline of an online ethnography to form my methodology for this project.
However, throughout this project, I must keep in mind that I am not only an observer of this community, but I am also a participant of it. In her article, “Friendship, Friendliness, and Feminist Fieldwork,” Gesa Kirsch illuminates possible problems with friendships and how they interact with fieldwork and posits the following advice: “Unlike friendships, which develop over time and are built on reciprocal trust and shared information and activities, interviews are likely to be asymmetrical interactions, with one party—the party generally with the most institutional power—asking the questions and the other answering. While feminists have worked hard to make these interactions mutually beneficial, to encourage the exchange of information, and even to propose the possibility of a friendship between researcher and participant, such relationships are still based in large part on an interview process whereby the flow of information is one-sided” (2165). Feminists work to undo patriarchy and power relations on every level, and the power relationship between interviewer and interviewee is no different. In order to conduct an interview that is mutually beneficial and does not play in to a hierarchical power structure, I must keep the interviews open to dialogue and input. Luckily, I already know some of the prospective participants from my undergraduate studies, and all of them are people with whom I have shaped an online relationship already, which will help me conduct these interviews. Although it will be beneficial, my previous involvement in this community could also cause bias in my research, as well as in the gathering of data, which is also something of which I must be aware.
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Literature Review: Blogging as a Genre
November 11th, 2009This continues a series of posts that, all together, comprise my literature review for my Master’s thesis research. You can view all of the posts by clicking here.
What follows is a brief section that works to define blogging as a genre as it relates to feminism. Enjoy!
While the radical feminists of the 1960s and 1970s networked their writings by referencing each other within the texts, today’s networked writing shows itself in hyperlinked form on the Internet. The entire premise of social networking websites like Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter is to connect, or network, with other people or articles through various links either shared by the sites themselves, or from person to person. Personal blogs can also share this networked quality; blogs are a “…hybrid genre of writing in digital spaces. As a log, they stretch back to the genre of journal and diary writing, but as a web text, they encourage the linking to other networks, both by the blog owner and users of the blog” (Lindquist and Seitz 184). In order to better find and share information, as well as cultivate a loyal audience, bloggers tend to form communities of people who have the same goals in mind. Each blogger has his/her own unique style (some might post cartoons, others might post academic responses, some might muse on or share opinions about certain subjects, etc.), but bloggers with the same end goal are likely to combine efforts, collaborate, comment on each other’s stories, and share each other’s information. Often bloggers will post links to favorite websites in the sidebars next to the individual blog posts, as well as links to other blogs or web pages within the individual posts themselves. This creates a network, or a kind of community, between bloggers similar to the linked texts of the feminists in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the article, “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog,” Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd set out analyzing blogs in order to discover many things about blogs as a genre, including why blogging caught on so quickly, what the motivations behind bloggers are, what rhetorical work blogs perform and how they perform this work, and how to define blogs as a genre. In order to answer these questions, Miller and Shepherd analyzed a random selection of personal blogs, well-known blogs, and evaluative criteria within blogging communities. Miller and Shepherd look at the history of blogs in this article, as well as the history surrounding their emergence. They discuss MTV’s The Real World and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the tension between public and private that emerged there. At this point in time, the world was trying to make celebrities into real people and real people into celebrities. They mention that cell-phone ownership and the appearance of memoirs also added to the need for people to share information, and also point out the major tenants of blogs as a genre. They say, “content is the most important feature of a blog” (1458), and that there is a general expectation that links to other relevant content should also be provided, as well as the format of the most recent post appearing first on a site. There is also the expectation that blogs are primarily nonfiction: “The blogging subject engages in self-disclosure, and as we noted earlier the blog works to bind together in a recognizable rhetorical form the four functions of self-disclosure: self-clarification, social validation, relationship development, and social control” (1468). Blogs truly are the fastest – and most economical and environmentally safe – way to disseminate information in modern times. Baumgardner and Richards agree; although internet petitions lack plans and specific agendas, the internet is “a truly essential organizing tool when it is used correctly, disseminating information about demonstrations and legislation without killing a single tree” (296). It is no surprise, then, that social media, blogging in particular, is becoming the new face of activism, especially for feminists, giving them a venue to express their ideas, create awareness, and call followers to action. People are using social media to write and distribute their ideas to a broad audience and, unlike pamphlets or other hard-copy documents, the information presented in these blogs is both easily shared to a broad audience – via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc. – and is part of a conversation. Instead of Socrates’ concern with the written word “that it stabilizes ideas, so that writing falsely represents ideas as frozen in time, ripped from the living, human situations in which they naturally move” (cited in Lindquist and Seitz 27), a blog is instead a living, breathing, changeable document to which an audience can respond, and an author can change as he/she sees fit. This kind of easily distributable dialogue is rapidly changing the way activists find and share their information.
Women have a different way of writing and sharing information than men do, though, which is what makes feminist bloggers so different than any other kind of blogger. In the essay, “The Impact of Women’s Studies on Rhetoric and Composition,” Hildy Miller first briefly explores the history of composition, beginning with Aristotle and Plato. Then, Miller moves into talking about women’s perspective on writing. She discusses the difference between men’s and women’s processes of writing, how men and women respond to rhetorical situations differently, and what it means to compose as a woman. She also discusses ways in which women experience writing differently. For example, she says many women experience writer’s block differently than men because of their long history of being silenced (21-22). According to Miller, women experience writing differently and, therefore, experience literacy events within an online community differently, which makes feminist online activism so unique.
Literature Review: Feminist Activism
November 10th, 2009This continues a series of posts that, all together, comprise my literature review for my Master’s thesis research. You can view all of the posts by clicking here.
What follows is a brief section about feminist activism and literacy. Enjoy!
Feminism has not only produced many varying definitions, but also many varying forms of activism. In their chapter titled “What Is Activism,” Baumgardner and Richards also work to define what feminist activism is and what it should be. As with their definition of feminism, they try to take a non-controversial, middle-of-the-road definition of feminist activism. They write: “Though activism can be grand or all-consuming, it is also as common and short-term as saying “That’s not funny” to a racist joke, “No” to the boss who asks only the “girls” in the office to make coffee, or calling your senator to protest…” (282). They also give examples of women activists and what they have done to protest the injustices they see. “What all these feminists have in common,” they write, “is this: they saw an injustice and use their rage to become everyday activists. One can be an activist with one’s voice, money, vote, creativity, privilege, or the fearlessness that comes from having nothing left to lose” (281).
bell hooks agrees that all forms of feminist activism are important, but stresses that theory is necessary. She posits that people can talk about their personal experiences all they want – like bloggers do – but that a solid, feminist theory is necessary for any activism. In her essay titled “Feminism,” she writes: “Personal experiences are important to feminist movement, but they cannot take the place of theory” (32). This may explain why feminist blogs that take a more analytical standpoint are more successful than blogs that simply talk about personal issues. She goes on to posit in her essay, “The Significance of Feminist Movement” that feminism and feminist activism within a family structure is incredibly important. She says that feminism within families that supports “family as a kinship structure that can sustain and nourish people… graphically address[es] links between sexist oppression and family disintegration… and to give examples… of the way family life is and can be when unjust authoritarian rule is replaced with an ethic of communalism, shared responsibility, and mutuality” (40).
While feminist activism can be on any level, and, as bell hooks posits, works best when within a familial structure and can be taught to children within the family at a very young age, activists outside the family must find other ways to spread their feminist theories. This is where literacy practices come in. In her article, “‘Substantive and Feminist Girlie Action’: Women Online,” Jacqueline Rhodes writes that “[r]adical feminists in the late 1960s and early 1970s poured out ‘temporary’ texts… that were often written collaboratively, distributed collectively and publicly through the magic of mimeography and volunteer effort…” (116-117). These texts, she goes on to say, parallel today’s cyber-culture in many ways, “not the least of which is the feminist sense of textuality that arises sometimes out of, sometimes in response to, and sometimes in direct contradiction to larger political moments” (117-118) as well as the emphasis on networking texts which creates the possibility for a community of writers calling people into action.
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Literature Review: Feminism
November 10th, 2009This begins a series of posts that, all together, comprise my literature review for my Master’s thesis research. You can view all of the posts by clicking here.
What follows is the section on the feminist movement and defining feminism. Enjoy!
For quite some time, feminists have used the power and ease of distribution of the written word to spread their ideas to a wider audience. They wrote radical texts in the form of manifestos, guides, statements of purpose, and other political texts that were often linked together – or referential to each other in some way – and were distributed quickly and publicly and often disappeared as rapidly as they appeared. Feminists have always used literacy events to spread information about their causes; from pamphlets and packets to websites and blog posts, feminists rely on the written word to create a community and recruit community members. Historically, women activists have formed communities by holding meetings and quickly distributing information. Now, however, feminists seem to have taken up a presence online, and communities of feminist bloggers are springing up seemingly out of nowhere and without a formal site or forum for discussion. How do these feminist bloggers create a community online using nothing but literacy practices? How do their processes of reading and writing online work together with others’ processes in order to create such a community?
Before we can begin to answer these questions, though, we must explore what we mean by “feminism.” Feminism has taken many forms since women first started fighting for equal rights. From the volunteer force of women including Jane Addams to activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and authors and theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, feminism has produced as many theories as it has definitions for the term. In fact, there seem to be as many definitions for feminism as there are feminists. bell hooks, one of the foremost feminist theorists of our time, discusses the problems with feminist discourse in her essay “Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression.” She says: “A central problem within feminist discourse has been our inability to either arrive at a consensus of opinion about what feminism is or accept definition(s) that could serve as points of unification. Without agreed-upon definition(s), we lack a sound foundation on which to construct theory or engage in overall meaningful praxis” (18). This is precisely the problem feminist bloggers deal with on a daily basis. Every writer has a different definition of feminism, and this can cause discrepancies and arguments within the feminist community – a community that needs solidarity to survive.
There are several feminists who have tried to define feminism; among them are Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. In their book, ManifestA: young women, feminism, and the future, they wrote an entire chapter titled “What is Feminism?” In this chapter, they work to posit many definitions of feminism. They write: “In the most basic sense, feminism is exactly what the dictionary says it is: the movement for social, political, and economic equality of men and women” (56). Although this definition is very basic, it does cover all of the issues feminists want to cover in their activism. Baumgardner and Richards take it one step further, and break down this definition:
It is a movement, meaning a group working to accomplish specific goals. Those goals are social and political change – implying that one must be engaged with the government and laws, as well as with social practices and beliefs. And implicit in these goals is access to sufficient information to enable women to make responsible choices. (56)
Baumgardner and Richards also point out that feminism is just as often described by what it is not than by what it is: it is not narrow minded; it is not about rejecting women who love makeup and designer clothes or women who decide to stay home with their children; it is not about “dissing men” (63). The list goes on, but the implications are clear: feminism must be defined by what it is rather than what it is not in order to create a radical movement necessary for change.
Most researchers and theorists agree that definitions of feminism – and, consequently, feminists – exist on a spectrum. In their 1996 study titled ‘I Am Not a Feminist, but…’: College Women, Feminism, and Negative Experiences,” Joan K. Buschman and Silvo Lenart found that college women, ages 18 to 22, strongly believed in equal rights for women and the importance of “nontraditional” gender roles, but the young women they interviewed did not necessarily identify as feminists. Their study discovered that there were varying levels of group consciousness when it came to feminism. Women who identified themselves as feminist made up 17% of the interviewees and were the strongest proponents of women’s rights and equality. The population that Buschman and Lenart define as Post-Feminists make up 35% of their population and “are more likely to see the battle for equality as a past victory than an on-going struggle” (67). The Anti-Feminists comprised about 4% of their population and such a small size did not allow them to conclude much about that part of the population. They did identify a new cluster of people who existed between the feminist and post-feminist populations. These interviewees were not satisfied with women’s status at the time, but believed that individual activism was necessary for change, not the group activism the self-identified feminists sought. Buschman and Lenart also found that, more often than not, growing up with a mother in a “nontraditional” role did not make a woman identify herself as a feminist. Experiences that did contribute to a positive view of feminism were acts of violence against women, such as rape, sexual harassment, or other forms of sexual violence.
In 2003, Pamela Aronson took this a step further in her study “Feminists or ‘Postfeminists’?: Young Women’s Attitudes toward Feminism and Gender Relations.” She noted that, in the late 1990s – around the time Buschman and Lenart completed their study – mass media was touting the feminist movement as “dead.” Aronson interviewed women in her study just like Buschman and Lenart did, but broke apart the results based on race, class, and life experience. Aronson noted basically the same definition for postfeminists as Buschman and Lenart did – that they agreed that women’s rights are important but are not active in urging for further change. She observes, as well, that negative images of feminism throughout the media could and did contribute to women refusing to define themselves as feminists. This, however, began to change with women who came of age in the 1990s, and these women began to make up “Third Wave” feminism. It is this “Third Wave” generation that Aronson interviews for her study, and discovers almost the same spectrum of feminism that Buschman and Lenart did. They found that about one fourth of the women in their study identified themselves as feminists, 19% of their interviewees fell into the category of “I’m a feminist, but…” and roughly one third of their interview participants fell into the category of “I’m not a feminist, but…” (913-917) The final quarter of their research population were unsure of how they felt about feminism or had never thought about feminism. They did not, however, find any part of their population with anti-feminist sentiments. What they did find was that women who took the “I’m not a feminist, but…” approach were “associated with more privileged racial and class backgrounds” (919). Those who identified as feminists in their study were mostly college educated or had taken women’s studies courses at some point. They further state:
Those who qualified their feminist identities and those who had never thought about feminism were disproportionately from less privileged racial and class backgrounds… were college-educated, working-class women and/or women of color who came to feminism as a result of assumptions of equality when growing up. (919)
This suggests that, although many women in modern society do align themselves with feminism and agree with feminist principles, there is a good part of the population who either does not think about feminism or, as bell hooks states throughout the essays in Feminist Theory From Margin to Center, has felt excluded by the predominantly white, upper- or middle-class, college-educated mainstream feminism. It seems that “feminism” may never be concretely defined, but that it is best to allow the definition of the term to be fluid and allow each individual feminist to take her – or his – own definition. After all, as the Second Wave feminists said, the personal is political.
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“I’m not a feminst, but…” Continued
November 9th, 2009
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To follow up on my previous post on this subject, here’s something interesting from a more recent (2003) study by Pamela Aronson called “Feminists or ‘Postfeminists’?: Young Women’s Attitudes toward Feminism and Gender Relations”:
I have shown that the feminist identification without qualification and the “I’m not a feminist, but…” approach are associated with more privileged racial and class backgrounds. The feminists were more likely to be college educated, and most had taken women’s studies courses. Those who qualified their feminist identities and those who had never thought about feminism were disproportionately from less privileged racial and class backgrounds, but their life experience differentiates them from the other groups as well. The “qualified” feminists [“I’m a feminist but…” feminists] were college-educated, working0class women and/or women of color who came to feminism as a result of assumptions of equality when growing up. Among the women who had never thought about feminism, two-thirds had become parents early in life, and none had pursued a college degree…
This study also suggests that having the space to think about political issues such as feminism may be a luxury that some young women, especially single mothers, cannot afford…
Most important, whether or not young women call themselves feminists, they support feminist goals. In fact, the young women I interviewed were more supportive of feminism than had been found in past research, and none expressed antifeminist sentiments.
Well, it looks like some of the commenters on the last post were right on! How do you feel about the excerpts from this study? Are they closer tho what you would expect to find now, in 2009?
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“I’m not a feminist, but…”
November 9th, 2009
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“I’m not a feminist, but…”
We’ve probably all heard this phrase spoken before, and we are definitely aware of its implications. I personally know several women who align themselves with feminism and the women’s movement, but for one reason or another refuse to define themselves as feminists. But why is this?
In a 1996 study titled “‘I Am Not a Feminist, but…’: College Women, Feminism, and Negative Experiences,” Joan K. Buschman and Silvo Lenart set out to answer this question. They gave women, ages 18 to 22 years old several questionnaires in order to find out why some women defined themselves as feminists and some didn’t.
What they discovered was interesting. Instead of trying to analyze all of it right now, I will just put a few quotes here and let you tell me what you think about the results.
Research centered on the attitudes of young women has shown that they willingly support both equality for women and expansive notions of appropriate gender roles.
We have argued that past formulations of the determinants of consciousness development – exposure to nontraditional gender roles – are no longer definitive, or even relevant, predictors of support for feminism.
Most interesting among our results was the specification of an attitude cluster which does not fit neatly into either the feminist or the post-feminist camp. These women, which we call the “precarious feminists,” are the largest group within our sample and are probably a good reflection of most young college women today. They have a moderately strong group identification as well as strong beliefs in individualism. One possible explanation for this result is to argue that such women recognize the need for group action generally, but in their individual cases feel that they will advance on their own merit. A sense of “not me” may be at work. A second possible explanation is that this distinct attitude pattern may be the result of the cross-pressures between a recognition that women’s status still needs improvement and a negative framing of the women’s movement in popular discourse.
The label “feminism” evokes many more negative responses than does the term “women’s movement” across all clusters.
And, finally, the most interesting insight (in my opinion):
Stereotyping of the movement in popular discourse (especially in the mass media) might be the more compelling cause of disassociation and should be the focus of more systematic research. Our final analyses show that the so-called “nontraditional” variable does not seem to operate any more… Rather, salient negative experiences (such as sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence) did predict support [for feminism] across all clusters.
What do you think about this research? Is it outdated? Right on? Are there any other sources out there that extend this research? What about in real life? Have you encountered people who do not define themselves as feminist, but align themselves with the feminist movement?
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Are We Excluding People?
November 2nd, 2009
Image by Guillermo Esteves via Flickr
This is just a thought at the moment, but aren’t we, as feminist bloggers, excluding not only those who don’t speak English, but those who can’t access technology?
An interesting conversation took place a while back in a grad class, and I didn’t blog about it then because, frankly, this blog wasn’t started yet, so it’s been rumbling around in my mind ever since. It went something like this:
Lady: Well, the great thing now is that the information gap is closing!
Me: How so?
Lady: Because everything is online! You can just type something in and it shows up and there you have it. Literally anyone can access it!
Me: Not everyone. You have to have access to a computer. Not to mention the internet.
Lady: Everybody has access to the internet! I mean, you can take your laptop anywhere and get free wi-fi.
Me: Sure. But you have to have a laptop. I paid $1400 for mine. I can imagine that might be an issue for some people.
Lady: Oh. Yea.
OK, so what can we do about reaching those who don’t have access to technology? Or what is being done? (What are you doing? I’d love to hear!) I have to admit, I’m not too well-versed with “real-world” feminism, and by that I mean what is going on outside the blogosphere. My activism has been totally online, mostly because I’m not sure what else can be done in my area, and I’m not sure how to find out. Leave some comments!
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Small Strokes
November 1st, 2009
Cover via Amazon
I love it when research about feminist activism and feminism points you to a quote that explains exactly what you’re trying to do with your own activism. This is from ManifestA: young women, feminism, and the future by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, and I feel it describes exactly how I feel about feminist activism:
Though activism can be grand or all-consuming, it is also as common and short-term as saying “That’s not funny” to a racist joke, “No” to the boss who asks only the “girls” in the office to make coffee, or calling your senator to protest… (282)
Also important to remember:
The first myth is that activism will bring an immediate and decisive victory. In reality, the journey to justice is usually [darn] long. So while the click of consciousness brings immediate gratification in itself, social change, even on a small scale, is slow and arduous work. (283)
The second myth about activism is that it has to be huge… (285)
The third myth is the importance of the superleader… It is a myth that effective activism is the result of one person, or even a few. (285)
Although we may not yet have a critical mass of Third Wave activists, we need to dispel the fourth and final myth: that our generation is politically, um, impotent. Our purported lack of activism is usually chalked up to vague notions of apathy. We were reared by the boob tube, and made cynical by the cold-war politics and consumerism of the Reagan-Bush era. For a while, ad executives and media pundits conjectured that Generation X was simply lazy and irresponsible – fulfilling the slacker persona of the early nineties. The apathy rap has some truth when it comes to feminism. Some people do believe that everything is fine now, and that there is no need for feminism, either because they have low expectations or because they haven’t been in the outside world long enough to experience the limitations brought on by sexism… But history tells us that for each big leap, for each crystal-clear moment in which people refused to give up their seats on the bus or at the lunch counter, there is a time collecting energy and stating new visions – a time of pre-emergence. Understanding that change takes time will lead us to a redefinition of our generation politically. (286-7)
How do you feel about feminist activism right now? How do you define it? How do you participate in it? I’d be interested to read your comments!
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Breast Cancer Awareness – 10/31
October 31st, 2009Here ends our breast cancer awareness month journey. I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures and found the facts and links useful.
Please, please consider donating to my Avon Walk. Every dollar truly makes a difference. To donate, click here.
See all Breast Cancer Awareness Month posts
Walkers walking throuh downtown. No better way to raise awareness than to walk through the heart of Chicago!
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Breast Cancer Awareness – 10/30
October 30th, 2009Support Breast Cancer Awareness here.
See all Breast Cancer Awareness Month posts
Let’s finish off this series with a few more pictures, eh?
Sooo many walkers and the beautiful Chicago skyline on a beautiful day:
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Breast Cancer Awareness – 10/29
October 29th, 2009Support Breast Cancer Awareness here.
Here’s another picture from the Avon Walk! My friend, Adam, and me hanging out at lunch:
Breast Cancer Awareness – 10/28
October 29th, 2009I prefer 2 days, but those who participate in the walk are AWESOME! (My mom did it a few times!)
Support Breast Cancer Awareness here.
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Breast Cancer Awareness – 10/27
October 27th, 2009The White House went pink for breast cancer awareness, too!
Support Breast Cancer Awareness here.
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This Is What A Beautiful Bride Looks Like
October 27th, 2009
Wedding Weightloss Ad
I am becoming increasingly frustrated with wedding mentality and pressure. There is so much pressure to be perfect when you’re preparing to be a bride, and it’s sad to me how many women buy into this. I, myself, bought into it! I felt I had to do EVERYTHING perfectly, and, instead, ended up doing everything wrong – because I was trying too hard.
Then, something just… clicked. I was poking around Facebook, and saw a trend in the ads on the right side of my screen. Almost all of them were for a Wedding Weightloss routine that, of course, since I’m a bride-to-be, I must follow.
Let me pause for a second here to divulge something about me that you may not know. I am thin. Skinny, even. So I really have no right to complain about my body, and I try not to, but even skinny bodies come with their own body image issues. (You won’t believe what I’m adding to my gown and wearing underneath my gown against my principles to get the figure I want. (Or you will believe it because you’ve seen it or you’ve been there.)) And, don’t get me wrong. I have a strapless wedding gown, and I am following a workout routine for my arms. But I will not NOT NOT diet. It is unhealthy and unnecessary.
But the pressure to be perfect and look perfect doesn’t stop at thinness. I’ve always felt my teeth were crooked and too big and my worst feature on my face. That was until I went to get my eyebrows done for our engagement pictures and the eyebrow tech told me I had “quirky” eyebrows and then launched into a spiel about how my face wasn’t perfect. She framed it as a good thing, but I didn’t hear any of that. And now I can’t stop focusing on my quirky eyebrows.
Enough is enough! I am not perfect! (Weird, I know.) But I will still be a beautiful bride! EVERY bride is beautiful! We need to stop feeling the pressure to be perfect! And there seemed to be no better way to do this than to show the world what REAL beautiful brides really look like. So, I created a tumblr to do just that. It is called This Is What A Beautiful Bride Looks Like, and I’m looking for pics of REAL brides because you are all REALLY beautiful! You can submit pics to me via e-mail – samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com – or tweet it @samsanator.
Let’s show the bridal industry what real beauty looks like!
Breast Cancer Awareness – 10/26
October 26th, 2009
Find The Cure
Have I posted this one yet? Another great breast cancer resource: BreastCancer.org
Support Breast Cancer Awareness here.
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Blogging Burnout
October 26th, 2009
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I’m going to go ahead and just say this, and hope it doesn’t sound too woe-is-me or self-centered or any of that.
I am doing much more than any normal person should ever be expected to do.
I no particular order: I’m planning a wedding, writing a Master’s thesis, blogging for a really great travel itinerary company, fundraising for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, and teaching high school.
There. I said it. I’m not going to spend this blog post complaining about it. I’ve spent enough time complaining about it. I know everyone has a lot going on. Lately, I’ve read more blog posts than I can count about the need to take a break for real-life stuff. I’m relatively new to the activist blogosphere – I started this blog in June, but have been keeping some form of blog since undergrad – but I’m going to guess that real-life hits in the fall because the entire world operates on the lazy-summer-but-back-to-work-in-fall model that we encounter during school.
I originally started this blog to keep track of my work for grad school, and along with that, I wanted to write about my personal experience of feminism. Instead of doing that, now, I feel as if I am analyzing everything. Why do I do this? Because my readers like my analysis. I get more hits and comments on days with posts that are analytical in nature than I do on posts that are intensely personal. And I feel like my analysis adds more to the discussion than my personal experiences do. And I like analyzing things; it’s just what I do – what I have always done. But it’s a lot of work to pick everything apart to pieces all of the time, and, quite frankly, it makes me feel awful by the end of it. There is so much in this world that is not right, and the more I focus on it, the more depressed I get about it.
I’ve been struggling with this for a while now, and two weeks ago, my fiancé and I took a trip to Madison to get our engagement pictures taken, and to just shut out the world for a while. I left my computer at home. I turned my cell phone off. And a strange thing happened: I felt happy. So, we came back from Madison and I left my computer off for two weeks, except to do a little bit of homework.
But then, I started to feel bad again. I made a commitment to this blog, and I made a commitment to feminism and activism, not to mention that this blog and the community surrounding it is sort of the focal point of my Master’s thesis, which is far from finished. I started to feel like, if I couldn’t do it all, I wasn’t worth much – as a feminist, an activist, a blogger, a person.
This simply isn’t true, and I must remedy this situation. I am worth a lot, and this blog means a lot to me (and, I hope, to you, too). I need to stop thinking that if I can’t do everything I am worth nothing.
Apparently Wednesday was Love Your Body Day. Well, I’m making today Love Myself day, and I am making this promise to myself and to my readers: I am going to love myself enough to know and respect my limits, and to not talk myself into feeling worthless when something takes a little longer to get done than I expected. I am going to feel great about all of the good things I am doing, and I am going to make time in my life for the things that are important to me.
I encourage all of you who are feeling overwhelmed with life and blogging and activism right now to make the same promise to yourselves, and if you do, please post a link in the comments.