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Week 10 Outside Post

I had a conversation with my roommate this week about Megan Trainor’s new song “No”. The song is about a woman who is hit on when she goes out to bars/parties and how she says no to the men that approach her. The very basic and clear lyrics of the chorus are:

“My name is no My sign is no My number is no You need to let it go You need to let it go Need to let it go Nah to the ah to the no, no, no”

My roommate had come home upset because she had worked with a girl who is “antifeminist” because she is “sick of the feminism shit”. This person quoted lyrics from a verse that read:

All my ladies, listen up

If that boy ain't giving up

Lick your lips and swing your hips

And stated “she’s sending him mixed signals.” My roommate asked her coworker if licking your lips and swinging your hips while you are dancing is supposed to be exclusively for a man. The coworker was very unreceptive but I think this is a huge issue in our society today. It is assumed that women do things for the sole purpose of pleasing men. It is the expectation that our motivation should always be to satisfy them and it is a ludicrous idea that a woman could really be doing something for just herself. This applies to the common book in that it is very often assumed that when a woman dresses a certain way it’s to “impress” someone or to “get attention”.

I dress how I dress because it makes ME happy, because it makes ME feel good.

It’s got nothing to do with you. Don’t flatter yourself.

#stopstaringatmycollarbones #don't flatter yourself #this is for me

sageandbone

ellestanger-deactivated20200613

baawri

Say no to stereotypes, be happy everyday! [x]

Week 9 Class Post

Audre lorde, “Master Tools”

Week 7 Class Post

Being thirteen

Week 6 Class Post

This week my group presented our chapter from the Rebel Girls book titled A Politics of Participation. My specific portion of the presentation was on pleasurable political communities. The book talked about political communities building a sense of community and how that solidarity could be protective against other issues teens face, like depression. The goals of these communities are constructed to maximize participation and then events are centered around youth culture to draw youth in. The political events are designed to be enjoyable and make the youth want to attend.

A large portion of the discussion of pleasurable political communities was on the meaningful relationships the young girls create and the important social connections they become over time. The author explained that activism was such an emotional experience that the bonds formed end up being extremely strong. While this can be so beneficial in so many ways (solidarity, companionship, closeness), it can also have drawbacks.

When interviewed, many of the girls expressed sentiments like “I have nothing in common with the other girls at my school” and see other teens as “frivolous” and “unlike them”. This mindset ends up hindering the cause because the communities can be seen as closed off to new members. Judgmental and prejudiced attitudes from the young activists can become an obstacle for creating participatory political communities.

This links to my common book in that they are both examples of women being pitted against one another. Messages from society tell young girls that they are one another’s competition and you shouldn’t like someone who is more beautiful than you or more intelligent than you because she makes you look bad. Instead of seeing a woman in charge of her own sexuality, we see a slut. Instead of seeing a woman who has put on a short skirt because it made her feel good this morning, we see her trying to get attention. We have to come together and realize we are all women. We have that in common, and it’s so incredibly important. So stop trying to find ways that we are different.

#wearealike #stopstaringatmycollarbones

Week 4 Class Post

This week in class we talked about Bell Hooks and the concept of White Supremacy. A question was asked of us: What do we have to know, what do we have to understand to be able to have this shift to understand whiteness from the black imagination?

The suppression of that knowledge is what is at the heart of racism.

we need to understand the terrible events that occurred in the.

we need to understand how those events informed negative internalization of blacks about themselves (self-hate)

we need to understand how self-hate as an effect of racism has informed how blacks see whites and how they felt about us. suspicion. fear. hatred.

whites need to be immersed in black culture. where they are the minority, where they are the one who doesn’t fit in.

whites need to feel like “the other” this absence of recognition which facilitated making a group “the other”

have to be educated on the privilege they don’t know- the actions that reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign of informing who they are and how they think.

whites need to understand and be open to other’s perspectives- what blacks have gone through- listening to others’ perspectives

understand what privilege is- instead of assuming a white identity and receiving the benefits of being white.

understand the whiteness presence felt in black life- terrorizing imposition- a power that hounds, hurts, tortures. a reality that disrupts the fantasy of whiteness as representing goodness.

understand the history of slavery

understand from a third party point of view that was not a victim or a perpetrator. to offer an outsider’s objective perspective.

black and white to symbolize “good” and “evil” with whiteness meaning goodness. understanding what whiteness means from the black perspective/imagination. black folks merely invert this stereotypical racist interpretation so that black becomes synonymous with goodness and white with evilness.

Guiding Questions on Feminisms Matter

Week 3 Class Post

Below are a few of my favorite questions with my responses to the assignment we had on Feminisms Matter by Victoria Bromley:

How does considering gender as performance rather than biology help create new understanding/knowledge in relation to your interest area?

This is such a cool concept. We really do perform our gender. Our sex is different, but with everything we do, our clothing, our hair styles, our mannerisms and the way we speak, all contribute to how we act out our gender in society. In relation to my common book, we act our gender through our dress. At the same time, others evaluate our gender based on the clothing we wear to present ourselves to the world. You see someone (man or women, male or female) wearing a dress and you assume they are female, because that is a huge component that goes into how one evaluates the gender of the people around them.

How does considering the language used to discuss your interest area help generate understanding of that thing? (Remember the move from arguing to asking. For example, if someone says women are less capable athletes than men instead of arguing you ask why would that person use this language to discuss gender and athletics?)

For example, if someone were to say “she’s a slut” when they see a woman dressed provocatively. I could ask why do you say that and what about her and what about your experiences lead you to say that. It’s important to remembers that the statement reflects more about the sayer than the subject; it’s about their thought processes and what they have learned and been taught throughout their lives.

How does considering your interest area as undefinable affect your understanding of that thing? Of yourself? Of others?

I think that considering my area of interest as undefinable actually creates a better understanding. Because there are no “rules” or “boundaries” of a concept that is undefinable, it allows the issue and the movement towards equality in that aspect to be flexible and to flow and apply to more than one conversation or topic. Women’s dress is used to evaluate them, it’s used to categorize women into “good girls” and “bad girls”. Women’s dress is regulated and controlled by schools, places of employment, our state, all the way up to our federal government. Women’s dress is used as an excuse for why something bad happened to her or why something was done to her. Women’s dress and how it is seen and interpreted is not definable. This gives me a better understanding of myself and of those around me because it tells me that at any time: I am being judged and evaluated on the clothing I put on my back that day, and that someone may or may not tell me that what I am wearing is not appropriate, and that what I choose to wear may be used as the “cause” of a sexual assault on me.

#feminism matters #feminismsmatter #victoriabromley #doing gender #stopstaringatmycollarbones #she was asking for it

GORAL’S STORY ABOUT HER NEPHEW NOT UNDERSTANDING HER GENDER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T DRESS FEM.

Feminist Speakers and More

Connect back to Free The Nipple Post

http://www.TucsonYouthPoetrySlam.org https://twitter.com/tucsonyouthslam

Dress Code Poetry

Poetry Aloud happens twice a year at The Ware Center in Lancaster, the combined efforts of F&M's Writer's House and Millersville University's Creative Writer...

Privilege Is Never Having To Think About It

Week 5 Class Post

2/22/16: From our class discussion this week, we talked about Bell Hooks’s Idea of White Supremacy. We had a great conversation about European beauty standards that all women are supposed to conform to. Women with dark skin straighten and dye their hair, bleach their skin, choose Instagram filters to lighten their features, and wear “white clothes” (NorthFace jackets, UGG boots, lululemon leggings). They are told that these are the things that they need to do to be “beautiful”. There is this concept that white is code for “classy” because all of these products and items that are “white” are expensive.

I thought this connected so well with this spoken word poem by Andrea Gibson. Andrea Gibson talks about privilege as something that you have if you don’t have to think about it. Andrea talks about her interaction with a black woman who told her that she can only dress like she doesn’t care BECAUSE she is white. The black woman tells Andrea that a woman of color can’t do this without being looked down on, being seen as trashy.

These two concepts are so powerful and they intersect specifically on the point of dress, even women’s dress in this example. Women’s dress is modeled after this European standard and different women are treated differently on the SAME dress based on their DIFFERENT race. Women are evaluated and judged differently by our society and culture when wearing the same thing (sweatpants and a hoodie) because they have dark skin or light skin.

Beauty is a comparative with whiteness as a standard.

These men sure aren't subtle.

Week 10 Outside Post

Double Standards.

**post picture of two different TAs

Week 9 Outside Post

** Connect to “I am not responsible for your thoughts” post

Week 7 Outside Post

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153826035400406&set=p.10153826035400406&type=3&theater

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