#gretchenheaton

[drcknowledgeandpower]

"I had two options: one was to remain silent and wait to be killed, and the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one" 

[drcknowledgeandpower]

Knowledge and Power

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2866034/Leo-DiCaprio-leaves-Miami-party-20-models-parties-without-girlfriend-Toni-Garrn.html

I didn't think was important until I read "The 40-year-old walked out 'with 20 girls. Leo and 20 girls. He is my hero,' a source said. 'He was overflowing with models everywhere.' 

The fact that he is considered a hero for leaving a party with 20 girls shows the double standard in society. Girls are looked at as accessories and the media perpetuates that stigma. 

[drcknowledgeandpower]

Cartoon depicting of a lot of opinions I have heard regarding the nude photo leaks. I think this is an interesting topic to think about, is it really the solution to tell people to not take pictures or to dress a certain way? 

[monicacollado]

Women

Denzel, a contestant for America's Next Top Model.  He considers himself to be a man's man.  He plays football and he is the man of any relationship.  At one point during the show he was arguing with another man, a gay man. While arguing he kept wondering why the other man was acting like such a girl.

To Denzel women are weak, tearful, and soft.  Although he loves women he did not seem to think highly of them.

[drcknowledgeandpower]

As posted from The Guardian: Taylor Swift has been called a prodigy, a “feminist’s nightmare,” and – most annoyingly and most often – boy-crazy. People are so obsessed with Swift’s supposedly too-active dating life that there’s an entire wiki dedicated to her ex-boyfriends. Timelines of her relationships have been published by Billboard, Business Insider and Glamour magazine. Any song that Swift releases immediately sparks speculation about which famous ex is featured therein – her creative output always somehow ends up tied to a list of men. It can’t be fun for a young, talented, wildly-successful woman to constantly have her music bonafides attached to her love life. So when a Vanity Fair reporter asked the singer-songwriter last year if she was “boy-crazy”, Swift called her out: For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated – a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way – that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist. And now, in her new Blank Space video, Swift performs the very unflattering image that the public has foisted upon her, as if to say: You want boy-crazy? I’ll give you boy-crazy! Did Taylor Swift make you mad? (Courtesy of Ryan Seacrest) This is the Taylor Swift we’ve been waiting for: the Taylor Swift who smiles while she offers up a hearty “fuck you”. For the full article, please go on: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/11/taylor-swift-blank-space-video-woman-boy-crazy

[olesuk2001]

Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism by FCKH8.com

Facing a future where women are still paid 23% less than men for the same work, and where 1 in 5 women are raped or sexually assaulted in gender-based violence,…

[drcknowledgeandpower]

I watched this the other day and thought it would be an interesting video to bring up since some of you might have seen it.  My roommates and I are slightly obsessed with American Horror Story.  This season on American Horror Story’s “Freak Show” they casted actual “freaks” as the characters in the carnival.  Before the season started, they interviewed the cast about their disabilities and why they considered themselves to be a “freak”.   When I came across Erika Ervin who plays Amazon Even, due to the context of the name Amazon Eve, I thought Ervin might have been the tallest woman in the world making her a suitable character to play as one of the “freaks”.  All the other characters had something considered to be different due to biological causes whether it was the smallest woman in the world or the man whose limbs did not fully form.  However, Erika Ervin was simply a transgender woman.  Ervin’s interview was very interesting and it shared her struggles of being transgender and her experiences getting to where she is.  Ervin also brought up several issues of topics such as the AIDS association with the gay community and societal expectation of a woman’s appearance.  While it was interesting to hear her story and see how she wound up playing a part on American Horror Story, I found it hard to get over the fact that all the other casts had physical and biological differences that deviated from the norm and Ervin was placed inside this category.  I think this relates to the idea that gender is a social construct, however, many people view it as something that is natural and biological.  It also made me think of how transgender woman are viewed as more of a “freak” to society compared to a transgender man.  In my opinion, American Horror Story would never have casted a transgender man as one of the characters because for a woman to be masculine is more accepted than a man to be feminine.  I am interested to see how American Horror Story plays out and the role “Amazon Eve” will take on in the season.

[drcknowledgeandpower]

When People Who Are Supposed To Have Our Best Interests At Heart, Don't...

For the Students in Transition Seminar, we have to go to various on-campus events. One of the required events was a Health and Wellness Presentation. For the most part, it was great. I learned where all the health centers are, how to get counseling if I need it, and so on. However, when the (white, male) speaker got to the topic of alcohol, he encouraged us not to drink and used the sentence "I'm not victim blaming, but why would you put yourself in a situation like that?"

There was no mention of enthusiastic consent, or grey rape, or what constitutes date rape. Nothing. Just a mention that you can get free condoms and dental dams at the health centers. As for domestic violence or relationship violence, there was a brief mention of a center "down the street."

The presentation wasn't exactly made any better by the really mature college students laughing every time he said "penis" or "vagina."

Just goes to show that not everyone thinks the way DRC does.