#mp1318

[m1sosazai]

The Price of Nice Nails

I was shocked to learn that nail salons were so cutthroat to their employees. We always hear that America is a land of opportunity, a place of diversity, but the ugly side of it, with the hatred and discrimination of immigrants, rarely comes up in the propaganda. Because we live in a modern age, and surely we’re better than that now, right?

The underpayment was less surprising. Money is power, and people want to keep that in their own hands. But I felt really bad for Ms. Ren.

[m1sosazai]

Linda Tirado’s “Hand to Mouth”

I thought the excerpt provided by the class reading was interesting, because it completely contrasted with the image of poverty provided by Pam Fessler’s plenary. Ms. Tirado’s poverty is an angry, bitter kind, with not much to be thankful for, and constant stress and annoyance as an armor against the privileged, uncomfortable world that doesn’t know how lucky they have it. Ms. Fessler, on the other hand, presented to us people that may live in apartments, who may have TVs and other tech, but still had to work a bunch of jobs, and didn’t seem quite so irritated.

I also thought Tirado’s take on men telling women to smile was great, because frankly, no one ever tells men to smile more, and if you’re going to be doing something you don’t like, why not get paid for it? (Though I suppose that’s what media stars do, since women in TV shows and anime and movies are so often these perfectly put-together glamourous girls, bubbly and high-cheekboned and smooth-skinned and always, always smiling, unless they’re crying attractively, designed to appeal to the male audience.)

[m1sosazai]

5th Plenary

I agreed with a lot of the issues raised via skits, but one thing that annoyed me about it was the mixup over sexuality and romance. For example, being asexual doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love. It means you don’t desire sex. There are plenty of asexuals in romantic relationships. Being aromantic is when you don’t want a relationship. And if you’re a girl still attracted to men even if you only have relationships with women, that would make you a bisexual homoromantic, technically.

Maybe I’m being nitpicky, but this misinformation just irritates me. A lot.

[m1sosazai]

Plenary #3

Pam Fessler’s speech was pretty interesting to me, both as a feminist and someone willing to discuss poverty. I didn’t realize the number of women in high-ranking journalism positions was so low, nor had I known that 46% of Americans still languish in poverty. That’s practically half the population! I’m not particularly interested in Welcome to Night Vale, or particularly interested in listening to radio, but hearing her snippets of reporting during the plenary gave me a new perspective on this medium, although I probably will still prefer the internet to getting news over radio.

Hearing how other girls lived in other countries was really eye-opening, as a typical self-absorbed American, because I hadn’t thought to consider how foreign girls would be suffering in less-privileged places, since it had no impact on my life here. It gives me hope that although a lot of people rely on the internet, TV, or newspapers to report on events both minor and major, out there, there will be people listening and empathizing with others abroad.

[m1sosazai]

Sexual Culture

While I’d already known about the objectification of women in modern-day society, I’ve never had a film shove it so thoroughly in my face as Dreamland 3 did. The sheer volume of undulating bodies, sexualized clothing, and misogyny present throughout the movie actually made me feel a little nauseous, and if my faith in humanity had been negative before, it’s now in the imaginary numbers region thanks to Dreamland 3.

I’m pretty sure that the sexualization of lesbian love for male pleasure is a contributing factor to most people’s homophobia, since if the amount of girl-on-girl action in music videos is any indicator of how many females actually participate in this just to get male attention, a lot of girls aren’t actually doing it because they’re gay or bi. And I will forever not be able to see two girls kissing without wondering if they’re just doing it for the fanservice from now on, that’s for sure.

[m1sosazai]

Plenary #4: Kayla Jackson

This week’s plenary had a strong theme of spirituality running through it, and how to use that to empower women. Such a topic would normally leave a lot of room for an evangelist to blather on about how accepting God would open someone to possibilities of equality or some religious rot like that, but Ms. Jackson was incredibly earnest and in fact rejected the possibility of worshipping God to empower women, which made me respect her a lot. Most of the plenary was actually about converting negative energy to positive energy, and a lot of people seem to take that as forcefully churning the anger inside you (like butter) into happy thoughts, like “haha, this is so unproductive, what am I doing”, but I disagree.

Not about the negative thoughts being unproductive - because they are. But why do the “positive thoughts” always have to be about tamping down the anger? How is suppressing the bad feelings until next they rear their heads anything but running away from the problem and even more unproductive, in some ways, than the anger and vengeful thoughts were in the first place?

I myself find anger a useful motivating tool that can spur me on to do things I might otherwise have left unfinished and undone. How many inventions have been created because someone out there thought, “I’ll show them I can do better?” How many social justice movements have been started because someone out there was angry at the way they were treated? Anger is all too often seen in our society as something shameful that needs to be hidden away (mostly if you’re a woman, to be honest, because if you’re an angry woman, you’re told to “calm down, be nicer, be polite, stop being a bitch!”). But what no one realizes is that all anger is, is undirected pure passion focused on hurting. But if you’ve got a target, and the will to refocus that passion towards a greater goal, it’s not directionless rage (anger) anymore. It’s determined energy. That, to me, is what Ms. Jackson was talking about when she spoke of turning negative energy into positive (productive) energy.