Rape culture, 11/18

As I sit in a classroom of people who criticize the idea of rape culture and whether its the laws fault for being outdated or the outfit of women. And how if these students could change something and help they would, but the truth of it is that you will NEVER understand the victimization of a victim until you are in their shoes. You see what they choose to express but the truth of it is? They will spend years if not more trying to fix the mental damage that has been done to them.
Being a victim is like stripping down every fundamental structure of your confidence and trying to rebuild when the thought that everyone around you could be the next offender.

If it were about the outfit on the girl, we wouldn't find children being sexually assaulted at a young age and we would not find rape in every culture across this country no matter the outfit of the victim.

And in arguing that because men are not told "don't do that" you are letting them learn it for themselves, Is basically saying that because we did not specifically explain to these people males that Raping another human being...how is it that some can refrain more than others.

But because I sat in a class where we can discuss the way rape culture is affected by all aspects in a society dominated by males with people who have hardly ever experienced such violence and crime...
People who will never understand a culture they live next to and haven't been involved in, I pray that they never are. I find myself at odds, with classmates, with myself, because in the same breath that I will express that it is worse to come forward and tell someone what happened I will blame the attacker long before I blame the victim and whatever they were wearing, I will also speak that the problem isn't whether our laws are outdated or how we function together or telling little boys no.
Instead... this rape culture we find ourselves surrounded by, is based solely on the fact that those who have never been a victim or have never first hand experienced the damage will never be able to change the outcome for those who do experience it.

The suppression of women with mental health disorders

You know what sucks? Anxiety.
There are days when an unexplainable feeling has washed over me and I am completely overwhelmed by everything. Nothing goes right for me on those days and unfortunately its in those times that even the tiniest drop can send my world crashing around me.

You know what's worse? The inability to explain how I feel to others.
Knowing that despite my best efforts to make words come out they will never understand how it feels to walk around with your stomach in a knot so tight you'd have to cut it to get it undone. And I feel sick. Like my ulcers are back I keep getting pains even when I'm not eating.

And because I'm a female? I must be on my period because that one statement discredits my disorder since nobody could ACTUALLY feel like that all the time.
Because I am female and because that is the only excuse to be emotional, my feelings become irrelevant to those around me.
So much so that I even excuse it myself, because "I'm sorry for acting out I'm just on my period" somehow validates my actions to others more than a mental health disorder.

And people won't understand, they never do. But it seems almost irrelevant to argue that my anxiety is real and I am cracked at every edge inside, but I have been taught not to show it because feelings are weak.

But I am not.

Quite honestly? People with these disorders are the strongest that have existed fighting without revealing what could actually be going on.

Because it's "not real", "its all in our heads", "we're worried about nothing"
As if we don't already know that.

We know.

We cannot validate ourselves without the fear and knowing that someone is going to invalidate us everytime.

And no it's not everyday I fall apart, some days are better than others. I am not always drowning beneath the waves... but I am constantly treading water.
- The suppression of women with mental health disorders

second shift working

I begin by referencing a video shown in class from youtube called "magic coffee table"

Within this short film, if it could be called a film, we are introduced to a heterosexual couple who we assume are dating. The opening of it shows the male sitting on the couch, where he potentially could have been for hours asking his female partner to cook him dinner because he's starving.
Firstly I feel the need to really push the thought that it is a heterosexual couple where the MALE is asking the FEMALE to cook him dinner. Just like every other gender role in the past the female is almost expectant to serve the male.
After this is asked the female proceeds into a long speech about how she has just worked another job like him and why can't he cook his own dinner, it's been a long day for her as well. The male of course interrupts this speech and tells her it will be alright and that it will work out, to which the female responds how?

Here we are introduced to a basket sitting on the counter where the male tells the female that it was magic how no matter what dirty clothes you put inside this basket they are magically cleaned and folded piled onto your bed the next day. As if this supernatural power never fails to clean his clothes and that it's been happening since she moved in but he had not wanted to jinks it.

Are you serious? you're kidding me right? The "magic" basket gets all your clothes washed and folded.
Which is actually the woman doing so after she gets home... her actions go unacknowledged and underappreciated.

Then the male tells her about the magic coffee table. No matter what kind of crap you leave on it, it is always cleaned up the next morning. Again, of course this is the female doing so.

It is here we see a very obvious ignorance to the amount of work females do around the home. Not only is she expected to contribute to the income and be independent but also she is expected to load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, wash laundry, fold laundry, grocery shop, cook dinner, pick up trash, all while still having time to maintain their health and be there for their significant others.
A subservient gender role portrayed in a humerous way is in no way wrong from the standards women are still held to today.
This video is probably only one example of such a couple making a joke to get the point across maybe it should be more acknowledged how much women do.

Pink think adolescence and the magic years/children and their compliments

Seeing young girls dressed in dresses and ribbons in their hair. The initial reaction is to say that "aw you're so cute do you want to be a princess when you grow up?" and to the young males we lean towards "what a big boy you're growing up to be, what a heartbreaker you're going to be"
We encourage girls to have unrealistic goals of being a princess and then we encourage men to be cops or firemen or variations of heroes.

Regardless of how in adolescence we fuel certain paths to the different genders we can address how it was marketed to adolescents that sex needed to be saved for marriage and that if a girl was defiled beforehand she really wasn't worth marrying.

I believe the term Flinging the Woo created almost a comical outlook on teenage sex in the 20th century.

The pubescent teenage years proved to be challenging for parents messing with teenagers wanting to practice what they learned in sex ed rather than hearing about it in theory.
So to fix such a problem pink think began marketing marital sex as fun but not too much fun.


There is a point at which females values begin to change because your reputation can be tarnished if you are more tomboy or hang out with boys "heading down the road toward lesbianism" which should be something that we address and are beginning to in society today.

A letter to society

Please tell me how I should love myself even after I have been defiled time and time again.

How am I supposed to feel empowered when my worth is reduced too what was given to me between my legs.
The only power I have in this life is being manipulative and I am the one expected to accept blame when I am no longer found fascinating by those who claim to love me.
How can I be expected to feel successful when the only task I am asked to do involve cooking, cleaning, or taking care of children. I am not a perfect essence of housewife and I do not find it my duty to look after others, because I can supply for myself.
Do not shame me into the shadows of a man. You break me down and melt my will to fight for myself to build be into a mold of what you expect me to be.
You cannot tell me I am beautiful then paste pictures of girls with unattainable unnatural beauty on every street across the country.
You cannot play innocent when it is you who has made me into the shell of a human,
It is you who has crushed me
into the ideals of "femininity"
- A letter to society

Pink think

"Pink think is a set of ideas attitudes about what constitutes proper female behavior,..." - Pink think, Lynn Peril

Girls are born female, femininity is an acquired trait. The thought of femininity being taught to us, is actually not one of new origin. As we are kids (young females) we are given dolls to practice taking care of a baby just like mommy, and we are given kitchen sets along with tea parties, stuffed into dresses or skirts and given play makeup to make us into "women" that could be wantable by men.

Hail the V commercial by Summers eve was pulled because it brought a "private" matter into a public light but commercials for male sex enhancements run nearly all the time and aren't pulled. Furthermore Viagra and other male sex enhancements are covered by insurance but birth control isn't.

As a female there's so many double standards held to women instead of men. If a guy has sex with a ton of girls he's a legend, but if a female is to do so she is suddenly a slut, a whore.
It is preposterous to think that a women would even want to have sexual relations outside of pleasing her husband.

I relate this to my own life. My sister, who has been dating her boyfriend for over 2 years now, moved in with him a little after a year if I remember correctly. My mother made a comment to me one day that she didn't approve of what my sister was doing, it was unheard of a couple living together without being married, so why is it allowed now? Society is an ever changing hierarchy and my generation, and that of my sisters are now more accepting of relationships without the marriage certificate. In fact more children are had out of wedlock rather than in a marriage.

We visit after WWII, after working class women's husbands return from the war what is supposed to happen? Do women return to the home and retake the positions they held before instead of enjoying their steady paycheck and supporting themselves. Women are told that being sent home from work (being fired) you get NEW appliances that free up your time to take care of other household things.

It is necessary to address that these are thoughts developed BEFORE the second half of the 20th century and that we still face them today

Can men be feminist?

Ultimately the title of feminist is awarded to a group of power hungry females who believe that they are better than males in every way and deserve to have more power.

This however is one of many negative connotations that surround what being a feminist is. Feminism is the idea that men and women should be EQUAL. Not one having more power than the other or vice versa.
An argument can be made that men will never understand what it is like to be female and wouldn't be able to support the cause of being a female and wanting to be equal.

Personally I find that I would agree that men have a full capability of being a feminist. Should they support the cause of feminism (not radical feminism) then they can be allowed the title of feminism.

There seems to be the idea that we need to have a strong sisterhood because we are women? Why is it necessary that we need a sisterhood when it's even a disagreement within our groups of what women need to be better... could men be allowed into the sisterhood?
Generally if you share values you will form a bond with others, if men agree with that why shouldn't they be allowed to join and support the sisterhood.


We were also given a list of famous men who are known as feminist and why we should allow these men to define themselves as feminist? Their fame can help them reach more of the population and can express and promote more  of the ideals of feminism.

And as the conversation turns to who is anti-feminist of course none other than the Donald comes up. Why is it that more of positive feminist are being publicized instead of the negative? because more people could be coming out as pro feminism in an effort to gain more followers because then if they hadn't already most of the feminist group would support them.

Opposing the binary genders

Strictly speaking for myself, growing up I was taught that there were only 2 genders: Male and Female.
Yet in my GWS class a topic was recently brought up, what if we reject the binary genders that are defined for us. In our modern culture it is becoming more and more common for people to be "transgendered" or even "Intersex" for those of you who don't know an intersex baby is that of which is born with both sets of genitalia.

The question arose if you were the parent of an intersex baby would you choose which organ your child kept and raise it as that gender or would you let it grow and choose which it felt as it should identify as?

At what age is it appropriate to let your child decide how they identify? When are they old enough to know whether they are a boy or a girl... more importantly how do you raise your kid allowing them to choose but explain that they will be constantly outcasted.

Gender separation starts at a young age. In preschool we separate to boys bathrooms and girls bathrooms or we play in our separate groups. Girls typically with dolls since that's most likely what they have at home and boys with trucks and cars. How is it that as a parent you could allow your child to grow up confused and ridiculed practically forced into making a gender decision based on society itself.

I know personally that if I hadn't been called a girl or been raised knowing I was a girl, I would probably have identified more with the male side of things: blue was my favorite color, and I wore pants instead of skirts or dresses all of these seeming to be defining factors of how we recognize boys or girls.

There was an interesting case of which parents had decided to have their newborn son circumcised and something went dramatically wrong, it was then as a result decided that the best course of action was to mutilate the rest of the male genitalia and give the child female parts to raise it as a girl.
The problem with this being that the chemical balance in the brain is difference between males and females and that simply giving him a doll and growing out his hair using female pronouns will not make him a girl.
The amount of flaws within our society, which is just now beginning the process of rejecting the binary system, is monumental. Which is why it is more so up to parents to educate their children and to decide if they want their children to decide who they are, which ultimately they will do anyway.

Feminism

Gender and women studies         8/29/16

Recently having entered college and being enrolled in a Gender and women studies course has created a very interesting series of thoughts in my normally collected simple head.

Why is it that gender rolls still control most of the important conversation we have today?
I understand that our history has been flooded with the problems of "keeping women in their place" but in the 21st century it's not crazy to think we could resolve conflicts without telling women they belong in the kitchen or are undeserving to earn as much as men do in the work place.

Regardless of what time period you are in there is a stigma about being a woman that seems to be unshaken by the turmoils of time.  When you tell people you are a feminist you will receive a few weird looks and maybe even a few "heck yeahs" from other who support women in their quest for equality but most of all you will get the assumption that you are a power hungry crazy hormonal witch on the quest to achieve maximum control of how the world is run. What society fails to understand is that you do not have to be a radical feminist to want to women to be equal to men.
We live in a society where we are always at odds with something, be it another country, african american rights, minority rights, or even just equality struggles all around... life is a power imbalance constantly.  But I feel it necessary to point out that the one struggle that has seemingly yet to give way is that of gender equality because the reality of the matter not every single women wants the same thing!

Maybe I would love to be a home maker and take care of my children, I may actually enjoy the idea of cooking for my "bread winner husband" and cleaning the house, and even if I don't I should be able to say something like that without hearing "you'r setting women back 50 years"

The point of feminism is being able to choose your path and becoming YOUR full potential not what the majority of women or the opposing side of society believe you should be so long as you have the same opportunities as everyone else.