Rachel Collins
Jeannina Perez
WST3015
25 March 2010
Activism:
This week we began to work on splitting up the states and getting the email addresses of the heads of the programs. Adam found this really helpful list of American Women's Studies programs, so I think we're going to use that as a guide to expediate the process. We met with Nina to discuss where we are and what else needs to be done, and I volunteered to create the petition itself. We went over a timeline of what needs to be done and when, and we realized that there is definitely a lot of work to be done.
Reflection:
This week in class, we discussed women's relationship to the military and also global feminism. By its nature, our project is not global. Alice Paul was influential in American suffrage. However, I believe that rights for one group of women affect women as a whole. Maybe we're only as free as the least free among us. The same questions that we discussed in class in a global context are also relevant in a national context. IS there a national feminist movement? Many would say no- the needs and wants of women grow disparate over racial, class, and other differences, but I think honoring Paul is something we could probably all rally around. Voting is a right we all enjoy.
Reciprocity:
Having a definite timeline for our work is a good thing. It makes me beileve that we can actually finish and get something done. And despite how stressed this project is starting to make me, I'm encouraged also by the number of women's studies programs that exist. Though we're only a small group of people right now, I believe that many others out there would and eventually will support our cause.
Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Living in a Globalizing World."Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 385. Print.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Activism Log 4
Activism:
Recently, it's been difficult to make everyone's schedules work together so that we can meet effectively. We've decided to split up the women's studies programs according to the fifty states, with ten states to each person (and Australia for Nina). My states are Alabama through Hawaii. Adam and Jessie are working on getting a list of feminist organizations to send the letter to, and we're going to make a petition in order to begin gathering signatures. In the second wave of letters, we're gong to send a link to the online petition, so that we can get people to sign who aren't in our immediate circle of friends and university community. I don't think our problem is that we're not motivated, because we all understand the real importance of what we're doing, it's more that not being able to meet as often as we should is holding us back some, but we're working on figuring that out.
Reflection: We read "The Mommy Tax" in class this week, and while this topic might not seem to directly relate to our project, I believe that it actually does. Dealing with issues like the disparity between the work situations of men and women due to differing parental roles is just another part of the fight for equal rights in society, which is the same thing that Alice Paul was fighting for. As well as the right to vote, women should have the right to not have to let their reproductive capabilities destroy their career. Children and rights and a career should not all be mutually exclusive. I also performed in the Vagina Monologues this week, which was inspiring because it helped me to realize the struggles that some women endure in other parts of the world, which reminded me how important recognizing and appropriately honoring herstory really is.
Reciprocity:
It's been discouraging while discussing this project with people to realize how little most people know about Paul and the suffrage movement in general, but the ignorance of other just makes me more determined to help educate society about the invaluable contributions of Paul and women like her. I want my potential daughters and granddaughters to have historical figures to look to and be proud of as women.
Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 21. Print.
Recently, it's been difficult to make everyone's schedules work together so that we can meet effectively. We've decided to split up the women's studies programs according to the fifty states, with ten states to each person (and Australia for Nina). My states are Alabama through Hawaii. Adam and Jessie are working on getting a list of feminist organizations to send the letter to, and we're going to make a petition in order to begin gathering signatures. In the second wave of letters, we're gong to send a link to the online petition, so that we can get people to sign who aren't in our immediate circle of friends and university community. I don't think our problem is that we're not motivated, because we all understand the real importance of what we're doing, it's more that not being able to meet as often as we should is holding us back some, but we're working on figuring that out.
Reflection: We read "The Mommy Tax" in class this week, and while this topic might not seem to directly relate to our project, I believe that it actually does. Dealing with issues like the disparity between the work situations of men and women due to differing parental roles is just another part of the fight for equal rights in society, which is the same thing that Alice Paul was fighting for. As well as the right to vote, women should have the right to not have to let their reproductive capabilities destroy their career. Children and rights and a career should not all be mutually exclusive. I also performed in the Vagina Monologues this week, which was inspiring because it helped me to realize the struggles that some women endure in other parts of the world, which reminded me how important recognizing and appropriately honoring herstory really is.
Reciprocity:
It's been discouraging while discussing this project with people to realize how little most people know about Paul and the suffrage movement in general, but the ignorance of other just makes me more determined to help educate society about the invaluable contributions of Paul and women like her. I want my potential daughters and granddaughters to have historical figures to look to and be proud of as women.
Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 21. Print.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Die, Die My Darling
Rachel Collins
Jeannina Perez
WST30158 March 2010
Die, die, die my darling
Don't utter a single word
Die, die, die my darling
Just shut your pretty eyes
I'll be seeing you again
Yeah, I'll be seeing you, in hell
So don't cry to me oh baby
Your future's in an oblong box
Don't cry to me oh baby
You should have seen it a-coming on
Don't cry to me oh baby
Had to know it was in your card
Don't cry to me oh baby
Dead-end soul for a dead-end girl
Don't cry to me oh baby
And now your life drains on that floor
Don't cry to me oh baby
I picked this song because I had heard it before. It was originally recorded by a band called The Misfits, and was released in 1984. My Dad listened to a lot of Misfits throughout my childhood, and also listened to the cover version by Metallica. I grew up to also like The Misfits- I’ve known the words to this song for years and because of that fact, this song is the perfect example, for me, of the normalization of violence (and particularly violence against women) in the media. I’ve sung and hummed along with this song since a young teenager, most of the time not even thinking about what the lyrics were talking about. They’re pretty repetitive and less-than-nuanced, which only adds to my surprise that the scariness of the lyrics never occurred to me before.
First, the singer tells someone he refers to as “his darling” to “die, die, die.” We can infer that the person he addresses is someone close to him, maybe an intimate partner. He continues, saying that his victim should shut their pretty eyes, and that he’d see them again in hell. The implied question is, what did the other person do to deserve hell? The singer goes on to say that his “baby’s” future is in an oblong box, that they should have seen the violence coming and that now their “life drains on the floor.” We can piece together that his victim is female from the line “dead-end soul for a dead-end girl.” With very little extrapolation of the existing information provided by the song lyrics, we can tell that it speaks of a woman killed for some perceived offense against someone that she was intimate with. He believes that she deserves it (“I’ll be seeing you in hell”). He believes the contradictory ideas that she both caused it AND that it was inevitable, an illogical combination that absolves the individual who committed the violent actions from all responsibility and feelings of guilt. We are meant to blame the victim for her own brutalization (Kirk 265). We are meant to share in the singer’s gleeful satisfaction that the party at fault has been dealt just retribution for her offenses. In addition, the agency of the woman in the song is effectively stripped, as he demands that she “shut her mouth” and “don’t cry to me.” The woman has no voice. To argue, as many fans of the song probably would, that this is just a song and is not indicative of a larger trend of intimate partner violence would be to ignore the reality of the situation described by The Misfits. According to the government’s Office on Violence Against Women, 20 percent of teenage girls and young women have experienced some form of dating violence (261). The normalization of lyrics just like these contribute to fear felt every day by girls and women, and to the desensitization of men as a whole to the idea that violence is acceptable, as describes by John Stoltenberg in “I Am Not a Rapist!” (285).
Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn and Okazawa-Rey, Margo. "Violence Against Women." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 257-271.
Stoltenberg, John. "I Am Not a Rapist!" Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th Ed.New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 285-290.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Activism Log #3
Rachel Collins
Jeannina Perez
WST3015
12 April 2010
Activism: Last wednesday, I met with Nina to figure out what we're going to put into the pamphlet that we're going to hand out while we're out getting signatures on the petition. I'm glad that things are actually moving now, and even though getting signatures is still slow, I'm getting more excited and hopeful about the project. We decided that we're going to put some biographical information about Alice Paul, and each of us came up with ten points that we think are important about her. We are also going to include information about the facebook group (which now has 772 members!), contact info for the womens studies department, and a small works cited to say where we got our information from. All of the letters are pretty much sent now, but I have yet to get a response from anyone. So far, our petition has 183 signatures.
Reflection: Like I said, I’m a little frustrated by how slow the going is sometimes. I’m also frustrated by how many people cite the existence of Mother’s Day as the reason that we don’t need this. We’re not trying to replace Mother’s Day, and what would be wrong with have two holidays that relate to women anyway? Working in a group is always somewhat of a challenge for me, because I tend to want to just do everything myself. I’ve really been trying not to step on anyone’s toes or second guess anyone though. I’m glad that things are moving a little faster, and I’m encouraged by the amount of support that I’ve gotten from people that I’ve talked to about it. It’s neat to watch signatures come into the petition from people that I don’t even know, and to realize that something we created has reached out to people that we’ve never even met.
Reciprocity: I don’t think that the success of this project is the thing that’s going to teach me something. I read ahead to the activism chapter in WLMP and a phrase that encouraged me in that section was that “action always accomplishes something, and in this sense it always works” (586). I’ve found this to be true because even if the main goal of our project fails, we still started something and made people think about what their own opinions are with regard to the issue.
Jeannina Perez
WST3015
12 April 2010
Activism: Last wednesday, I met with Nina to figure out what we're going to put into the pamphlet that we're going to hand out while we're out getting signatures on the petition. I'm glad that things are actually moving now, and even though getting signatures is still slow, I'm getting more excited and hopeful about the project. We decided that we're going to put some biographical information about Alice Paul, and each of us came up with ten points that we think are important about her. We are also going to include information about the facebook group (which now has 772 members!), contact info for the womens studies department, and a small works cited to say where we got our information from. All of the letters are pretty much sent now, but I have yet to get a response from anyone. So far, our petition has 183 signatures.
Reflection: Like I said, I’m a little frustrated by how slow the going is sometimes. I’m also frustrated by how many people cite the existence of Mother’s Day as the reason that we don’t need this. We’re not trying to replace Mother’s Day, and what would be wrong with have two holidays that relate to women anyway? Working in a group is always somewhat of a challenge for me, because I tend to want to just do everything myself. I’ve really been trying not to step on anyone’s toes or second guess anyone though. I’m glad that things are moving a little faster, and I’m encouraged by the amount of support that I’ve gotten from people that I’ve talked to about it. It’s neat to watch signatures come into the petition from people that I don’t even know, and to realize that something we created has reached out to people that we’ve never even met.
Reciprocity: I don’t think that the success of this project is the thing that’s going to teach me something. I read ahead to the activism chapter in WLMP and a phrase that encouraged me in that section was that “action always accomplishes something, and in this sense it always works” (586). I’ve found this to be true because even if the main goal of our project fails, we still started something and made people think about what their own opinions are with regard to the issue.
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