Activism Log 7

Rachel Collins

Jeannina Perez

WST3015

10 April 2010

Activism:

This week we're pretty much just powering through sending out the letter and continuing to send the petition to anyone and everyone. I've been posting it on individual people's facebooks, and on my own every day. I'm a little bit discouraged by how slow the signature getting is, but I think once we start tabling on campus and keep using the internet as a distribution tool, it will eventually pick up. We hope to get at least a thousand. We haven't had a meeting with Nina this week since we're pretty much just sending letters nonstop, but we're probably have a meeting before the week where we table.

Reflection:

This week we talked about eco-feminism in class, and the way that women in movies and other media are often portrayed as have this innately close bond with nature and the environment, while men are often cast as the destroyers of nature. Nature is often sexualized as "virgin" territory, "penetrated" by mankind. This topic does not directly relate to our project, but I think it's relevant as another example of how stereotypes and myths about women are used as a means of control. This is true of the myth of women's increased connection to nature, but it appears in many forms. A common argument, for instance, about why women should not vote (and, today, why they should not hold high public office) is that we are too emotional, not logical or analytical enough, or that we easily become hysterical and could never work under pressure. Any thinking person could easily realize that these common perceptions are erroneous stereotypes, but they still manage to hold sway over our societal perceptions.

Reciprocity:

An objection to the idea of this project that I keep hearing is that the person I'm talking to "doesn't believe in having holidays for everything," or "what, every minority group needs it's own holiday? We'll have one for everyone if this keeps up!" This argument strikes me as ridiculous on many levels. There are only ten federal holidays, and only one recognizes a non white person, while non recognize a non-male person. In a perfect world, our education system would incorporate the importance of all groups to our countries history in a realistic, unbiased, and factually accurate manner- we do not live in a perfect world. While we live in this world, holidays such as these provide the impetus to get people talking about the role and specific history of the groups and individuals that they recognize.

Works cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Women and the Environment."Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 539. Print.