"thank you"

I am trying very hard to love myself, and I feel like this class has helped me to understand it on a personal level for other women, too. I have always wanted to be a "girl's girl," but I do not really do many "feminine" things except work in a purse store. Most of what I enjoy is fairly masculine, and more often than not I find myself surrounded by men who, while good-hearted, don't always quite understand me.

This class has been a great place for me to exercise patience and force me to come to terms with things academically. Being mostly self-educated previously on the subjects we covered in class, I never had a chance to participate in such structured discourse on these topics. Anyone who knows me knows that I love discourse, so I feel incredibly thankful to have been part of it.

I don't know if any other girls will ever even read my blog, and if they don't, that's fine. Girls are, however, so incredibly important to me, and anyone who tries to diminish their importance is not worth gum on my shoe (myself included; my own internalized prejudices are perhaps my greatest regret). I have never been so impressed with anything as I have been with the resilience of women in the face of adversity, with their adaptability in crises, with their ability to be whatever they have to be to survive and, in some cases, thrive.

I hope I can be as strong as Alice Paul and Sojourner Truth and Kathleen Hanna and all the other women in my class who taught me about all of their experiences. Some might think it silly to equate us to such great women, but I don't think it too controversial to say that every woman is a great woman simply for getting by in a society determined to make sure that they are subjugated by and subject to a power structure that will never help them to the top.

I have watched these other women grow into feminism in a way that is too heartwarming to describe. Whether it's in sports or in the ivory tower of academia, I can't wait to see what these other girls, representing the third-wave and all its good and bad aspects, can change.

Don't forget to love yourselves. Don't let the bastards get you down.

Thank you for everything, Professor Young.

"i've spent years walking sidewalks at night"

Let's talk about sexual violence on college campuses.

I have been on Yik Yak for awhile, an application for making anonymous "yaks" on college campus. Trine's is not a great place for anyone who is not part of the majority. Fatphobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia are all pretty rampant there. This particular yak does not come from our campus, thankfully, but there were so many issues with the Trine community's yakking (I did not make this word up) that IT actually blocked it from Trine's internet. It is now only available on personal data plans.

This, of course, is a horrible, horrible thing to say. It normalizes rape initially, saying that if a man is aroused he is entitled to sex no matter what, and on top of that fetishizes fat (and ugly) women in a disgusting manner. The implications of this as to a male mindset are horrifying enough. If a man feels that entitled, what does it say about the rest of men? However, in the interest of self-preservation, I am more interested in what this means for women encountering men on college campuses.

Phaedra Starling coined the term "Schroedinger's Rapist," and I have lived much of my life with this in mind. Derived from Schroedinger's Cat, the theory refers to how not all men rape, but any man could potentially be a rapist. Knowing that people like the above yakker exist just creates an environment in which women must be constantly aware of their surroundings for fear of becoming a news headline. This has come to the attention of college campuses recently as sexual assault has started to become more widely covered in the media, but that doesn't change the reality for most women on campus. As reports of rape and sexual violence go up nationwide due to the dispelling of some of the stigma around violence against women and people becoming more aware, there is little change, as far as I can see, as to what women fear.

Perhaps saddest of all, I cannot even imagine a world in which I am not always a little afraid.

"when she talks, I hear the revolution"

The Riot Grrrl Manifesto really spoke to me in a way that many other pieces did not, perhaps because it was one of the ones that seemed like it could most singlehandedly make a difference. It was perhaps aided by the fact that the writer was queer and a little more relateable to me. Regardless, it was a bare bones framework from which I feel much more complex feminist theory can be learned. It is so similar to Anzaldua's work that it would be easy to branch out from the manifesto to that. Most important, though, it seems modern even now.

It is easy, I think, for third wave feminists to shrug off The Feminine Mystique and A Vindication of the Rights of Women, because to us, they are of the past. In the sort of "soundbite" culture we live in, it would be difficult for anyone to be introduced to feminism now by reading Mary Wollstonecraft. As much as the riot grrrls may have hated it, in some ways, their manifesto caters to the mainstream in that it is significantly easier to swallow than lengthier feminist texts. It is so accessible that it feels like I could bring it up to anyone and not feel like it was asking too much for them to have read it.

I almost wish that this had been one of the texts to begin my own feminist experience. I agree with so much of what Kathleen Hanna says, and I can only imagine what it is like to read her work as well as be familiar with Bikini Kill's music (I myself am not familiar). Reading about her is an adventure unto itself. She is still active even today, having been the subject of a documentary only two years ago. The wikipedia article about her credits her with jumpstarting third-wave feminism itself, bringing it into the mainstream (though her punk credentials may not like being called "mainstream").

She's inspirational and her writing is accessible, and she provides a gateway into much more complex feminist theory.

"i'm imagining things"

"You're the boss."

I heard that for the first time in my entire life, I think, several days ago. Upon hearing that, I felt like I could have cried.

I do not understand why I need that validation, and I know that it meant more coming from a man. No matter how hard I try to unlearn this internalized misogyny that I live with, I know that I placed more value on what he said because he wasn't a woman. It gives me all kinds of mixed feelings.

On one hand it makes me ecstatic, because he respected the authority that I have, but I also should not have to feel so good that a man recognized me as able to hold authority. I should expect people to treat me that way. It makes me feel like I have not quite overcome the power structure I am so used to living under. One of the most important things of being a feminist is being self-evaluative like this, and I am definitely not always the best at it. It certainly is not easy, and it is easy to slip into hopelessness. What is the point of trying so hard all the time when there is always something else to improve on?

To me, internalized misogyny is one of the scariest things in the world. It rips people apart and they do not even realize it. It lets people demean themselves over and over again, and because of structural attitudes, no one ever bothers to correct them. It is scary enough in older women, but perhaps at its most heartbreaking in young girls. When I was little, I wanted to be any and everything but feminine, because there was something about being a girl that I hated. I was only six or seven and I did not know any better, but when I told teachers that I did not want to wear a dress because, "Girls are stupid," they just laughed and didn't bother correcting me.

Of course, I don't think I quite understood I was a girl at the time, but that's besides the point. Even at six or seven, I knew better than to want to be a girl because girls were less than boys. When I was eight, I even told my best friend (a boy) that I should have been born a boy because girls were stupid and weak and there was no reason to be like that. I was probably ten before anyone ever really informed me that what I was saying was so incredibly awful.

Even when they told me that I could be a girl and not be weak, though, no one ever told me I could be a girl and be the boss at the same time. I had to wait almost ten years for that.

"You're the boss," shouldn't mean that much, but it did.

"power's not given to you. you have to take it."

On the surface, one would think that an artist like Beyonce wasn’t the most obvious choice as an ally for feminism, but upon taking a closer look, there are few better fits. She is one of the most successful performing artists of all time as well as a mother and wife, embodying the idea that women can, in fact, have it all. Most importantly of all, though, is the fact that she self-identifies as a feminist. Women all around the world have been indoctrinating into believing that feminism is a “dirty word,” one that evokes an image of bra-burning, man-hating women who are unattractive and lesbians. Shailene Woodley, a prominent actress known for films like Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, not a year ago said that she wasn’t a feminist because she didn’t hate men, completely missing the fact that what she was describing was misandry and not feminism.

Who would say Beyonce hates men? Looking at her and seeing she is a feminist as well as a mother, a wife, and a successful woman in charge of her own sexuality, women like her rebrand the term. One of the greatest weapons detractors from feminism can wield is the idea that a person has to choose between their morality and a conventional/successful lifestyle. Whenever I try to speak out on inequality, one of the first insults thrown at me is something along the lines of, “No man will ever want you if you don’t shut up about this nonsense.” My husband, of course, would beg to differ, but they can’t even imagine a world where I would fight this fight if I didn’t hate men.

Beyonce doesn’t hate men. I don’t hate men. There are surely some feminists who do, but in my experience, women who hate men have far less power and number far fewer than men who hate women, even subconsciously. There is power in numbers. The more people like Shailene Woodley that there are, the less worrisome it is to those in power. The more women who come right out and declare themselves feminists in towering lights to crowds of people, the more power the movement has.

There are plenty of valid reasons to not call yourself a feminist (lack of inclusion, trans-exclusionary politics, etc.), but hating men certainly isn’t one, and the idea that a feminist is just someone who failed at everything else isn’t either. Anyone who thinks so can talk to me when they get to headline the VMAs and marry Jay-Z. If anyone has the media clout to reclaim the f-word from the men's rights activists on a Voice for Men, it's Beyonce, especially considering that a lot of those MRAs probably spent many years lusting after her.

"being quiet never got a damn thing done."

People have argued nature vs. nurture for decades, centuries even. I have always wondered when it is that boys begin to capitalize upon their privilege. I see it when little boys chase after little girls and the little girls’ mothers tell them that it is only because he likes them, and then wonder why, years later, many of those girls are in abusive relationships. How can it surprise anyone, when I was told for so many years that a boy was only mean to me because he liked me?

We are so quick to place blame anywhere but the man, and I never really understood it fully until we talked about the Eve myth. We are helpless, but conniving, seductive but weak. Women are scapegoats, the scapegoats of a patriarchal society constructed with us either on a pedestal or degraded into dirt, and no matter what, we are always second to the man.

And I guess this comes back to wondering what the best way is to combat our situation. Do we educate women, and show them that it doesn’t have to be this way, or is that not enough? In my experience, things never change until people are angry, so angry they won’t take it anymore, and civil unrest becomes inevitable.

It wasn’t being intellectual that changed things for the suffragettes; it was being disruptive. They aren’t exclusive, and I think people forget that. We demonize Malcolm X and exalt Martin Luther King, Jr. always forgetting that they shared more traits than we probably are comfortable with. They were, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. Feminists must be the same; voracious learners and fierce warriors. In my experience, those who say, “we would listen to you if only you were polite,” are the most unapologetic liars in the world. It is nothing more than a technique to derail righteous anger.

"she couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin."

I was seventeen when I was sexually assaulted, and I'm still not sure whether I'm ready to write about it, but I think it probably is good for me.

We had been dating for probably three or four months and I apparently wasn't giving him what he wanted. I have blacked a lot of it out from my memory, but what I remember most is him saying, "I can do whatever I want to you and you can do nothing to stop me."

After it was over, I made us dinner. I felt nauseous, but I made dinner, and told myself I was overreacting, and not until years later did I realize that I was really not overreacting at all. Somehow, the horrible act wasn't the worst part, and neither was realizing how horrible the act was. The worst part was when I tried to tell someone and they dismissed me. I had spent months trying to build up the courage to tell someone what had happened to me... and they told me I had just regretted it and changed my mind.

The weeks following were what made me a feminist. I spent days locked away inside myself, wondering yet again if I had really just blown things out of proportion. Somehow, I felt guilty for what had happened to me, and looking back on it now, I had done nothing wrong.

"Why would you put yourself in that situation?" My friend's words ring in my head still, because that is rape culture personified. I was the victim; I don't even feel like a survivor, even now. I still feel like a victim. And even though I was the victim I was the one who carried the guilt, who carried the burden. Even now, I don't think he knows what he did to me. Our culture protects him. Our culture of rape jokes, and "boys will be boys," and "she was asking for it," has ensured that he feels no shame for what he did to me, while even now, as educated as I am, I can't shake the lingering feelings that it was somehow at least partially my fault.

Brownmiller wrote that rape is not a sexual crime, it was a personal one; and we talked about how the personal was political. My assault made my body a battleground, but even now I don't feel like a soldier. I feel like I was taken advantage of and then told that it was my responsibility to not let that happen. Could you imagine going to the funeral of a murder victim and hearing relatives say, "Well,
he was just asking to be murdered?"