"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?"

"far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations"

I am of two minds about the Brock Turner rape case, and I was very happy (as happy as one can be, talking about such subject matter) to hear it brought up in class. As we discussed somewhat briefly, it is wonderful that Stanford is taking the matter so seriously, especially in the wake of all the controversy involving rape on college campuses across the United States. I can find very little to complain about in the way that Stanford handled the case on its campus as well as the way that it handled Brock Turner himself, but I find myself highly cynical as well. Who is to say whether this was done to protect the victim rather than to protect Stanford as an institution? No one can be certain. Regardless, of course, the correct action was taken; however, it is hard for me to be wholly happy knowing that the intentions may not have been justified.

I suppose it has been this way forever, though, with everything. People who educated women hundreds of years ago didn’t do it because women deserved to be educated. They let women get education because it would make them better mothers and better companions. While I know it is perhaps too idealistic to hope that people will make changes for the right reasons rather than for self-preservation, I can’t help it. Part of me will always want to believe that people want to do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because it benefits themselves.

Even more troubling, I wonder what kind of undercurrents will find breeding ground in institutions that simply “do not want to get caught.” I wonder if it will begin a whole new culture of cover-ups once there are new ways to hide wrongdoing on college campus. I hope that doing the right thing in this respect will carry on into a new generation that does not have the same kind of prejudices we are still struggling with, but it is sometimes hard to see such a future when are still fighting the battle today. I can only imagine what it was like for suffragettes who fought their whole lives for the right to vote, only to die before their labors came to fruition.  I cannot imagine how hopeless it must have felt.

"you are all you've got"

It is really hard for me to hear the others in class complain about girls who act stupid so that boys will like them, because for a very long time I was one of those girls. I lacked any kind of self-worth, and still struggle with my identity today, so I would take any attention I could get. I never went so far as getting a bad grade on a test I could do well on, but I have lied about how well I've done, and I even did similar things with my now-husband. It isn't something I'm particularly proud of, but there was no reason to say that I got a better grade than someone else when I felt like my worth hinged on others liking me. There was no reason for me to be perceived as "conceited."

I feel like I have been taught for a very long time that what others thought of me is the highest indicator of my worth, and one thing I have noticed is that others love to be the best. I didn't mind shrinking myself as long as it meant others liked me, and it took me a very long time to notice that it was really only other girls doing that. Many of the girls who didn't tended to look down on girls like me, who had caved to the pressure of feeding masculine egos. It was a toxic environment, and one that seemed intent on pitting girls against each other, especially when the ones who didn't act "stupid" were focused on distancing themselves as far as possible from girls like me in order to make themselves desirable in a totally different way. The girls like me, of course, tended to find the other girls conceited.

In the whole system, girls never won. It always ended up being women tearing apart other women, never realizing that we were all playing the same game with no one ever really winning. It still hurts today to hear people talk about girls who act differently than they are, because of the whole dichotomy of high school. College is different for me than high school was, but I don't think it's because of it being college; I think it's because I'm married. In a sense, being "off the market" put me in a position where I don't feel like have to impress people anymore, and it really opened my eyes to how foolishly petty everything was. Society has perpetuated a system where we (girls) always lose when we see ourselves as "us" and "them." Nobody wins except the men who reap the benefits of girls fighting amongst one another, each group feeling like they're doing the right thing. When we talk about patriarchal society, of course, it is much easier to subjugate and oppress a group that is already divided among itself, and this is just one easy example of how women are still divided in today's age. I would be lying if I said it didn't make me feel a bit other when we had this discussion in class.

"if you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

I rarely do things halfway. I'm a perfectionist to a fault, and this carries on to some areas where some would probably consider it unnecessary. One of these areas happens to be in online multi-player games. I do everything I can to self-educate so that I know as much (if not more) than the average player.

Last night, I became aware that that didn't really matter. I had always known that my knowledge was considered inferior, and I dread people hearing my voice for the first time, because as soon as people find out I'm not a man or boy, what I say means less. This is especially difficult when trying to get people to cooperate with me.

Never will I forget a few weeks ago when I told someone that his information was wrong and what we were doing was inefficient. The boy, after I told him (quite politely, in my opinion, although my tone was maybe less than ideal considering I wasn't really being listened to) that he was misinformed, quickly called me a, "cunt that didn't know anything." Things like this have been happening for as long as I can remember, and I don't know as there is any girl who would disagree. I am lucky enough to have a couple of guys who will back me up when no one listens to me, but why should they have to? I shouldn't need my husband or a couple of friends that I know in real life to have to repeat what I say before ten other men listen to me. It is absolutely infuriating, and leaves me feeling inadequate when what I say ten times is only listened to when my husband finally says it once.

People complain all the day about the lack of girls who play video games; still others say that girls don't play them simply because they aren't interested. With experiences like this, I can't say that it's hard to imagine why girls aren't interested. Why would you willingly put yourself into a situation where you were treated as a second-class citizen? What does it say about that particular subculture? I don't know if it's because they feel threatened by a girl telling them what to do, if it emasculates them, if it makes them feel like they could do an inherently better job just because they aren't a girl. All I know is that, too often, it is really hard for me to defend my dearest hobby just because of the toxic environment I put myself in to enjoy it.