Articles Out There This Week

There are a number of articles out on the blogosphere this week:

Responses to Dr. George Tiller's murder

A letter expressing the need for more female heroines in animated films (via feministing)


"When the Anti-Choice Choose" ( a great read, which I referenced in my own article below)

An interesting post about beauty salons as important spaces where women can share experiences with each other

Happy reading!

History, Quilting and Celebrating Women

I’ve never been a huge fan of history, I think in large part because what is written about in history books is so male-centered and male-dominated. So often when I do see mention of women in traditional and even some non-traditional history books they seem to be overwhelmingly women who have either participated in the “male world” as soldiers or explorers or are talked about in relation to their famous husbands. Women should not only be included in history if they are incredibly famous or take on male roles and perform them exceptionally. Of course these women should be included in history, but the lives of everyday women need to show up in history’s pages too.

In Denver, Colorado two playwrights, Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek wrote a story about American pioneer women, gathering material for their play from journal entries written by pioneer women themselves and recollections of these women. This play broke new ground, since most of the history books and literary works about the American pioneer era to date highlighted the experiences of “outlaws, cowboys, gold miners and trappers,” effectively ignoring the experiences of women. Newman and Damashek decided to tell the stories of pioneer women through the use of quilts, and I’ve included an excerpt from a review of the play that describes their rationale below.



“Newman and Damashek realized the potency of quilting, an almost-universal activity among pioneer women, as a metaphor. Made of scraps and bits — pieces of dresses, blankets, sheets, pants, fragments of a young girl's worn-out skirt — quilts were used to swaddle babies, warm the sick, shelter sleepers through the bitter winter nights and cover the dead. They served as gifts and charitable offerings; they were created to mark such significant transitions as births, weddings and coming of age. Women quilted outside in the welcome solitude of a May afternoon, or met in festive groups to sew, share food and dance. Quilts married gritty practicality with artistic expression as women sewed their deepest thoughts and longings into their panels. Newman and Damashek used the idea of the quilt not only to celebrate these quiet, industrious lives, but as a profoundly female way of structuring their play; each scene is inspired by and reflects on a traditional quilt pattern.”

It is refreshing to hear about ordinary women’s lives being explored and shared in a way that does not follow the traditional, male, linear and sequential model that many plays follow, but that the playwrights structured their piece in a way that reinforced the significance of these women. Subjects like those brought out in this play need to be a part of what we regard as legitimate history.

So often I feel like in my own small efforts to uncover, expose and eliminate sexism, I forget to recognize so many of the positive things going on in the world that celebrate women. In the process, these celebrations elevate women above the place they are given in society and enrich the world we live in by uncovering alternatives to a male-centric, elitist way of viewing the world.

Principians Raise Awareness about Sexual Harassment

Last night, Principia’s Peace and Conflict class presented a documentary they made about Sexual Harassment at Principia. The students who created the documentary included several anonymous records of sexual harassment at Principia in the video, submitted by students in the Principia community. The documentary also included the responses of a variety of students to various questions about sexual harassment. About thirty students, three professors, three parents and one administrator attended the showing, which was followed by a discussion about how to prevent sexual harassment on campus and how to make sure that those instances that do occur are handled effectively and with utmost concern for those who have been sexually harassed.

I was heartened to see that most students who were asked to provide a definition of sexual harassment provided consistent, accurate definitions. This has to be one of the first steps to addressing the problem—making sure that people know the definition of sexual harassment—and, if the documentary is any indication, students seem to know the legal definition. The trickier part is educating members of the community about what in the group discussion was referred to as “rules of social conduct” which would help members of the community recognize certain behaviors as inappropriate and would help prevent sexual harassment on campus.

During the discussion, a transfer student also talked about his experience with sexual harassment education at his former school. This college spent two days showing presentations and videos and engaging students in small and large group discussions about sexual harassment, and the orientation was presented in such a way that it made students feel it was “cool” to be informed about sexual harassment. Those engaged in last night’s discussion mostly agreed that this kind of model could be used at Principia, and that it would be more effective than the current model, which involves talking to students during freshman orientation and providing each person with a sexual harassment manual. Students often lose or forget about the manual, and there was a general consensus that very few read it, so when students are faced with sexual harassment they are often unsure about how to react and how to bring it forward so that counseling and appropriate disciplinary action can be taken.

Anti-Choicers and Choice

I just read an article about anti-choice women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant and get abortions. I strongly recommend reading the article. It reinforced how incredibly loving and selfless so many abortion providers are (and how far I have still to go to be that loving). The article left me feeling so angry about how hypocritical and narrow-minded some anti-choicers can be. Yet I don’t fault them completely for feeling the way they do.

A few weeks ago I watched the documentary, “Jesus Camp.” The documentary follows several elementary and some middle school-aged children from Evangelical families as they attend “Jesus Camp.” At this camp, adults indoctrinate these children, lecturing to them about how morally depraved American society is, featuring kid preachers whose sermons are unsurprisingly similar to those of elder preachers and scaring them with graphic stories filled with fundamentalist Christian language condemning abortion. These adults convince the children that they need to speak for all the lives lost to abortion. At the end of the film, these young children march in Washington, DC to protest abortion, their small lips covered in red duct tape with LIFE scrawled across each piece.

It makes sense to me that some anti-choicers act the way they do if they were exposed to similar treatment as young children. If children have been inundated with anti-choice messages from a very young age, I can imagine that most of them would still hold very anti-choice views that would be extremely hard to reverse. So I don’t blame them. Instead I feel genuinely sorry for them. How long has this cycle been going on? Because I suppose that those who run these camps may have also had similar experiences as children, and now perpetuate the indoctrination. They are cogs in a bigger religious machine.

Milestones

I hope this doesn’t come off as an ageist, snooty, and ableist complaint, because I’m trying to just explore my reactions to a situation that has developed over the past few months. I’m graduating from college this weekend and getting married two days after. My grandmother who, due primarily to restricted mobility and communication difficulties, spends most of her time at home, is absolutely thrilled about the wedding and, in her words, cannot wait to attend. Graduation is a different story. I completely understand not wanting to attend a long and often boring graduation ceremony that doesn’t feature a loved one very much (particularly in comparison to a wedding). I can also appreciate that making the effort to attend either event is physically and socially difficult (as much as someone can without experiencing it firsthand). Yet the principle of it still bothers me. Because there isn’t much of a gap between my graduation and my wedding, I think I’ve been made acutely aware of how much more emphasis people have placed on my wedding than on my graduation. Obviously committing to marriage is a significant step in society, and I do think my decision to marry is going to be one of the most impactful decisions in my life. But I also think that attending and graduating college is a huge privilege and milestone that will forever shape my experience.

My experience with my grandmother has prompted me to think about the effort I’ve put into both milestones, the amount of thought and prayer I’ve put into preparing for both events, and the amount of support I’ve been given, and the value I’m placing on both higher education and marriage. I realize I have so much to celebrate and that I can enjoy each celebration without comparison or concern about those who are celebrating with me.

Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love

In response to letters from a concerned public, Amazon has stopped selling “Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love,” a disturbing video game. Stockholm is advertised as a game “in which you must sexually and psychologically abuse your kidnapped victim to get her to fall in love with you.” Online petitioners who liken the video game to “great art” are working to garner enough support to convince Amazon to reverse its decision and continue to sell the video game.

Meanwhile, the creators of the game are trying to capitalize on Amazon’s ban of the game. The official website proclaims Stockholm as “the controversial masterpiece that was banned from Amazon” and comments on several articles suggest that Amazon’s decision to ban the game will only increase the number of game sales once the creators find another distributor who can sell to customers. Which leads me to wonder how to protest the sale of misogynist, disturbing video games and other products in a way that successfully prevents sales or is effective in another way, but that also does not attract a backlash? Is raising awareness about the video game to expose its misogynist, violent and disturbing content still the right course of action even if it means that more people will learn about and then buy the game? Of course there is no way to know the ramifications of the decision to speak out against this video game, but it is wise to know the potential consequences of your actions before you decide to proceed with whatever you feel compelled to do. Ultimately, I feel that despite possible negative ramifications, it is our responsibility as feminists and as citizens to speak out against products that both unabashedly and subtly degrade women.
http://rmdglobal.net/stockholm/

Marketing to Women

Mainstream marketers continue to miss the mark when attempting to develop and market their products to women. While I’m all for companies spending more time creating and promoting products that serve the particular needs and desires of women, most products and/or marketing campaigns that aim to attract women leave me unsatisfied at best and more often offended. The marketing departments at Dell and Mars, for instance, have demonstrated with their recent marketing campaigns that they are extremely out of touch with women.

Dell created a separate section of their website for women’s PCs and named the section Della. The major point of differentiation from Dell’s other PCs is the smaller size and weight (cause all women love small things!) and more color and design options to choose from. Dell provides superficial advice that demeans the very market they target, which includes things to do on your Dell like shop for clothing and track calories. These “features” have nothing to do with Dell computer capabilities, but rather are activities that anyone with Internet access can engage in. C’mon Dell, don’t patronize me! Mars, a company that sells chocolate candy of all sorts, has developed a new candy bar for women called “Fling” which uses sex and pink wrapping to convince women to buy chocolate.

When will marketers realize that using pink wrapping, and selling sex will never be as effective as developing products and marketing campaigns that treat women as intelligent, multi-layered, multi-tasking, with diverse backgrounds and interests? Marketers need to understand that women are not a niche market that need a separate section on a website, but are instead part of the human family, with needs and desires that should inform and enrich products, websites, etc that have been previously molded primarily according to men’s expectations and desires.