Sevice Learning Blog #3

This week I focused more on the learning than the actual service side of this project.  I did not actually meet with my group, as our meetings are bi-weekly, and decided instead to focus on the readings for the WST 3015 class, as the issues of ecofeminism (discussed in blog #2) and violence against women are two of my macro level topics addressed in this service learning.  I believe it is imperative to mention that all three of my classes this semester – a Latin American studies class, an anthropology class focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, and this women’s studies class have all mentioned the issue of violence against women, which Lori Heise succinctly puts “[t]his is not random violence; the risk factor is being female” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 257) and matters are only more complicated when “race, class, national origin, sexual orientation, and disability” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 263) are taken into account.

Throughout this project, some of the people uninterested in this cause of ending the bloody LRA-rule in eastern Africa mention their reasoning, is “they are over there so what does that have to do with me here?”  I have a hard time understanding how people cannot connect with the justification of our cause when according to Gwyn and Kirk, quoting the United States’ Office of Violence Against Women, “20 percent of teenage girls and young women have experienced some form of dating violence, which can include physical, emotional, verbal, psychological, or sexual abuse” (261) so this is clearly not an issue that is only “over there.”  This cause is about more than simply standing united against rape; it is about the culture of violence that has oppressed women of all ages from prebirth to elderly and from all over the globe.  Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey state “[u]nderlying these incidents and experiences [of violence against women] are systemic inequalities,… culturally, economically, and politically” (257) furthering “macro-level inequalities are present in violence at the micro level (258).  As Harry Sanabria discusses the colonization of Latin America, he makes note of the “[w]idespread violence by European males against indigenous women” (150) claiming that colonization was one of the key factors in the marianismo (gender ideology that construes women as passive, self-sacrificing, and submissive to men) (Sanabria, 420), and machismo (model that associates masculinity with drinking, fearlessness, bravado behavior and sexual potency) (Sanabria, 420), mentality stereotyped of Latin American cultures.  Sanabria discusses how “[m]achismo is also often responsible for domestic violence against women” and “[m]arianismo quickly became the framework of gender relations and female personhood [leading to a] nearly universal model of behavior of Latin American women” (152).

               

Word Count: 441

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Violence Against Women." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Sanabria, Harry. The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean. Boston, MA: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2007. Print.

Service Learning Blog #2

This week I helped my community partner actually do our event which was a huge success!  We held a meeting on Monday, November 5, where we discussed how we helped them  raise $2250 for the Invisible Children’s Frontline Tour!  According to DA/IC’s President, Vanessa, we were the most attended college event in the state of Florida and we raised the most amount from all the colleges in the state of Florida, only a private high school in southern part of the state beat us financially.  The rest of the meeting was about the positions available during the next election and fundraising ideas for the spring term.

When one realizes that part of the on-going war in Uganda that is now spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan is over resources, as H. Patricia Hynes puts it “the connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature” (539) is clear.  The fact that women must send their children away on buses in the middle of the night to avoid being kidnapped by the LRA is an example of what Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey call the “feminization of poverty” (314) because if these women had access to safe environments, they could afford to leave home to work to provide for their families.  While it is children who are kidnapped, it is the mothers who try to be a “voice to the disempowered,” because Joseph Kony rules through intimidation and fear and “tries to make sure that no one listens,” just like a sexual perpetrator  (Kirk & Okazawa-Rey 268).  Through attempts to educate the public and demand policy change, understanding how violence against women is “part of a general pattern of violence between the powerful and the powerless,” it makes it easy to understand how the “anti-violence movement must be an anti-oppression movement” (Kirk & Okazawa, 267).

Works Cited

Hynes, H. Patricia. "Consumption (1999)." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New york, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 567-73. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Women's Bodies, Women's Health." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Word Count: 352

Service Learning Log 1/3

This week I helped my community partner by tabling, attending the biweekly meeting, preparing flyers, and doing public relations work by reaching out to several community businesses.  I had a lot of success in getting the desired businesses to display a flyer in their store window.  My only slight disappointment came in tabling when some people refused a flyer; however, I would guess that more than 95% of people took them so I don’t really consider this a pitfall.  Next week is the event and I plan on massive last-minute promotions on Monday and the Tuesday, so the event stays fresh in people’s minds.

My best correlation to class material is Megan Seely’s Fight Like a Girl article where she lists all the various types of ways to politicize one’s life, some of which I did include “talk[ing] to friends, family, students, and/or co-workers about political or social issues… write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper in response to… and issue that interests you, … set up a table to give out information in your community or on your campus” (17).  From watching the uncut first documentary given to me by my community partner president, Vanessa, I learned that Invisible Children was started by three men in college in San Diego, California and has grown to getting a bill passed in Congress and meeting President Obama.  The Seely reading connects me even more to Invisible Children as seeing a real social grassroots movement in actuality has inspired me beyond words to never forget that I cannot change the world alone.  More importantly, I do not have to change the world alone because, as Seely states “whether small and individual or large and in a group, the steps we take to change the world connect us with others” (15).

We began our new chapter in Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives with a discussion on the definition of work and why some work is considered nonproductive.  I challenge the notion that humanitarian work, especially for a non-profit organization, like Invisible Children, is nonproductive when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has left Uganda, there is opportunity for children again, and a new bill has been signed into law.  As a feminist, I would consider what I do for Invisible Children to be worthwhile and deserving of a wage, regardless of the fact that the government tells me it is less than worthy.  One of the Ugandas on tour with Invisible Children, Agnes, is an example of what it means and why people say they want to  “emphasize education as a passport to greater opportunity” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 310) because for so many women, education is their only way out of their situation.

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Women's Bodies, Women's Health." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl: How to Be a Fearless Feminist. New York, N.Y: New York University Press, 2007. 15-25. Print. 

Word Count: 495

Sexuality and the SlutWalk

While strolling through a bookstore some years ago, I noticed the book Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch by Elizabeth Hilts about how assertive and confident women are labeled “bitch”, thinking surely there aren’t women out there that want to be called something that means a female dog.  Yet, I remember that I was in my young twenties when I really starting to self-identify as a feminist simply because I refused to accept the “caricatures... drill[ed] into [me] through popular culture and education” (Feinstein 188).  So I read the book and learned to accept with pride (after all, female dogs are very smart, protective, and confident) and embrace the reality that until antiquated notions of what a respectable woman is supposed to be behave like evolve, I will be called a “bitch” every time I stand up for myself in the same manner a man would defend himself.

Having stated the above, I wholeheartedly believe that the notion that a woman can reclaim the word slut is something, as the Open Letter from Black Women states “we cannot afford to label ourselves” (admin).  The group AF3IRM furthers this ideology on their website stating the argument “we cannot truly ‘reclaim’ the word ‘Slut’. It was never ours to begin with. This label is one forced upon us by colonizers, who transformed our women into commodities” and being personally involved with issues of human trafficking, in particular the sex trade, I wince every time a woman tries to reclaim this word. The subjugation and oppression of women involved in the dehumanizing sex trade is no one that can be understood by women claiming they can dress however they want and thereby shouldn’t live in fear of unintended consequences.  The Black Women’s Letter agrees with the SlutWalk‘s stance that victim-blaming is one of the core issues to be addressed, they can still “continue to fight for the development of policies and initiatives that prioritize the primary prevention of sexual assault, respect women and individual rights, agency and freedoms and holds offenders accountable… without resorting to the taking-back of words that were never ours to begin with” (admin).  In the same sense that Leslie Feinberg expresses her preference for “gender-neutral pronouns like sie… and hir” (Feinberg 188), so too should women express their objection to a term the Black Women say “may compromise more than we are able to recover.”  To provide understanding to core issues Feinberg states “we must not forget that these widespread discussions were not just organized to talk about oppression. They were a giant dialogue about how to take action to fight institutionalized anti-woman attitudes, rape and battering,… and other ways women were socially and economically devalued” (189).

Works Cited

admin, . "An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk." Black Women's Blueprint, 23 Sep 2011. Web. 26 Oct 2011. <http://www.blackwomensblueprint.org/index.php/an-open-letter-from-black-women-to-the-slutwalk/>.

"AF3IRM Responds to SlutWalk: The Women's Movement Is Not Monochromatic." AF3IRM. AF3IRM, n.d. Web. 26 Oct 2011. <http://af3irm.org/2011/9/af3irm-responds-slutwalk-women’s-movement-not-monochromatic>.

Feinberg, Leslie. "We Are All Works in Progress." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 188-89. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.

Birthing Contrasts

I chose to watch Episode 4: Mama Knows Best of the Liftime television series One Born Every Minute.  In that episode, three married couples all gave birth to girls.  The first couple, Christian and John-Mark, was very different from the couples on the video The Business of Being Born in that the women who chose midwives were not moaning from the pain as much as Christian moaned.  Even after telling the doctor that she had previous bad experiences with epidurals only numbing half of her body, they gave her one anyway so obviously her voice did not matter too much to her doctor.  The second couple, Nicole and Irvine, had a very long 24-hour labor that resulting in the mother being too tired to push and needing a C-section, another example of the doctor going against the mother’s beginning wishes, since Nicole wanted to be able to hold her baby right after birth.  The last couple, Kara and Kyle, had a scheduled appointment, the only male doctor in the whole episode broke her water for her, and then her doctor tried to move Kara’s baby in the birth canal from its posterior position to ease Kara’s labor time.  Each of these labors entailed the women coming into the hospital and getting put in the hospital bed, not walking around like in the movie and only Christian and Kara were complimented by their husbands for being strong.