Over the past few years, the news has been inundated with tragic stories of teens and cyberbullying. There were the stories of Phoebe Prince and Megan Meier, who after being tormented via social media sites and texting, resorted to suicide. The advent of formspring isn’t alleviating the now all-too-common cruelty of bullying, either. It seems that adults look at our generation and wonder if our obsession with vampires, warewolves and other beasts is actually due to a feeling of kinship.
There are probably a lot of causes for the advent of cyberbullying, which I’ve ruminated on before. But one cause I hadn’t really given much thought to before was the influence of a bullying media, specifically thanks to stimulating reality shows like the Real Housewives and nasty bloggers …
Once, for an Introductory Sociology course, I gave a lecture about social oppression. It was fairly abstract. I didn’t talk about any specific kind of social oppression, like gender oppression or racial oppression or sexual oppression. I just talked about oppression, like what it is and how it works and what it feels like or rather what the philosopher Marilyn Frye says it is and how it works and what it feels like.
Using her classic metaphor I paraphrased that oppression was like, as Frye describes it, the “wires of a birdcage,” as she writes:
“Cages … Consider a birdcage … If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires … If your conception of what is before you is …
Big Tree is a five piece folk band hailing from Brooklyn. They classify themselves as “A group of friends that love playing music and getting brunch the next day.” Little is known about Big Tree’s origins in the press. Big Tree is unsigned but has released the self-titled LP Big Tree as well as the Home (Here) EP.
Big Tree is more or less the definition of a broke, indie band producing their music because they simply love it. The debut album has its tracks recorded in “porches, bedrooms, attics, and living rooms”. The quality of the record does not suffer from these low-tech operations. Common instruments in songs include pianos, blues-y guitars, drums, a bass, and a fantastic voice. The genre ranges from folk to jazz infused pop that …
Not to distract from the intensely serious problem that Ellen raises on the show, but SERIOUSLY?! HOW AWESOME IS SHE!? I want to be her best friend. Thank god for one of the few role models teen girls have.
“Hello, Ms. President.” (Is That So Hard To Believe?)
The Yahoo! Homepage is literally one of the first things I see when I get up in the morning, and whenever I see a featured article about a woman who’s made an impact for reasons other than parading around on some reality show with a puke-orange tan (ooh, am I bitter?), I feel a jolt of excitement and curiosity. Click!
Last week, a Yahoo! Homepage featured article was about Geraldine Ferraro, “who in 1984 became the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket [in the United States].” She passed away two Saturdays ago.
I’ll be the first to admit that I abhor politics.
I know, I know, as a liberated woman I should want to educate myself about this stuff, but . . . I don’t …
Zach Wahls is a nineteen-year-old Engineering student at the University of Iowa. He is also a staunch gay-rights advocate who bravely and eloquently testified before the Iowa House of Representatives on behalf of his mothers, the video of which currently has over 1.7 million views.
Zach graciously agreed to answer some questions for the FBomb, and, believe me, if you don’t already have a crush on him, you’re about to.
You have been called the new “poster-child for straight allies who support marriage equality.” How do you feel about this title?
To be honest, I really don’t like being thought of as a “straight ally,” so to speak, because it implies that I’m somehow separate from the community, which is simply not the case. Gay rights are my rights as …
I recently heard some of my classmates talking about how sexism really isn’t as big a problem today as racism is. They said that racism is on a different level and that all the feminists need to shut their mouths and just get over it. On Women’s Day, one student stated that the day shouldn’t be a big deal because women’s struggles are not the same, or as serious, as racial ones. I didn’t say anything, but I was upset by what he said. I do not agree with this, and it hurts me that people feel that way.
I feel that sexism and racism are both equally horrible in their own right, and to separate or rank them doesn’t do anybody any good. I really do believe that we have …
