Feminism | Posted by Julie Z on 12/5/2011
The Anita Hill 20: Sexual Harassment and Teens
On October 15th, I had the honor of participating in the “Sex, Power and Speaking the Truth: Anita Hill 20 Years Later” conference. I spoke on an intergenerational panel that also featured speakers Kimberle Crenshaw, Virginia Valian, Gloria Steinem and Devon Carbado, which was terrifying and beyond humbling, but also probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever had the opportunity to do. Using your feedback about sexual harassment and my own observations, I pulled together a speech that I thought reflected our generation’s attitudes towards sexual harassment.
I’m beyond late sharing this with the FBomb community, but I hope you enjoy it and would still love to hear your reactions to my speech or any of the other panelists’ speeches and your thoughts about sexual …
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Feminism | Posted by Charlotte E on 11/23/2011
A Rant About My Sexist Week
There has been too much sexism is surrounding me this week and it’s really getting me down.
To start, a boy I know who I considered one of my friends and who knew about my intolerance for sexism thought it’d be really hilarious to pull the: “Do you want to hear a joke? Women’s rights” joke on me. The first couple of times he said this I ignored him. But then after a few more times, I told him to fuck off. He has continued to repeat it to me all of this week. The worst thing is, he’s not even just being a jerk because he thinks it’s funny, he even said “It’s hard for a man not to be sexist,” which I find utterly appalling. It’s pretty damn …
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Feminism | Posted by Liz P on 10/26/2011
Stand Up, Fight Back: Radical College Women Rock
One of the coolest things I’ve been able to do since entering college is become involved in radical politics. I think many people, and women especially, feel a few barriers to the realm of radical politics.
The word “radical” sounds polarizing. Actually, I didn’t identify as a radical until relatively recently. One of my professors explained that radical feminism, as opposed to liberal feminism, is interested in actually breaking down the power systems (patriarchy, racism, etc.) that form the fundamental barriers to equality. And it just clicked. Duh, I’m radical. There’s a stigma to the word, though, that I think presents a problem for a lot of people.
Radical politics are often dominated by that old chestnut of a demographic: white men. But for people of color, or for women …
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Feminism, Pop-Culture | Posted by Sarah M on 10/14/2011
Sluts and Whores
You know that scene in Mean Girls where Tina Fey’s character tells all the girls that they need to stop calling each other sluts and whores because it only makes it okay for guys to call them sluts and whores?
I wish Fey would tell that to girls everywhere.
There’s pretty much two types of that sort of name-calling and they both piss me off.
First, there’s the casual, “Hey, slut, what’s up?” or “Hey there, ho!” that friends say to each other. Now, this would be one thing if they were trying to reclaim the word, if this was some sort of movement or statement – but in the vast majority of cases, it’s not. These girls are just trying to fit in with the patriarchal bullshit that tells …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Susannah F on 09/30/2011
The Art of the Text
In our world of technology and instant communication, sentiments often get lost in cyberspace. In fact, there’s a whole website devoted to some of the crazy mishaps that can occur during texting. But when texting is successful, I can confidently say that one of its most common (and more recent) uses is as a means of hooking up and conducting relationships.
Some of my friends use text messaging in order to conduct their booty calls in college. If you meet someone at a party and exchange numbers, a text conversation is sure to ensue in the hopes of ultimately having a sexual encounter. One of my friends told me that if she is planning on meeting up with someone that she has been casually texting, she will continue to text …
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Feminism | Posted by Hannah R on 09/19/2011
Youth and Feminism: Ignorance Is Bliss
Today’s youth culture encourages females and males alike to embrace their sexuality and allows a freedom of expression. But it seems this freedom of sexual expression has ended up glamorising the idea that females are nothing more than sexual objects. Or at least, it seems that’s what girls our age think.
I have to wonder – how have girls our age not heard of the efforts made by Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes at the beginning of the 20th century? Or the women’s liberation protest demonstration at the 1969 Miss World beauty contest? I have discovered that there are very few teenage girls out there who fully comprehend the feminist movement and its effects on society, and, more importantly, its hopes and aspirations for the future generations of women.
I …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 09/16/2011
College Confidential: Disorientation
The bottom line of college orientation is that it’s a paradox: feeling simultaneously deeply comforted and entirely thrown off your axis, spinning rapidly towards the unknown. Or at least, that’s what orientation was like for me.
This paradox manifested itself at the very beginning of the journey from Ohio to New York. After posting my obligatory, “Leaving for college. Thanks for the memories everybody!” Facebook status, I packed all of my earthly belongings into the family car. That’s when I realized that all of my earthly belongings fit into the family car. While the reality of this totally satisfied the fatalist in me (look how easy it would be for me to escape with so little materialistic baggage to weigh me down once the zombie apocalypse hits — yippee!) it …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Alexa S on 09/12/2011
Observations in Target: Mass Marketing and Young Females
“Mom, look! That’s Rocky and CeCe, from ‘Shake it Up‘! Can I pleeeeease get one of their clothes?” She stands on her tiptoes to reach the highest shelf and points to a t-shirt with an attached pinstriped vest that is almost identical to the one CeCe is wearing in the poster above the rack of clothes. “I like that one!”
My post-elementary school years have contained very little Disney Channel, which I consumed vigorously as a child. But after spending a week with a seven-year-old, I was fully informed on how Disney is functioning today. I know every person says this about the shows they watched when they were kids, but I truly believe that the shows were much better then, especially for girls. Or maybe it’s just that …
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