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.
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 …
My interest in feminism could have started when my mom told me that people “aren’t weird, they’re just different.” It could have started when I was teased in elementary school for having braces or in high school for having overbite. It could have been those journalism classes or seeing how Native people in my high school were treated by my peers. Maybe it was because I had to come out as queer and then again, as a transgender man.
Hell, for all I know it started because I watched the Beatles animated film “The Yellow Submarine” every day with my brother when I was nine. All of those happy people dancing, becoming frozen because some Blue Meanie didn’t like music. Unjust, I tell you! I grew up listening to the …
It pains me a little bit to say this, but I have to admit it. I’m kind of a hypocrite. I’ve spent over a year on this blog exploring most every facet of being a teen girl in this culture through a feminist lens. I’ve bitched (and rightfully so) about how there’s still a shit ton of sexism out there and how we still need to fight for equality, but I never really mentioned the guys.
While I’ve always supported men in the feminist movement, and believe they need to be a part of it, I’ve always viewed the way masculinity standards shape and effect men as something completely separate from women in this culture and a marginal part of feminism. It wasn’t until I read Michael Kimmel’s book Guyland that …
The Future West Point Cadet and Military Axe Grinding
Not a single female was to be found in my first semester history course.
Our class discussed this curious state of affairs extensively, and it was decided after much deliberation that another history course offered during the same block – Gender, Culture, and Power – had absorbed any females interested in learning about current affairs in the Middle East and Central Asia course. Do women find hardcore politics unappealing? I think that would be a gross generalization, but the better question is: Do men find gender studies emasculating?
In any case, one morning, my favorite history teacher who taught the class, started a conversation about the military. As was her style, she often began the day with some relaxing banter before pulling out the academic big-guns. She was extremely quirky, …
Does anyone else enjoy partaking in the outlandish factoids of Snapple caps? I recently got a fact that stated that a banana is technically a berry and strawberries are not even berries. I will repeat this, because it bears reiteration. A banana (the yellow things you have to peel) is a berry whereas a strawberry (red fruit of deliciousness with BERRY in the name) is not a berry. So I had an initial shock and a moment of muddled thoughts. Society has played this trick a number of times on me throughout my life. Koala BEARS and panda BEARS are not even bears. Furthermore I concluded that this type of poor labeling by society is why I fight for gender equality.
To me, equality is a condition worth fighting for …
I was at homecoming this past weekend and, given my miraculously heightened sense of male gender roles, I made a few interesting observations that I would like to share with the wild internet west. Alright, I have taken a sip of coffee, so here we go.
There is no such thing as a male dance move. I noticed this as I was trying to dance to various rap and pop songs. I would sort of try and get into it and then I would grudgingly realize that I really had no dance repertoire to draw on for that selection. I had two options: either dance like a heterosexual douchebag or dance like a flaming homosexual.
Let us look at the dance routine of the douchebag. Put yourself in the scene. The lights …
