Britney Spears challenges photo altering

Please read this letter to Britney Spears, written by Melissa at Shakesville.

In it, Melissa mentions how Britney decided to release, side by side, both unaltered and altered photos taken during a recent shoot for Candies.

These kind of made my day.

Mike Huckabee creates a stir on my Facebook news feed

Facebook is clearly the best place for anyone (like me) who clearly has nothing better to do than try to educate their friends about sexism/racism/homophobia.

Mike Huckabee recently went to The College of New Jersey and was interviewed by the school's newspaper. A transcript of the interview provides the following quote from Huckabee, about legalizing same-sex marriage:

"That would be like saying, well there's there are a lot of people who like to use drugs so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, should we accommodate them?" he said, according to a transcript of the interview.

One of my friends wrote a status about this quote saying that he did not think the comparison was hateful at all. I responded to his status, but I will keep my analysis out of the comments for the time being.

So go ahead, discuss.

A post in which I question my participation in social networking...

Like millions of other people in the world, I have a Facebook account. I started my account in order to network with people who would be attending Knox College with me, and over the years it has grown into one of my preferred methods of communicating with people I am unable to see often.

However, Facebook is often a cause of much frustration for me because it gives people space to proclaim some rather shockingly sexist attitudes and beliefs. For example, one male on my friends list recently posted a status that said, "handjobs are like the WNBA, a cheap imitation of something guys do better themselves." I tried to point out how this was sexist, but the poster seemed to get distracted and have his attitude reinforced by others who commented saying that this status was funny.

I call out sexist/homophobic/racist statuses rather frequently to varying degrees of success. But today I was met with a shocking Facebook fan page. Anyone can make a fan page on Facebook, and currently there is a growing trend for people to make pages for anything even remotely clever that might attract fans. Today in the "Suggestions" sidebar of my Facebook home page, I was introduced to a fan page for "more girls go to college than boys, so stfu and make ME a sandwich," a page with more than 147,000 fans* and some pretty horribly sexist photos.

(click for a better view)

"But Amelia," people will say. "The first part is true. More girls are in college than boys. And the other part is a joke. Stop being a humorless feminist and just take a joke. It's a joke, see? Haha!"

I'll be honest. I am writing this post without knowing the current statistics when it comes to gender and college attendance in America (I know that my college is about 60/40 when it comes to women/men), but even if it is true beyond a doubt that more women attend college then men, that does not excuse the sexist language in the title of this page. Yes, it may be an inversion of a sexist trope, but I don't find it funny because it is still being used to put people down.**

The "make me a sandwich" trope is used so commonly that most people probably don't recognize the problems it presents. It is often used as a means of demeaning women who dare to make something of themselves. It is used to put women "in their place" - the kitchen, where they can serve men. Turning this on men does not make it funny. It's still sexist, through and through.**

The worst part of this terrible fan page?

Two of my friends are fans.

*At approximately 8:15pm CST on April 7, 2010 when I took the screen shot featured above

**EDIT (4/8/10): Added some lines to clarify that inverting a sexist "joke" so that it's aimed at men does not mean it's funny.

More from a rape culture

Do you want another example of what rape culture really is?

Looking in the corners of the bathroom I change in at work in case someone hid a camera there.

Didn't even realize how messed up that is until today and I've been doing it for months.

If women aren't safe in their hotel rooms and homes, then how can I be safe in the locked bathroom at my work?

A lunchtime conversation among friends

Overheard at the lunch table today...

Boy 1 to Girl 2: I heard Girl 1 didn't like a princess when she was at your house!

Girl 1: I didn't like Jasmine when I went over to your house.

Girl 2: Why not?

Girl 1: Princesses wear long skirts. She had pants on.

Girl 2: Princesses can wear pants.

Boy 1: Yeah, princesses can wear pants!

Boy 2: They can even wear shorts.

Girl 2: Yup.

Girl 1: They could wear underwear outside!

Girl 2: Nope, princesses don't do that.

Boy 1: [mashes up watermelon in his milk glass] Look, I made a watermelon smoothie!

The end.

When beautiful isn't beautiful...

...unless it's impossible.

The woman on left is Kimora Lee Simmons. I'm not sure who that is on the right, but I think we're supposed to believe that she is Kimora Lee Simmons.

h/t

Learn From This Fail

Last night I came across a new (to me) website, Learn From My Fail. It's similar to fmylife, in that people can submit less-than-perfect moments from their life to be read on the internet. Going through some of the posts on LFMF, I found this by a user by the name of "feeling violated":

This is upsetting because it tells of an experience of violation that no person should have to deal with, and illustrates the troubling fact that there are still many people in this world who do not view women as anything more than public property.

What's worse is the tone of victim blaming.

The website is called Learn From MY Fail, which indicates that because this woman posted her experience, she is blaming herself for the uninvited actions of the "frat boys" at the party she attended. This is classic victim blaming: If only she hadn't worn that shirt, those boys wouldn't have been provoked into touching her in a way that she clearly wasn't comfortable with. It just makes me sad that she has bought into the idea that their behavior was somehow a failure on her part.

Troll Patrol: Trans people and othering

I recently received a troll comment in my inbox to be moderated relating to this post about the International Transgender Day of Visibility. The comment was not as easy for me to write off as most troll comments are.

The troll spewed off the normal sort of "why are you paying attention to these people and not to ME" attitude prevalent in most troll-speak, but it was the last line of the comment that caught my eye.

And for the record, what you're doing is counterproductive to getting a group accepted as "same as everyone else", because you're making them separate and
"different" and "othering" them through your actions.

Full disclosure: Someone very dear to me is trans*. The same is true of several of my friends at college. So that is part of the reason this particular troll comment hit somewhat close to home.

That last line of the comment gave me pause because I was concerned that perhaps, after all the time I have spent trying to educate myself as best I can about issues particular to trans people, that maybe my cisgender privilege had led me to do something that may have hurt people I never intended to harm.

What is othering?

The basic concept of othering entails the creation of a dynamic of opposing groups of “us” versus “them.” There is nothing essentially bad about othering. It is a categorizing process that is given qualitative value based on it use. Negative othering could be taking on aspect of a person that makes them distinctive (that they are transgender, for example) and using that as a reason to harm them. Positive othering includes using one’s point of view (that sexism is bad) and using it against the opposite side (that sexism is good) in order to gain rights for more people. So, while the concept of othering is not necessarily either good or bad,

“…we do have to be careful about it, even positive othering can turn into something negative, for example when talking about countries that need aid we tend to treat them as inferior to us, and in doing so we are distancing ourselves from them and viewing them as ‘the other’.” – h/t

The Comment

In the quoted section of the comment there are several problematic assumptions. First is that the goal of bring to light the lives of trans people is to have them viewed as “same as everyone else” and that by promoting the Transgender Day of Visibility was “counterproductive” to that goal. While it could make sense that this would be a goal for those who work for the rights of trans people (after all, trans people are often persecuted and killed for being the “other”), it is not necessarily the case. True, some members of this community may want to pass and live without being openly trans, but other members of the same community (Monica, Queen Emily and Lisa for examples that I read often) are vocal about their trans identities and even use them to shape their activism. Basically, we have to be sensitive to the fact that the trans community is diverse in many ways, including their feelings on passing.

The second assumption in the comment is that by blogging about this Day of Visibility I was othering trans people in a way that the comment author implied was negative. This ties back to the simple understanding of what is best for a group of which he is not a member. In response to this assumption, I would like to address a few points.

Acknowledging how a group is different, especially when that group is already being denied jobs, harassed, and killed for being different every day is not an inherently threatening move. Difference is an important trait in being human. You know the phrase: “No two people are alike.” While acknowledging the difference between themselves and cis people may not be comfortable for all trans folks, it does not necessarily follow that creating a safe space for people to express their differences, if they so choose, is dangerous.

Without awareness and education, there is no hope of working towards ending transphobia. If we completely stopped discussing trans people, their lives and issues particular to them in order to avoid othering them in a negative way, think of all the ignorant, transphobic hate that would manifest itself in the lives of these people. While making the issue of transphobia visible may not stop all transphobic attacks, without it I believe the world would be much worse off.

That comment forced me to consider this issue, but I believe that as long as we work to make safe spaces for people who choose to be vocal about their lives as trans people (and maybe educate a few people along the way) that we’ll be just fine.

Thanks for your interest, though, Troll.

*EDIT 4/3/10: Thanks to a comment left by Queen Emily, I realized that I unintentionally othered my trans friends by mentioning their positions on surgeries/hormones. That information has been removed because it is irrelevant to this post. I had included it originally because I had written a slightly different post that mentioned feelings on surgery/hormones (and I question if it was even necessary there), but I take full responsibility for my mistake. I appreciate all readers and commenters who help me recognize instances of my cis privilege and help me grow in my understanding of these issues.

April Fools Fail

I'm sorry, Sheldon Anderson, Republican candidate for the Minnesota House from Wyoming, MN, but how is this an April Fool's Joke?

It just makes you sound like an asshole.

The Declaration of Independence says that all people have unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I think many of the things you list would fall under at least one of those categories for people out there. I may parse your use of "entitled," but I think we're talking about almost the same thing.

Gunn Is Love - Westboro Baptist Church counter-protest

Over at Shakesville I found this really touching video of Bay Area Gunn High School students who counter-protested a group of Westboro Baptist Church picketers.

It made me smile. I wish my high school had been so awesome.



Check out the Shakesville link for the transcript.

International Transgender Day of Visibility

I just found out that today, March 31, 2010, is the second annual International Transgender Day of Visibility. The event was started last year as a way to celebrate the lives of trans people.

As someone who has several trans people in my life who I hold very dear to my heart, I was excited to hear about this. In a world where we are (sometimes slowly) making progress when it comes to equality, transgender issues are some that I wish more people were talking about.

For more, check out what Jos at Feministing had to say about this day.

Recommended Daily Reading: Genderfork

The topic of gender has been on my mind a lot recently (see my last post), so when @Genderfork started following me on Twitter, I was really excited. That Twitter account led me to a website that quickly became one of my favorite daily readings.

Genderfork is a really great website that collects photos, quotes, questions, videos, and even does profiles of people who express gender in a variety of ways. I visit this website every day. It's a great reminder of the way in which the beauty of humankind comes from its diversity.

What have you been reading? Feel free to share links in the comments.

Chick Flick or Wrestling? Answer to continue ChaCha-ing.

Back in December I started using a free text message service called Cha Cha. If you text a question to Cha Cha, you will receive an answer via text. It is not the most precise tool, but it is convenient for those urgent questions that you must have an answer to when you are nowhere near the internet. However, the service comes along with advertisements at the bottom of every text message. These are clearly labeled as ads, and you have to text for more information about them, but they are still there. These ads are the reason I will no longer use Cha Cha.

On March 7 I texted Cha Cha to ask for a reminder of what Rikers Island in New York was. I got the following response in a text message from Cha Cha*:

Hey, b4 we answer, pls help us personalize ChaCha to better meet ur needs. Just answer 4 short Qs! -- Q1. What is your gender? Txt MALE or FEMALE back to us

The two options were really distasteful to me personally, but I also took issue with the principle of dichotomizing gender and refusing to provide service until I chose one gender. I responded by texting back: Neither.

Cha Cha did not like that, and texted the following in response:

Chick Flick or Wrestling? We need 2 know ur gender so we can send you offers u care about! Txt MALE or FEMALE to keep ChaCha-ing.

I understand (although I do not like) the need for ad space in this service. I also understand that targeting ads makes them more effective. However, in the format of a texting service, targeting ads based on gender is problematic. Text messages are short correspondences and they do not serve well to accomodating the other numerous, multi-layered gender identities that many people would feel more comfortable with.

Texting basically makes it necessary to rely on a gender dichotomy that just isn't realistic for most people. Chick flick or wrestling? I like neither of those things. That's exactly why I refused to answer Cha Cha's gender question and will not be allowed to Cha Cha anymore.



*The interesting thing is that I was discussing this with two other people who use Cha Cha and neither of them has been asked to answer the gender question. I am not sure how the service chooses who has to answer the question or when.

Sexual assault, triggers, and the problem of male privilege in activism

**Trigger warning: sexual assault**

Over the past month or so, a lot of talk about sexual assault has been happening on my college campus.

Here's the situation.

I am president of a feminist group at my school, Students Against Sexism in Society (SASS). Last term there were several reported incidents of sexual assault on campus. These (rightly) caused an uproar among students who wanted to see immediate and concrete action taken by the administration after several years of pressure to see certain changes by groups like SASS. The outrage felt by students was displayed in ways ranging from student organized open forums, zine creations, students attending faculty meetings and speaking out about their concerns, and even some anonymous actions.

It was one such anonymous action that provoked a large amount of controversy. One day, early in the morning, large banners were hung up in a high-traffic building on campus. The banners covered most of the windows leading up to the cafeteria in that building and were difficult to ignore. The banners made exclamations about the state of sexual assault on campus, saying things like “2 sexual assaults, one weekend: where is your outrage?” and "Knox is no exception to rape statistics." (For more information on these banners, click here*).

The reason for the controversy over these banners focused on two things: The way they presented the problem of sexual assault and their placement in a high traffic area of campus and the possibility that they may trigger survivors of sexual assault.

The latter was an issue we discussed at a SASS meeting the week the banners went up. The group knew the meeting was going to consist of a lot of discussion about sexual assault, but what no one was prepared for was the behavior of a male student who showed up to the meeting. He is not a regular member of SASS, and right away he attempted to dominate the discussion by talking at length about topics of his choosing without letting others give their input. This behavior forced me to cut him off at several points and he did not take kindly to that.

When a woman brought up the issue of the banners being triggering to survivors of sexual assault, the male student appeared ignorant of what the term meant and said that it shouldn't matter if the banners "made a few people uncomfortable" because it was more important that people be aware of the problem.

This attitude prompted many at the meeting to try to explain to this student that triggering a sexual assault survivor was more than just making them uncomfortable and how it is important to offer a trigger warning when a discussion may be difficult for survivors to hear. The male student listened to everyone, but did not seem to completely understand. He then went on to accuse students, by name, of rape. The group listened uneasily to his stories and a discussion took place about using names when accusing people of such crimes when they have not been found guilty of anything. However, the male student stood by his conviction that it was important to "warn the campus" about these people who he was personally convinced were rapists.

Then he went on to name another male student by name and told, in great detail, about the supposed rape he committed. All of this without a trigger warning. This act triggered a member of the group and I had to leave the meeting with them. The meeting was called to an end during our absence as most of the group was, as I found out later, very upset by the male student's behavior. The atmosphere was uneasy at best and felt downright unsafe at worst.

I spoke with this male student after the meeting. I told him that if he wanted to be a productive member of these sorts of discussions, he needed to educate himself on how to talk about them appropriately. He told me that he wanted to educate himself. He apologized to me and the other student that had to leave the meeting. He said he wanted to be part of the solution. Despite this student's good intentions, this meeting brought to light some important issues facing women activists working for solutions to problems regarding sexual assault.

First, the necessity for male activists to check their privilege at the door. During the SASS meeting, the student's male privilege showed in the way he handled himself. He disregarded other (female) members' attempts to add to the conversation, as if he had more right to speak than they did, and he ignored their explanations about triggers before he told unverified stories that hurt people who were listening. This was the most infuriating part of the whole ordeal to me. This student walked into a meeting that was meant to be a safe space, especially for the women there, and totally disregarded the feelings/advice of those he should have been working with, people he had a hard time even allowing to speak. Overall, his attitude and actions created an atmosphere in which producing meaingful activism seemed difficult.

Second, the importance of taking survivors into account when coming up with solutions. The male student was not a survivor of sexual assault, and was not well-educated when it came to understanding how survivors might feel about some tactics that he was ok with using. I understand that there is some contention over the idea of survivors being treated as fragile vs. trying not to revictimize survivors, but this experience made me believe that work on the issue of sexual assault that does not take survivors into careful account (providing trigger warnings, getting their input, etc.) is not work I want to pursue.

Has anyone else ever had a similar experience? I'm curious as to how this male student can be integrated into a working solution about the problem of sexual assault on this campus, or if he should even be allowed the chance after his behavior. Opinions?

*The article from The Knox Student quotes me as president of SASS. For more information on the situation at Knox last term, visit the school's student newspaper for coverage of the events.

4 year old hate speech

(trigger warning - language)

So.... one of my 4 year olds called another a faggot today.

In case you don't know, I work in a preschool, one that has a mission statement of specifically empowering women and girls.

We had just come in from playing outside and were taking off snowpants and boots, about to head to lunch. I don't even know what happened in the build up, but it came pretty much out of no where.

I didn't catch the first part of what he said, but he was talking to another girl. He ended the comment with, "faggot!"

I said, "What did you say?"

He said, "faggot?"

"No. That is not ok. You can not use that word. It hurts people," I said.

"I can say it at my house!"

"Well, this isn't your house and I don't want to hear it."

"[brother] says it!"

"And if he were here, I'd tell him the exact same thing."

"Aw, come on, can't I just say (mouths faggot) one more time?"

"No! I don't want to hear it again."

I usually don't respond to kids swearing. Most of the time they're just trying to get a reaction from someone and it's easiest to let it rest. Often, another kid will tell me another kid swore and I just tell them to tell the offender that they don't want to hear it.

I think I was just so surprised that I instantly responded. But even so, I wouldn't have let that one pass. I responded with emotion, I think more emotion than the kids are used to me wielding. It's just ... these are 4 year olds. Faggot should not be in their vocabulary.

There are several open lesbians who work at my site, several of whom bring their partners to school functions. His mother works at the site and he has spent the night over at one women's house many times.

I don't know if he knew what it meant. I doubt it. Would he have used it if he knew what it meant? I don't know.

He did know that it wasn't something nice to say.

He did know that you're supposed to say it in a mean tone, spitting it out of your mouth like venom.

He did know that it was a name you use when you want to make someone feel inferior, like shit, to show that you're better.

He knows it's supposed to hurt. Which means that it doesn't matter if he knows what it means, because he'll use it again as a weapon. Except next time, I won't be there.

Fewer processed foods = healthier

From Simple, Good and Tasty, a Minneapolis based food blog:

"May I speak with Lee?" my doctor started.

"Um, that's
me," I answered.

"I've got the results of your blood work, have you gota minute?"

What choice did I have? Must. Face. The. Music. "Yeah, okay,"I said.

"Everything looks really good," my doctor continued, "your cholesterol's down, your blood sugar looks great, your blood pressure is right on. Every number is better than it was the last time you had a test four years ago."

"Really?" I asked, "the numbers are better?"

"Yes," my doctor said, "did you say that you're eating less processed foods these days?"

[Of course I said that. Do you think I might have missed a chance to plug my local, sustainable, organic food business with my doctor's office? What kind of a fool do you take me for?]

"Yeah," I said.

"Well, good for you, that's terrific," my doctor continued, "I'm thrilled that you're
thinking about these kinds of things."

"Um, thanks," I said, unsure of how to take a compliment from a doctor (there's a first time for everything). "Are you saying that eating fewer processed foods and more real, whole foods can actually make me healthier, even if I don't lose weight?"

"Absolutely," my doctor said, "absolutely."

Spread the word.