An alternative view regarding the Olympics:

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist and feminist, died on Tuesday, March 27. I  read her essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” about a month ago for an English class, and I was unable to put the book down the entire time. Her words evoked an emotional and deep understanding in me that other works rarely match. In honour of Adrienne Rich, here is an excerpt from “Re-Vision”:

“It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful. The awakening of dead or sleeping consciousness has already affected the lives of millions of women, even those who don’t know it yet. It is also affecting the lives of men, even those who deny its claims upon them. The argument will go on whether an oppressive economic class system is responsible for the op-pressive nature of male/female relations, or whether, in fact, patriarchy — the domination of males–is the original model of oppression on which all others are based. But in the last few years the women’s movement has drawn inescapable and illuminating connections between our sexual lives and our political institutions. The sleepwalkers are coming awake, and for the first time this awakening has a collective reality; it is no longer such a lonely thing to open one’s eyes.

Re-vision–the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of enter-ing an old text from a new critical direction–is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male -dominated society. A radical critique of literature, feminist in its impulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name–and therefore live–afresh. A change in the concept of sexual iden-tity is essential if we are not going to see the old political order reassert it-self in every new revolution. We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us.”

From “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”, by Adrienne Rich

Today’s reasons to fight for equity

These articles are sad and blatant examples of discrimination that occurs everyday. Perhaps more sad is the fact that most of you probably won’t be too surprised about this.

• From Jezebel.com : Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed

• Miss Universe Canada disqualifies transsexual contestant – more on this here as well

 

From NPR: After Trayvon Martin’s Death, We’re All Having “The Talk”

On The Two-Way, NPR’s news blog, Mark Memmott writes: “A national discussion about race continues in the wake of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s death last month in Sanford, Fla.

To recap: Martin, who was unarmed, was shot by a a 28-year-old man, George Zimmerman, who claimed self defense. Martin’s family and supporters — and now a growing number of people across the nation — say it was a case of racial profiling and that Zimmerman only assumed Martin was “suspicious” and followed him through the neighborhood because the teenager was black”.

Read more here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/22/149130431/after-trayvon-martins-death-were-all-having-the-talk?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Excerpts from An Evening with Dr. Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West speaks at Cal Poly Pomona in February. Dr. West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist. Here, he speaks poetically and captivatingly about civil rights, social justice and the human condition in general.

Women’s Worth Week Promo Video

Thank you to the wonderful women and men involved in this video. Please watch and share.

Why I’m doing Women’s Worth Week

The number of female friends of mine who have described relationships in which their independence and self-esteem have been decreased or compromised is staggering. I knew this for the last five years, at least, but I never thought that it would be me in that situation. In fact, even while I was in that situation, I didn’t realize what was going on — just how abnormal, and not okay, the situation was.

I ended a 4 year relationship at the beginning of this past summer. I won’t go into the details of what happened, but I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore; the drama, the constraints, the total emotional roller coaster. But I never realized just how much I needed to be rid of it. After I broke up with him, I had the best summer of my life. Freedom was wonderful, and I seemed suddenly to have gotten a massive energy boost. I wanted to do everything, to explore, to adventure, to do whatever I wanted with spontaneity. I was incredibly happy, and the sudden contrast made me realize just how downtrodden I had become. I realized that all those weeks of tears and those rages which came out of nowhere were not “just hormones”, or just my shortcomings as a person. Those emotions were real, they were in response to the subtle and small injustices to which I was constantly being subjected. I realized that I should have trusted my emotions and my instants, and realized that I knew that the way I was being treated was wrong.

Many women have experienced situations like this. There’s a a spectrum, of course — such violence against women can be physical, sexual, verbal, subtle, overt, oppressive, jealous, and so on. And even if you’ve never experienced it in a relationship (because I’m not at all trying to say that all men participate, or that we should spurn relationships because they lead to violence), you may have experienced such a spectrum of violence out in public. Walking alone at night, taking the chance to raise an argument in class or at a meeting, expressing an opinion, It’s hard to avoid these kinds of situations without forgoing a fulfilling life — yet these situations can all lead to an experience of oppression and violence.

And no matter where your experiences are on the spectrum, the results, at the basic level, are similar. You’re left making excuses, wondering how you let this happen. Maybe, like me, you wonder how even after all your social justice learning and research, all the positive female influences in your life, you still can fall for that kind of treatment. It’s been nine months since I broke it off with my ex, but I still have painful flashbacks of all those things that I let slide. These are the times when I need to go lie down, curl into a ball, and just try to make sense of it all. At the same time, I find myself making excuses – still – and telling myself that it wasn’t so bad.

I’m writing this with hesitation. I’m worried about admitting what happened, and about what others will think of me or him. But I want to share this because I know that I’m not alone.

Feb 13-16 is Women’s Worth Week at Queen’s, and I’m currently helping to organize it along with some wonderful women who are truly passionate and concerned about this issue. We need people to share stories and volunteer, and I really encourage you to visit our Facebook page. Hopefully, through this event, we can create a space for some healing.

Thought of the Day

Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.

~ Michael Leunig

 

Jean Kilbourne on “Killing Us Softly 4”

A 1993 study on women in relationships shows that 28% have experienced abuse by someone they know, and 15% have been forced to engage in unwanted sex under alcohol or drugs. It was with this statistic that Jean Kilbourne opened her captivating talk on what exactly advertising sells, and how it is linked to real problems in society.  Based off her fourth “Killing Us Softly” film (the first was in 1979), the presentation showed that the same subtle messages pervade advertising today. Here are some of the points Kilbourne made:

• We’re exposed to 3000 brands a day on average (often without actually realizing what we’re seeing), and babies at the age of six months can recognize corporate logos. That’s scary, especially when you think about what exactly advertising is often telling us.

• For women, it’s all about how to look and what to do in order to look that way. Often, this involves a body that is literally impossible to attain. In Pretty Woman, for example – Julia Roberts’ head is hers, but her body is that of a body double. Photoshop is another tool used to create these impossible forms – we’ve all seen the comical “Photoshop gone wrong” pictures, but often the mistakes aren’t quite so obvious – instead, we see the “perfect” thighs or arms or light, clear skin.

That's her head, but not her body!

• Not only do impossible standards affect a woman’s self esteem, they also affect the way men look at the real women in their lives.

• Kilbourne isn’t trying to say that advertising causes violence, but she does emphasize the way that advertising often turns women into objects. In any situation, the objectification of humans is the first step towards violence. How is this objectification achieved? First and foremost, advertising often dismembers the female body. There’s a focus on breasts, on grotesquely positioned limbs. There are the come-hither poses of the models and the frequent displays or insinuations of rape. Women of colour in advertising are often portrayed animalistically or exotified. There’s a terror of aging which perpetrates the ads, and again this is a denial of reality.

A pretty blatant example of selling sex and dismembering/objectifying women's bodies.

Wonderbra ad, 1999.

Stereotyping of women of colour using animal prints and a hostile gaze? Check! Click on the photo to see more examples.

Twiggy was majorly - and controversially - photoshopped for this Olay campaign. Click on the photo to see what they changed.

• For males, there’s the trend of turning men’s bodies into sex objects as well, and this has increased from the past. However, this is different than women’s dismemberment because men don’t live in a world in which their bodies are continually judged. Statistically, there are fewer consequences for men as a result of this objectification. Males are also used to emphasize the importance of making money on a man’s worth. This is also a wounding stereotype, one that goes as far as making relationships into a financial transaction in some ads.

So many things wrong with this picture.

• Kilbourne talked a lot about the obsession with thinness – the idea that girls should literally take up less space. With the high rates of eating disorders, this is not something that we can afford to perpetrate. There’s a constant shame towards eating, which is underscored by language such as “guilty pleasure” and being “bad” when you’ve broken your diet. Kilbourne emphasizes that dieting is a great way to wreck your metabolism and to eventually gain more weight. The fact that obsesity rates are rising while our obsession with thinness continues points to systemic, societal problems. In addition, the myth that women of colour don’t suffer from eating disorders is not true, as with men and boys – who now make up 10% of anorexia sufferers.

Something's a little off here...

Yes, these actually exist. The ads for these t-shirts, featuring a slogan made famous by Kate Moss in 2009, were banned in August 2011.

• Trigger Warning: The following may be triggering for survivors of sexual assault. 

Sex in ads was another big theme in the presentation. This is something that extends from the sexualization of little girls, to the use of sex – and violent scenes suggestive of rape – to sell products. Moreover, the media offers conflicting views of sexiness: sexy yet innocent, experienced yet virginal. For men, the media’s sexual messages emphasize masculinity and power, painting men as dominating over women – often through violence or implied sexual assault. This distorted message promotes the view that men are violent, and anything feminine in men is negative. Most men aren’t violent, but many are afraid to challenge other men who show violence in their actions or words. Thus, advertising keeps us trapped in defined roles of masculinity and femininity.

This promotion for the Prada Autumn/Winter 2011 Collection doesn’t just hypersexualize and ‘dismember’ (thus objectifying) female bodies. It also contributes to the sexualization of girls – one of the models featured in the video is only 13!

How long did it take you to notice the tomatoes?

Apparently, Dolce & Gabbana can even go as far as to use gang rape to sell their products.

So what do we do about this? It’s a public health issue – one linked to sexual assault, violence and mental health. These are huge problems…

• Nearly 30% of all female homicide victims were known to have been killed by their husbands, former husbands or boyfriends. In contrast, just over 3% of male homicide victims were known to have been killed by their wives, former wives, or girlfriends.

• 1 in 4 North American women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime. In reported sexual assaults, 97% of sex offenders are men.

• At any given time, 70% of women and 35% of men are dieting. A 1993 Statistics Canada Survey reported that in women between the ages of 15 and 25, 1-2% have anorexia and 3-5% have bulimia. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, with 10% to 20% eventually dying from complications.

… and if the media is perpetrating and contributing to these problems,  that’s something we need to be more worried about. We need to be conscious about our own choices. Before buying, find out who is making products and what messages those companies are sending or supporting.

Furthermore, support each other. Stop the negative self-talk, especially when around young girls. Women, stop bringing down other women for no reason. Stop calling your friends bitches and hoes. Don’t fall victim to this way of treating others. Be okay with all expressions of masculinity and femininity, and ask yourself why you feel otherwise.

Jean Kilbourne spoke at Queen’s University on October 27, 2011. Her two newest books, “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids” and “Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel” are available to borrow from the Equity Library in the ASUS Core.

Visit Jean Kilbourne’s website at http://jeankilbourne.com/.

New Resource – The Equity Handbook

The Equity Handbook is a training resource for anyone who is interested in discussing social justice and equity in a group setting. It includes information, activities and discussion about a number of issues. Click here: Equity Handbook

Check out more resources under the “Resources” tab above!