Nico

Email Submission: J

mpvoices:

[trigger warning: ableism]

When I started college this year, I was excited to finally be able to participate in activism outside of the Internet. I RSVP’d for the first meeting of the campus feminist organization as soon as they sent out an email. The president seemed very eager to welcome me since only a few freshman had responded at all. This changed when I wheeled myself into the meeting room. Everyone stared at me sitting there in my wheelchair as I introduced myself. 

I explained how excited I was to be there and the group seemed to warm up to me…except for the president. She made a big show of me being there saying “See? Feminism is for everybody!” and kept asking me if I needed assistance with anything. I was fine with that, until she was at the snack table whispering to another colleague about how I should have told her I was a cripple and how she was so embarrassed. 

I didn’t really think anything of it. I’ve grown accustomed to these kinds of things and everyone else seemed to like me a lot (I made a good number of friends that night). When the next meeting rolled around, I noticed that the president had moved the room to another building: a building that didn’t have a wheelchair ramp and wasn’t accessible to me. I emailed her and asked her if accommodations could be made but she did not reply. I had to get other members of the club to help me into and out of the building. 

I asked her if she had gotten my email and she flashed a smile, she must have missed it! I let it go. I never want to be a bother for anyone and there wasn’t any point in starting drama. I asked her if we could meet in a building that would be more accessible for me and she told me that it wouldn’t be a problem. They’d be happy to do anything that would let me participate.

The next week rolled around and she was having the meeting in the same building. I sent her a confused email asking if she had forgotten her promise. The next day, one of my new friends told me that the president had said that she didn’t want me at the meetings anymore. I was an embarrassment and a shame. I ‘freaked’ her out too much. My friend was supposed to ask me to not come back. This new friend saw me cry for the first time since I began college. She held me and told me it would be okay, that not everyone is like that. She told me to forget about the other girl and suggested we make our own group. 

I think we’re going to.

the myth of the perfect 1950’s woman

feministdisney:

filthy-knees:

While in the middle of an anti-sexism reflective essay, I can’t help but sound sexist.

I am a feminist also, so hear me out.

Women in the 50’s CARED about how they looked, they were well presented, classy and had pride in themselves. They put a face of make up on (which I am not saying is essential) and they cared about their figure. Sure they had more time than most women do in this day and age. What I am saying is that majority of women I see (take note I live in logan) don’t have any pride or care in themselves anymore. I applaud feminist movements and all that but why must we be rough about it? You can follow any trend you want, but do it properly? Oh man. I have dug myself a hole.

**edit: women were actually taught how to take care of everything.

Hopefully you don’t take this the wrong way. I just think “what is the point of living if you can’t even take care of your insides and outsides??”

I get what you’re saying but as a feminist I think you can begin a further critique of these subjects, assuming you actually want to push further in your examination of sexism etc.   As another blogger pointed out, think about what you’re really picturing in your head.  I’m guessing you weren’t alive in the 1950’s- neither was I.   So what is your “ideal world” based off of?   Tv shows and movies from that time period, or shows and movies now made to replicate that time period?  

Our american collective memory has only remembered in all these things, the story of the middle-class, white american family.   Not all women and men lived like this.   Those tv shows and well known photos aren’t an accurate reflection of the average American life.   Most women didn’t wear immaculate makeup everyday.   Sure, they might have been more dressy, but my own mother still remembers when they (the girls) were first allowed to wear pants to school.   Not even jeans: just pants.   We tend to associate skirts and dresses with being “more classy/dressy” because they are more traditionally feminine, it may seem like these women were perhaps “more classy,” but really their choices were just more constricted.

And to say, as people often lament, that women suddenly started going to work just this century is one of the biggest myths we have fallen into believing.   Only in the middle and upper class was this true- women in the lower class/near or at poverty were already working from the time they were teenagers.   But their stories are forgotten because they are either not white, or weren’t upper or middle class.

“Women in the 50’s CARED about how they looked”   Women today still care, they just are more likely to care in the sense that they dress more to please themselves rather than just look pleasing to other people.   Why is your mind telling you that women don’t care enough about how they look now/should spend a lot more time caring about how they look to other people?

“And they cared about their figure.”  This feels like body policing.   Turn on the tv- switch to any channel whose demographic is adult (like, not Disney etc).   Count how many diet commercials you will observe within a single half hour, and then try to tell me that women today don’t care/aren’t worried about their figure.   And don’t forget, as a feminist, to examine intersecting privileges here; there is often a direct correlation between poverty and the ability to maintain a healthy diet.  

femonster:

methodistcoloringbook:

sparksummit:

partyprofessor:

One Thursday last month, during the lunch hour at H.D. Woodson Senior High School, half a dozen teenage boys have gathered to eat pizza and talk about hollering at women. “From where I come from, you holler at a girl,” one student tells the group. “A girl can’t be too upset when a guy is paying attention to her.” “It depends on the type of girl and whether she has respect for herself,” another says. “Some girls will say, stop. But they like it, for real.” “If she’s wearing short shorts, booty shorts, short skirt, with the thong showing, she wants it,” another guy says. “Can’t blame it on the boy. She knows what she’s doing.

 “But what if it’s hot out?” This is Kedrick Griffin. He’s here to play the 37-year-old devil’s advocate on a subject that’s generally considered normal behavior for a teenage boy in the District of Columbia. This exercise has come almost at the end of a year-long District program called the “Men of Strength” club—MOST Club, for short. The same pattern is repeated with groups of boys in public middle and high schools across the District: Come for the pizza, stay for the deconstructions of masculinity.

I can’t even begin to express how much I love this.

it is so so so important that people are doing this. i’m grateful to all programs like this.

 I’m so glad this is happening

(Source: professorpinka)