new wave feminism
A quasi-academic look at Feminism, politics & race relations through the lens of a 20-something year old Nigerian American who was born & raised up in the (still) segregated south but has relocated to the "liberal" yet historic & traditional north.
This blog is my space for an interdisciplinary examination of race, gender, class, sexuality - all things intersectional & multi-dimensional.
Feminism the way I see it...
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So lately I’ve discovered that not only does the school I teach at have zero systems in place to teach their middle school students about health & sexual education - but that these students are becoming hypersexualized without a full context of what’s going on. I hear boys ask girls invasive/inappropriate questions during class and am at a loss. How do you teach young girls that their bodies belong to them and others are not entitled to touch and rate as they wish? How do you teach young boys that your manhood isn’t defined by how many girls you violate and disrespect?
This is the age where a lot of messages are internalized without fully understanding their impact and it’s even worse when adults just turn a blind eye and ignore these things because “welp, it isn’t my problem, so and so’s department needs to figure it out.”
I would love any resources people may know of, used, or seen in passing about middle school sexual education - but more importantly consent education. I hear a lot about us needing to teach consent - but has anyone actually taken the next step and developed lessons/programming on these topics?
We already know that poor communities of color lack resources that would otherwise provide such education - so we need to do something and spread this information around!
Thanks in advance!
Today’s topics: war (women in combat), abortion, homelessness
Its all pretty telling, but particularly sections 2, 6 & 8
From the article:
According to my mother, black women’s bodies were often battlegrounds for opponents of civil rights. She specified that while all demonstrators were in danger of being attacked, women were often specifically targeted. She explained that the thugs (civilians and so-called law enforcement officers) who battered her and her female counterparts often exacerbated their attacks to threaten black women’s dignity, and to spark the patriarchal ire of male protesters.
She implied that these white men used violence against black women as a tool to buttress their notions of racial and gender superiority, to flaunt control, and to disrupt the movement’s progress through harassment and intimidation. Moreover, she insisted that routine acts of aggression were seldom met with accountability, which led to a cavalier perpetuation of this form of terror.Through my mother’s accounts and the stories my father shared about his cousinJoan Little, who bravely defended herself and slayed a white jailer who tried to rape her, I learned about the prevalence of violence against black women leading up to and during the civil rights movement.
While my mother’s experiences and Little’s obviously differ due to the fact that my mother was not sexually assaulted, the common threads are that they both were victims of police cruelty and unchecked systemic violence fueled by a virulently racist and sexist culture.Through family stories and Danielle L. McGuire’s groundbreaking textAt the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, I strengthened my knowledge about the significance of bearing witness and documenting stories about violence against African American women.
McGuire’s book details how the “ritualistic rape and intimidation” of black women including Recy Taylor, Betty Jean Owens, and Joan Little helped spark the civil rights movement by mobilizing black communities, giving much-needed context to how African American anti-rape activists and organizers such as Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells inspired their communities to stand up for black women’s bodily integrity.
Also, if you read The Ethics of Living Jim Crow (i may post about this separately) Richard Wright discusses the fact that in Jim Crow, black women were so ruitinely disrespected, assaulted and degraded that if a white man was degrading a black women, everybody better learn their place real quick and join in or co-sign that shit. Everybody acts like all that stuff is in the past, but then we act surprised when - to this day - WOC are treated the way they are and depicted certain ways in the media. Or they wanna pretend that our constructed hyper-sexualization is *actually* pathological. Our country lived in a SYSTEM where this wasn’t just the norm - it was a brutally enforced expectation. There is no off switch to socialization.
The fact that this is a talking point is utterly disgusting.
The Melissa Harris-Perry show on “can rape jokes ever be funny?” in relation to the Daniel Tosh fallout. Im super late putting this up but… it starts with a Wanda Sykes clip!
A teenage boy who raped a girl of five was handed a community order by a judge who blamed ‘the world and society’ for his exposure to pornography.
This judge needs to recuse himself from the world
(via thenewwomensmovement)
Wow, sort of upsetting story. California has no law requiring victims to testify, yet the DA simply insisted that she be required and that was enough to lock her up for 25 days and then put an ankle bracelet monitor on her. She’s also a part of the foster care system, so she didn’t even have the privilege of an advocate to fight on her behalf.
Is it justice if you manipulate those with the least means to act as a mere means to your end as oppose to treating them with the respect you give any other victim?
Our community, much like society-at-large, needs a paradigm shift as it relates to our sexual assault prevention efforts. For so long all of our energy has been directed at women, teaching them to be more “ladylike” and to not be “promiscuous” to not drink too much or to not wear a skirt. Newsflash: men don’t decide to become rapists because they spot a woman dressed like a video vixen or because a girl has been sexually assertive.
How about we teach young men when a woman says stop, they stop? How about we teach young men that when a woman has too much to drink that they should not have sex with her, if for no other reason but to protect themselves from being accused of a crime? How about we teach young men that when they see their friends doing something inappropriate to intervene or to stop being friends? The culture that allows men to violate women will continue to flourish so long as there is no great social consequence for men who do so.
DescriptionWiyabi is Assiniboine for, “Women”. This project was created in response to the overwhelming and frightening statistics of violence towards Native American Women.
*1 out of 3 Native women will be raped and 3 out of 4 will be physically assaulted.
*88 percent of the violence is perpetrated by non-Native men, and Tribal courts have zero authority to prosecute them.
*The murder rates is 10 times the national average.
*Native women are more likely than any race/ethnicity per capita in the U.S. to be victims of violence.
*Native women are more likely to be stalked than any other group of women.
*Between 2005-2009, U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 50% of all Indian country matters referred to them, 67% of which involved sexual abuse and related matters.
In addition to promoting awareness to the pandemic of interpersonal violence, the Save Wiyabi Project highlights legislation that is beneficial to reservations and empowers Native women.
The Re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act and the SAVE Native Women Act are two pieces of legislation that would greatly aid reservations and Native women who are victims of sexual and domestic violence. Please contact your Senators and encourage them to support both.
Sh*t Everybody Says To Rape Victims [TW]
Was not expecting to see this, but I’m glad it exists. I really hope this meme sticks around for a while, so many perspectives are using it as a medium to explain their daily lived experiences.
Watch and discuss
ASCOSA: A UK-based organization for adult male survivors of child sexual abuse
Male Survivor: A comprehensive site on male victimization, including a message board and healing weekends of recovery
Menweb: Male child sexual abuse
Survivors Manchester: Supporting male survivors of sexual abuse and rape
Further resources
Helplines:
If you are in crisis and need someone to talk to, or if you need advice, then the following helplines may be useful:
UK:
Male Rape Support Association: 07932 898274
AMSOSA: 0845 4309371
Childline (Under 18): 0800 1111
Men’s Advice Line - 0808 801 0327 (For men in abusive relationship)
USA:
RAINN: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) (for male and female survivors)
Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-888-7HELPLINE (for men and women)
Australia:
Mensline: 1300789978
Men’s Domestic Violence Helpline: 08 9223 1199
Other helplines can be found here.
transient-dreamer submitted:
I think this would definitely be worth your time to look at. “Social effects” being a euphemism for behaviors perceived to be opposed to traditional conservative sensibilities.
The original opinion piece:
The female studens’ response:
That is ridiculous… yoga pants and leggings all the time and its NOT even that serious. I can garuntee no one can see my VAGINA when I wear yoga PANTS this ignorant asshole is just trying to get a pass for staring at people’s vaginas…
My favorite line of his:
Yoga pants make butts look good, and I can’t truly blame you yoga-pant wearers for wanting to flaunt. Part of me is, at heart, a yoga pants fan.
But the rest of me stubbornly objects. I can’t help but feel that women who wear yoga pants have a false modesty that says, “I want to show off my body, but I am too embarrassed to be overtly sexual, so I will just wear skin-tight, curve-revealing clothing to satisfy my exhibitionist desires in socially acceptable means.”
I get the sense that women wear yoga pants to feel sexy without getting judged as a slut, yet I see something demeaning in women wearing yoga pants and parading around their half-silhouetted vaginas all day.
That’s funny, because I get the sense that this is a thinly veild “I was staring at someone’s body who happened to be wearing Yoga pants and i’m angry that their body turned me on but i’m not ENTITLED to have sex with you on demand. How dare you wear comfortable clothing that turns me on but then you wont allow me to actually treat you like a sex object. ITS NOT FAIR, if you’re not going to sleep with me you’re NOT allowed to wear something that I find attractive!” And then he argues that it affects social culture? umm obviously the culture is fine because everyone fucking wears Yoga pants/leggings - your perverted ass is just hot and bothered and wants to make a big fucking deal about it.
NOT BUYING IT. College dudes have the most disgusting case of sexual entitlement I’ve ever fucking seen. And college publications have the most ridiculous wanna-be controversial opinion pieces written in them JUST for fucks sake.
and the response was great - an exerpt:
It’s not about yoga pants. It’s about the implications you, the author, don’t even know you made. Even something as simple as the construction of your article is offensive. You begin with the notion that Roger Williams University has less than rigorous academics. You then cite a specific example of a woman who you believe embodies that notion. Finally, you make an assumption about how these women, who are apparently dumb and get easy grades, think and feel. You imply that we should dress differently because it’s in your best interest. You tell us that we “don’t know how to express our sexuality” and you criticize us for the fact that your own eyes wander. Here’s a thought: Maybe women don’t dress the way they do to please men. Maybe they do it to feel comfortable, or sexy, or pretty. But, we are not going to make that assumption because we don’t know why individual women dress the way they do and neither do you.
in a slightly related note: I’ve recently decided to stop buying jeans altogether and ONLY buy leggings/yoga pants. Shits cheaper, more comfortable, and don’t tear when my thighs rub together :| #thickgirlproblems
