community

This post comes after day of hell being super Nanny to a family, a new one, who, while I do love these kids, think their parents are great and enjoy my job, I also just cant help but shake my head at how much these kids have, how little they know about the world outside of their very nice four walls. Sometimes I have to catch myself while doing this and question whether my feelings are fair or if this is how we should all have been as children, but because my life was such a contrast to theirs I just cant seem to work out my feelings on this.

I was raised very aware of what goes on the world, the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of it unfortunatly I learnt the hard way, being abused etc. But the rest was because my parents were very open with us about such things. My dad especially took us to protests, friends houses who were going through crisis and it was always explained to us what was going on, sometimes I must admit this was overwhelming and probably a bit inappropriate for the age I was at the time. But most of the time, I think it was okay, good in fact, as by the time I went to high school I was very aware of the issues in not only my community, but in many parts of the world. I guess though, that my Dad being so relaxed about me interacting with people, trusting people and trusting that I knew dangerous from safe situations a little more than I did at age 11 was really how I got hurt in the first place.

With the exception of my books, I have a very modest media collection. I just don't spend that much time watching television and movies or listening to music. However, I am interested in women and supporting us in every way I can. So, given my commitment to women and feminism, how is it that my modest media collection is primarily composed of men's works?

I'm not trying to argue that men aren't worth watching, reading, listening to, or otherwise supporting; men do create some wonderful things, worth the investment of my time and money. I'll never be willingly separated from East of Eden, and my love of Tom Petty appears to be limitless, but how have men and their creations taken up so much more of my shelf space than women and our creations?

Sunday I watched a woman rip down the hill on her snowboard. Last weekend she was easily the strongest female snowboarder out there, but while she is indeed awesome, there just isn't much competition. Sitting in the chairlift with one of the many skilled men that ride out there, I started to wonder just why more women don't ski or snowboard.

Later that night I came here and read Joey's post in the forums:

And this is really a pattern with me, too. For as far as I can think back, I've had at least one really close guy friend, and more often than not, I was closer with that guy than I was with any of my girl friends. It's really only been very recently that I've formed really strong bonds with female friends.

So, I'd like to talk about my job a little bit. I've been working at a domestic violence shelter for two weeks now, after nearly two months of being unemployed. Despite knowing going in that I'd have to get a second job because the pay is too low to cover my bills and that I wouldn't be receiving any benefits, I was incredibly excited when they hired me. Hopefully it goes without saying that I'm interested in working with women to help them improve their lives in any way I can.

After two weeks though, I'm not longer looking for a part-time job, I'm looking for a new one. I wanted to help empower women, to offer support as they made difficult transitions. Instead my responsibilities include reminding adult women that they are not allowed to eat in the living room and monitoring what time they get up in the morning. Nearly every one of my coworkers has compared this job to babysitting and that's exactly what it feels like.

*Disclaimer: This may be jarring to read--it discusses my experience as a concentration camp in Germany.

I just came back from a visit to a concentration camp in Northern Germany. It was the second one I've been to, but we had a guided tour which really changed how I saw the camp. It never gets easy to go to a place like a camp, but today felt different. The camp itself was stark--it had been a prison after it was a camp, and now it served as a memorial.

There were fields of lush grass spotted with dandelions, and I thought they were pretty, until our guide started describing how corpses were burned in the camp's crematorium and the ashes were spread for fertilizer.

There's something that's been going on that's been making me slightly uneasy, and yesterday I finally put my finger on it.

Towards the end of last summer, while I was in Italy and working on my termpapers, a media war broke out in Germany between the 'housewives' and the 'career women'. It was sparked by the publication of the book "Das Eva Prinzip" by Eva Hermann, which I'm sure I've mentioned in a previous blog. I was aware of the publication of the book and outraged by the implications of it (feminism had not helped women but only made their situation more desperate as it had led them to act counter to their biological destiny - that of being a wife and mother exclusively), but too far away to really follow the arguments that followed it.

I feel as though over the last few days I have been inundated with sexist comments and commercials. I sit at a lunch table with a couple of guys, who are all close friends. I am pretty close with half of them, and I've dated two of them. But the other day we were all joking around, and one boy did not seem to think what we said was very funny (had he said it, of course this would be a different story), so he said "Zen, you're such a twat."

I'm not sure why this triggered an ultra-sensitive feminist switch inside me, but since then I have heard so many insults and seen so many diet pill commercials, I'm beginning to wonder if being a woman is as amazing as I thought it was.

Susan Basow, the scholar most beloved by my Gender and Politics professor, called out the biggest obstacles to female-female friendships. One of them was competition for "high-status males" (uh, what). Another was the nuclear family (or its quivalent.

What Basow doesn't tell you is that the opposite is also true, that the break down of that competition and the failure of that family set-up (kids or no kids, married or unmarried, hetero- or homosexual) can really endorse and encourage those relationships we neglect.

My silence at the AGA can be attributed to a number of excuses: classes, exams, graduation, work, fights with my boyfriend; feminist issues seem to fade in the personal drama ("the personal is political" who?). While I see an opening for further discussion already (the nuclear family or the pursuit of it impedes female-female friendships and--gasp--feminism!), I mean to take a moment for a little gratitude.

About a week and a half ago, Kampire pointed out the plight of the Biting Beaver (link) for us to see an actual story of a woman denied EC. Over at her blog (link), she's posted her story cut and dried, and it's empowering. As a young feminist in this rich internet socio-political community, I strangely (and rather guiltily) feel more proud of her actions than sorry for her troubles. I'm thrilled with the fact that she's living rpoof they're all wrong--all those anti-choicers out there unreasonable enough to believe that denying a women EC fights abortion, that a 24 hour waiting period will change a woman's mind when that's all she's probably thought about since she learned she was pregnant, that abortion directly results in depression and anxiety disorders.

Last Saturday night, I planned on driving to my boyfriends place, for a surprise visit. But after I couldn’t find a parking spot, I gave into the fact that I had to walk. I don’t usually feel unsafe in the area where I live – I walk to school pretty much every day. But at night, the confidence that I feel walking alone in West Campus changes.

As I was walking the mile or so to his place, I passed by the porches of fraternities and other homes with groups of loud, drunk boys. Sometimes I would see other people, walking alone and in groups. Some people were waiting for the bus. Vans and SUVs drove near me, sometimes slower than I would have liked. The streets were darker and more empty than I would prefer. Several things that I remember while I’m walking don’t help this overwhelming anxiety that I’m feeling.

I just finished washing an egg mask off my face, which is horribly unpleasant while it is drying. I smell like home-made bread, but at least my face is soft! I pluck my eyebrows, probably every week, but at least they have good arches! I shave my legs every three days (or more in the winter), but at least I don't have to be embarrassed!

Why do we do all this!? My guy friends roll out of bed, get dressed, and a select few brush their teeth. Hygiene aside, how do they get away with it? People assume a girl is dirty if she doesn't shave, or she's a lesbian tree-hugging hippie feminist. But a guy is just a guy. ...no more to it.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say leave, because I wasn’t exactly here for very long. For what it’s worth, I’d really like to come back.

When I first saw a link to this site I immediately got excited, and wanted to jump on board right away. It struck me as a completely unique way to both exchange and get feedback on ideas, and being the fresh-faced and shiny-eyed feminist that I am, I wanted to take part. I had every intention of writing once a week with the same diligence I use to finish my math homework and study for the SATs. I never expected one of my closest friends to be raped, I never expected to feel so selfish about how upset I was, and I certainly never expected coming here to suddenly be painful. Add in the stress of some of my own health problems, and I quickly became furious about things that used to only feel like an abstract injustice. The idealist in me wanted to keep writing, but the rest of me was too pissed off at the world. I became very good at telling myself I would sign on “next weekend”, or “the week after that”, but all of a sudden I am sitting here two months later. I’ve always known that the easiest way to acutely deal with anger is to ignore it or stuff it into a box and throw away the key. After finally reading what some of what you have had to say these past few weeks, I’m starting to realize that anger can in fact be powerful. I’m sorry I’ve missed so much of that.

Safe Spaces, Part One.

This past week we held my school’s annual event where we discuss sexual violence, using testimony, music, dance, poetry, skits and other things to express our feelings and personal experiences with sexual violence, assault, rape, and our culture. Usually I am scared of those sorts of events, scared because of what I might hear, and intimidated by the vulnerability that those who choose to speak display. But I went, and I chose to speak a piece written by Heather (--it was extremely well received!!!) excerpted from her journal, and discussing the culture we live in and how rapists are created and protected within it. I was scared to read it. I don’t know if some of the experiences I have had could be classified as sexual assault (certainly not rape), but my voice trembled as I saw myself in some of the women that did speak.

The decision to make Plan B OTC came the day that classes started at my university, so it took until this week for the news to make our mainstream and the campus paper to make some statement. The first full week of the paper's new daily run was been full of stries relevant to student life, and the front page feature of Plan B's new status was a breakthrough on a paper whose editor is known for his conservativeness.

The opening quote from the doctor in charge of our on-campus women's care clinic stated "It's safe enough to put it in vending machines." More than the issues that Plan B will hopefully counter, the emphasis was on the new availability and what it meant to the college community. The article leaned into an opinion that we all could be proud of, but the news article was only the beginning.

Before I was a part of the AGA, I’d never been heavily involved in any community that was exclusively for women. I had always wanted to be, but never knew where I could find an outlet like that, outside of particular music genres, slumber parties, or girl-cliques in High School. Sororities were what I had to look forward to, if I wanted to be involved with a community specifically made for girls, and that was pretty much it.

But after moving last Friday to a new house, going to school with a new major, and enjoying new volunteer opportunities, I can tell that I’m going to have everything that I wanted for this year, and my ambition to find cool girl-communities is being fulfilled with a vengeance.