Activism Log Week 3

This week was our Feminist Coming Out Day. We had a pretty good turnout since it was on market day (Wednesday) at UCF’s main campus. We had a lot of people go through our table either making shirts or taking our surveys and most importantly exchanging in conversation with us. I feel that our ultimate success was bringing in people to take a moment to think about issues that they may not have put much thought into. One of our fallbacks however was being unclear with one of our survey questions. A lot of people, especially men were taken aback and unsure of how to answer: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be sexually assaulted, do you agree with this?” I think people felt that maybe if they circled yes they were supporting valuable advice. While, we were trying to advocate that women’s clothing is irrelevant in sexual attacks, it didn’t come out in the right way through our survey.

Although this question raised confusion it was a good reason to start conversation with men about their thoughts on this. Some thought not dressing like a “slut” might help avoid attacks but they agreed attacks should never happen regardless of what a woman is wearing. All of these students will eventually encounter someone in their lifetime who’s been a victim and since “ninety percent of college women who are victims of rape or attempted rape know their assailant” it’s important that they recognize the scenario is not always the “creepy man in the alley after the club” kind (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 262). It felt good to engage in these sorts of conversations with men because as we’ve discussed this week, many don’t like the fact that they’re always seen as a potential attacker, they’re supportive of the feminist cause without even realizing it. And as Stoltenberg points out, “such a disclosure would never have occurred among college-age males even a decade [ago]. The vocabulary and sense of social safety would simply not have existed” (285).  I feel that nowadays more men are open and respectful of feminist ideals even when they are coming from a woman’s mouth.

I have a lot of guy friends, more than girl friends and I feel that these situations have personally influenced me to avoid the path of least resistance when it comes to jokes that indirectly add on the rape culture. By being “one of the guys” I feel that I have to become more aware of the environment I’m establishing in parties by making jokes or not saying anything when something’s off (like a really drunk girl being handled by guys you think are her friends) (290).

After our event, while walking around in my FEMINIST shirt a UCF student in the courtyard yelled out “Do you cook and clean in that shirt?” and as much as I wanted to just smile and brush it off we somehow got to talking about his thoughts on feminism. According to him we should call ourselves humanists if we really want equal rights for everyone. The thing is we haven’t reached that point yet where we’re all on the same playing field. I’m sure no one looks at him and expect his life to only consist of tasks like cooking and cleaning.

Work Cited:

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Activism Log Week 2

So our Feminist Coming out Day page got posted on to Funnyjunk.com as a “Feminism Fail” this week. You may be thinking its okay; all publicity is good publicity, but I must admit it didn't feel good as a group member/page creator to get attacked with all these messages. In case you can’t read from the picture attached, the comment says “Will there be sandwich making?”
 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first person that can handle a joke in a lighthearted manner, but for some reason it was hard not to take this personal. The multiple messages, all bashing on women’s rights, started to become a problem for the promotion of our event. Eventually, as a group we decided it’d be best to delete the event page and create a new one (made private). It’s unfortunate because as much as we want to get the word out to as many UCF students as possible, it’s unlikely that they’ll resist the temptation to make a joke out of it. It’s inevitable that people will still relate feminism to negative images of “mannish” women, who don’t wear makeup or shave their legs, and even worse are man-haters. For so many years, mainstream media has distorted feminist goals and perspectives; preventing people from stepping away from the already instilled notions of our society (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 4). What I can appreciate about our community partner, NOW@UCF is that they are doing their best to make feminism cool and “eroticizing equality.” We are hoping that people become as equally passionate about equality as we are. Seeing such resistance, even from women proves that our job as feminists doesn’t end here. While helping NOW table on Wednesdays these past few weeks, I took note of a very cool sign they tape up on their tent. I feel that from the second people approach our location, at least one of their preconceived notions is already shattered: “You Don’t Have to Be ANTI-MAN to Be PRO-WOMAN.”

People often times approach the table with questions especially during fun and interactive events like “Paint Your Orgasm Day” (an event that encourages women and men to express themselves and their sexuality) that went on this past Wednesday. It’s interesting to see people come with questions or want to start some sort of conversation. I feel that the most important part about this is listening to what other people have to say. Only then will we reach complete conscientization as Paulo Freire refers to as the process of “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions….and to take action against oppressive elements of this reality” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 59). People may say things that are offensive, but what good will fighting fire with fire ever do? I think that’s something we can all work on, whether it’s our tone of voice or way of coming at people. As humans, angered by the circumstances, we could have easily tried fighting and arguing all the people that made negative comments on our event page, but in the end wouldn’t that just reinforce all their assumptions?

We couldn’t have gone into this thinking it’d be easy, many people will continue to go against what they do not know about. And maybe it’s just that, maybe they’re scared that if they know the whole truth they’ll feel just as obligated to act as we do. I know I sure as hell did. It’s never easy to move against the current, traveling in different wavelengths than our peers, but knowing that we’re serving a purpose makes it that much more gratifying

This is the flyer I made that we’ve been passing out for our event.

We’re meeting this weekend to make all the posters, scarlet letter stickers, “Are you a Feminist?” survey and our “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirts. Feminist Coming Out Day: November 2, 2011!  

                                 Works Cited

"       Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.