reflection

this song goes along with the article so well, talking all about how the girl needs to be saved and be the princess. way to go taylor swift just feed into the idea that we as feminist are trying to avoid.

I was annoyed with this women in the beinnning of the article, all the ranting and complaining about a freakn toy but as i read on i started to realize that i was one of these girls. Almost every day when i was younger my friend paige and i would play princesses, we would dress up and run around trying to get saved and stay out of the way of the evil step sisters and evil witches. We had all the costumes movies and most of the other nonsense that you could by that was princess related. As we got older of course we grew out of this but we still yerned for the girly like things such as canopy beds, nail polish, american girl dolls, and nail polish. Makeup became a must an we loved trying to look girly and be appealing. We were the first to use purses as pencil cases at our very strict catholic school. Now that we are of college age i can see how it has affect us both, i always have had a boyfriend and do not feel comfortable without one, paige is going to school to be an actress/model and doesnt know much else other then to get places with her looks. Not to say that we cant think for ourselves or that we are not intelligant girls, but a lot of the things brought up in the article applied to our younger years. She talks of how it would seem that the feminist movement never happened and that young girls are going to get the wrong idea. It is not going to be easy to not allow girls to be exposed to the princess market because it seems to just be a part of growing up, the idea is that the messege needs to be explained and known that it is not how life actually is.

extended comments on Shelias blog

After reading Shelias blog in which she tool quotes from the article and spoke about them I would say I have to agree with alot of the points that she made. It was ludacris for Biddulph to say that boys tend to not hear because there ear canals can be messed up. Thats just another excuse and if you ask me boys have enough excuses for the ignorance(not saying all are ignorant) I liked how she started her blog by saying that this article was like one of those pictures were you have to look at it long enough to see two different images. It was an ineresting way of explaing how she felt about the points that were being made. She went on to discuss the issue of boys being more violent then girls and causing 85% of violence in America, which i found to be a bit shocking seeing as girls get in fights all the time, i guess they just arent physical fights.



the article as Shelia noted starts to seem clear as to what the aithor wanted us to get out of it and it was that boys will be boys but "Raising boys to manhood means confronting racism, sexism, and homophobia both in our communities and in ourselves". as Paul Kivel said. I liked that she closed her blog with that statement because i didnt really get the authors point so clearly until that was said and was enforced in Shelias blog.
The quotes she used also helped me to pull out the depth of the article and the true talking points, that some excuses as to why boys are the way they are is crazy. Her blog was very informational!

i am putting in this song video because i thought of it when i read this article it talks of a girl being abused by a boy and the lyric that stuck out to me was "do you feel like a man" it seemed to relate slightly to what Kimmel was trying to say were that men do things that are wrong not due to biolgy or poor upbringing but maybe just because it makes them feel more like a man. its also song by a man which shows that not all men are put under the category of violent or rambuchus.

connections

I read The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle The Masters House by Audre Lorde and it reminded me of two other readings we read Oppression by Madiline Frye and the readings we read one People Like Us. The article by Audre is about a African American lesbian women who was askes to sit and discuss feminism at NYU but she soon realized that the community of feminist was not acknowledging all women just white heterosexual women. Madiline Frye talks about how we live in a world run by white heterosexual males who oppress women and dont allow them the same rights as they have. People like us talked about the class system and who is the highest in the system and why. These all relate to each other because they discuss how in a world that says we are all free it does not appear that way. Audre felt oppressed by people she thought were just like her and she was appauled by the fact that the community she feels she most relates to didnt recognize her as one of them. People like us talks of how people hang out with the other people in there class so they feel a sense of belonging. It almost controdicts what Audre had to say but the underlying messege is still the same oppression. Which Frye talks about in detail. That we are in a cage and have bars restricting what we do and how we feel because we live in such a patriarcal society.

I have posted a video that has links to other videos about oppression. That seems to be the theme that we talk about most in class because it is still a huge issue today.

How are American women being oppressed? Roseanne On Beauty (Top Tips For Dieting)

How are American women being oppressed? Roseanne On Beauty (Top Tips For Dieting)

Argument against Adrienne Rich

The author Adrienne Rich argues that all women fall under the lesbian contium. She thinks that all women have a lesbian love for the women in their life such as their kids or friends. Any love between to women is a lesbian love in her eyes. The article goes on to talk about how the exsistance of lesbians isnt in any important literature. Adrienne Rich feels that there is no excaping lesbianism in a heterosexism society. A society that tries to oppress lesbians is apparntly to Adriene impossible because all womenaly love is Lesbian love.

I personally disagree with this because i feel there are all different kinds of love and that love between to women does not have to be classfied as lesbianism. Society already tries to classify women and oppress them i feel Adrienne Rich does the same in her article by saying all women fall under the lesbian continuim. Women can be friends without there being some sort of lesbianis to it. Adrienne Rich would say i am wrong and argue her point that all women are under the conituim.

Lawrence Mead has some nerve

Lawrence is basically saying that it id a poor persons fault for being poor and that they are the sole reason that they have not moved up in the social class. He is implying that they could get out of it but they just dont want to. After watching the movie i agree and disagree with this statement. When we watched the people who were diving into mud and fishing for pigs feet it seemed that they liked being poor. They enjoyed the friends they made and all that went along with having little money. But then when we saw the women and her sons in the trailer it seemed that she didnt like being poor and was trying to get out of being poor. But it isnt that easy to just get out of being poor as we watch. She couldnt afford a car so she had to walk 10 miles to work and as a result she showed up smelly and dischevelled. A job that would pay more then minimum wage would require someone to come in looking presentable and well kept. You could see that the women was trying so hard to care for her family but it wasnt so easy. Sometimes people dont mind not making much and enjoy the simple things in life but for those trying to get out of poverty its not that easy. Lawrence makes it seem like people can just wake up and not be poor but it is so much harder then that.

class without a teacher went well, we all stayed and watched the movie, and stayed to discuss. It was so refreshing to see that people can be mature in settings such as that. We chatted about the film and shared stories about how class has effected  our lives. Everyone had something to say and got a chance to say it.

by Brooke at 11:17 pm

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Comments

Sep

29

reflection

After reviewing both of the webistes i decided to do the reflection because i feel like i can relate to this topic of class and how people get classified either wrongly or accurately. This text made me think about how people can be judemental and oppressive when it comes to class. So far as getting a job people may be looked over because they dont own a house yet they have a degree and can do the job super well. It related to me beacuse when i came to Rhode Island i made a ton of friends that were from here. One day at lunch after knowing me for some time i told them i was from Connecticut. After disclosing that information they immediatly assumed that i had money and was rich. From then on when we went out they would say things like "oh im sure brooke can pay for that because she is from Connecticut". It bothered me because i no longer felt like i was the same person they once thought i was, i became classified by my class. I am not rich and i work for everything i have but there was no use trying to explain that to them so i just let it go. I myself have made assumptions like this in the past but never really realized how it could make someone feel. Most people assume that if your from south Providence you live in the ghetto and have no money. When that may not be the case. Social class is an issue because there doesnt seem to be a way to break out of it once that class is place upon you. While on the website i took the quiz to find out what class i was and it told me that i was some what trailer park class. Now this quiz has no idea who i am or were i am from it just based it off the answers i put down. Which is alot like what people do in society today. The base your class off of what you have and the answers you give. If some one where to use slang such as ain't they would automatically be classfied as un educated and from a lower class. This structure has been around forever and is still a prevelant issue.
it can make even the hardest working person feel small just because they arent in the "right class". I am currently sitting in the computer lab and can see the girl across from me glaring at another girl who looks like she hasnt bathed in days and has ripped clothes on. I can only imagien what is running through her head while she glares at this girl. Every one may not experince being made fun of for there class but we all witness people assumeing in there mind that someone is beneath them or above them when it comes to class. I hope that we can abolish class and finally achive eqaulity, because although America says it is all about equality, that just isnt the case with a structure like class around.

oral project!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

oral project!

I read over the material for the oral project and am super stoked about it! I cant wait to dive into some of the points it made like how history empowers us and that we can learn from the past to create a super bright future. The women i am interviewing is also very excited to get her voice heard because people at her home rarely listen to her :( This is going to be a great knew way to learn about history!

Oppression (Quotes)

The reading I am going to be doing my quotes on is the Marilyn Frye reading about oppression. In her writings she speaks very powerfully about how women are put down and they dont even know it. Some women would argue that they have never felt oppressed but after reading her article Im sure alot of women would change their mind. It talks about how women will forever be oppressed but men as men will not ever excperience oppression.
"Something pressed is something caught between or among forces and barriers". (Marilyn Frye) I thought this was a pretty powerful view on what being oppressed really means. She goes on through the rest of the text to talk about how woemn get caught in these barriers without knowing they are in them. To be pressed is almost like being trapped with no way out. The three waves of feminsit show us that we are still pressed with no way out, even when we seem to fix a problem another one arises leaving us back at square one. She mentions being looked down upon because some women have sex so they are then considered loose. They are pressed into this mold becuase they really have no way of convincing people other wise because the judgemnet has already been made. So there they stay in those barriers of being a loose girl.



"The guy removed a barrier to the lady's smooth and unruffled progress". (Mariyln Frye) This quote is dicussing the process of a man holding a door for a woman. A harmless gesture that most would see as something sweet and worth awing over is acutally in Mariyln's eyes a means of oppression. She discusses how this is just another way that a man makes a women feel incapable. She aruges that men can open a door for a women and do that small favor but can't do their own laundry. Its almost as if the man is trying to say "hey i can do something other than provided". I kind of veiwed it as a way of keeping the women in love or in like with the man. If a man opens the door its cute but say later you get in a fight, or feel unappreacited, the man could just be like well i was a gentlemen and held the door for you. Marilyn may not agree but that was partly how i saw it being oppressing.


"People can and do fail to see the oppression of women because they fail to see macroscopically and hence fail to see the various elements of the situation as systemactically related in larger schemes". (Maryiln Frye)
This quote ties together everything the article talked about. How men get away with either purposely or accidentally oppressing women because people see a bigger picture as oppose to looking at it carefully and taking a step back to be like wait what? She is trying to open peoples eyes in her article and help women be more aware of there world around them. If no one points it out does it still exsist?

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