Washington for the win

Just a short blurb today, but congrats to Washington State for passing marriage equality! They’re waiting for the governor to sign, which he’s promised to do. After that, it’s just a 90-day waiting period—during which opponents have promised to fight it to the death, of course—before same-sex couples can start getting married!

Prop 8 no more!

Prop 8 was struck down today!!

Okay, so I know I just gave you this whole big speech about how I’m not going to only talk about LGBT and feminist stuff anymore, but come on. Prop 8! This is big stuff we’re talking about here!

Of course, the fact that Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional doesn’t mean the whole country (or even the whole state, for that matter) is going out and buying rainbow flags (somebody actually told me recently that their father did this when they came out. I wish, right?) and throwing parties tonight. Couples in California are still pretty skeptical, and even if there wasn’t still a stay in place on same-sex marriages, most couples wouldn’t exactly be running right out to the justice of the peace. Too many of them are afraid they’re going to end up in a situation like the 15,000 plus couples who got married when same-sex marriage was first approved in Cali., only to have the right revoked a few months later. So at this point, we’re mostly waiting to see what happens.

I remember having a conversation about Prop 8 just after it passed in 2008. I was told not to get too excited about gay marriage, because eventually all the states that had passed gay marriage laws would go the same way as California.

…yeah. I’m not entirely sure why that was considered an appropriate or acceptable or response either.

Incidentally, gay marriage is coming up to a vote in the New Jersey State Senate next Monday. The bill missed the mark when legislators voted in 2010, but according to The Advocate, the Senate believes there is enough support for the bill to pass this time. Unfortunately, Governor Chris Christie seems as determined to spoil our fun as usual (as a gay college student in N.J., I don’t have much to love him for), but. I guess we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, I’m excited.

On a (kind of) totally different note, I’m really excited about (and stressed out by) this project I’m working on for my senior seminar in Sociology. I’m giving a 30-minute presentation about LGB teens in the foster care system! DID YOU KNOW–20 percent to 40 percent of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, but there are ridiculously few GLBT-oriented homeless shelters or agencies that even train foster parents to deal with these issues? Watch this video for the story of one LGBT welfare center and some really interesting statistics around the 2:05 minute mark.

Like a Phoenix

Okay. I’m back, and it’s time for some changes! Clearly the fact that I couldn’t manage to keep this blog up for more than a few weeks indicates that there was something wrong with my first attempt, and some things need to change if it’s going to continue at all. So here they are!

1. Time/timing

Last summer, I decided to start a blog two days before going away with no internet for a week. When I got back, I ended up working seven hours a day, six days a week, for several weeks before plunging into my senior year of college. Yes, I know—we’re all busy, and plenty of people manage to keep up blogs every day! That’s fine. But clearly, I’m not “plenty of people.” My goal of writing three times a week was intimidating, and when I had missed a certain number, I just gave up. To fix that, I’m going to aim for one post a week. Sometimes I’ll write more often than that. Other times, I might be lucky to get to it once every couple of weeks. Either way, I can’t let myself feel guilty for not writing, or I’ll end up quitting again.

2. Topic constraints

When I started this blog, it sounded like a good idea to have a theme—after all, who wants to read a blog that’s just about “stuff?” The problem is that feminist and gender issues aren’t the only things I want to talk about. I’m a journalist and a sociology student. I love hockey and music, and even though it’s really hard as a college student, I’m trying to be more active and have a more regular sleep cycle this semester. Sometimes I want to talk about those things too! Under the guidelines I’d previously set myself, I felt bad if I tried to write about things that I couldn’t tie into feminism. So when I couldn’t think of something specifically gender or sexuality-oriented (ha! I’m so punny) to write about, I ended up not writing at all, and feeling guilty again. That leads me to the last problem I had with blogging when I tried to start last summer.

3. Tone

Obviously, I think that I have things to say that other people might be interested in reading, or I wouldn’t bother starting a blog. I was also hoping to establish a collection of my writing all in one place to which I could direct potential employers. So when I was starting out, I thought that I had to give my blog a very news-y, formal kind of tone. What I was forgetting is that it’s my blog. Sure, I might get more hits in a Google search if I scoured news websites and commented on the things I found there. But that doesn’t do me much good if I want to write like I’m just having a conversation with the world. I can use proper grammar and write about interesting things without keeping myself totally uptight.

So, those are my goals: post at least once a week and write about things I want to write about, in the way I want to write about them (my new guideline for blog posts, incidentally, is to just not write anything I would be embarrassed writing in a letter to a friend. That should keep out any over-sentimentality, etc.) And if I follow them, I should be able to fulfill my ultimate goal—keeping this blog afloat once and for all!

Farmer’s Daughter

This blog will be reborn from the dead next week. In the meantime, just wanted to pop in to say–I am on my way to an agricultural fair. With my girlfriend in pigtail braids and myself in a plaid snap-up shirt. Because I am dating a farmer’s daughter.

Caliente!

So, I watched Mad Men today for the first time, and I wanted to talk a little bit about gender in the one episode I saw. First off, for those of you who’ve never seen it, the show is set in an advertising company in New York in the 1960s (so obviously, we’ve got some rich ground for gender games right there). And there’s a lot of it going on–from several of the businessmen play-wrestling the youngest member of their crew to test out their latest product, right down to the sheer dynamic of the relationship between Don Draper and his wife.

Specifically, though, I want to go more into detail about the way men and women interact in the workplace in this world. As my roommate David put it, “The 50s, man…it’s like another planet!” Peggy Olson, the new girl, is being treated like a piece of meat by the men she works with. They wink at her, ask her out to lunch, shut the door behind her and try to kiss her…you get the idea.

The episode kept making me think about the way it feels to get hit on in public by some crude guy. I’m not talking the guy holding the door open and making a flirtatious comment at you, but the guy who yells “Caliente!” out his car window at you (yes, that is a true story) or honks at you as you walk down the street with a couple girlfriends.

The problem is that we’re constantly told that attracting attention from guys is your goal as a young teenage girl. At the same time, though, you can’t attract the wrong kind of attention. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we would classify as the wrong kind. So when a guy yells out a car window at me, I’m embarrassed, then angry–followed by vaguely flattered, which leads to embarrassment at that feeling, and more anger that despite my best efforts, the tiniest part of me can’t help but be glad that someone thinks I’m attractive enough to honk at. And it’s even worse when someone else is there to witness it, especially since the majority of my friends are guys themselves.

See what I mean here? If I, who am not even interested in boys, get this conflicted about it, I can only imagine how it feels for girls who are actually interested in appealing to men. I mean, seriously, if we’re being honest? For almost every girl, even when anger and disgust make up the majority of your reaction, there’s going to be that tiny part of you that sometimes reacts by thinking, “Look…guys must think I’m pretty.”  And I know. Some of this is probably in direct opposition to what a lot of feminists think, and if anyone disagrees, we can hash it out all you like–as David pointed on in his second comment, that’s what open debate is for, right?

But I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I’ve been turning it over and over since the first time someone honked at me, when I was about 13, and I’m just really tired of guys yelling at me–and the confusion that ensues thereafter. I’m not saying it’s okay for anyone to make crude gestures or statements to girls and women, because it’s definitely not. It’s just that even when I’m ignoring the advice, I’m sick of being told to look pretty for guys (something that encourages them to act crudely in the first place) and then made to feel guilty for it.

Roadtrip

Hello again, y’all.

I know this is really bad timing, considering I just started this blog about two days ago, but I’m about to head up to Buffalo for a week, and I’m not sure how much blogging will happen in the meantime. It’s for a wedding, so I’m sure I’ll have some things to say about that, though! I’m heading up with my girlfriend, my cousin and her girlfriend, and my non-straight male cousin (so basically we’re the gay car), which will probably give me even more to talk about.

So basically, either I’m warning you for nothing and I’ll just continue to talk at you for the next week, OR I won’t have time to write anything, and then I’ll post about five blogs on the same day when I get back

Anyway, if you get bored while I’m gone, you should check out these cool things:

• Tom, as I mentioned in an earlier post
• Christina, who’s writing a blog about her upcoming trip to London…which is unrelated, but still fun
• xkcd, because I’m a geek, and also because this particular cartoon describes me perfectly
• PostSecret, because they’re an amazing project about being true to yourself and letting your secrets out into the world
• and finally, To Write Love on Her Arms, a lovely non-profit who aim to fight addiction, self-injury, suicide and the stigma of mental illness through spreading awareness and fund-raising.

Let me know if you find anything fun over the next week, or anything you’d like to hear me write about/you think is important news!!

Sex Sells Sports?

Okay, I lied. Apparently, my back brakes decided they’re going to stop working, so I have a little extra time while I wait at the mechanic before I can head back to Rhode Island. So, of course, I’ll spend that time writing out another blog post!

One of my friends, my former Editor in Chief at The Acorn (Drew University’s paper, whose senior staff I’m currently on) was kind enough to send me this link from NPR about whether or not sex sells sports (since it’s been used to sell pretty much everything else). It’s a fair question–after all, anyone who likes women and has seen a women’s tennis match lately can probably tell you that the skirts are at least as intriguing as the game going on (of course, I’d be lying if I pretended that everyone who likes David Beckham does so because he or she is a huge soccer fan, but that’s besides the point). The fact of the matter is, whether or not it works, women in sports are almost always portrayed either as sex symbols, as participants in “non-threatening” sports (coverage of a female ice-skating or gymnastics champion is much more likely than coverage of a female basketball player, for instance), or both.

As Kane says in the above piece, this “reassures (especially male) fans, corporate sponsors and TV audiences that females can engage in highly competitive sports while retaining a nonthreatening femininity.” It’s also important to emphasize their heterosexuality, because as we all know, masculine female athletes are always *gasp* dykes, and we can’t have that, now can we? After all, female athletes are wholesome and clean, just like a good old-fashioned swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated.

What’s more, Kane decided she was going to find out whether or not the advertising works–and what she found was that they actually turned off the two biggest markets for female athletics, “women and older men.” And those who agreed that the images were attractive? Well, shockingly enough, while it may have put these younger men in the mood to watch something, it certainly wasn’t women’s sports.

Beyond the whole “sex sells” argument, I want to show you a couple images from a project I did in a women’s studies class last semester (I’ve included the rest of the PowerPoint, which discusses both Masculinity & Femininity in Sports, if anyone’s interested, but I’ll just focus on these two images for the sake of this conversation). First off,  we see this image of a male golfer. As the text says, he’s a survivor–a vet, a cancer survivor, something of the sort. He has earned our respect by getting through some tough thing that resulted in the loss of his legs, and now he’s back to playing golf once again. Juxtaposed with this image, however was this image of a female golfer. Whereas the man in the above advertisement had to contend with the handicap brought about by the loss of his legs, her handicap is simply her gender. Let me run that by you again–being a woman is in such opposition to the idea of being an athlete that it is comparable to having no legs.

Yep. If I go on about that anymore this whole post will just turn into a crazy rant against everything, so I’m going to stop talking now and post this

Petition and also Tom

Hey guys, I’m about to drive to RI from NJ, so I don’t have time to write a full post right now, but I just wanted to send you a couple things!

First off, sign this petition to remove the ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with other men (that is the way it’s worded in the actual ban, btw–it doesn’t specify gay men, exactly. So I guess that’s something, anyway). According to the article and some stats that I will double-check for you in my BIo Sex book later, about 32% of cases of HIV diagnosed in 2008 were done in heterosexuals, and about half of those living with HIV in 2009 were women.

Secondly, Tom is cool and you should read his blog. Especially this one about gay marriage passing in NY. Also, if you feel so inclined, you should watch a couple funny videos from the same cause: this one is called Make Homosexuals Marry (so they can be miserable like the rest of us). And this one has all the arguments against gay marriage, complete with A LOT of f-bombs, but I love this group!!

On Birth Control and Self-Respect

Those of you who’ve been keeping a close watch on the new health care changes may already know that just yesterday, a new law was passed that “generally bans copayments, deductibles and other charges for preventive services recommended by expert professional organizations” (reprinted here in The Star Tribune after appearing in The New York Times). The reason this is particularly interesting to me? Women’s health needs have been specifically highlighted by this law, and “all government-approved contraceptives for women” have been classified as preventive services for the purposes of this law.

According to the article, the law won’t go into effect until January 2013, and as it points out, women who are as yet unable to attain health care will not feel the immediate effects of this law. However, those who do have health care will no longer have to struggle monetarily to receive services such as mammograms or STI-testing–and the fact that contraceptives have been included in the law could go a long way towards reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in the United States.

As someone who was raised Catholic, I was always taught that sex before marriage and sex with the use of birth control were wrong. However, while many parents and teachers preach to their children about right and wrong, sin and evil, my parents always told me that refraining from sex before marriage and the use of birth control was about respect. According to them, waiting til marriage was about respecting yourself and your future spouse to such an extent that when you met him, you could tell him that you’d been waiting your entire life to share yourself with that one person. While I’ve obviously developed my own opinions on such things, I’m aware that the way my parents taught me about pre-marital sex was both the more beneficial and, unfortunately, the more uncommon way of doing so.

Too many teens are told by their parents and other institutions that they shouldn’t have sex because it’s wrong, and that’s the end of that. But of the seven unwed young mothers that I’ve known (and yes, I’m very aware that this number is extremely low and clearly influenced by my race and class experiences), I knew four of them through my church! Clearly, then, this message isn’t getting through. And while my parents’ message of self-respect definitely has more merit to it, I want to make an argument against their logic.

There’s no question in my mind that respect should be the number one consideration in any sexual encounter–both respect for yourself, and respect for your partner. But because I don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with sex between two consenting individuals of an appropriate age (and that’s a discussion for another time), I don’t think that respect necessarily has to come through in saying no. Sometimes, respect should be about saying yes. Yes, that feels good; yes, I want to do this right now; yes, I’m on the pill.

Because how can we claim to respect ourselves if we haven’t taken control of our bodies? And just like respect, that control doesn’t have to mean keeping our bodies under lock and key–it should be about doing with your body what fulfills you. So to some girls, maybe that means waiting til marriage–that’s fine! But to others, maybe it means taking action to protect yourself, and then finding a partner who respects you just as much as you respect yourself. Of course, there are many countries and parts of the world in which women aren’t yet able to take those steps, and they suffer greatly for it. But thanks to this law, many more women in the United States will soon be able to pursue that second definition of respect.

That Girl, She’s Got an Opinion

If you’ve read my profile, you’ve got the very basics, so I’m not going to go over them again here. What you do need to know is, I’m a walking oxymoron–at least according to some people’s way of thinking. I’m a journalist, but I entered that world through photography, rather than articles, despite the fact that I’ve been writing literally since I was old enough to hold a pen. I’m a non-heterosexual (who needs labels?) woman whose religion and spirituality is extremely important to her. I love music, and I’m perfectly capable of distinguishing between good and bad, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the lyrics or beat to songs that I know aren’t “good.” And, as one of those songs says, “She’s kind of quiet–don’t let it fool you, cuz that girl, she’s got an opinion” (“She Likes Purple,” Wideawake). I’ve been the quiet one in the room for a very long time, but I’ve always had an opinion–and the quiet stops now.