I’ve resolved for 2012 to be better. Even though I still don’t love the idea of resolutions, I am making a small resolution-type-thing… in 2012 I refuse to get caught up in anything that will drag me down in the way that this last year did.  My anxiety issues (which I will talk about more in a future post) have hit their peak in 2011 (seriously, I’m calling it) & 2012 will be the year that I pull myself together and become the calm, collected, kickass person that I can be 24/7, instead of just when I am out in public and my reputation is on the line. Part of this resolution means writing here (and elsewhere on the web) a lot more again, because I miss blogging & everyone who I interact with on here!

While I was missing from Imagine Today a TON happened elsewhere. The two most exciting things are…

(1) I got an article posted on xoJane.com!

(2) I also got accepted to present at Momentum 2012 alongside Maria Falzone! Check it out, check it out! I added the conference icon to my sidebar (FINALLY) so if you’re interested at all check it out and consider attending. Last year’s conference, the first ever, was fabulous, it was new, exciting, and experimental yet the organizers obviously knew what they were doing… the workshops were well scheduled, presentations ran smoothly and were well times, plenty of delicious and refreshing snacks were constantly available. I normally really enjoy conferences, but Momentum is on another level entirely. Check out the liveblogs & recaps I wrote of last year’s conference…

• Momentum Liveblog Part One
• Momentum Liveblog Part Two 
• Momentum Liveblog Part Three
• My First Burlesque Show
• Closing Plenary Videos (Not mine.)

Maria and I will be co-facilitating a presentation called Selling Safer Sex to College Students: Tips and Techniques of the Trade. Click the linked title to check out the description! Maria is ridiculously funny & we are both committed to facilitating a session with plenty of dialogue and engagement, so I can promise you this will be awesome. I know my biggest issue that week is going to be choosing between so many wonderful looking workshops.

So I am signing off for now, but I promise this time it won’t be for nearly three months (sorry!) I’ll be back with new content (and a renewed commitment to writing here) soon! In the meantime, do any of you have resolutions? How do you stay calm and focused when life seems to want you to lose your mind? I always love having conversations in the comments!

For most people today is Columbus Day, but not for me. After reading about the atrocities committed by Columbus and his men in James Lowen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me I can no longer acknowledge the day in good conscience.

Despite my lack of aptitude when it comes to history, for the past ten years or so I have had some awareness of the fact that Columbus Day was a really crummy holiday. I mean, thinking about it logically it is easy to understand that Columbus didn’t discover anything, he simply took over a patch of land that was already inhabited by various groups of people. With this understanding I spent many years ambivalent, not thrilled about the reasoning behind the holiday but enjoying my day off all the same. Now, however, I am outraged. This excerpt from a post on commondreams.org is lengthy, but it sums up the horrible history behind Columbus’ expedition to the “New World” very well. It is a history that I, like many of my peers, was woefully unaware of until just a few weeks ago.

“If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea. The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what’s happening in the whole world. When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino “Indians” who loved there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of Columbus’s crew such as Miguel Cuneo. When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola, however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come out to greet them. Cuneo wrote: “When our caravels were to leave for Spain, we gathered one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495. For those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island’s fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done.” Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she “resisted with all her strength.” So, in his own words, he “thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.” While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus – which is to this day still taught in some US schools – to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: “It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold.” Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus’ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: “A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand.”

In order to draw attention to the controversy over this “holiday” at Ramapo Professor Gorewitz planned a “campus takeover to appreciate Native Americans.” This is the schedule for the day:

9:45 – Gathering 10:00 – Greetings from representatives of the Ojibwa and Lenape communities 10:15 to 11:30 – Trudell by Heather Rae 11:30 to 1:00 – Powwow Highway directed by Jonathan Wacks 1:00 to 2:00 – Drum circle near the arch 2:00 to 3:30 – Smoke Signals directed by Chris Eyre 4:00 to 6:00 – The Business of Fancy Dancing written and directed by Sherman Alexie

I’m in class and meetings for most of the day, but I did manage to jump back and forth between Ramapo Coming Out Day (more about that in another post) and the Drum Circle! The drum circle was lead by a Native American man* who spoke for awhile about the significance of the various instruments before leading the circle in a beat for a little while. * [Because I came in late, I missed where exactly he was from but we should all be aware that   "Native American culture" is not a monolithic thing. Someone I spoke to told me the man was from Wisconsin, so I suspect he is Ojibwa based on the program and the fact that there is an Ojibwa reservation in Wisconsin. If anyone has more information about the facilitator of this portion of the event please post it in the comments! ]

In addition to the film festival, there has also been a petition going around to change Ramapo’s name for the day to it’s Native American spelling, Ramapough. This is the part of the event that resonates with me most, since so few people on this campus realize that there is a Native American tripe, the Ramapough Lenape people, living not twenty minutes from Ramapo’s campus. Even fewer people realize that the Ramapough Lenape people’s health and livlihood has been compromised for years now, at the hands of Ford Motors:

In 1983, the Ramapough homeland was declared an EPA-monitored Superfund site by the federal government. After 7,000 cubic yards and 727 tons of paint sludge and 61 drums of toxic waste was removed from the Upper Ringwood, New Jersey site from 1987 to 1990, and in 1994, the EPA delisted the site and declared it safe. In 2006, after many complaints by the Ramapough, Upper Ringwood was the first site in history re-declared a Superfund site and today the EPA admits that 80 percent of the toxins were missed in the original cleanup.

I didn’t know about any of this until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon an article online. This is astounding to me, since the impact this event has had on the community is so powerful:

One area in particular is known as “Cancer Row.”  Every house here has been visited by cancer and in many cases, by The Grim Reaper.  No individual lives into his or her 70s in this area, which, prior to Ford’s presence, supported a healthy population of elderly people. Children, adolescents, and adults are routinely diagnosed with multiple cancers; many have died as a result.  Those who are still on this Earth are not exempt from a myriad of other health issues, including but not limited to gall stones the size of which seasoned medical professionals have never before seen, skin ailments requiring surgical excising of large areas of one’s skin, and unexplained bleeding from the throat, eyes, ears, and mouth. Stumped, local doctors advised one 29-year-old woman that she suffered from lupus and all manner of other diseases; all were incorrect diagnoses. Finally diagnosed properly by healthcare professionals in New York City, the woman learned that she suffers from heavy metal poisoning.  A newlywed, she was also counseled not to try to conceive, as “it won’t live.”

Things like this are allowed to happen, largely, because so many of us are ignorant. In many mainstream public school systems we are taught to see Native American culture and people as something that died out “a long time ago.” The evidence of this is all over our culture: from “Indian Princess” Halloween Costumes, to movies like Pocahontas that vastly misrepresent the story of a real Native American girl, to “Tribal” trends in clothing stores… our culture treats Native American people, a CURRENTLY oppressed group, as some sort of mythical historical figure. In doing this we ignore the reality: Like the fact that there are many, very different groups of Native American people; or the fact that Native American women are at least 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes than other women in the United States (and at least 86 percent of reported rapes or other sexual assaults against Indigenous women are committed by non-Indigenous men); or the fact that an entire race op people (The Ramapough Lenapes) are being harmed by toxic chemicals that an American company put into their land.  We do this because it is easy: after all, buying into Disney’s version of Pocahontas’ life feels much better than acknowledging the reality. Seeing Columbus as a hero who discovered the earth was round (nope) feels better than acknowledging the America we know was founded on a history of rape and subjugation. We do this because he people in power want to keep us ignorant: After all, acknowledging the injustices STILL being commuted against Native American people means that we actually have to do something about it… and doing something likely means inconveniencing major companies and uncovering a great deal of corruption.  We don’t have to do this anymore. This injustice started with Columbus, but it can end with us... what are you going to do to help?

“>I wrote this for the Ramapo College Women’s Center blog, but I wanted to share it here too!

For most people today is Columbus Day, but not for me. After reading about the atrocities committed by Columbus and his men in James Lowen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me I can no longer acknowledge the day in good conscience.

Despite my lack of aptitude when it comes to history, for the past ten years or so I have had some awareness of the fact that Columbus Day was a really crummy holiday. I mean, thinking about it logically it is easy to understand that Columbus didn’t discover anything, he simply took over a patch of land that was already inhabited by various groups of people. With this understanding I spent many years ambivalent, not thrilled about the reasoning behind the holiday but enjoying my day off all the same.

Now, however, I am outraged.

This excerpt from a post on commondreams.org is lengthy, but it sums up the horrible history behind Columbus’ expedition to the “New World” very well. It is a history that I, like many of my peers, was woefully unaware of until just a few weeks ago.

“If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea.

The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what’s happening in the whole world.

When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino “Indians” who loved there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of Columbus’s crew such as Miguel Cuneo.

When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola, however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come out to greet them. Cuneo wrote: “When our caravels were to leave for Spain, we gathered one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495. For those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island’s fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done.”

Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she “resisted with all her strength.” So, in his own words, he “thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.”

While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus – which is to this day still taught in some US schools – to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: “It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold.”

Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus’ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: “A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand.”

In order to draw attention to the controversy over this “holiday” at Ramapo Professor Gorewitz planned a “campus takeover to appreciate Native Americans.” This is the schedule for the day:

9:45 – Gathering
10:00 – Greetings from representatives of the Ojibwa and Lenape communities
10:15 to 11:30 – Trudell by Heather Rae
11:30 to 1:00 – Powwow Highway directed by Jonathan Wacks
1:00 to 2:00 – Drum circle near the arch
2:00 to 3:30 – Smoke Signals directed by Chris Eyre
4:00 to 6:00 – The Business of Fancy Dancing written and directed by Sherman Alexie

I’m in class and meetings for most of the day, but I did manage to jump back and forth between Ramapo Coming Out Day (more about that in another post) and the Drum Circle! The drum circle was lead by a Native American man* who spoke for awhile about the significance of the various instruments before leading the circle in a beat for a little while.

* [Because I came in late, I missed where exactly he was from but we should all be aware that   "Native American culture" is not a monolithic thing. Someone I spoke to told me the man was from Wisconsin, so I suspect he is Ojibwa based on the program and the fact that there is an Ojibwa reservation in Wisconsin. If anyone has more information about the facilitator of this portion of the event please post it in the comments! ]

In addition to the film festival, there has also been a petition going around to change Ramapo’s name for the day to it’s Native American spelling, Ramapough.

This is the part of the event that resonates with me most, since so few people on this campus realize that there is a Native American tripe, the Ramapough Lenape people, living not twenty minutes from Ramapo’s campus. Even fewer people realize that the Ramapough Lenape people’s health and livlihood has been compromised for years now, at the hands of Ford Motors:

In 1983, the Ramapough homeland was declared an EPA-monitored Superfund site by the federal government. After 7,000 cubic yards and 727 tons of paint sludge and 61 drums of toxic waste was removed from the Upper Ringwood, New Jersey site from 1987 to 1990, and in 1994, the EPA delisted the site and declared it safe. In 2006, after many complaints by the Ramapough, Upper Ringwood was the first site in history re-declared a Superfund site and today the EPA admits that 80 percent of the toxins were missed in the original cleanup.

I didn’t know about any of this until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon an article online. This is astounding to me, since the impact this event has had on the community is so powerful:

One area in particular is known as “Cancer Row.”  Every house here has been visited by cancer and in many cases, by The Grim Reaper.  No individual lives into his or her 70s in this area, which, prior to Ford’s presence, supported a healthy population of elderly people.

Children, adolescents, and adults are routinely diagnosed with multiple cancers; many have died as a result.  Those who are still on this Earth are not exempt from a myriad of other health issues, including but not limited to gall stones the size of which seasoned medical professionals have never before seen, skin ailments requiring surgical excising of large areas of one’s skin, and unexplained bleeding from the throat, eyes, ears, and mouth.

Stumped, local doctors advised one 29-year-old woman that she suffered from lupus and all manner of other diseases; all were incorrect diagnoses. Finally diagnosed properly by healthcare professionals in New York City, the woman learned that she suffers from heavy metal poisoning.  A newlywed, she was also counseled not to try to conceive, as “it won’t live.”

Things like this are allowed to happen, largely, because so many of us are ignorant. In many mainstream public school systems we are taught to see Native American culture and people as something that died out “a long time ago.” The evidence of this is all over our culture: from “Indian Princess” Halloween Costumes, to movies like Pocahontas that vastly misrepresent the story of a real Native American girl, to “Tribal” trends in clothing stores… our culture treats Native American people, a CURRENTLY oppressed group, as some sort of mythical historical figure.

In doing this we ignore the reality: Like the fact that there are many, very different groups of Native American people; or the fact that Native American women are at least 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes than other women in the United States (and at least 86 percent of reported rapes or other sexual assaults against Indigenous women are committed by non-Indigenous men); or the fact that an entire race op people (The Ramapough Lenapes) are being harmed by toxic chemicals that an American company put into their land. 


We do this because it is easy: after all, buying into Disney’s version of Pocahontas’ life feels much better than acknowledging the reality. Seeing Columbus as a hero who discovered the earth was round (nope) feels better than acknowledging the America we know was founded on a history of rape and subjugation.


We do this because he people in power want to keep us ignorant: After all, acknowledging the injustices STILL being commuted against Native American people means that we actually have to do something about it… and doing something likely means inconveniencing major companies and uncovering a great deal of corruption. 

We don’t have to do this anymore. This injustice started with Columbus, but it can end with us... what are you going to do to help?

Showing off my tie-dyed bra after a few hours of tabling!

This past weekend I helped to bring Octoberbreast to my college’s Octoberfest celebrations. For three hours I stood behind a table with some friends, in a black dress and a bright tie-dyed sports bra, encouraging other women to tie-dye their own bras while we spoke with them about the various Breast Cancer Awareness Month events we had coming up around campus. The table was met with a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement… we ran out of bras long before the event ran out of time!

In executing this table we did A LOT of things right. The idea was fun and catchy. We had a range of sizes wide enough that we did not have to tell anyone that we didn’t have a bra big enough for them (though we did run out of smaller sizes much quicker than anticipated.) We managed to educate a number of people through conversations and pamphlets given out alongside their bras – sharing information about breast cancer in general as well as the events we have less to come.

Still, there was one thing about this event that made me feel just a bit disappointed in us: we had forgotten the men.

Breast cancer awareness is important, yes, but with “I <3 Boobies” bracelets on so many arms, and NEW! pink products coming out all the time… most people are pretty aware of breast cancer, well, at least the 51% of them that identify as female are. The other half of the population is still at risk because somewhere along the line the conversation about men & breast cancer often seems to get lost. In fact, I have to wonder if all of these campaigns that focus so much on boobs make men even less aware of breast cancer, since they are trained to associate it with “boobies” and women in general.

If this is true, as I suspect, then these campaigns actually could be costing male breast-cancer patients valuable time as they are less likely to be on the lookout for breast cancer symptoms.That time could be the difference between life and death.

In August many media outlets were reporting on a South Carolina man, Raymond Johnson, who was denied  coverage for his breast cancer… simply because he was not born female. Johnson makes too much money to be considered for Medicaid, but not enough to afford insurance that would cover his treatments, as a result of this his doctors encouraged him to apply for help under The Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act. Johnson met all of the requirements for coverage under this act except for one: he wasn’t a woman. Johnson isn’t the only man who has been denied by this fund for the same reasons.

Equally horrifying (at least to me) is the fact that Johnson didn’t even know he could GET breast cancer. For all of the awareness campaigns out there he, like many men, was left in the dark until his diagnosis was brought to light:

“I didn’t even know men could get breast cancer,” says Johnson, who was diagnosed after he went to a local emergency room for chest pain treatment. “I’m young. I didn’t think anything bad could really happen to me.” [Source]

While it is true that breast cancer is MUCH more rare in men [there are just under 2,000 new cases of breast cancer in men in the U.S. per year, and just under 400 deaths, while almost 40,000 women die of breast cancer each year] that does not mean that raising awareness in men is not important. Like all cancers, a patient’s chances of survival are MUCH higher

For an event like ours, I would suggest providing white tank tops for men (and women who don’t want sports-bras) to tie-dye in order to help draw in a more mixed crowd. Overall, when it comes to Breast Cancer Awareness, I continue to advocate for a less “boobies”-centric view… what I mean by this, is that campaigns should focus more on the people who are fighting this disease, and less on the “boobies” themselves.

The bottom line is that breast cancer doesn’t discriminate based on sex, and neither should breast cancer awareness programs or treatment funds.

To end this on a positive note, is one awesome Breast Cancer Awareness campaign that speaks to men as well as women:

“Peter Criss, drummer and founding member of the rock band KISS, recently went public with his battle against breast cancer. People don’t associate men with the disease, but men have breast tissue, too, and they are susceptible to breast cancer. Keep reading and then encourage your loved ones — male and female — to get screened for the potentially deadly disease. “ Read more here!

What do you think? Do you know of any effective awareness campaigns that target women AND men? As always, feel free to share in the comments!

I didn’t know anything about Troy Davis’ plight or his case until last night, when his life was taken by the state.

I am angry, sad, confused, lost… its crap like this that leaves me feeling hopeless, unable to escape from a culture that would murder a man who had so much reasonable doubt tied to his conviction that he probably shouldn’t even be in jail, let alone dead right now.

I feel complicit in all of this hate. No matter how much I read, no matter how many worthy causes I advocate for there are always going to be things that I miss. Like Troy Davis. I want so badly to do my part in advocating against racism, but I don’t even know where to begin in my community.  I want to advocate against the death penalty. I want to do something that would help to stop this from happening ever again. Yet I can’t seem to get past this feeling that my one voice doesn’t mean a single. damn. thing. I mean, if the voices of the thousands who did protest meant nothing to America’s government, why would mine?

How do you pick up and keep going when the country you’ve been raised to love violates its own principles so blatantly?

How do you accept the fact the the cries of so many Americans, calling out for justice for Troy, were so soundly ignored?

Tonight I watched a room full of Republicans boo a f*cking soldier, risking his life in Iraq for a country that doesn’t even recognize him as an equal citizen. So much for, ‘support our troops.’ Earlier this week I saw headlines telling the story of Jamey Rodemeyer, a fourteen year old boy who was pushed to suicide at the hands of bullying.

Where do you go when you dread opening your computer, turning on the TV, even opening your eyes in the morning… for fear of witnessing something else you can’t bear to comprehend?

What could I ever say, or hear, that could make this better? There’s the old standard: life goes on. And that’s true, life will go on and before long Troy Davis and Jamey Rodemeyer will be forgotten by most of us, overshadowed by a million other injustices, annoyances… and good things, too.

If anything, that makes me feel worse. For me, and for so many other life goes on. For Troy and Jamey it ends abruptly, senselessly, without justice.

Its human nature to look for connections, even when there are none. This time, there is a connection: it’s hate.

We’re trained, from an early age, to fear one another, to hate one another. White kids taught to hate kids with skin darker than their own by parents who weave elaborate lies about entitlement (welfare, affirmative action) and danger (muggings, crime). I should know, even my own progressive family feeds right into this BS from time to time. Children who aren’t white taught to hate themselves by a society that tells them you are not good enough, not deserving even of the things you have earned, a society where history has no meaning and everyone’s circumstance is something that they have earned rather than something determined by centuries of history, stretching back long before their birth. Is it any wonder Troy Davis is dead despite the overwhelming doubt surrounding his conviction?

When straight kids are taught to fear queer kids, as preachers teach that love can be a sin, teachers turn a blind eye to bullying and parents try to steer their kids in the “right direction.” When those queer kids are taught to hate themselves, to want to change because as they are love is something dangerous, not something that every human being deserves. A country where just being openly gay is enough to get a soldier booed. Is it any wonder that Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself just this week?

We’re taught to fear everyone who is not just like us, fear that can turn to hate in the blink of an eye.

A system that executes people for their crimes teaches us that killing, violence, and hate are the answer.

A government that refuses to grant basic rights (like marriage, or job protection) to vulnerable members of its population is one that teachers discrimination is okay.

… and we’re all complicit. Every single on of us has had a moment where we stayed silent, watched hate unfold before our eyes but sat paralyzed and unable to act. Maybe it was a friend calling a stupid movie gay or a grandmother making a ridiculous comment about Mexican students going to school for free. I’ll just let this one slide, we think. We’re having a nice time and I don’t want to be the downer.

I almost stopped blogging just a few weeks after starting, because the passage of Prop 8 in California left me feeling so gutted, so hopeless, that I just didn’t see the point. Just as I did then, I find myself returning to the idea of love as the only thing that matters, the only thing powerful enough to change our world into one that doesn’t hurt so much to inhabit. I don’t meant this in a wishy-washy metaphorical sense though. I mean we have to love each other enough to be honest. Love ourselves and the people around us enough to confront the hate, head on, to call it out even when it is masquerading as humor. We need to love our country enough to demand better. To write letters, and protest, and vote, and campaign until America lives up to the values it was founded upon. We need to love even the most hate-filled people, love them enough to push the hate from their hearts and help them to transform. We have to love even when all we want to do is close out the world because the hate simply hurts too much to bear.

It won’t ever be easy, but it will be worth it. That’s what I’ve learned, at least, in twenty one years of muddling through this all, and personally I will never stop trying to prove that love is stronger, for Troy Davis and Jamey Rodemeyer and the million other voices silenced all too soon by the simple power of hate.

The Help is a well executed book from a marketing standpoint. It is nicely paced, wonderfully dramatic, and it features a classic (but always satisfying) struggle of good vs. evil. If we lived in a nice little whitewashed vacuum where this was just a good story, where real women’s lives were not being used as fictional fodder, where the privilege that the fictional white characters possessed never really existed and didn’t still exist… if that was the world that this novel was published in, then this one “guilty pleasure” book wouldn’t be such a big deal.

We don’t live in that world.

There are plenty of things about this book that are just plain offensive. Most glaring, to me at least, is the very affected “accent” that Minny and Aibileen’s sections of the book are written in, while Skeeter’s parts are devoid of even a hint of a southern accent. This sets the two main black characters in this novel off as “other” from the very beginning, which is off-putting. Additionally, Aibileen’s comparison of her own skin color to a cockroach (among many other comments the character makes against her own skin color) is appalling. As are the historical errors in terms of incorporating Medgar Ever’s death into the novel (claiming he was bludgeoned to death, rather than shot) which just show a lack of respect for the topic she was writing about.  The stereotypes – from absentee or abusive black men to sassy or saintly black women don’t help anyone either. I could go on, but these points and many others were already made beautifully here.

Still, the book is quick and easy to read. The conclusion of the book provides a nice, neat, ending sure to make any white person who finds themselves identifying with Skeeter feel good. I can understand why so many people were quick to jump to this books defense because, quite frankly, I’d feel quite a bit better if I could be one of them. 

It would be much easier, much less uncomfortable to close my eyes to the privilege of constantly seeing a variety characters who look like me in the media, enough that I am sure to identify with one… a privilege  that allows me to decide whether or not to be unsettled by another stereotypically written black character because I’m not being discriminated against and, thus, that punched-in-the-stomach feeling that goes with subtle discrimination is missing.

It would be much easier to ignore the privilege of being considered “default” in my whiteness, of knowing that people will not assume that I hold my opinions simply because of the color of my skin. A privilege that comes with knowing I have a much better chance of having my words taken seriously by the mainstream media, especially when talking about marginalized groups, than an actual member of that group.

I would be so easy to indignantly insist that I deserve to be listened to because I work hard on my blog posts (which I do), ignoring the fact that plenty of less-privileged people also worked damn hard on their writing, writing that is often ignored because it lacks “mainstream appeal” meaning, it is not white enough to be lifted up by mainstream feminist blogs.

But I can’t, because that is what The Help is. A whitewashed, declawed version of history that simultaneously manages to condemn racism and absolve the white people who let it continue or who do “enough” to help the cause, by offering up Skeeter as the “good” anti-racist white woman we can all identify with.

READ THE REST AT PERSEPHONE MAGAZINE!

Other Great Related Pieces:

A Critical Review of The Help

(This is one of my favorite posts from the entire blog dedicated to analyzing this novel.)

Writing Race

Who’s Allowed to Tell the Tale? (And Which Tales Should They Tell?)

If you don’t want to watch the video, this comment from the youtube page for the video more or less sums up the director’s main (ill conceived) point:

None of these “future leaders” don’t seem to understand affirmative action. It’s all right to cheat a student who worked hard for 12 years to achieve high grades to loose an education to a student with lower grades, but don’t weaken their basketball team.

This is partially true, the people that they interviewed don’t fully understand how affirmative action works… but neither do the filmmakers.

The Basics of Affirmative Action

First, lets get a major misconception out of the way: quotas are illegal. Schools do not have a certain number or percentage of students from various minority groups that they must admit. Instead, schools  and employers set goals for inclusion based on what groups are not being represented, and then they set a time frame during which those goals should be met. However, they face no retribution of for whatever reason these goals are not met. [Source]

In this framework, affirmative action is not a plot to screw more qualified white students out of “their” place in an institution, but rather to keep the concept of diversity firmly in mind when creating a student body or a group of employees. To meet these goals some organizations employ a “points system” whereby being a part of an underrepresented group gets you a certain number of points… but so do your SAT scores, grades, references, your community involvement, and so on. Within this system being a member of an underrepresented group does not get you a free pass into a college or place of employment based on your race, but rather, it affords you a few extra points in light of the fact that (more likely than not) you have faced some amount of race or gender based discrimination in your life that has hindered your ability to get stellar references/grades/whatever.

Basically, affirmative action comes down to two major concepts: generating diversity AND acknowledging the uneven playing field that exists, and taking that into account when making decisions about people. [Click to learn the truth behind some more myths about affirmative action!]

So Why Shouldn’t We Apply Affirmative Action to Basketball Teams?

Basically, if we lived in a world free of race and gender based discrimination, where everyone was afforded comparable resources and opportunities to succeed then, yes, affirmative action would be silly. But that is not the world we live in. In order to apply the concept of affirmative action to basketball, we’d have to make a compelling argument that white people are facing some sort of systemic discrimination that hinders them from achieving in basketball.

Or, as the filmmaker so eloquently put it…

“How is like, academic ability really different from athletic ability. [...] I mean athletics is the same thing as academic ability.”

Although none of the people in the interviews made the final cut of this short film could answer the question, I can! Academic success is largely influenced by a student’s environment. While raw academic ability can provide students with an edge, ultimately they need a strong and supportive background in which that ability can be nurtured to succeed. Children who grow up in poverty tend to lack that background: they don’t go to schools with funding for fantastic teachers and up to date equipment and textbooks, they often go to school hungry and return to homes where . It just so happens, due to the social structures in place due (in part) to the United State’s history of slavery and race-based discrimination against immigrants, that people of color tend to be disproportionately impacted by the cycle* of poverty.

This same argument can be applied to basketball. Players who can afford great coaches, nourishing food, the time to practice, and so on will have an edge over other players. Are white basketball players somehow systemically being denied these resources? If anything, given what we know about who tends to be impacted by the cycle of poverty, the opposite can be argued in terms of the big picture. White people are more likely to have access to these resources… so why, again, should they get a leg up when trying out for a basketball team?

All of this said, I think the affirmative action model could use some improvement… luckily I am not alone in that belief!

In this modern day and age many institutions and politicians are considering and experimenting with shifting to a model that focuses more on socioeconomic status. This makes tons of sense to me since people with money tend to have access to better resources (like homes in good public school districts, money for private schools, money for SAT tutors, the freedom to take an unpaid internship, and so on) not to mention the fact that they also have their basic needs (food, shelter, clothing) met, thus freeing their minds to focus on getting ahead rather than just surviving. Although people of color disproportionately tend to be  forced into this cycle, systems that looks primarily at socioeconomic status are a viable way of ensuring that all people living in poverty get assistance in breaking the cycle.

At the end of the day, if affirmative action was simply about giving certain groups of people a leg up for no discernible reason, the video’s argument would make  perfect sense. Its not though. I’d challenge the directors of this film to point to the social structures that keep white kids from excelling at basketball (while subsequently putting black children in a position to excel at it.) If someone can convince institutions that the basketball field isn’t equally accessible, then it would make sense to look at ways of leveling it… but until that argument can be made, affirmative action on the basketball court just doesn’t make sense.

*********

* Why is it called a cycle? I mean think about it, if your parents are poor they are not going to be able to provide you with the food you need to focus in school, a home in a well-off school district, tutors when you fall behind, etc. Thus, you are more likely to not make it to college and not go on to get a better job than your parents, thus setting your children up for a disadvantage. This is why it is called a cycle – its not to say that people don’t break out every day, its just acknowledging that the odds are stacked against them. Affirmative action is one way of evening out those odds.

Today is a great day for love.

I don’t have much to say aside from, I LOVE New York!

Seriously though, this decision was a long time coming.

Now, when’s the rest of the country going to get on board?!

For that matter, I think its about time we started to pass laws protecting the rights of trans people. This victory is beyond fabulous, yes, but it is so important to remember that many trans people, some even living in the states with marriage equality, still don’t have vital things like job protection and this is so not okay. The DSM still lists being transgender as a mental illness, under “gender identity disorder” which is also, not okay. I am so, so happy that marriage equality laws passed in New York but the battle for LGBT equality is far from won.

I have no time for a huge introspective post right now, thanks to the two classes that I decided to take this summer. Fortunately, both of those classes are helping to inform my activism, feminism, and blogging! I am taking Advanced Topics in Black Psychology and Film Representations of Race, Class, and Gender because they both could towards my degree and they both help to fill the MAJOR gap in my activist knowledge surrounding issues of race and ethnicity.

I don’t have time for long blog posts at the moment, but I DO have time to share some of what I’ve been reading in and out of class so that we can learn together!

I didn’t know much at all about the Tuskegee Syphilis studies until last week, but I’m glad to have learned. What happened to the men involved in this study (and their families) was terrible. Essentially, over 400 black men with syphilis were recruited for a study on the effects that the disease has on the body (especially the heart, brain, and spinal cord.) These men were promised free healthcare and money for a burial in return for their participation… which is where we run into our first ethical mistake. Technically these men couldn’t consent because, at the time, black people could not purchase life insurance and most could not afford health care, this creates a power imbalance that makes honest consent more or less impossible.

One of the doctors involved with the study, injecting a participant.

The study went on for years, with the men receiving nothing more than pink aspirin and an annual checkup… although they were told they were being treated. Some dangerous treatments (like arsenic) were experimented with and given out for free, but the men in this study were carefully tracked and kept away from any potential treatments. This is ethical mistake number two: deception is permissible only when it is the only option, and its not okay in cases where extreme damage will be done to a participant without their knowledge or consent.

After it was discovered that Penicillin cured the disease the scientists involved with this study decided to continue anyway… keeping the men in this study away from life saving treatment, for no good reason. The scientists wanted bodies to autopsy and study, and they were determined to get them even at the expense of real human lives that could have easily been saved. This can’t even be called an ethical mistake… its just flat-out inhumane.

The kicker of it all is that we didn’t even learn anything new. According to my professor, Syphilis had been studied many times before this. We already knew what it did to the body, the researchers just wanted to see the process in action, and they were willing to essentially kill innocent people in order to get what they wanted.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the United States conducted a similar study in Guatemala around this time. In order to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating the disease, US scientists purposefully infected people (by paying infected sex workers, or just putting the disease right into the body using medical techniques) and then gave some treatment, and some nothing at all.

When did this all happen? The Tuskegee study started in 1933 and didn’t end until 1972, just 39 years ago. The Guatemalan study took place from 1946-1948, 64 years ago.

[Sources: Tuskegee, Guatemala.]

What strikes me most, I think, is that things have not gotten much better when it comes to our societal structures and racism. While I doubt scientists would dare attempt to violate human rights in as blatant of a manner in the present (in the United States, at least… part of me feels like we’re probably still engaging in some sketchy things abroad), there are still plenty of systemic injustices that place the black population in a vulnerable position.

For example: I found this article, Fourteen examples of systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system, on Tumblr instead of in class, but it is still incredibly relevant and powerful to a lot of what I have learned in a formal setting so far.

Eight. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20% more like to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.

[...]

Thirteen. Remember that the US leads the world in putting our own people into jail and prison. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the US has five percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations. The US rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries and black males are the largest percentage of inmates according to ABC News.

Fourteen. Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17% of white job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than blacks without criminal records!

[...]

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness sees these facts as evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African Americans – a racialized system of social control. The stigma of criminality functions in much the same way as Jim Crow – creating legal boundaries between them and us, allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted people. She calls it a new caste system.

Poor whites and people of other ethnicity are also subjected to this system of social control. Because if poor whites or others get out of line, they will be given the worst possible treatment, they will be treated just like poor blacks.

I pulled out a few examples that really struck me, but you really should just go read the whole thing. Aside from explaining the problem of the Prison Industrial Complex in easily understandable terms, this piece makes suggestions as to how we can begin to mend a broken system and highlights organizations doing the work.

I have to go do a paper now, so I don’t have the time to formulate a thoughtful response to all of this reading yet. Plus, to be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed with information at the moment… kind of the same way I felt when I first started reading about queer and gender studies. Just like then, reading and talking and repeating is the best way (for me at least) to get past my own ignorance and move into a place where I can start to contribute to the solution. I hope some of you learn in the same was as I do and can benefit from this as well! So, lets help each other grow?

I’d love to have a conversation with people about this though so please, share your thoughts in the comments!

So, so many books!

Now that classes have ended for the semester, I have regained my ability to read for fun! As a result of this new-found free time and renewed joy in leisure reading I have spent a ridiculous amount of time at various bookstores over the last few weeks.

Yesterday I found myself at Barnes & Noble for an hour or so, just to get out of the house. I really didn’t want to add to that already GIGANTIC pile of books to be read, so I decided to spend some time looking at books that I knew I would never want to buy. This is how I ended up flipping through Glenn Beck’s An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems. (Link goes to the Google Books preview.)

First off: save your money. Glenn doesn’t actually solve a single problem, he just complains a lot about how messed up our culture is and makes extravagant claims about how conservatism could fix everything from troubled marriages to oil dependency.

What struck me the most, though, is the whole chapter in his book devoted to body image.

That’s right, the man who just recently spent eight minutes pretending to vomit on his show, in response to a skin cancer PSA that Meghan McCain took part in. In the PSA McCain wore a tube-top and positioned her body so as to appear naked (the point of the PSA was to equate leaving the house without sunscreen to leaving the house without clothes.)

[I'm not the BIGGEST Meghan McCain fan, but her response to Beck has made me like her that much more!]

Beck continued on to advise her to:

“Put some extra clothes on. Like, lots of extra clothes … has she thought about a burqa, just to be extra safe.”

Meanwhile, in his book (which came out before this whole mess) Beck wrote about the need for the modeling industry to truly enforce standards that promote models who look like the “average” American woman (… like Meghan McCain?) or, at the very least, discourage models from becoming life-threateningly thin. He also talks a bit about the societal pressures that young women face in regards to their body image. (You can read most of the chapter for free, here!)

Yes, he said plenty of problematic things in this chapter too: for instance, constantly referring to young girls as “prostitots” complete with a “charming little drawing that shows a “prostitot” growing up. However, mixed in with the problematic messages, there seemed to be a man who genuinely wanted his daughters to grow up in a world where they could feel comfortable in their bodies.

How is this the same man who went on to fake vomit in response to a woman’s body on his national radio show?

Glenn gives some pretty solid advice in his book, bringing the responsibility for protecting young people’s body image onto the parents:

“My family has an unwritten rule, if you wouldn’t spend time with someone in real life, then don’t let them into the living room via your television set either. It seems simple, but these days we’re not just letting people into our living rooms; we’re letting them right into our kid’s bedrooms. [...] Celebrities only have power because we give it to them.”

- Glenn Beck, page 67 of An Inconvenient Book.

This isn’t the whole solution, but cutting out negative media messages is a great start to helping to shape positive self-esteem for yourself and those around you. May I suggest starting by cutting Glenn Beck out of your lives? (After all, you wouldn’t want him vomiting all over your living room!)

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Also, a sidenote to anyone else with a WordPress powered blog: working in the new distraction free mode really is convenient. I love how the sidebar slides down the page with you as you type!

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I have a few things to say about tonight’s episode.

After losing their challenge this week Star Jones, Marlee Matlin, and Meatloaf were sent outside so that Trump could consult with his two advisers. While outside, Meatloaf and Star continued the argument they had been having in the boardroom. When addressing Star during this conversation (which was not friendly or positive in any way) Meatloaf called Star Jones sweetie. I immediately cringed when this happened, and I am so happy to say that T did as well, because we both recognized how condescending this interaction was.

Upon watching this my mind immediatley jumped back in time, to the job that I was working two summers ago. One day a Professor came in and needed help using the stapler, so I showed him how to do it. He most likely felt embarrassed that he needed help using the stapler, because once he was done he made sure to throw a big, “Thanks sweetheart!” in there. Now, I know this is one of those scenarios where I’m going to have people coming out of the woodwork to call me an angry, humorless feminist for being annoyed by this… but I was. In that context, with the tone that was used, sweetheart felt like a tiny reminder that I was still somehow beneath him. Even though I had just taught him how to use the stapler.

Maybe if I had known this man I would have felt differently.

Maybe if our interaction hadn’t been one that threatened his authority (just a little bit) by making him look silly, I would have felt differently.

Maybe if there were any kind of equivalent to this type of comment that men regularly deal with, I would have felt differently.

But as this situation stands, I was left (just a little bit) annoyed, feeling like I had witnessed another (tiny) instance of sexism that plays into the web of  (just slightly) frustrating events that build and build and build into the brick wall that is oppression.

The scenario on the Celebrity Apprentice was much less ambiguous than mine. Honey, sweetie, dear, darling… these terms of endearment are all lovely when used properly, in the right context. An argument, however? That is not the context. Meatloaf knew this, on some level, because in an argument when someone calls you sweetie the implication is calm down you silly sweet thing, you’re getting all riled up for nothing. Isn’t it?

A random tweet on the episode: Star Jones wanna get mad at Meatloaf calling her “sweetie” but they done called you “fat”, “turkey neck”, and “payless queen” before?

Clearly, the way to render feminism obsolete is to take the glass ceiling down and use it to replace all doors with automatically opening glass doors!

To me, honestly, sweetie is the most frustrating out of all of these. Why? Because other people will acknowledge that being called fat, or turkey neck, or payless queen is insulting. Getting people to acknowledge  that referring to you by a term of endearment when you are not close, and not happy with one another in that moment is not okay is a very difficult task, as we saw in this week’s board room. Trump layed into Star for being frustrated by this exchange, but still she stood her ground and ultimately got fired (for other reasons).

I feel the same way about the persistent door opening trope. If you’re opening the door for me because you got there first, or I was carrying something big and you’d like to be courteous… that’s awesome! Despite what you’ve been told about angry feminists, I am not going to get mad at you for helping me out regardless of your sex/gender identity. What frustrates me is the assumption that men must open doors, carry things, pay, etc. for women because women are the weaker sex and men are the providers.

This belief system is frustrating to me on two levels:

First, it assumes that all female-bodied people are one way and all male bodied people are another, leaving no room for the amazing amount of variation that actually exists between people.

Second, just like calling someone sweetie in a fight, opening a door for someone solely because that someone is a woman is just sexism dressed up in kindness. There’s a word for this in feminist theory, its called benevolent sexism.

Hostile sexism is an antagonistic attitude toward women, who are often viewed as trying to control men through feminist ideology or sexual seduction. Benevolent sexism is a chivalrous attitude toward women that feels favorable but is actually sexist because it casts women as weak creatures in need of men’s protection. [Source]

Benevolent sexism wouldn’t be so bad on its own but, because of the society we live in, it is impossible to divorce benevolent sexism from hostile sexism. Studies have shown that people high in benevolently sexist beliefs (aka chivalry) are also high in hostile sexism… in fact, most psychologists couple these together into something called “ambivalent sexism” when they look to measure the levels of sexist ideologies in a population.  The way this, usually, plays out is that these people are sweet and chivalrous to the women they see as acceptable, but threatening and mean to the women who “step out of line.”

The way that this plays out in the real world, at least for me, is that I smile and thank anyone who opens a door for me or offers me a hand carrying something heavy. I tend to put up with people talking down to me with terms like sweetie or dear, unless it is being done in a blatantly rude way and/or I am in a position where I feel comfortable starting a dialogue with this person about their word choices. This doesn’t do me any damage really in those interactions but, at the same time, it means that I am not working to challenge people to question the sexist beliefs that they hold because how the heck do you ask someone why they are opening the door for you without appearing confrontational? 

I’m stuck. I honestly don’t know how to answer that question. I can talk theory, and I can call out blatant sexism… but how do I smoosh those two things together, and start educating the people around me who are not mean or hostile, but still carry sexist beliefs around every day?

What do you do to bring benevolent sexism under the microscope in an effective, non-confrontational way?

Mother’s Day originated after the Civil War, as a form of protest regarding the death and destruction of the war, by women who had lost their sons. Mother’s Day was created in 1858 by a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis. Jarvis organized Mothers’ Works Days in West Virginia, with the goal of improving sanitation in Appalachian communities of West Virginia. During the Civil War, Jarvis and other women left their families to care for the wounded on both sides. Jarvis also spent her time during the war as a peacemaker, calling together meetings to try and convince men on both sides to end the fighting.

In 1872, Julia Ward Howe proposed an annual National Mother’s Day for Peace. This is the original proclimation that she issued:

Arise then…women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe out dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace…

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God -

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

Americans celebrated Mothers’ Day for Peace on June 2 for thirty years after this proclamation. In 1913 Congress declared that the second Sunday in May would be Mother’s Day.Many activists mark this proclamation as the turning point where Mother’s Day became commercialized and focused on honoring mothers through gifts and fancy meals (consumer goods) rather than through activism and the pursuit of peace.

Personally, I would love to reclaim Mother’s Day for Peace by keeping this activist perspective firmly in mind this Sunday. I play to talk with my family (at Mother’s Day Brunch) about the origins of this holiday and what it means, as a start in reclaiming it. I also plan to make a donation to the activist organization of my mother’s choice as a means of reclaiming those roots. What do you think?

Feminist hand-wringing about the wage gap relies on the assumption that the differences in average earnings stem from discrimination. Thus the mantra that women make only 77% of what men earn for equal work. But even a cursory review of the data proves this assumption false.

Upon reading this I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me was hopeful that this really was true because that would mean one less battle left for the feminist movement.

That hope was quickly dashed, however, as I remembered the chart that I had helped to make for the last Pay for your Privilege Bake Sale I had helped to run at my college: the wage gap doesn’t just exist across gender lines, its also firmly in place across lines of race, sexuality, and gender expression. Even if Carrie Lukas was right, and there was no longer a gap between men and women’s earnings, what were the chances that the wage-gap in regards to race/sexuality/gender expression had also gone away? (Not very high apparently.)

So there is still a problem but maybe, just maybe, there really isn’t a male/female wage gap anymore and that fight can at least be dropped. I was hopeful, yes, but another, bigger, part of me was doubtful… so I did what any good critical thinker would do: I went looking for that data myself.

Lukas’s first claim is as follows…

The Department of Labor’s Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.

I trust this analysis more than Lukas’ because this one actually includes a chart so that I can see the data, instead of making claims. The New York Times piece reveals that time actually does play into the wage gap, but not in the way Carrie Lukas claims…

As you can see, among workers who work at least 40 hours a week, men still significantly out-earn women.

But as soon as you drop below that 40-hour-a-week mark, the reverse happens: Most women make more than men who work equivalent hours, with the exception of workers who put in fewer than five hours a week.

Now this data is also flawed, as it does not control for the type of job worked nor does it have an even number of data points per category, only the number of hours, but it still casts some doubt onto the WSJ article in my mind. The NYT author hypothesizes that, since men are more likely to work full-time jobs it would make sense that they would be more likely to out-earn women when the hours were longer.

Lukas’ second claim is as follows:

Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.

Now this I found suspect, for a few reasons. First of all: to claim that women” gravitate” towards jobs that are more comfortable/less risky/etc. is at least a little bit disingenuous. Sure, plenty of women purposefully choose jobs that have these qualities, but there are also plenty of women who want to be lawyers, or doctors, or contractors, or other less convenient more stereotypically “masculine” jobs who face an incredibly tough road simply based off of their sex. If you’re constantly facing the assumption that you are less fit for your job, based solely off of the reproductive organs you posses, it stands to reason that you’d be more likely to give up and choose a career path with less struggle involved. Simply put: women (and men) don’t make decisions in a vacuum – since gendered expectations are a part of our every day lives, it stands to reason that this particular piece of social conditioning would play some role in the options that we perceive available to us and, thus, pursue.

Beyond that though, I have no idea where she is getting these numbers because she didn’t cite a single source.

Here are two charts that track the wage-gap within various industries (in other words, comparing people to their peers) and (surprise surprise) there is still a pretty huge discrepancy in most industries:

This chart, published on a New York Times blog in February of this year, uses information from the US Labor Bureau to illustrate the current wage-gap in the United States. According to the blog:

Over all, women who worked full-time in wage and salary jobs had median weekly earnings of $657 in 2009. That’s 80 percent of what their male counterparts earned. But as you can see from the chart above, there’s a lot of variation depending on the industry.

This interactive chart, published by the New York Times in May 2010, breaks the gap down even further by industry. Its only a year old, so I suspect the overall patterns still hold true, more or less, despite the fact that some numbers may have shifted slightly in the last year.

Lukas’ final major point:

In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s.

This study showed that among young, single people without dependents living in urban areas (i.e. most likely fairly privileged college-educated people) women actually tended to out-earn men. This does not surprise me, for the reasons that Lucas mentioned: these numbers look at a very specific portion of the population that is very well-poised to succeed.

Here’s what the president of the company that did the research Lucas sites has to say:

It’s pretty simple: more women are graduating from college than men, so more young women are qualified for higher-paying entry-level jobs. Thus, in aggregate, millennial women are earning more than millennial men as they start their careers.

Millennial Hispanic and black women make even more  — as much as twice – as Hispanic and black men of the same age. That’s because the education gap is even wider between Hispanic and black young women and men than it is for whites. This doesn’t mean that women in particular professions, industries or job categories are making more than their male peers. It also doesn’t have anything to do with what individual women make compared to their male colleagues. And most of all, this doesn’t relate to married young women or the biggest earnings barrier of all: children.

I feel like Carrie Lukas thinks feminists are all “handwringing” over some mysterious coalition of villainous men, pulling the puppet-strings and screwing women over at every turn. If she understood the truth, that the feminists fighting the wage-gap see this as a sociocultural issue effected by many factors including gender-roles that push women into lower paying jobs and men into dangerous jobs (also part of the reason why men tend to die younger); mentoring opportunities being less frequent for women in many industries; the fact that women (for whatever reason) are not as well taught in the art of negotiating as a whole and, thus, tend to start with lower salaries; the history of racism in this country that leaves people of color, in general, with far fewer opportunities than white people; the lack of affordable childcare and/or workplaces with childcare in this country that set up barriers to many women who want to work; and so on.

This is why, in my mind at least, you don’t really fight wage inequality. You raise awareness about it, yes, because it is a symptom of a larger social illness that needs constant fighting. A world with no wage gap would be a world where people aren’t put into boxes based off of their sex, or their race, or their gender identity, or their sexuality… a world where people were all given an even playing field to discover their own abilities. The closer we come to that world, the more this gap will close but, desipte what Carrie Lukas might say, we don’t live in that world just yet.

If you’re looking for more click through to the poster’s YouTube channel for a few more short clips from this talk.

Such comments assume that diversity is measured only by the number of Blacks, women, and Latinos in the room, without considering the structural reframing, process, and competencies that can make the term usable. “Diversity” as shorthand for a tally of physical bodies and archetypes is one of the major issues this term faces for validity and understanding. This incomplete definition makes whites feel apart and not responsible, targeted groups into tokens who feel responsible for carrying the burden in get-togethers, and ultimately diminishing collective knowledge. And for those who accompany the word with action, process, and competency, it annoys us when others in the choir don’t sing with the entire range of notes true diversity asks for.

[...]

The worst crime of limiting diversity to stockpiling identities is that it leaves black, white, whomever, oblivious and shackled from taking any social action. I have participated in too many dialogue sessions, hate crime debriefings, class discussions, and lunchroom chit chat where targeted groups have vent sessions, whites stay quiet, and everyone feels good for being in conversation, yet empty that nothing has been done. Everything returns to the status quo of disproportionate favoritism, neglect, anger, and struggle. Why is it that these feelings and situations do not convert well into action? Why do we like the notion of diversity so much, yet we still struggle in using it in the classroom? Why does a room full of positive change agents ask the question “What can I do?” The reason is because action steps, knowledge, competencies, and processes have been severed, or never included, in “diversity.”

[Click to read the rest!]

I hope that the comments section for the post picks up soon because I’d love to hear what other people think!

- Loretta Ross, Founder of SisterSong
@ the CLPP Closing Plenary

The last workshop I went to today, a Strategic Action Session on Racism & Being an Accountable Ally lead by Lorie Seruntine, was honestly transformational.

In order to even have a prayer of being an effective anti-racist activist & ally to people of color focused initiatives that want allies I have a ton of work to do. The biggest thing I took away from this weekend is quite simple: I don’t know much of anything at all when it comes to issues of ethnicity and race. Its obvious through the clunky way I write about it, the way I nervously and carefully select my words, the way I often stay silent for lack of the right words.

I don’t have much more concrete information now than I started with at the beginning of the weekend… but what little I have has released me from this self-imposed silence.

In the Strategic Action Session I learned the history of the word Caucasian [click  to read Zaneta's post on this issue, from awhile back.] All this time I have been referring to myself, off and on, as “caucasian” because in my mind it was the politically correct word to use in this dialogue. I never took the time to figure out where this word came from or what it really meant and, as a result, I messed up and inadvertently supported a racist system through my ignorance.  Recognizing this ignorance is the first step to moving past it.

I have messed up, a lot, in the past. I will continue to mess up in the future, no matter how hard I try, its inevitable. When I first came to feminism I said a ton of stupid things about gender issues, reproductive justice, and so on… I still do mess up from time to time, but as I read and read and read and write (or listen and listen and listen and talk) more I mess up less and less because I learn from my mistakes and the mistakes of others. Its scary to be at the beginning of that process again, which is why it has taken me so long to start holding myself accountable as an ally to anti-racism work. Staying in the comforting realm of (white) body image and (white) gender issues would be so much easier and would feel so much more comfortable… but it would also mean that I was alienating tons of people and helping to contribute to a system of oppression.

In the same workshop I also learned just a tiny bit about how white supremacy was put into place in the United States:

In 1676 came Bacon’s Rebellion by white frontiersmen and servants, alongside black slaves. The rebellion shook Virginia’s planter elite. Many other rebellions followed from South Carolina to New York. The main fear of elite whites everywhere was a class fear. Their solution: divide and control.

On one hand, the slave codes were enacted that legalized chattel slavery and severely restricted the rights of free Africans. The codes equated the terms “Negro” and slave. At the same time rules were set for servants, their bonds were loosened, they were granted certain privileges such as the right to acquire land, join militias, and receive bounties for the slaves they caught.

With these privileges they were legally declared white on the basis of skin color and continental origin that made them superior to blacks and indians, thus whiteness was born as a racist notion to prevent lower class whites from joining people of color, especially blacks, against their common class enemies. [Source]

Seeing whiteness as a construct invented to create this discomfort, this divide between me and the people of color in my community, is the key that has finally, finally unfrozen me.

The power structure in the United States depends on the discomfort, and consequential silence, to survive. My silence is a small part of the divide that prevents us from joining together and rising up against this bullshit system that separates us and gives me more power. It makes us look at one another and see strangers, others… where we should be seeing allies. Its my responsibility to subvert this construct however I can.

Here are some of the tools that I feel I found this weekend for starting to do just that:

• Accept the fact this this won’t be easy or comfortable; it will be worthwhile.
  

Although our facilitator and fellow participants did everything they could to make the space comfortable today, I still felt anxious even starting to talk about my own racial/ethnic identity. As an ally the first thing I need to accept is that no one owes me comfort, no one owes me education, no one owes me anything. I am responsible for educating myself before engaging, and seeking out opportunities to listen and learn in order to contribute to this movement.

Only I can get myself to a place where I am capable of engaging in a way that actually pushes this movement forwards.

• Realize that intentions are not always enough.

My intentions when calling myself “caucasian” were good: I wanted to use the “right” word and be able to engage in dialogue. My intentions in staying out of these conversations were good: I didn’t want to butt in where I was uninformed and unable to add to the space in a meaningful way. Yet despite those intentions, my actions only managed to alienate people by supporting words that have been historically used to oppress and keep myself away from spaces where I could learn to change my thoughts and actions. For all my good intentions, I was doing the opposite of what I wanted to do.

Good intentions are a great starting point – but we have to move past them in order to be able to accomplish anything.

• You can’t just declare yourself an ally; allyship must be a consensual endeavor.

Jessica Yee brought this up in the first panel and, embarrassingly enough, this concept had never occurred to me before she said it. There isn’t much to say here, the concept is ridiculously simple: in order to really claim the identity of ally to any movement you need to know the people directly effected by that movement well enough to know what they want to get out of the movement and, thus, if and how you can help by being an ally.

To call yourself an ally without consent is worse than meaningless, it can actually cause harm and alienate us further from one another.

• Allies take initiative to educate themselves.

This conference was a fantastic start on that for me. I didn’t liveblog the two panels I went to regarding issues of racism and colonialism, because I couldn’t do them justice… I was just too ignorant to even consider typing and focusing at the same time because catching up to the people around me took 110% of my focus. That’s okay, for now, but moving forward I know it is my job to learn enough that I can keep up in the same way I do with things like (white) body image issues and conversations about gender. In order to take steps towards that I made myself an education action plan; my goal is to have accomplished the things on this list (and more) by next year’s CLPP conference. (Feel free to join me!)

My Personal Education Action-Plan

• Read and  blog about Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic-Industrial Complex of Feminism a book that was edited by Jessica Yee, who was one of the speakers on the first panel that I went to this weekend. [Zaneta did an awesome liveblog of it here!] I just ordered my copy off of Amazon and I am so excited!
• Commit myself to spending more time reading blogs and online articles about racism and the experiences of people of color.
• Interact with the awesome resources provided in the Strategic Action Session. [Challenging White Supremacy] [People's Institute for Survival and Beyond] [SisterSong] [Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice]
• Take a related course at my college. I registered for Advanced Topics: Black Issues as my senior capstone psychology course over the summer!

• Allies use their privilege strategically to amplify the voices of people that they are working alongside and educate other allies into the movement.
  

I saved this for last because it may be the most important point.

My main goal as an ally is to amplify the voices of those directly effected by the movement. I started to tip-toe towards this by live-tweeting the Plenary and putting quotes in when I can. I also, personally, try to do this with the “Read This Now!” section of Imagine Today. I, personally, have a long way to go on becoming an effective and consensual ally in this sense.

This particular post does not really amplify anyone’s voice but my own. It is very self-centered on purpose because it is helping to work towards the second part of this bullet: educating other allies. It is my hope that this blog post will help other potential-allies and activists to break through their own hesitations & just dive in. Voicing my own discomfort and ignorance will, I hope, help other potential allies to own up to their discomfort and start to take positive steps towards turning themselves into an informed and effective consensual ally to the many justice movements that exist in this country.

Please contribute in the comments! I want to hear about your experiences, your reactions, reading recommendations… anything & everything to help in this process of growth.