Cuz a dreamer never sleeps

storybook:

Heidi Eckert urges young women to get politically active (by mikewstagg)

My speech from the April 28th Unite Women rally in Baton Rouge. I hate watching myself, but I am also proud of myself for speaking out. I never would have imagined I’d have the confidence to do that. And the microphone is too high ;)

The thing about being scared to go to your professor’s office hours… so, so true. I usually wait until a friend can go with me, but that’s so limiting.

So proud of you, Heidi!

Female pilot boots passenger for sexist comments

airandsea:

SAO PAULO — A Brazilian airline says one of its female pilots tossed a passenger off a flight because he was making sexist comments about women flying planes.

Trip Airlines says in a Tuesday statement the pilot ejected the man before takeoff as he made loud, sexist comments upon learning the pilot was a woman. The jet continued on to the state of Goias after a one-hour delay.

The passenger involved in Friday’s incident has not been identified. He was met by police at the plane and escorted out of the Belo Horizonte airport. Police at the airport have not responded to calls and it isn’t known if the man has been charged with anything.

Trip says it won’t tolerate disparaging remarks made about any of the 1,400 women working for the airline.

Cheers for this bad-ass woman.

Today, my mom sat in on my women’s studies class

Later, she was all, “Of course, I don’t really agree with a lot of that stuff, but at least it’s interesting to see how they conduct classes.”

Me (half-jokingly): …What if I chose that as my major?

Mom:

I know she’d support me and all, but I feel she’s secretly wondering what went wrong with her daughter. I’ve been considering making women’s studies a minor, and now it’s extra tempting because I know it’ll freak out my mother.

But maybe I should decide on a major first.

falserapeculture:

These “Dudetips” are scattered around UCLA.

Can you imagine the outcry if it read:

Muslim tip #32

If you get on a plane,
remember not to blow
it up.

1) This is the second time I’ve seen someone counter the dudetips with “imagine if we told Muslims not to blow up planes.” WTF? I’m pretty sure falserapeculture is repeating something they heard elsewhere (so unoriginal either way), but how do people even come up with this stuff?

Dudes are not oppressed. Supposed misandry is not the same as racism, but way to trivialize and appropriate an oppressed group’s experience for your benefit.

2) There’s a tumblr called falserapeculture. Among other things, it highlights ”the women that ruin lives without much or any consequences for their lies.”

I don’t want to live in this world anymore.

3) Jesus Christ, I need to get my crap together and join Bruin Feminists next year because if they’re pissing off so many misogynistic assholes on campus and online, they must be doing something right.

seejaywrite:

So I guess if you’re #feminist, it’s okay to be #sexist. #smh #drama #ucla #university (Taken with Instagram at UCLA Dodd Hall)

What the utter fuck. This is not “sexist”… I do not think that word means what you think it means.

There is no such thing as oppression against men. And maybe you should consider that our culture constantly tells women not to GET raped—don’t wear revealing clothes because it looks like you’re asking for it, don’t go out after dark, carry pepper spray to protect yourself—but doesn’t teach men not to rape in the first place. This poster is an attempt by Bruin Feminists to reverse the trend, which ultimately leads to victims being blamed for rape, not the rapists.

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

fuckyeahwomenincinema:

Laura Mulvey is best known for her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal Screen. It later appeared in a collection of her essays entitled Visual and Other Pleasures, and numerous other anthologies. Her article was one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework, influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz had attempted to use psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema, but Mulvey’s contribution was to inaugurate the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis, and feminism. (x)

I looked for a copy of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” online and started reading it. However, I realized that educational though it may be, I was using this article to put off homework. So I turned off my computer and pulled out my reading for Italian Film.

And the reading out to be this exact article. I kid you not, it was freaky.

How would you define the difference between being “sexy” and being “sexualized”?

ALSO

The same devil’s advocate/Harry Potter argument dude mentioned that he gets asked why he’s taking a women’s studies class.

“I tell people that I like to consider myself a feminist but don’t actually know that much about it, so that’s why.”

“That’s my serious answer, anyway. Sometimes I tell people it’s just to pick up chicks.”

Can we just kick him out of the class?

And finally, the idea of people “being so worried about being politically correct” has been brought up by several people in class, and not even those who are privileged in most ways.

I just can’t even.

Today in my women’s studies discussion

A white, upper middle-class (presumably straight) man said the following:
“Well, just to play the devil’s advocate…”
and
“Well, I’m personally a big fan of the Harry Potter argument. You know, “fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself.” [In reference to the racial/homophobic slurs and whether you’re allowed to use them if they can’t be used against you.]

Here is why the Voldemort situation does not parallel our world:
Voldemort targeted the majority of wizards and only spared an elite group—and even then, he would turn on them if convenient.
Racist/homophobic slurs do not discriminate against a majority, but against a minority.
Therefore, it may be okay for the whole of the wizarding community to say “Voldemort” but it is not okay for the whole of our population to go around saying the n-word in an attempt to strip its power. Because unless you are black, it never had power over you in the first place.

I argued against the dude’s “Just to play devil’s advocate” statement (which was that people prefer to watch men’s sports because they’re just “objectively” better and did not acknowledge the fact that our society gives men more opportunities to become “better” athletes), but didn’t get a chance to call him out on the whole Harry Potter thing, which is really eating me up inside.

But no.
Just no.

AND THEN another dude brought up the “fact” (which he’d heard from a friend) that lesbians are actually just going through a phase.
I shook my head throughout the whole time he was talking and he sort of laughed nervously and pointed it out, asking me, “So that’s not true?”
Seeing as how I have straight privilege, I wouldn’t be able to explain the “truth” about being a lesbian even if I wanted to (wtf though, seriously). But I was definitely going to call him out on his undermining of someone’s legitimate identity.
I did not, however, get a chance to do so.
Jackasses, all of these guys.

Possibly the worst part is that at least one person in the discussion agreed with each of these guys. One girl even offered up plenty of scientific evidence to support each one.

I’m starting to believe science less and less. It is extremely possible to skew studies so they reveal exactly what you want to. I mean, there were times when science was proclaiming that white people are more evolved and intelligent.
But no.