Abstinence-Only Education Now Includes Warning Against Dangers of Fingerblasting

Jezebel, this is why I enjoy serious issues introduced by you.. I giggle; then my face turns red from fury. 

@1 month ago
#jezebel #women's rights #feminism 

"

I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

"

Soraya Chemaly

(Source: The Huffington Post)

@2 months ago with 5 notes
#reproductive rights #woman's rights #women's rights #women's health #feminism #human rights 

shove it, stranger that i will never see again but made me feel worthless.

Most women experience sexual harassment in public spaces as frequently as they step foot outside their homes. I am not excluding men from this experience, but it does happen at a disproportionate rate more regularly to women than men. There are many sociocultural reasons for this and I understand that expressions of masculinity and power are unknown to the one exposing their power through cat calling and other practices that are demeaning to women and other members of society. The normalization of these actions are a huge distraction towards engineering social change, gender equality and respect. 

As little girls, we are told that this will happen. To turn your head and ignore it. Sometimes humour the oppresor, sometimes give them a little smile just to shut them up. I wonder if men know that most women were taught to defend themselves in this situations by calmly carrying on with a walk and internalized fear. 

Today, as I was walking towards a jewelry shop in an outdoor shopping center (all locally owned business, no chain nothings). This area in particular is very pedestrian friendly, tons of people gather around, outdoor performances occur on the daily, poems flow from mouth to mouth effortlessly and its a place that brings a lot of fond memories of the past years living in Atlanta. I am wearing nothing out of the ‘ordinary’, a big jacket cause I ride a scooter and it’s winter (Note: Even if I were wearing anything that reveals a lot of skin I should not be subjected to street harassment. My body is mine and no one should disrespect it). A man looks me up and down, I feel as though his eyes are glancing my body through the clothes and I felt disgusting, powerless, pissed the fuck off but I couldn’t speak up and tell him to shut up. “You’re so sexy” he said very audibly and proudly. Why didn’t I say fuck off? Why did I feel so scared even after all the other times that I’ve expressed opposition to street harassment? I couldn’t get myself to say anything to him. 

I realized that I felt very alone in that moment even though there were many people walking around me, some in the same direction as me. So why did I feel so desperately alone? 

I came home and wrote an e-mail to my boyfriend an somehow felt more comfort knowing that he will know what just happened to me. As though, the key to my loneliness and discomfort laid on sharing this information with my boyfriend because I know that he would defend me in any situation. But I need to understand that I can’t, and in the past I haven’t, relied on this comfort because all I am doing is becoming a victim that does not act against this abuse in order to change these reactions. I reacted so weakly, but I believe that next time I might just say a big, “shut your mouth!” and move on. Maybe it’ll be frightening the first time, but just like some people get a hang of performing street harassment, maybe I’ll get the hang of standing up against them. 

This is something that I must do.

Have you ever had a daughter? A mother? A lover? A woman you loved entirely too much to let her be touched by a rose petal? Have you ever wanted her to be used as an object to prove masculinity? Have you ever wished discomfort upon them? Have you ever seen those women’s faces on my face? My body as a reflection of theirs? Stay back, show respect because I am the same as your daughter, mother, niece, wife, lover. 

@3 months ago with 2 notes
#cat calling #harassment #holla back #sexual harassment #street harassment #feminism 
At first I didn’t know what to graffiti as the wall was so big and the spray cans took time to get used to but Chu was a really good teacher. I wanted to do something about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the burqa, but in an ironic way and take the idea of the burqa away from how we are used to seeing it. But when I was working I had images of all the problems in Afghanistan and all the problems women have here. It was all in front of me, and I felt I wasn’t doing them justice. I worked on an image of a woman in burqa sitting on the ground and had made up a poem about her life. I did few others like her as I wanted to mix the modern style of my painting with their past life to show what kind of life women have in this age. Click on the picture to watch Shamsia in action! 

At first I didn’t know what to graffiti as the wall was so big and the spray cans took time to get used to but Chu was a really good teacher. I wanted to do something about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the burqa, but in an ironic way and take the idea of the burqa away from how we are used to seeing it.

But when I was working I had images of all the problems in Afghanistan and all the problems women have here. It was all in front of me, and I felt I wasn’t doing them justice. I worked on an image of a woman in burqa sitting on the ground and had made up a poem about her life. I did few others like her as I wanted to mix the modern style of my painting with their past life to show what kind of life women have in this age.

Click on the picture to watch Shamsia in action! 

@3 months ago with 13 notes
#afghan #feminism #girl power #graffiti #self #self expression #street art #street art #women #graffiti women 

The discussion of feminism and how it is taken and understood by people who do not identify with it, can be a lengthy and sometimes redundant exchange of words and ideas that continuously clash creating sudden conflict. Feminist Killjoys highlighted so thoroughly what those continuous clashes are, how they happen and why they continue to happen. There is indeed, something inherently unapologetic about taking on feminist politics; this unapologetic attitude is obstructed, misunderstood and pushed right back when it is explored by people who are not likely to understand what exactly is being argued or fought for. Therefore, as a feminist you have to explain bit by bit what feminism is and how simple it really is, but as a result feminism is being sold short of its powerful impact and historical importance. What happens when feminism is pushed as a side effect, rather than the cause of change?

I ask this question because of my own experiences of explaining feminism to family, friends, and strangers. I became an expert at naming social shifts not as feminist actions, then surprising my audience by saying, “that was feminism!” Oh, too late. I had already dislocated a political action from feminism, disenfranchised it from the revolutionary changes it has created. As a feminist, one has to also fight for people to understand what it exactly is, with no care of how violently your words are tossed aside.  I will borrow Sara Ahmed’s metaphor of the table. The table is located in different places, serves different purposes, carries complex identities that have to inhabit in harmony, or attempts of cordial understanding. My table became a battleground when I moved back to my parents’ home last year due to losing my job from being hospitalized for a month as a result to acquiring an infection after a surgery. I have learned to identify why the clashes in my family happen. My family is luckily open minded to having an open minded daughter. This seems to be a positive statement, and indeed, it is not a negative one but it is a limiting one. I have analyzed what this means for our relationship in the future and how seriously they will be able to take my life choices that are influenced by my feminist thought and actions. I read their responses to my opinions as: feminism is rebellion, rebellion is so passé, and it is simply a stage that will be shed out once real responsibilities set in, once it becomes too complicated to be a feminist this will all go away. But how can a phase that changes personal and global histories go away? How is social change something that an individual experiments with for a few years then abandons completely?

I do not want to constantly defend who I am and how it affects my feminism or how my feminism affects who I am, because it should not be questioned so often.  But alas, I am an idealist and when my idealism is met with resistance, it becomes problematical to gather my thoughts and express what I truly want people to know about feminism and my role in it. I still have yet to come up with a just feminist elevator speech, because what it means to me is always changing, growing and metamorphosing and increasingly becoming a part of me.

@6 months ago
#feminism #feminist killjoys #killjoys #girl power #self expression #latina feminist 

I am an idealist to the supreme. It disconnects me from people around me. Idealism does not refer to positivism. Take note: I got sexually harassed tonight by a peer whom I have professional relationship with in the non-profit sector. I tried calling my partner; long distance calls don’t always work and this call did not go through so I got really nervous. I knew he couldn’t do anything about what happened but I needed to tell him the event that took place. I began to make conclusions on what he would think of what happened. I thought he would be jealous at first and his anger would come from his jealousy. I don’t know why I thought this so quickly. I informed myself with this notion in the fact that yes, he is protective over me just as I am over him; however, I never thought he would react with questions like ‘how do you feel? are you okay? are you safe?’ A lot of this has to do with the fact that I still struggle with issues of worth but still. It is no excuse to mistrust the one person I share my life with. I think sexism crept up. Sexism is filled with insecurities about one’s identity so I will not try to find an excuse for this perceived idea of how my partner would react to my sexual abuse. I can’t make excuses for sexism. Because still, as a feminist, this is how I react to my personal life. 

I don’t know if this will be controversial or not but it makes sense to me. 

@1 month ago with 3 notes
#feminism #feminist #kill joy #sexual abuse #truth 
Las Desobedientes: Mujeres de Nuestra America Mi madre me trajo este libro desde Colombia. Mejor regalo no existe! Las historias de estas mujeres lograron grabarse el la memoria colectiva, gracias a que por su rebeldia y desobediencia crearon modelos de conducta, superaron obstáculos, instauraron nuevas actitudes y abrieron espacios que les permitieron participar en el trabajo remunerado y en la educación superior, a la vez que posibilitaron la autodeterminación en el mundo familiar y en el medio politico y social. La desobediencia la definimos, entonces, como un desacato a las leyes establecidas que regian la conducta feminina en las sociedades patriarcales, y que distribuían en forma asimétrica derechos y deberes entre hombres y mujeres o entre diferentes clases sociales. La escasez de noticias es un hecho común en los estudios femeninos, ya que la mujer ha sido ignorada y silenciada y, por lo tanto, es poco visible en la historia oficial. 

Las Desobedientes: Mujeres de Nuestra America

Mi madre me trajo este libro desde Colombia. Mejor regalo no existe!

Las historias de estas mujeres lograron grabarse el la memoria colectiva, gracias a que por su rebeldia y desobediencia crearon modelos de conducta, superaron obstáculos, instauraron nuevas actitudes y abrieron espacios que les permitieron participar en el trabajo remunerado y en la educación superior, a la vez que posibilitaron la autodeterminación en el mundo familiar y en el medio politico y social. La desobediencia la definimos, entonces, como un desacato a las leyes establecidas que regian la conducta feminina en las sociedades patriarcales, y que distribuían en forma asimétrica derechos y deberes entre hombres y mujeres o entre diferentes clases sociales.

La escasez de noticias es un hecho común en los estudios femeninos, ya que la mujer ha sido ignorada y silenciada y, por lo tanto, es poco visible en la historia oficial. 

@2 months ago with 2 notes
#feminismo #latin america #estudios femeninos #latinas feministas #mujeres #feminism 
HEY, Susan G. Komen for the  “cure” Get it right.

HEY, Susan G. Komen for the  “cure”

Get it right.

@3 months ago with 4 notes
#women's rights #reproductive rights #feminism #women's health #health #planned parenthood 

What does it feel like to be a woman on the street in a cultural environment that does nothing to discourage men from heckling, following, touching or disparaging women in public spaces?

Filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West believes that the streets are a War Zone for women. Armed with only a video-camera, she both demonstrates this experience and, by turning and confronting her abusers, reclaims space that was stolen from her.

War Zone is an excellent discussion starter for both men and women. It gives voice and expression to a disturbing daily aspect of being a woman in this society. It also gives men a direct personal feeling for what harassing behavior looks and feels like to a woman. Young men who may think such behavior is cool or funny will be forced to rethink their assumptions.

War Zone is a classroom, documentary edition of Maggie Hadleigh-West’s first film by the same title. Her film has been screened and applauded at scores of festivals in the U.S. and abroad. She has appeared to discuss the film on the Today Show, CBS News, 20/20, BBC, NPR, CNN, and Eye to Eye with Connie Chung.

@3 months ago with 8 notes
#women #feminism #respect #sexism #war zone #cat calling #catcalling #girl power 
Abstinence-Only Education Now Includes Warning Against Dangers of Fingerblasting

Jezebel, this is why I enjoy serious issues introduced by you.. I giggle; then my face turns red from fury. 

1 month ago
#jezebel #women's rights #feminism 

I am an idealist to the supreme. It disconnects me from people around me. Idealism does not refer to positivism. Take note: I got sexually harassed tonight by a peer whom I have professional relationship with in the non-profit sector. I tried calling my partner; long distance calls don’t always work and this call did not go through so I got really nervous. I knew he couldn’t do anything about what happened but I needed to tell him the event that took place. I began to make conclusions on what he would think of what happened. I thought he would be jealous at first and his anger would come from his jealousy. I don’t know why I thought this so quickly. I informed myself with this notion in the fact that yes, he is protective over me just as I am over him; however, I never thought he would react with questions like ‘how do you feel? are you okay? are you safe?’ A lot of this has to do with the fact that I still struggle with issues of worth but still. It is no excuse to mistrust the one person I share my life with. I think sexism crept up. Sexism is filled with insecurities about one’s identity so I will not try to find an excuse for this perceived idea of how my partner would react to my sexual abuse. I can’t make excuses for sexism. Because still, as a feminist, this is how I react to my personal life. 

I don’t know if this will be controversial or not but it makes sense to me. 

1 month ago
#feminism #feminist #kill joy #sexual abuse #truth 
"

I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

"
Soraya Chemaly

(Source: The Huffington Post)

2 months ago
#reproductive rights #woman's rights #women's rights #women's health #feminism #human rights 
Las Desobedientes: Mujeres de Nuestra America Mi madre me trajo este libro desde Colombia. Mejor regalo no existe! Las historias de estas mujeres lograron grabarse el la memoria colectiva, gracias a que por su rebeldia y desobediencia crearon modelos de conducta, superaron obstáculos, instauraron nuevas actitudes y abrieron espacios que les permitieron participar en el trabajo remunerado y en la educación superior, a la vez que posibilitaron la autodeterminación en el mundo familiar y en el medio politico y social. La desobediencia la definimos, entonces, como un desacato a las leyes establecidas que regian la conducta feminina en las sociedades patriarcales, y que distribuían en forma asimétrica derechos y deberes entre hombres y mujeres o entre diferentes clases sociales. La escasez de noticias es un hecho común en los estudios femeninos, ya que la mujer ha sido ignorada y silenciada y, por lo tanto, es poco visible en la historia oficial. 
2 months ago
#feminismo #latin america #estudios femeninos #latinas feministas #mujeres #feminism 
shove it, stranger that i will never see again but made me feel worthless.

Most women experience sexual harassment in public spaces as frequently as they step foot outside their homes. I am not excluding men from this experience, but it does happen at a disproportionate rate more regularly to women than men. There are many sociocultural reasons for this and I understand that expressions of masculinity and power are unknown to the one exposing their power through cat calling and other practices that are demeaning to women and other members of society. The normalization of these actions are a huge distraction towards engineering social change, gender equality and respect. 

As little girls, we are told that this will happen. To turn your head and ignore it. Sometimes humour the oppresor, sometimes give them a little smile just to shut them up. I wonder if men know that most women were taught to defend themselves in this situations by calmly carrying on with a walk and internalized fear. 

Today, as I was walking towards a jewelry shop in an outdoor shopping center (all locally owned business, no chain nothings). This area in particular is very pedestrian friendly, tons of people gather around, outdoor performances occur on the daily, poems flow from mouth to mouth effortlessly and its a place that brings a lot of fond memories of the past years living in Atlanta. I am wearing nothing out of the ‘ordinary’, a big jacket cause I ride a scooter and it’s winter (Note: Even if I were wearing anything that reveals a lot of skin I should not be subjected to street harassment. My body is mine and no one should disrespect it). A man looks me up and down, I feel as though his eyes are glancing my body through the clothes and I felt disgusting, powerless, pissed the fuck off but I couldn’t speak up and tell him to shut up. “You’re so sexy” he said very audibly and proudly. Why didn’t I say fuck off? Why did I feel so scared even after all the other times that I’ve expressed opposition to street harassment? I couldn’t get myself to say anything to him. 

I realized that I felt very alone in that moment even though there were many people walking around me, some in the same direction as me. So why did I feel so desperately alone? 

I came home and wrote an e-mail to my boyfriend an somehow felt more comfort knowing that he will know what just happened to me. As though, the key to my loneliness and discomfort laid on sharing this information with my boyfriend because I know that he would defend me in any situation. But I need to understand that I can’t, and in the past I haven’t, relied on this comfort because all I am doing is becoming a victim that does not act against this abuse in order to change these reactions. I reacted so weakly, but I believe that next time I might just say a big, “shut your mouth!” and move on. Maybe it’ll be frightening the first time, but just like some people get a hang of performing street harassment, maybe I’ll get the hang of standing up against them. 

This is something that I must do.

Have you ever had a daughter? A mother? A lover? A woman you loved entirely too much to let her be touched by a rose petal? Have you ever wanted her to be used as an object to prove masculinity? Have you ever wished discomfort upon them? Have you ever seen those women’s faces on my face? My body as a reflection of theirs? Stay back, show respect because I am the same as your daughter, mother, niece, wife, lover. 

3 months ago
#cat calling #harassment #holla back #sexual harassment #street harassment #feminism 
HEY, Susan G. Komen for the  “cure” Get it right.
3 months ago
#women's rights #reproductive rights #feminism #women's health #health #planned parenthood 
At first I didn’t know what to graffiti as the wall was so big and the spray cans took time to get used to but Chu was a really good teacher. I wanted to do something about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the burqa, but in an ironic way and take the idea of the burqa away from how we are used to seeing it. But when I was working I had images of all the problems in Afghanistan and all the problems women have here. It was all in front of me, and I felt I wasn’t doing them justice. I worked on an image of a woman in burqa sitting on the ground and had made up a poem about her life. I did few others like her as I wanted to mix the modern style of my painting with their past life to show what kind of life women have in this age. Click on the picture to watch Shamsia in action! 
3 months ago
#afghan #feminism #girl power #graffiti #self #self expression #street art #street art #women #graffiti women 
3 months ago
#women #feminism #respect #sexism #war zone #cat calling #catcalling #girl power 

The discussion of feminism and how it is taken and understood by people who do not identify with it, can be a lengthy and sometimes redundant exchange of words and ideas that continuously clash creating sudden conflict. Feminist Killjoys highlighted so thoroughly what those continuous clashes are, how they happen and why they continue to happen. There is indeed, something inherently unapologetic about taking on feminist politics; this unapologetic attitude is obstructed, misunderstood and pushed right back when it is explored by people who are not likely to understand what exactly is being argued or fought for. Therefore, as a feminist you have to explain bit by bit what feminism is and how simple it really is, but as a result feminism is being sold short of its powerful impact and historical importance. What happens when feminism is pushed as a side effect, rather than the cause of change?

I ask this question because of my own experiences of explaining feminism to family, friends, and strangers. I became an expert at naming social shifts not as feminist actions, then surprising my audience by saying, “that was feminism!” Oh, too late. I had already dislocated a political action from feminism, disenfranchised it from the revolutionary changes it has created. As a feminist, one has to also fight for people to understand what it exactly is, with no care of how violently your words are tossed aside.  I will borrow Sara Ahmed’s metaphor of the table. The table is located in different places, serves different purposes, carries complex identities that have to inhabit in harmony, or attempts of cordial understanding. My table became a battleground when I moved back to my parents’ home last year due to losing my job from being hospitalized for a month as a result to acquiring an infection after a surgery. I have learned to identify why the clashes in my family happen. My family is luckily open minded to having an open minded daughter. This seems to be a positive statement, and indeed, it is not a negative one but it is a limiting one. I have analyzed what this means for our relationship in the future and how seriously they will be able to take my life choices that are influenced by my feminist thought and actions. I read their responses to my opinions as: feminism is rebellion, rebellion is so passé, and it is simply a stage that will be shed out once real responsibilities set in, once it becomes too complicated to be a feminist this will all go away. But how can a phase that changes personal and global histories go away? How is social change something that an individual experiments with for a few years then abandons completely?

I do not want to constantly defend who I am and how it affects my feminism or how my feminism affects who I am, because it should not be questioned so often.  But alas, I am an idealist and when my idealism is met with resistance, it becomes problematical to gather my thoughts and express what I truly want people to know about feminism and my role in it. I still have yet to come up with a just feminist elevator speech, because what it means to me is always changing, growing and metamorphosing and increasingly becoming a part of me.

6 months ago
#feminism #feminist killjoys #killjoys #girl power #self expression #latina feminist