Archive for the 'Third Wave' Category

Good things

I am in such a wonderfully good place right now. There are still enough days between now and due dates that I’m not yet in full freakout, and I am surrounded by the most wonderful and caring people anyone could know. It began yesterday with some sweet things my kids said, then I was surprised late at night with warm sticky rice in coconut milk topped with cashews and a glass of good wine. Today this was followed up with kids who are excited to be learning to write secret codes in binary/ascii, who laugh, joke around and tell me they love me, and finally an end of semester party with Actiongirls and the Women’s Studies Student Association. These men and women are fun, intelligent, committed to social justice, the environment, feminism, and friendship. It feels so good to be a part of the group. Thank you Carol, Aubrey, Tina, Mike, Edith, David, Allison, Catherine, and Korinne. As for the party: good food, soooo much garlic, and a great theme picked out for next semester’s art-performance-extravaganza: Cliterature! Call for submissions coming out supersoon… stay tuned.

Getting Ready for BlogHer 2006

BlogHer begins in 4 days. Here are some of the things I’ve been doing to get ready (in no particular order):

  • Choose sessions! (Day One) here and (Day Two) here. So many things look interesting and I’m not sure how I’ll manage to be in more than one place at a time. I’m really hoping that all the sessions I don’t end up going to will be podcasted so that I can catch them later.
  • Pack. Am I really going to get up that early for yoga? At least I have the change in time zone going for me. Only with that on my side do I stand a chance. And all this talk about tiaras and ball gowns – yikes!
  • Plan what to do for the extended vacation before and after the official conference. Yelp.com: (San Francisco) and (San José) is good for this and so is 43places (San Francisco) or (San José).

BlogHer
I know I want to go to Sunday Lindy in the Park – anyone else? Every Sunday there’s a free Swing dance/Lindy Hop in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco from 11 am – 2:00 pm with a free beginner/refresher lesson at 12:30. I love swing dancing (any dancing for that matter) and outdoors in California sounds like the perfect venue. Maybe there’ll be swing dancing by the BlogHer poolside. Now that would be cool BlogHer style networking.

I’m still looking for good Thai, Indian and other vegan-friendly restaurants – please leave a suggestion in the comments if you have a recommendation. Will travel for good food!


Mt Tam, taken by kodama

Other things I’m hoping to do include basking in some redwood shade and maybe hitting a beach or two (the second link may be nsfw). My friend Marilyn from Oregon says Muir Wood is too over run by tourists so I’m leaning towards Mount Tam. Rob isn’t afraid of tourists I guess since he wants to check out Fisherman’s Wharf.

See how easy it is to get distracted from work when a a trip like this must be planned? It’s so easy to get lost surfing all the cool things there are to do when you go travelling. Only problem is that if I don’t finish the work that needs doing before I can leave I won’t be able to leave! Back to getting ready . . .

  • Eat all the food in the fridge so that there’s nothing stinky or scary greeting you at the door when you return. Clean the toilet. Same reason.
  • Download and listen to all of last year’s podcasts from the BlogHer sessions. Especially if you couldn’t attend you might want to catch up and see what you missed. Offerings include:
  • Try to pack but get sucked into World of Warcraft because you just learned some really cool tailoring recipes and people at the auction house reeeeeeeeeally need new clothes. Anyone up for creating a BlogHer WoW guild and going on a raid at the conference?
  • Water the garden (put it on a timer maybe?), arrange for someone to look after the children and pets, let students and employers know that you will be out of town and unavailable Until Further Notice (or sometime next week, whichever you prefer).
  • Set some clear goals for the conference. Remember when you first started your blog or registered for the conference? Why did you do it? Has that changed at all? Use this to figure out what you want to gain from BlogHer 2006. Maybe it’s technical skills? building some community? making new friends? something else specific even if it’s only to step away from the computer? Meet up with your favourite bloghers maybe? Change the world? Dismantle patriarchy? No goal is too large for BlogHers united.

Be prepared to answer questions like:

  • Who are you?
  • Where do you blog? (i.e. the URL, though your hometown works here too.)
  • What’s your blog about? and the follow-up: What’s that?/What does that mean?
  • and the 20-million dollar question this year: Why do you blog?

It might also be helpful to have a list of questions to ask people in those awkward moments when you’re side-by-side and frozen by shyness and cannot think of anything to say. Tuck a cheat sheet into your sleeve or get a tattoo if you’re really worried. Here are some ideas:

  • Who are you?
  • Where do you blog? (followed by, “No, I mean what’s your URL?” unless you really were after their hometown.)
  • What’s your blog about? and the follow-up: What’s that?
  • and of course

  • Why do you blog?

Questions not to ask and things not to say:

  • Have I ever read your blog? ~Really, how would anyone know that but you????
  • You’re not at all what I pictured! ~You’re likely to send a blogher into fits of self deprecation for not measuring up to audience expections if you say this. Don’t do it!

(I will do my best to not say any of these things.)

I really want to have a clear and concise answer prepared for when asked what my blog is about. I also need to make some more contact cards. Hmmmm.

bcard

Add to list:

  • Bring contact/business cards

Further things I know I have to do:

  • Charge camera batteries
  • Empty flash cards
  • Clean up laptop and flash drive, backup important files
  • start a list of all those last minute things that can’t be done until the last minute that I don’t want to forget.
  • and very important! update the blogs!

Only 4 more days!!!!

Old Women

I’m getting older… single mom, couple of kids…I’m relatively casual, a jeans and t-shirt person predominantly although on a hot day I’ll wear a long loose skirt. I don’t wear make-up, I have a practical shoulder length haircut which I tie in a ponytail when I’m teaching dance classes. My hair is string straight and I have freckles. I’m pretty ordinary.

I know people whose appearances matter much more to them it seems. People who’ve had cosmetic surgeries, who diet and restrict their meals. People who work out incessantly. Friends who read Cosmo, while I read Bust.

Conversations with my friends come around more often to our bodies. There’s a general sense of “our bodies are falling apart.” People seem to think I don’t struggle the same way or to the same degree. Maybe this is true…I’ve been giving it some thought and I’ve come up with a few ideas.

I don’t think I’ve built up a dependence on my appearance. The way I look has little impact on the work I do. I (try to) live off my brain and talents and know that any relationship that is based on superficial shells is fleeting so not worth the effort. I grew up teased for my freckles, and the kids, cruel as they are, called me chicken legs (and I know now that my legs are/were no different than anyone else’s!)

I was tall at a young age so in grade nine gym class when we were all weighed on a scale (hunh? what was that for anyway?) and I was 115 lbs I felt like a fat cow. Today, many years later, I know that I was a healthy weight for my height. Just because I was more than 6 inches taller than all the tiny girls who were under 100 lbs did not mean I was fat! Ridiculous. The point is that I never had a period where I was really happy or excited about my body. I never thought to myself “I have a great legs/abs/breasts/eyes/whatever.” I mostly ignored my body. Sure this caused other issues but it’s giving me a good perspective for this aging stuff.

When I was in my late teens/early twenties I had two older women in my life. I don’t know their ages in years but both had older children/teenagers at the time. One had beautiful long flowing grey-white hair and was a gardener. She spoke gently and thoughtfully and was intelligent and exceptionally insightful. She made a wonderful impression on me and I thought that someday I wanted to be just like her. The other woman was small and incredibly strong. She was the mother of 3 girls who were all incredibly smart, talented, and beautiful young women. I wanted to feel supported like her kids did. I wanted to support my kids the way she supported hers. I wanted to be confidant like her, to be able to see things clearly like she did, to understand like she did. She had a way of making me be honest with myself about things I didn’t even realize were problems. She was the first one to point out to me that the problems in my marriage were problems – that other people were happy and that maybe I might want to be happy too. I remember the way she made me feel more than I remember the way she looked but when I saw her just a few years ago she was covered in wrinkles and her hair was a soft grey. She was bustling, involved in work, volunteering, spending time with her grown kids – she was beautiful. I wanted to be just like her too.

I think the fact that I have these role models/heroines – these admirable women in my life and that I met them when I was young and impressionable is significant. Without someone to show that with age comes good things how can we know that growing older can be good? Having these women to look up to and remember eases the transitions that our bodies and lives go through.

Aging in our society is hard for both men and women. Our culture is tied to youth and beauty and age is equated with uselessness. It’s hard to resist the advertising for wrinkle creams and hair dyes and all the other products and procedures that promise youth, i.e. value. For women though, I think it’s an added challenge that there are so few older women to call ‘successfull’. Women who are currently 60+ were less involved in public life when they were younger than women are now, and so there are fewer popular examples of ‘success’. The older women that tend to come to mind are from show biz and are known for the numbers of cosmetic surgeries they’ve had.

Older women also make up one of the largest groups of people living in poverty. This is another reason why we don’t have a lot of positive role models for growing older. Without enough money to live it’s hard to inspire the next generation. I think though, that some people are more afraid of wrinkles than poverty stats.

So what is it that these bodies are doing that make us feel like they’re falling apart? Well, thinning, greying hair, abs not so tight anymore, skin isn’t the same as it was when we were younger. All I can say is that yeah, change is hard and try to point out that it’s just change. If we could change the perception would we have an easier time of dealing with it? Does the language we use (i.e. “falling apart”) make it that much harder to adjust (à la Sapir-Whorf)? Can people change a perception that is so ingrained?

I’d like to lose some weight and work out more but I wouldn’t change my grey hair or trade in my baby stretch marks. I’m sure most people harbour a desire to be pleasing on the eyes but I would never want to be so dependent on my appearance that I’d be crippled by body changes.

I look forward to getting older. There are so many good things to look forward to. I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time to be old, that this will be the best part of my life. My confidence is beginning to grow and I’m just starting to get the hang of how to live. I also think (maybe naively) that with age will come more understanding and certainty. I’m getting old enough to see that the more I learn, the more questions there are. I’m starting to doubt the correlation of wisdom and age – but I don’t worry specifically about body changes anymore. Our wrinkles are the proof that we’re survivors. But I’m not sure women will ever be convinced to look at it that way.

Yay Canadian BlogHers!!!

Hooray for Kate!

After BlogHer 2005 (which I could not attend) I got really keen for bringing it to Canada. I talked with the team at BlogHer and they put me in contact with Alexandra Samuel. Unfortunately my house was robbed right as the excitement was building and with no computer it was a challenge to keep up the momentum. Then the new semester began and here it is April…

Luckily Kate has started up with the idea and there is interest! I’m so excited – it will be a great way to meet other bloghers, and a fabulous way to share the work of planning.

Get ready for more of this at E3 2006

mannequin in a t-shirt that says booth babe

Rob‘s been away at GDC this week and he’s been taking pictures of the boothbabes apparently. This photo is from his flickr page. With the fines for objectifying women set for this year I wonder how many boothbabes like this one we’ll be seeing at E3 2006?

We Will Not Be Silent! Media Violence Against Women Must End!

This text was written collectively by Actiongirls, a student and community group based out of the University of Windsor in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. This action has consumed us for the past month and we need your help. Please read through to the end and help us in our campaign however you can. There are some ideas to get you started at the end of the post.

Thank you from Candace & Actiongirls

Background:

In recent weeks, posters could be seen all over Windsor, Ontario, claiming that three women were Missing. The posters included photographs of three local women, along with their names, ages and identifying features, but were not in fact a Missing persons report or alert and instead were an advertisement calling for a mock ‘Search Party’ at a downtown nightclub to ‘celebrate’ a local band’s single and video release there.

missing women poster

The three women featured on the Missing poster are actually actors in the band’s video. Both the poster campaign and video were created by a media consultancy company in Windsor, Mimetic
Productions.

video poster for Held Back

The video featured at the release party, is made in the genre of a snuff film – the women featured in the Missing posters are each violently kidnapped, and held captive, bound and gagged in a basement. Each woman represents a former girlfriend of the lead vocalist, and he blames each for his present mental state. He attempts to possess them, stroking and fondling them while they are terrified and physically captive and restrained, unable to defend themselves or escape. Following this torture, he leaves and a heavy steel door slams. He leaves the women to their fates – death from starvation and dehydration. As he leaves, we see the man carrying a rose for his next victim.

An awareness campaign was launched in Windsor soon after discovering this Missing poster marketing gimmick and its association with a violent misogynist video. This campaign – launched by a local feminist collective Actiongirls – aims to highlight the reality of missing women and the role of media violence in perpetuating the victimization of women. This reality is callously disregarded in this advertising campaign and video.

end media violence against women signs

Actions so far have included a march at night through Windsor’s nightclub district, with a small group of women activists carrying noisemakers and signs protesting profit from tragedy, media violence against women and calling for ethics in advertising. This march was met by a small counter-protest. Two women from Actiongirls were also interviewed on local CBC television news (Friday, 10 February, 2006).

The backlash:

Activists from Actiongirls have been continually harassed since their campaign against these fake Missing posters and the video began. Continual attempts are being made to intimidate us and silence our protest – whether in the form of letters to the University of Windsor hierarchy (the group is based on campus) alleging that protest activity is slanderous and calling for Actiongirls to be reprimanded; or in the form of derogatory online anti-feminist backlash; or ingenuous and insulting plays at placation – for example, coffee and cake with the director of the video! We do NOT take candy from strangers,

and

WE WILL NOT BE SILENT!

The kidnapping, beating, rape, torture, and killing of women is a real horror – one that should not be exploited for profit by anyone. With more than 500 Aboriginal women missing in Canada alone, and thousands of women kidnapped for use in the sex trade or worse, the use of an advertising campaign depicting women as falsely Missing is a dismissal of real pain and terror. Depicting this pain and terror in a music video goes further to justify the continuance of violence against women and especially to justify this kind of treatment of women by men.

image of fighting woman

THIS ISSUE IS BIGGER THAN
ONE SMALL CITY,
ONE VIDEO
PRODUCED BY
ONE COMPANY.

What can you do to support this activism against media violence and the use of missing women as a marketing tool?

  • Contact the company and tell them what you think of their Actions:
    Mimetic Productions:1677 Albert Road, Windsor,
    Ontario, N8Y 3R4; Fax: 519-254-3904;
    email gavin@mimeticonline.com
  • Contact MuchMusic and voice your concerns about the gratuitous depiction of violence against women in this video before the video is added to their rotation:

    Craig Halket, Senior Music Programmer,
    Much Music, 299 Queen Street West,
    Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2Z5; Fax: 416-
    591-6824; email:
    craigh@muchmusic.com

  • Contact your local media outlets to alert them to our awareness campaign and the subsequent attempts to silence it, or contact The Windsor Star, who continues to support this company and refuses to publish community complaints:
    The Windsor Star Group Inc., 167 Ferry
    Street, Windsor, Ontario, N9A 4M5; Fax:
    519-255-5515; email:
    letters@thestar.canwest.com
  • Come out and join us for a march to express community solidarity in opposition to media violence, violence against women and profiting off REAL missing women!

    We will not be silent!

    Saturday March 25th, 2006
    6pm
    Dieppe Park
    (corner of Riverside Drive and Ouellette)
    Windsor, Ontario

  • Create anchor text on your own site or blog that links Mimetic Productions to this post. Use this code if you want a quick and easy cut and paste:

    <p>Media Violence Against Women Must End! What you should know about <em><a href="http://www.femilicious.com/blog/2006/03/08/missing/" title="We will not be silenced">Mimetic Productions</a></em>.</p>

For more information contact: Actiongirls@femilicious.com

Is being feminist ‘enough’?

When I was an unruly teen my father used to frustrate himself with my determination to always root for the underdog. This has redefined itself in my adulthood as a call to issues of social justice. I feel strongly about issues – in other words – give me an issue and I’ll feel strongly about it. Whether it’s porn on an ipod or fairtrade coffee or debeaking chickens or dealing with feral cats – I’ll carry it with me and it will colour most everything I do.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we support more than one cause when possible. Read more »

Am I a bad person?

This past weekend I was in Ottawa for a conference. Ottawa is part of Canada. Canada is cold. And snowy. Especially in the winter time. Like the third weekend in January.

Even if the instructions say: “dress warmly and bring boots” there will be variation in how people interpret “boots”. My roommate for example had mukluks: very warm, and very dry, as well as reflective of her culture. I had above the ankle hiking boots (they were seconds at Columbia earlier this winter when my 11-year-old daughter shockingly grew into and confiscated my wonderful Sorels). Because of a killer blister on my heel that just won’t get better I alternated boots outdoors with birks and socks indoors.

Wondering where this is going?

On Saturday it snowed. All day. The sidewalks were covered in snow. Read more »

“Feminism for Sale”

THIS magazine, “the leading alternative Canadian magazine of politics, pop culture, and the arts” still says that Heath and Potter’s article “Feminism for Sale” will be online soon. Harumph. I’m about ready to give up. I’ve been waiting since at least November for it to go public to put up this post. How can we have a thorough discussion of the article and its issues until the editors make it available? I read the print article and was blown away by it – there’s no way that these two can be taken seriously. With this week’s Carnival of Feminist being about Feminism and Pop Culture I figured now was the perfect time to post it – maybe the article will still make it up someday. Or maybe THIS Magazine has changed their mind following the backlash in their letters section. john_d at the THIS Magazine blog says, “I don’t know if any THIS Magazine article has ever received more letters of complaint than Feminism for Sale.”

So in case you haven’t read it: Heath and Potter provide a superficial overview of the second wave feminist movement. Although they make reference to some ‘big names’ and a partial agenda of the 1960s and ‘70s women’s movement, they do not give credit to the depth of issues interrogated, the progress made, the personal empowerment of large numbers of women and the impact second wave feminism has had around and beyond the American borders.

It is hard to have a neutral reaction to this piece. Whether or not a reader believes that feminism has lost its steam and that the women at the forefront of the second wave have sold out to the technocracy (THIS Magazine, September 2005, p. 220), readers will definitely find themselves engaging in (and I hope vehemently objecting to) the writing of Heath and Potter.

Within any activity or organization, there are always pieces to criticize, feminism and feminists of yore included. However, Heath and Potter hardly present both sides of the story, preventing readers from drawing their own conclusions. Perhaps because this piece was written for publication in a magazine it draws more heavily on emotional persuasion through its chosen topics and the style of language used. Its purpose is not to present facts or inform but to persuade, challenge, and even enrage. THIS Magazine’s focus is alternative pop culture and political issues and certainly feminism and the second wave fall into these categories. Unfortunately, because their approach is to enflame rather than methodically critique the second wave it is difficult to accept their article as a legitimate critique of contemporary feminism.

The first question to ask regarding this article is who are Heath and Potter? What authority do they have to speak of – and comment on – feminism? Whose voice do they represent and whose interest do they protect? Further, whose voices do they present? The authors do not provide first-hand experience with either the second wave or third wave women’s movement. To truly understand a movement or a perspective it is necessary to enter it and participate. Heath and Potter show no indication of actually having spoken to today’s feminist activists. There are no personal anecdotes of third-wavers, no quotes, nothing. Where are the women????? Again and as always, they are hidden beneath the voice of patriarchy, the very voice Heath and Potter represent. Their failure to situate themselves weakens their credibility.

And another thing! Where are the Canadian voices? THIS Magazine is a Canadian publication yet the feminists Heath and Potter discuss are all American. Everywhere we turn, Canadians are subsumed by Americana: culture, technology, politics, and the arts. Here, in this counterculture magazine of all places, an effort be should made to include Canadians and Canadian content, whether or not the authors support or recognize their activism. Given that the majority of Canadians will never pick up a copy of Herizons, where will they ever read about their Canadian foresisters? Heath and Potter do their best to make sure it is not going to be in THIS Magazine. Canadian women are alive and kicking and it is time that this is recognized.

Regarding the issues discussed in Heath and Potter’s article, I want to address these that I think are especially significant: women’s self-esteem, rape/pornography, and the thrust of the second vs. third wave movement:

Heath and Potter claim that women have easy confidence, and are taking over universities and preparing to dominate the job market (214). Many women that I know struggle with their self-confidence and feel an incredible pressure from their surrounding culture to look and act a certain way. Where are the women to whom Heath and Potter refer? The rates of eating disorders among young women in Western society show that self-esteem hardly comes “easy” to women. Although there are increasing numbers of women enrolling in universities, these enrollments are hardly spread equally across all disciplines. Men still dominate engineering, science, math, graduate and doctoral programs, and higher positions of administration. To say “women are taking over universities” (214) is a gross misstatement. The same is true in the job market. Women continue to dominate the pink-collar ghetto and experience the phenomenon of the glass ceiling. Struggles to find the balance between career and family responsibilities prevent many women from “dominating the job market” (214) as Heath and Potter suggest. Perhaps including some statistics would help their position here – if there were any.

Heath and Potter should also back up their statement that “despite some vague claims about matriarchal societies in the distant past, most of the available evidence suggested that all major cultures throughout history were patriarchies” (216). This is pre-history. There are no written texts from this period. Modern archeologists have to interpret artifacts without any input from ancient peoples. I will concede that research supporting matriarchies is impossible to confirm but it is equally difficult to disregard what has been uncovered. To suggest that the evidence favours patriarchy over matriarchy when there is no way to confirm either is unacceptable.

Further disturbing is Heath and Potter’s discussion of rape. They claim that an “entire generation of young men is now entering adulthood, having come of age in an environment that is completely saturated with pornography” (219). Heath and Potter claim that according to MacKinnon’s work, this saturation should have led to the “ultimate nightmare scenario” (219). Heath and Potter fail to recognize FEMINIST campaigns regarding education about sexual consent (e.g. No means No), the emergence of porn/erotica without scenes containing violence against women and other sexual forms of expression that continue to grow (e.g. online instant messaging and chat rooms). But even given all of this, men still rape. How much rape per capita are Heath and Potter willing to accept? Feminists say NONE. If one woman is raped it is a sign that men still feel the power, desire, and ability to dominate women and this is a problem. Moreover, regarding their claim that we have not entered a sexual apocalypse: there are many signs that this is indeed upon us. Sex, that is, women’s sexuality, is commoditized and enlisted to sell anything and everything. Sexual harassment is a reality in the workplace, in schools, and in society-at-large, and little girls’ clothing is sexualized to the point where lingerie stores have storefronts which cater to girls who have not yet hit puberty. Children are being exploited as sexpots! To me, this bodes apocalyptic.

Heath and Potter suggest that at the core of the second wave movement was women’s “collective victimization” and this contrasts with the third wave focus on “personal responsibility and individual achievement” (220). They criticize third wavers of culture jamming the second wave’s critique of culture (220). What Heath and Potter do not recognize is that the second wave accomplished much more than a critique of “beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power structures” (220). These activists made progress for women in the workplace, in sexual liberation politics, and in the culture of the day. The result of this is that third wavers have a greater public visibility than previous generations. And yes, since there are more women with independent lives and resources, there will be more *stuff* created by them and for them. Art and business can go hand-in-hand and it was never the intention of the second wavers that women take a vow of poverty. What they asked was that women make conscious choices regarding their consumption. Creating and owning property does not make today’s women sell-outs to their forerunners. It means that we have had progress. Before the second wave, it was still difficult for women to have earnings to invest in their own enterprises. Now they do. This is good.

Activism never ends. For each goal that we reach many more are discovered along the way. Feminists are in the struggle for the long haul, whether the issue is the beauty/cosmetic industry, sexual abuse, gendered division of labour and equality in the workplace, etc. Heath and Potter do not give any credit to the extensive achievements that were made by the second wave women’s movement. Perhaps this article has been effective in jarring people from any impending complacency and inciting them to action before mass society has the opportunity to believe what they read in This Magazine.

So pardon me Heath and Potter: this is OUR revolution and while you are welcome to join us, until you talk to the women doing the work here, we will speak for ourselves, thank you very much.

Canadian Federal Election

We’re up for another federal election in just over a week. The Green Party has chosen not to put up signs this time. Not only are signs an eyesore in the community and a big litter maker post-election (and often during) but they are also doing this in an effort to make a responsible spending choice. What value do signs contribute to people and their environment? Read more »

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