How We Teach Children

We complain about the way people think, and the stereotypes people have towards certain genders. For instance girls are artsy. They like music, art, english, and history. Men are different. They like math and sciences. How has this notion come to be? Why do we believe women are more compassionate and men are tougher? We learned that our sex is what we are (male or female) and our gender is the stereotypes that go along with that sex. So if our preferences and stereotypes are not given to us by nature how do we receive them? The answer is they are learned behaviors that are instilled in us from a very young age. While I interned at a preschool over the summer I saw as teachers constantly told female students to talk about how they feel, while little boys were just told boys don't cry. Teachers encouraged girls to paint and boys to play with blocks. The little kids rarely had a preference as to which they were going to do, however, they were groomed as they grow up.

Intersectionality and Feminism

At the beginning of the year we learned about how feminism supports such a small variety of women. When people say feminism is no longer needed and a thing of the past, they ignore that the women most affected by negative stereotyping are minority women who have both race and gender working against them. White women can get jobs because companies like to promote that they are not sexist, while black men can get jobs so companies can know they aren't racist. Black women, however, face both sexism and racism and that is too much for a company to look past. I like this sign because it promotes that white women are not the only "type" of women. When fighting against sexism you must also fight against racism.

Feminism Meme

Memes are one of my favorite things on the internet. They are funny and provide me with so much entertainment. While memes usually have to be a bit controversial, so we can find the humor in them, memes that promote an incorrect perspective are not at all humorous to me. This meme promotes the sexism that we learned about at the beginning of the year with the negative stereotyping towards feminists. I have known a lot of feminist and never have any of them been triggered by a man telling them to have a good day. These memes promote negative outlooks on people who are just looking for equality between genders.

Celebrities and Baby Weight

It is bad enough that women are stereotyped instantly when they become pregnant. Even worse than this stereotyping for average women is the stereotyping faced by celebrities who happen to be a woman. If they gain a slight bit of weight or say they have exciting news, all of a sudden everyone assumes pregnancy. Celebrity women basically are unable to reach 110 pounds without people assuming they are having a baby. While most women get to enjoy their baby once he or she is born, celebrity women are expected to lose unhealthy amounts of weight in order to get their previous bodies back. It is completely unfair to assume a woman who has just given birth would be back to 95 pounds in 3 days. During Kim Kardashians pregnancy, people actually made comments about how big she looked. This shocked me, she is pregnant she is meant to be big. Not even pregnant women can escape body shaming.

Donald Trump Sayings About Women

It is no secret that Donald Trump has said some horrible things about women. Sadly, I feel as if society has gotten used to hearing it come from him and in a way has accepted it. I feel as if this video is powerful because you see as women read quotes from Trump that are so extremely inappropriate. With Trump being president, I have noticed very clearly an increase in sexism and racism around me every day. This video is powerful because it shows women who are clearly against his actions.

Poverty in America

In America, we see poverty everywhere. However, in my sociology class, I learned that the stigma about it being mostly men in poverty is incorrect. Men make up 49% of the population and 44% of the people in poverty are men. Women make up 51% of the population and 56% of them are in poverty. Even though women have 2% more people in the population then men, women still make up the vast majority of poverty. We learned that even more surprising, most of these women run a single household, meaning they are the only people supporting their family and have children. This creates a new generation, the children of the mothers in poverty, that are also in poverty. 

Antifeminist and Sexist Man Speaks to a Woman About What She Would Be Happier Doing

This video shocked me to the point where I almost have no words to describe it. The first man speaks about politics while the second man jumps in about his personal opinions on women. This has to be one of the most upfront examples of sexism I have ever seen. He explains to the woman that apparently "she is miserable and would be happier being at home with kids where she belongs." As this woman attempts to speak up for himself he continues to bash her and shoot her down with what she should be doing. While his comments are EXTREMELY arrogant what upsets me even more are the comments under the video. For one, the video was posted under an antifeminist youtube channel, which explains the comments made. In one section of the video when she is explaining why she chose the job she did and how she doesn't need or want a family at the moment a caption came across the screen saying that just means no one will love her because she is a bitch. Comments agreeing with the man take this video from being annoying to unwatchable.

Must Be Adorable to Get Positive Attention

Jennifer Lawrence is one of my favorite actresses and I believe this has to be one of my favorite quotes from her. It reflects the everyday struggle women face with how to pose problems they have and/ or how to assert their opinions. This reminds me of one class discussion we had about women as bosses in the work place. If a woman is too assertive (or too much like a man) in a boss like position she is considered a bitch. Jennifer Lawrence points to this injustice by proclaiming that she is not going to try to find the nicest way to say an opinion in order to make people like her.

Celebrity Feminists

"Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal? These old attitudes are drilled into us from the very beginning. We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible." -Beyonce

http://www.mtv.com/news/1822259/celebritiy-feminists-pharrell/

MTV posted a link with celebrities who are not afraid to call themselves feminists. I find this to be super productive in ridding the world of the negative stereotype that goes along with the word feminist. On the list, arguably the most powerful and well known person is Beyonce. While I have always known Beyonce to support women's rights, when she goes as far to say she is a feminist she brings light to a word many chose to try to ignore.

Not only are some of the most influential women part of the list, MTV did not exclude men from being apart of the feminist movement. They include Patrick Stewart, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Legend, Ashton Kutcher, Joss Whedon and Dustin Hoffman. On a list of 16 celebrities who call themselves feminists, 6 of them are male. While that may not seem like a lot, that is almost half who are men who see the issues that go along with women's inequality. I hope to see more in the future, but I believe it shows how we have truly progressed.

Defund Planned Parenthood

"President Donald Trump privately signed a bill on Thursday that allows states to withhold federal money from organizations that provide abortion services, including Planned Parenthood, a group frequently targeted by Republicans."

As we recently discussed in the book "Pushed" women's rights are often ignored and the rights of a fetus are put above the mothers. We learned that federal funding can not go towards abortions. When people argue to defund planned parenthood they are not defunding abortions they are defunding healthcare for women. Just because a business performs procedures you may not agree with, when your money does not go towards the procedure, you do not have a right to take money away from other health procedures that women need. Abortion, in my opinion, is used as an excuse used by men to be able to defund an organization that they will never need. Before Trump defunds Planned Parenthood, he should realize that millions of people will be out health care, causing more federal problems and poverty.

Gender and Jobs

It is no secret that men get paid more than women in jobs where both genders are doing the same thing. However, a typically ignored problem involving jobs and gender is the ability for both genders to get a job in the first place. I discovered this problem most recently between me and my brother. At the age of 15 I was never offered a job. My brother, however, recently 15 and a white male has been offered two jobs for this summer alone. I have applied to countless places and interviewed at multiple jobs in hopes that one would accept me. while my brother has been offered jobs in two different businesses. I asked my mom why she believed this was. Her response to me was simple and without question "because he is a boy and companies may need things to be lifted, and you couldn't do that." I don't blame my mom for her response, she has worked her whole life and sees differences in her pay versus that of a man but it really resonated with me. Because I am a woman I will never be payed the same as a man, but beyond that unless I choose jobs that stereotypically are done by women I may never get accepted at all.

Abortion

To me, the idea of abortion has always been something I have thought critically about. While I can understand religion as a reason to be pro-life, I can not fathom the idea that many people argue pro-life not seeming to understand the facts behind what they are saying. For one, many people who are pro-life refuse to take into consideration the fact that women are the ones growing this new life within them. Women are human beings, and while you may view a fertilized egg as a human being, the living, breathing person in charge of growing the fetus are the ones that will be affected. Due to the fact that the woman is in charge of growing the child, they should be the ones with the rights to either continue through with child birth or proceed with an operation, which by the way, does not end the life of the fetus, just terminates pregnancy. In this video, a grown, white male speaks out about the fact that he thinks women should have the right to chose what they do with their bodies. He points out the fact that many white males are basing their facts about pro-life off of an idea that is not true and scientifically proven to be incorrect. A woman in the comments points out the fact that even as a corpse you have the right to what is in their body and what is not. For example, as a dead person I can donate an organ or chose not to. Yet, as a women they chose to try and take the right to make a decision with your body away.

Purity Balls

As we begin to read The Purity Myth, we have talked a bit about an event called the purity ball. Before learning about what the event consists of from Valenti's point of view I wanted to seek information from the internet to establish the biases of the social media world. I found an article in the Huffington Post titled "Welcome to the Bizarre and Beautiful World of Purity Balls." I wanted to see how an article would argue for the beauty behind a father demanding virginity from his daughter in a manipulative way. The article mentions the controversy that surrounds the ball with only young girls, dressed in wedding day dress attire, taking interesting types of photos with their fathers. In the article the author mentions Valenti's teachings of not stressing virginity and making it the only thing that makes a woman moral. The article takes three steps backwards though when it argues for a man who says the more he learns about purity balls the more he supports them because the fathers, just like every parent, want to protect their daughters. In my opinion this is just an excuse for men to control their daughters and be selfish in expecting them to not be sexual beings because of the discomfort it causes them. I found it interesting that while Valenti's points make more sense she is talked about very briefly, while the opinion of the man who seems to be uneducated in the topic is talked about much more.

Podcast

I watched the podcast Boo-boo Ass Milk. The reason I really enjoyed this podcast is because as women, they talked about things many women are not "supposed" to talk about. Stereotypes hint to the fact that women are not supposed to really enjoy food, talk about race, curse or express injustices. They had Nicole Byer on the podcast, someone who pushes all the boundaries, especially expressing intersectionality when talking about her experiences with being an African American woman.

Anti-Feminist Quote

While searching through Facebook I ran across an anti-feminism article that really disturbed me. The woman who wrote the article explained that her boyfriend was in class and the topic of female sports came up, which prompted the conversation that female athletes are looked down upon compared to male athletes (something we learned about in our class). She says her boyfriend was uncomfortable with the conversation and she defended him by calling everyone in the class feminists, turning the word into that of a derogatory term. I found it extremely interesting and annoying that a girl would not explain to him that those women were speaking about personal experiences, not to immaculate men, but rather to educate them on their experiences being women. I could not find the article again, but it prompted me to further research anti-feminism, a very annoying and daunting task as it predominantly is written by men trying to down grade the struggles of women. But truthfully, what was more enraging was the amount of women who go along with feminism being a bad thing. I learned a lot through this research, mostly that many women will not even stand up for their own rights.