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.