12th Blog Part 2: "Thank You For an Amazing Class"

12th Blog Assignment

Part II

Dear Dr. Heather Peerboom,

I have learned so much in Women’s Studies 301. Maybe no one noticed but I know I never spoke up during class, I wish I had, but I’m very shy and pretty socially awkward. I’m genuinely working on it though. I write, that’s how I best express myself. Despite my reserved behavior in class, taking Women’s Studies 301, especially from Dr. Heather Peerboom, was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m not kissing up, I genuinely feel that Dr. Peerboom’s WS 301 class has changed my life for the better. 

I’ve always considered myself a feminist. Even when I didn’t quite understand the issues, I always knew that I was someone who stood up against injustice. It doesn’t matter if you’re white or black, it’s obvious that it’s wrong to treat people badly because of race. It’s the same with women’s rights, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female or whatever you consider yourself, it’s obvious that it’s wrong to treat people badly because of gender and/or sex. I’ve always known that, and I’ve always known that I was the type of person who would fight for justice for everyone. So feminist is what I’ve always known I was. 

What Dr. Peerboom’s WS 301 class taught me was to think deeper than what’s on the surface of things, to dig deep, see past the bullshit, to test boundaries, to ignore social pressures. Her class taught me to never stop asking why, what, how, who, etc. Her class taught me to not be suspicious of myself for my feelings and such but to be suspicious of “social graces and manners.” To be suspicious of what is being shown to me as “normal” and “weird.” To go with my gut when I know something is not right instead of second guessing myself.

The readings and class discussions in Women’s Studies 301 have taught me a lifetime of things I might have never known. I’ve always known there were “issues” but this class has shown me the issues, this class has put me face to face with the ugly truth of the issues women and men face today. This class, it’s readings, and class discussions have shown me that it’s not just women’s issues, it’s everyones issues and that even though these issues might not be the ones on the news (like they should be) but that does not mean that they are not there. There are many dark shadows in the women’s movement today and we must work to shed light where there is darkness because if there is no awareness, then there is no recognition or problem solving, and thus there is no solution. 

Like I said, I’ve been a human rights activist, a feminist, since before I can remember. What Dr. Heather Peerboom’s Women’s Studies 301 class has given me is a clear purpose in life that I was afraid to acknowledge before. I now know that the human’s rights movement, more specifically the feminist movement, is where I belong. My life isn’t complete without feminism, it’s not complete if I don’t fight the good fight for justice and equality. I’ve realized my purpose in life is to fight in the feminist movement. My purpose in life is to shine light where there is darkness; to fight for justice and equality for everyone; women, men, girls, and boys. 

The only thing I can think to say now is: Thank you, Dr. Peerboom, thank you for teaching my Women’s Studies 301 class.  

From Lacey McKenna Carr,

aspiring to be the next Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Heather Peerboom

12th Blog Part 1: "From Yours to Mine"

12th Blog Assignment

Part I

http://alexlucasroyals13.blogspot.com/

My response to Alex Royal’s blog, “Assignment 2”:

I like your take on this assignment. I'm glad to hear your ideas about and awareness of feminism has been enlightened and changed. The problem is that people think the fight is over, that we did it, we won the right of equality. The truth is that the women's movement has won many battles for their cause but the war is far from over. The problem now is that the battles are less organized, the enemy is harder to pin point. The feminist waves of the past were driven by one huge issue that the people fighting for gender equality could all come together and fight for. Now, it's not so simple. The solution is making people aware of the problems equality is facing today and giving them ways to help in the cause. 

http://anthonyhenderson23.blogspot.com/

My response to Anthony Henderson’s blog, “Should Love be Painful??”:

This is an excellent post and I enjoy reading it. I too have never been a victim of physical violence/abuse but one of my dear friends did. She stayed with him even though he beat her, lying to her friends and family, until he almost killed her the night of our senior prom. No one even knew was abusing her until that night. The only reason she survived is because she accidentally pressed on her cellphone while he was beating her and it called her parents who could hear their daughter begging for her life and the voice of her then boyfriend yelling at her and beating her. They called the cops and sped to his house which was right next to mine. They got there and saved her within minutes of the call. If the cellphone hadn't miraculously called her parents she probably would have died that night. Everyone was supportive of her after that but we were all confused as to why she would stay with someone like him until literally the law had to separate them. She was a beautiful girl, made good grades, etc. etc. It's just that even when girls in those situations deserve more they have such low self-esteem or they have been beaten into submission that they think they can't do better or deserve what's being done to them. It's so sad. Family members and friends can help by paying close attention to the signs and not hesitating to ask.   

Pop Culture

Blog 11

No one can go through life today without being affected by pop culture. It’s a wickedly strong social force that is impossible to ignore. Pop culture can affect people in different ways, both positively and negatively, depending on the person. 

Growing up my mom read the best books to me. She read everything from The Velveteen Rabbit, The English Roses by Madonna, to every single Dr. Seuss book she could get, and many more. As a child I grew up with Barney the purple dinosaur, Garfield the orange and lazy cat, the clean comedic characters of The Muppets, all the 101 Dalmatians, Simba and Pumba from the Lion King, every Disney princess and prince, and many classics. As for music, my parents contributed to 100% of my musical experience as a child. My musical diet consisted of a healthy serving of classic jazz and blues, a hefty amount of rock’n’roll, and a little bit of country every now and then. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me and I thought I was pretty much awesome. 

Then when I started school in the mid-90’s my exposure changed. While I still secretly slept with my stuffed animals, read Dr. Seuss often, and adored everything Disney, my tastes elsewhere drastically changed. My friends and I were all about some Britney Spears, boy bands, plaid, scrunchies, Spice Girls, bubble gum, Mary-Kate and Ashley movies, shows like Hey Arnold and All That, and crimping our hair. I liked me, my friends liked me, and of course Justin Timberlake thought I was mighty fine. Pop culture had little to do with how I felt about myself or gender other than that I knew that the Back Streets Boys were a heck of a lot cuter than any boy I had class with. 

I changed a lot between those days and middle-school. I was a full blown “nonconformist” tomboy by then. I had no interest in girly things, fashion magazines, and all that. I liked alternative music and watched little TV. I had very low self-esteem and therefore chose rather to just not think about how much prettier the other girls were and just hid in my over-sized T-shirts. However, after meeting my best friend of that time, who was the complete opposite of me, things started to change. Social media, TV, music, movies, pop culture was my life. I loved to get all dressed up EVERY SINGLE day and always had my headphones on, blasting the latest underground music. I got my first cell phone around then and became the “texting queen,” as my parents called me. 

Pop culture certainly made me feel like a lesser person at different times of my life. Sometimes it made me feel like I wasn’t pretty enough, my boobs weren’t big enough, my skin wasn’t clear enough, my shirt wasn’t low enough, my skirt wasn’t short enough, my outfit wasn’t cool enough, the music I liked wasn’t rad enough, I didn’t know enough, and the list goes on and on. However, pop culture has also benefited me by helping me come out of my dark shell and becoming the happier, girlier, more involved person that I am. It’s all about finding a balance between who you are, your insecurities, and pop culture. 

The First Time I had Sex

8th Blog Assignment

My first sexual experience was with a girl when I was very young. I was nervous but excited and it was a very fun and pleasurable experience. However, my first (and quite frankly most of them) sexual experience with a male was quite the opposite.

The first time I had sex with a male I was 15 and a freshman in high school (First strike, I was way too young to be having intercourse). I actually remember the date, May 28th 2008. I had sex with my then boyfriend, Ryan*. Ryan was 18 and a senior at our high school (Second strike, can you say pedo?). We had been dating for six months. He had been badgering since month two to have sex and that if I truly loved him I would have sex with him (Third strike, that obviously wasn’t love and if I was too stupid to see that then I was definitely too stupid to be having sex in the first place). I thought he was a virgin as well but little did I know that somewhere between two months and six he had decided enough was enough and that if I was going to drag my feet he would just sleep with, and lose his virginity to, my backstabbing friend, Sarah*. Of course I didn’t find that piece of information out until after I lost my virginity to the bastard. 

The night came when his parents went to sleep early and he had finally badgered me enough about it that I decided I might as well just give him what he wanted. Our “sex” consisted of light kissing, no foreplay, and 20 minutes of me sitting with my knees to my chest saying “I don’t want to do this” and him trying to convince me, then him making me be on top even though I didn’t want to be, and ending in no pleasure and certainly no orgasm for me. And to top it all off the cheating bastard also had the tiniest penis I’ve seen as of yet. Serves him right.

Obviously, my first male/female sexual experience sucked and it would take a long time for me to realize that I can and deserve to have pleasurable sex for me.

* Names have been changed 

Second-Shifting

10th Blog Assignment

Second-shifting oppresses women. It causes women to constantly be busy, never having time for themselves. It keeps women in traditional gender roles while adding on even more stress from their career. It allows men to keep doing less than women do and to believe that women can and should handle any and everything that is asked of them. This keeps women tired, stressed, compliant, and probably depressed and unfulfilled. 

Women have always been taught to be compliant, nurturing, subservient, and perfect. Women have always been expected to be the perfect 24/7 house cleaner, babysitter, personal chef, chauffeur, accountant, personal shopper, organizer, event planner, subservient sex toy for their husband, and so much more, and she is expected to make it all look easy and be perfectly beautiful and manicured and serene at all times. Now women are not only expected to do ALL OF THAT, but also to be successful career women. This behavior is reinforced by women who look down upon “stay-at-home-moms,”, men who refuse to take on extra responsibilities along side their wives, and women who let their husbands get away with that. 

Women are working harder than ever and men are working exactly the same as they always have and women are letting them do it!! Men’s disrespect for women and women’s low self-worth have not changed with the waves of feminism, and in some ways they have only grown worse. Women are expected by men and other women, media, etc. to do more and more and more than our mothers, our mother’s mothers, and so on. It is a vicious cycle that women can’t seem pull themselves out of. Women do more, men do less, and media promotes it. . .will it ever end?

Pro-Choice

9th Blog Assignment

I consider myself to be pro-choice, however, I once considered myself pro-life. That was before I was educated about what being pro-choice and pro-life really meant. I am pro-choice because abortions, however sad they may be, is a necessity. I don’t believe that the American government should enforce laws based on religion, namely the Christian religion. Considering a just fertilized egg as a human being can only be justified by the belief that we have souls. We don’t all believe that way and we shouldn’t be forced by law to follow others religious beliefs. What a woman and her doctor do should be the legal concern of no one but her and her licensed physician. The problem is that there should be some sort of boundaries. Partial birth abortion is one of the most disgusting, vial, and inhuman things I’ve ever heard of. I believe that after the first twelve weeks, roughly the first trimester, abortions for any other reason than to save the mothers life is wrong. To keep things like partial birth abortions from happening unless the mothers life is at risk we need to start educating young people about safe sex, how to avoid becoming pregnant or contracting an STD whenever they do decide to become sexually active. Humans will have sex when they want to regardless of how they were raised, so regardless of how people believe we all need to be educated and open about sex and sex education.  

If pro-lifers get their way then birth contraceptives will most likely become even harder to get or be outlawed all together. The combination of our societies lack of sex education plus the outlawing of birth contraceptives would bring about a vastly substantial increase in unwanted pregnancies. Abortions would no doubt be illegal if pro-lifers get their way so a substantial increase in unwanted pregnancies mixed with a lack of sex and abortion education plus safe abortions being illegal. . .would lead to a colossal increase in abused children, abandoned children, families who need financial help from the government, children in our horrid foster homes, and botched abortions that will lead to sickness and death in woman.

I am pro-choice because my mother didn’t talk to me about sex, if my boyfriend hadn’t of suggested birth control, who knows, I could have ended up pregnant like my best friend. I am pro-choice because birth control cleared up my acne, reduced my menstrual symptoms, and kept me from getting pregnant before I was ready. I am pro-choice because my mother wouldn’t have had me or my little sister without medical help. Because if my precious little sister was raped and impregnated then I’ll be damned if anyone try to keep her from aborting her rapists seed. I am pro-choice because abortion isn’t so cut and dry as to outlaw it completely as some sort of solution. Humans deserve rights to freedom of choice and that means that women deserve the right to choose what they will and won’t do with their bodies. 

Comments and Praise

Blog 7

Response to Jonnett Johnson’s blog “Macho Man?”

http://jowomenstud.blogspot.com/

I’ve also had someone very dear to me experience violence and rape from a boyfriend. She is one of my very best friends from high school. She had been seeing her boyfriend for almost a year. Little did me or our friends know that he had been abusing her. It started small, harassing phone calls, ridiculous jealousy, constant fighting. Then it started to get worse, he began to hit her during their arguments. During Spring Break our senior year of high school my friend and her best friend went to the beach with my friends boyfriend.  There he ended up beating her. She needed stitches in the head. She told all of us she had tripped. Her best friend had seen the whole thing and just kept her mouth shut. Then the night of our senior prom he almost beat her to death, raped her, paraded her around his house naked taunting and harassing her, held a knife to her throat in front of her parents and the police when they tried to save her. By some miracle my friend didn’t die that night. Sadly, it really seemed like justice was never achieved for my friend though. We got her boyfriend evicted and he spent a year in jail but that was it. . .I so wish that women would remove themselves from bad relationships but sadly some women don’t respect themselves enough or don’t know that they deserve better. It’s scary. I wish that those things had never happened to my friend or yours. 

Response to Jillian Gordon’s blog “Homosexuality in the church”

http://jillology.blogspot.com/

I love this blog entry. I grew up in a very open-minded church and family. I’ve never had any doubts that homosexuality was just as normal and “ok” as heterosexuality. Once I got into my small Mississippi high school, that’s when I found out that my view on homosexuality was not so common. I won’t lie, I was pretty angry about the judgement people passed about homosexuals. It seemed so wrong to me that people thought they could judge someone to the point of hatred and still consider themselves “good Christians.” It blew my mind that people who had pre-marital sex, regularly participated in vulgar speech and acts, basically people breaking “Christian codes,” but still thought that homosexuality was such a sin. Sinners judging sinners pretty much. It’s crazy. “Let he who has not sinned through the first stone.” John 8:7. It’s honestly one of my very favorite verses from the bible.