Monday, December 7, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Social Justice Event
For my second Social Justice Event I attended the screening of UnSlut. This was a documentary that discussed slut shaming and how young girls are affected by it and bullied in schools and how it must be stopped. The film director Emily Lindin started the UnSlut project after going through her own experience with slut shaming. She had been called a slut for I believe going to the third base with her boyfriend at the time in 6th grade. She had become very depressed from having the whole school calling her a slut and it really had a huge impact in her life. There were about 4 stories of girls who had been slut shamed and how it impacted them. One story was about a girl who had sent nudes to her boyfriend at the time and he had forwarded it to the whole school. As soon as she got to school the next day she was automatically called a slut, was harassed and judged. Nothing every happened to the boy who leaked the nudes. While she had to suffer in the school halls, became depressed and was even suicidal. There was another story of another high school girl who had gone to her friends house to sleepover and they ended up going to hang out with some boys down the street. They ended up drinking and while she was passed out drunk a group of boys brought her upstairs and gang raped her. She didn't recall anything until she woke up throwing up and banged her head on the window. These young boys took pictures of her and sent it all throughout the school out in the end she was called a slut and harassed. There were so many things wrong with this situation the boys were never bullied for doing this or called rapists, she was the victim and ended up being the "Bad" person. Unfortunately a year later after suffering through depression, changing schools and nothing working she killed herself. Her case is awaiting trial to see if the boys will be charged with rape, out of all of this the friend that was with her when this occurred claimed the girl gave consent to sex. Her definition of consent was that the girl wasn't fighting or kicking resisting while she was being raped. This lead realizing how little teenagers know about consent and sex in general. Most don't get proper training. There was one story of a woman who was raped and she was told that she was asking for it due to what she was wearing. Overall the documentary did stated that the problem can't be solved overnight but it starts with each person work on themselves and educating the younger generation. The goal is to take back the word slut to the point that it wont be an insult anymore. This reminds of the speaker that came to talk about sex positivity and showed the video of tea. That is a way in which you can teach students about consent and the other video of Amber Rose promoting sex positivity by being proud of the walk of shame instead of being ashamed. I also think of Generation M and how women are represented by the media and how we are portrayed as sexual objects and nothing else. It's a misogynistic society and it needs to be stopped.
http://www.unslutproject.com/
http://www.unslutproject.com/
Social Justice Event
For my first Social Justice Event I attended a talk hosted by the African Studies program. The title of the talk was "The Damnation of Black Women Critically Analyzing Policy's Treatment of Black Women", the speaker was Dr. Jordan-Zachery the Director of Black Studies at Providence College. This was such an informative talk. Her main focus was on how Black Women were disappearing from the academia and society itself. This talk of disappearance was also brought up by Rich when it came to Lesbians and this is what lead to Lesbian Existence. The fact that the academia is so selective with what they portray and allow others to learn is ridiculous. Lorde also discussed this problem and stated, "The same evasion of responsibility, the same copout, that keeps Black women's art out of women's exhibitions, Black women's work out of most feminist publications". She began with the incarceration of Black Women and the statistics, in 2001 1-19 black women are incarcerated, while 1-45 for Hispanic Women and 1-118 for White Women. As of 2001 Black Women were incarcerated 2.5 times the rate of white women. Most of these Black Women were in jail in regards to drugs and did the mandatory minimum. From this there's a chain reaction the black women does what she does to keep food on the table for her children but this then leads to her being incarcerated and her children in foster care; about half of the children in foster care are black. She then discussed pay equity, unemployment. One thing that stuck to me the most was that a Black Women whom is a High School graduate earns $30,450 while a White Male High School Dropout of 9th grade or less earns $32,675. This seemed ridiculous but accurate not only are we females we are black females which is the lowest of the low. Not even with more schooling do we get some sort of "equality". This brought me back to the article about the Land of Limitations which is true even with a High School degree she is still limited because of social class and the color of her skin. In regards to us disappearing she talked about a study in which they showed pictures of different colored people and the black woman's face was not recognizable/remembered afterwards. For example they should a picture of a white girl a hispanic girl then a black girl in some order. They could list all but the black girl's face. According to this talk we are only visible when it comes to poverty, black people have the highest rate of poverty 25.1. Overall this was an eye-opening talk in which I left realizing how unjust our society really is (although I already knew this). I must fight or my own rights and for all the other Black Women. This is why I considered myself a black feminist.
http://womanistscholar.blogspot.com/
http://womanistscholar.blogspot.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)