Writing not Raging https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging A blog for a course on Feminism, New Media and Health Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:18:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/var/www/webroot/ROOT/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/01/15140022/mhc_logo_NEW-favicon.png Writing not Raging https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging 32 32 No Freedom without Reproductive Freedom https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/no-freedom-without-reproductive-freedom/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/no-freedom-without-reproductive-freedom/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:55:38 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=237 bfcd-2013I have always been prochoice. But I had never really critically examined my own position on abortion until this past semester. I sometimes wondered if I, personally, would feel comfortable having an abortion if I were to get pregnant. I questioned the morality of abortion even as I supported a woman’s legal right to have one. There was, perhaps, some cognitive dissonance as I tried to artificially separate my personal views from my politics (you really can’t). But through my coursework and self-reflection (see my blog post “What does an abortion look like?” and my final paper on the visual (mis)representations of abortion online) I came to resolve this internal struggle, and solidified my prochoice position.

This is not to say that the individual choice to have, or not have, an abortion is an easy one. Every woman, and every circumstance, surrounding that decision is unique. But while the individual choice may be hard, our government, laws and society should make access to this choice easy. There is no freedom without reproductive freedom.

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I’ll be back… https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/ill-be-back/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/ill-be-back/#respond Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:02:54 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=218 What a whirlwind semester this has been! I’m so thrilled I had the opportunity to take this course (Feminism, Health and New Media) with Professors Jessie Daniels and Morgane Richardson. It has honestly been one of the highlights of my collegiate career and I have learned so much–not only from Professor Daniels and Richardson, but from YOU, my wonderful classmates. For those of you reading this from outside the course, I highly suggest checking out some of their blogs, which are listed here. I found the integration of new media in this course to be a fabulous learning tool. From reading my classmates blogs to tweeting with them (check out #hons201) it reminded me of the value of incorporating technology into the classsroom (and made me wish more courses did it). 

Ultimately though, the value of this course was in the way it affected me personally. Being able to look at the world through a feminist lens can be frustrating at times, but I’m honestly glad to have this new perspective–it really is permeating everything I think and do! (To be honest, though, I’m still struggling to cut “you guys” from my vocabulary. Thanks Patryk, for continuing to call me out.)

Me after finishing this paper (last assignment of the semester)!

Me after finishing this paper (last assignment of the semester)!

For my final paper (click to read: OHagan_CriticalEssay), I looked at the visual representation of abortion online, as inspired by this early blog post and mentioned here. There is a great deal of feminist scholarship on the subject of the visual representation of abortion–especially fetal images–that really was kicked off by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky’s article “Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction.” I highly recommend it to those of you interested in this issue. I also decided to try to do some original research–looking at popular images associated with abortion online. Though in the end I was only able to do this on a very small scale, I do think it’s a rich area for further research, and that the visual representation of abortion (online and off) is something that we as feminists should work to change. So much of the rhetoric–moral, political, medical–surrounding abortion is based in the way it is represented visually. Speaking personally, I know this shaped my own views on abortion for many years and it is only through taking this course that I have been really been able to critically reexamine my own personal and political opinons (again, I’ll refer y’all to my earlier post on the subject).

Though I think I’ll be on hiatus for the holiday season, I’ll be back! I love blogging, and after having stopped and started multiple times over the past few years, I’m thrilled that I was forced to keep one up for four months. I’ll continue blogging starting in the new year, right here, though the focus will be expanded from just feminism, new media and health to anything I feel like writing (and probably raging) about. I’ll probably also give the website  bit of a makeover to reflect this transition.

Once again, thank you all for a fabulous semester!

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Cultural consciousness: the Key to Good Humanitarian Aid https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/cultural-consciousness-the-key-to-good-humanitarian-aid/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/cultural-consciousness-the-key-to-good-humanitarian-aid/#respond Sat, 08 Dec 2012 02:26:41 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=214

from LiberiaTrip on flickr

You are a UN Humanitarian Aid worker who has recently been sent to Liberia to provide aid to women, men and children in surrounding IDP camps. Using the readings, notes from the guest lecture, and film, state what steps you think the UN must take to ensure the safety, health and well being of these communities. What information must be recorded and why? What services must be delivered, and how?

Cultural consciousness is the first key when entering a foreign country to provide humanitarian aid. Since I know very little about Liberia, my first step would be to educate myself as much and as quickly as possible–hopefully finding “experts” who could advise me. These experts shouldn’t just be those who have an academic or intellectual understanding of the situation, geography, and country (though some of them might be) but people are experts by virtue of being Liberian. It would be especially important to involve Liberian women in planning the kinds of services needed and the method of delivery. Involving women in this way is empowering, and as Mary-Wynne Ashford writes, “The empowerment of women is slow, but, where it is advancing, the trend away from armed violence is clear.” The UN should therefore be acting as a catalyst to speed the empowerment of women. Involving both women and men ensures that aid isn’t “gender-blind” and rather addresses the needs of both men and women, which do differ. This is true in terms of health, especially reproductive health. One of the most essential services to provide in an IDP camp is a health clinic that is clean, staffed and supplied well, and accessible to all of the residents of the camp.

Food is an essential resource in these camps and proper nutrition is necessary to keep the residents healthy. To ensure the fair distribution of food, rations should be given at the individual level, rather than familial. For this to happen, there has to be very accurate record keeping about the population of the camp, and this information should be stored in such a way that it is not easily lost or destroyed. For example, digital records that can be backed up, modified and stored easily might be ideal (assuming the availability of electricity).  In addition, it is important to strike a balance between distributing enough food to allow the residents to maintain autonomy over their food supply and consumption, while also discouraging wastefulness and/or hoarding given that funding and resources for such camps is often limited. Sanitation is also a major concern–lavatories located too close to people’s residences can create unhealthy spaces but lavatories located too far from the camp can be inconvenient  inaccessible to some, and put certain populations–including women–at increased risk for violence.

Ultimately, the most important thing is that the camp is a safe space. This means that the camp must in its very construction take into account gender relations of the population, which are affected by culture and religion. Women should be able to sleep, relax, and conduct their daily tasks without fear of violence, and without having their movements restricted by a poorly planned camp. Again, here it is crucial to have the input of the camp residents themselves to ensure cultural consciousness.

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The Education of Kaitlyn O’Hagan https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/the-education-of-kaitlyn-ohagan/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/the-education-of-kaitlyn-ohagan/#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2012 23:06:59 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=204 After watching The Education of Shelby Knox in class two weeks ago, I thought I would follow in some of my classmates footsteps and write about my own experiences of sexual health education–especially as it served to inspire the topic for my final paper.

My first memory of official sexual education is in fifth grade, during my “Library” period. We spent a few class periods discussing HIV/AIDS and the way it is transmitted through bodily fluids. To be honest, I don’t remember how explicit the teacher was when it came to discussing condoms and sexual intercourse, but I already knew about the mechanics of sex thanks to an article entitled “The V Files” I had read in Teen People magazine in third grade.

My sex ed.

In seventh grade, I took a health course, but I honestly can’t remember if we discussed sex or not. I assume we must have, but what I remember most from the class were the lessons about eating disorders. Around the same time, rumors began to fly around my middle school that one of the girls had gotten pregnant and had an abortion. She was branded a slut and excommunicated from most social groups–though I never particpated personally in this name calling and exclusion, I certainly didn’t speak out against it, or even think otherwise. Having been raised Catholic, with married parents, and friends whose parents were married or had been married at the time of their birth, I thought extramarital sex was an extremely rare and terribly immoral thing.

By eleventh grade I had realized this wasn’t the case, though I still had illusions about saving myself for marriage. I also took a one semester health class, in which students showed up stoned to present research on why smoking weed was bad, and the male student who sat next to me graciously informed me (without prompting) that he preferred when women shaved “down there.” Our sexual education in this chaotic class consisted of a period of frightening images of STDs and being told to use a condom–not that we were shown how to do so. Condoms were available in the SPARK office–after 3PM, and only if our parents hadn’t signed a form saying we weren’t allowed to have them.

And finally, the issue I’ve chosen to write my final paper on–abortion–was mentioned all of once, in the context of explaining the  before it was legalized women used coat hangers to perform unsafe potentially deadly abortions. WHAT!? How exactly did that work? How does abortion work now!?–questions I thought but didn’t ask, questions I WISH I had asked but then again, my instructor probably wouldn’t have known or supplied the answer anyway.

Though I have always considered myself prochoice, I didn’t ask any of these questions again until this semester. After watching a film from the 1970s which shows a woman having an abortion, I was struck by how different it was from typical antiabortion propaganda–so struck that I wrote a blog post entitled What does an abortion look like? This has become the inspiration for my final paper topic, as I hope to examine visual representation of abortion online, and question why, in a space (the internet) overflowing with feminism, there is almost no visual counter to this ridiculous propaganda. 

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Writing about Race https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/writing-about-race/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/writing-about-race/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:33:47 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=200 I am white and middle class, I have always had health insurance, been financially stable, never had to fear retaliation from family or friends for dating someone of a different race or gender. In other words, I am privlidged–something illustrated by the privlidge line we conducted in class last week. 

For most of my life, I have operated unaware of this privilege, perhaps understanding in some abstract sense the forces of racism and classism in society without appreciating the way such foces granted me an advantage. As I made my way through public school in NYC in “gifted” programs I was for the most part surrounded by students from the same background–white, middle class, privileged. I recently discovered my college application essays. To my horror I describe my local high school as being filled with “mediocre, unmotivated students”–the same high school one of my younger sisters now attends. My warped perception was based on a misconception that the largest–if not only–factors in academic achievement were intelligence and hard work.

If I didn’t realize the way that privilege influenced my education, you can be sure I didn’t realize the way it influenced my life as a whole. Thankfully, my education–both academically and socially–over the past three years at CUNY has been eye opening  Finally exposed to a diverse learning environment–in terms of not only race and socioeconomic status but also age, gender, sexuality and general life experience–I came to appreciate my own privilege. As a student not just at Hunter but also at Macaulay, I realized the way that our education system functions (especially in defining “gifted” students) is negatively impacting diversity in our schools, which not only negatively impacts marginalized students but also (a more selfish realization) that I–and students like myself–also suffered from the lack of diversity in our eductional experiences.

Such realization has pushed me to write my public policy capstone next semester on diversity in gifted education, looking specifically at public high schools in NYC (I’m sure many of you are familiar with the current controversy over the SHSAT and Specialized High Schools in NYC–one of which, Stuyvesant, I attended). Readings I’ve undertaken this semester (including bell hooks) that highlight the way our education system can reinscribe racialized hierarchies have pushed me in developing my own understanding of privilege and how it functions in my personal life and society.

It is an ongoing process, and I have often struggled with how I–coming from this privileged, white background–should write about race. Though I would like to think that I can sympathize with the disfranchisement faced by people of color given the disfranchisement I face as woman, I know that at some level, such comparisons are apples and oranges, and I cannot truly empathize. In other words, who am I to comment on the obstacles and prejudice faced by women of color?

I hope the answer is that I am an ally, and that I can write and comment on issues of race with sensitivity and clarity–especially if I write with an understanding and acknowledgment of my privileged background.

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Harassment or Performance Art? My train ride home https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/harassment-or-performance-art-my-train-ride-home/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/harassment-or-performance-art-my-train-ride-home/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:59:11 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=196

Photo Credit: pameladrew212 on flickr

As I boarded a Flatbush Ave-bound 2 train after a long day of school and studying, I was looking for nothing more than a peaceful ride. I have become quite used to panhandling subway performers, and as such, they don’t normally disrupt my ride. However, tonight was different. Three young men boarded the train with a boombox, and expecting the usual show of tricks and acrobatics, I tucked my bag under my seat, and sat back. I was immersed in my reading when the music started and one of the young men began to gyrate in front of the woman sitting next to me. 

She didn’t say anything, and I thought she clearly looked uncomfortable, but felt it wasn’t my place to stay anything. I only peered out of the corner of my eye as I tried to avoid drawing attention to myself, but it made little difference. The “performer” moved in front of me, his knees almost touching the edge of the seat on either side of me, his pelvis disturbingly close to my face. Channeling the feminist energy of this class, I looked up. Though I was put off by the fact that the man was wearing a mask, I said firmly and clearly “This is harassment.”

While the two men with the masked performer immediately reacted to my statement (“What’d she say?” “She said that’s harassment yo!”) the masked man himself simply moved on to another woman. He went throughout the car, performing his lap dance routine on various passengers, occasionally getting creative and hanging from the handlebars or sliding down a poll. I had only been re-immersed in my reading when I heard laughter on the train–it appeared that what I had clearly interpreted as inappropriate behavior was now being enjoyed by most of the passengers on the train. The woman sitting next to me gave the performer some money; for this her reward was an especially impassioned lap dance.

As the performer took his bow and most of the train car applauded, I came to a sudden realization that I was the only white woman on the train, and that all three men were black. While I know I wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s pelvis to be in my face on my train ride home–be it white or black, male or female–I wondered how my statement has been interpreted in this space.

But I stand by it. I bought a $2.25 train ride, not a $2.25 lap dance.

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Navigating Gender-Exclusive Space https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/navigating-gender-exclusive-space/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/navigating-gender-exclusive-space/#respond Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:21:39 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=172  

Photo Credit: Parkway Baptist Church Youth Ministry Dress Code

Last weekend, I was at the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference.  My awareness of how gendered the space at the conference was began before I even arrived in Boston. A week before the conference, all student attendees received an email from one of the student organizers; it included a gendered dress-code: 

What to wear:

• MEN

-Slacks

-Polo or button up

-Tie not required

• WOMEN

-Blouse, sweater, or button up

-Skirt or slacks (a business appropriate dress is acceptable)

Though this is certainly not the most offensive dress code I have ever seen or heard about in contemporary society (see the picture on the left), the fact that it was gendered at all creates two distinct, separate spaces for men and women–and shuts out those who don’t identify fully as either.

I also found out that since CUNY was paying for myself and my fellow students to attend the conference, our hotel rooms could not be gender-mixed. I was bewildered: why couldn’t two students, adults, who mutually consented, share a multiple-occupancy room regardless of the students’ sex or gender identity? Having gender-inclusive housing is listed as a best practice to suppor transgender and other-gender nonconforming students at colleges and universities. There is also a list of colleges that provide gender-inclusive housing (CUNY’s not on it). But frankly, even for students who do identify as male or female, to not allow gender-mixed housing seems nonsensical. If this policy is based on creating a safe space for students, there’s an assumption being made that all students find same-sex housing to a be a safer space than mixed gender. Though this may be true for some students, it’s certainly not true for all.

A Boston Police Officer came to talk to students the first morning of the conference. Given the recent controversy and backlash against statements by a police officer in Toronto (the prompt for Slutwalks), I would have thought all police departments would make it a priority to retrain their officers on how to give a safety talk. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case–the office repeatedly said that “girls” were more likely to get rufied, told “girls” not to walk around alone at night, and ended his talk with the explicit instructions “Don’t be the victim.” As if anyone would choose to.

Needless to say, there were no gender-inclusive restrooms at the conference, and their lack of inclusion betrayed a large lack of diversity at the conference. Of course, creating gender-inclusive restrooms can be tricky, as this recent post on Feministing (Gender-neutral restrooms are every BODY’s business) makes clear. But it’s possible, and it’s important to create these spaces so that situations don’t arise like the one recently reported in the Toronto Star (what is UP with Toronto?), in which a transgendered student was told to use a bathroom OUTSIDE of his school.

What was most striking for me, after our coursework on transgendered individuals, was realizing how gendered physical space is. As a woman, I already often find myself struggling to deal with the way gendered space subordinates women; I can’t even imagine the struggle transgender individuals face in trying to navigate spaces that specifically exclude them. Though we have created gender-inclusive spaces online, we need to now also create physical space that is gender-inclusive.

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Whitewashing in Fanart https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/whitewashing-in-fanart/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/whitewashing-in-fanart/#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:15:54 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=183 Produce a creative 1- 3min web video that challenges and/or demonstrates resistance towards some of the negative representations of women of color’s bodies online.

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Stop saying “You Guys” https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/stop-saying-you-guys/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/stop-saying-you-guys/#comments Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:48:11 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=177 On Wednesday night, on the train to Boston with two of my CUNY classmates to NCHC (more on that in an upcoming post), Patryk Perkowski asked me if it was okay to say “you guys.” Despite my frequent feminist writing and ranting, I had never really considered the question – and I myself, use the phrase “you guys” all the time. Feeling a bit flustered, I hedged, and said while I believed in the importance of recognizing and correcting the way patriarchy is perpetuated and internalized through language, perhaps the convenience of “you guys” trumps the need to correct this “sexist” language. 

Liz Kelman quickly called me on my bullshit, pointing out that once people make the effort to change these linguistic habits, it actually is pretty easy to maintain the change in the long term. She also pointed out that arguments regarding “convenience” for individuals feed a false idea that one person can’t make a difference.

I knew she was right–I made the decision to refer to my partner as such (instead of boyfriend) recently, and now, for the most part, when I’m referring to him “partner” just rolls off my tongue. I quickly googled something along the lines of “feminism saying ‘you guys'” and found this great article   on how “One Seemingly Benign Phrase Makes a Man Out of All of Us.” I highly encourage you to read the article, especially if you’re skeptical about why we shouldn’t say “you guys” to refer to gender-mixed groups, but to summarize:

“Most of us are familiar with the idea of internalized oppression, the subtle process by which members of disenfranchised groups come to accept their own lesser status. We need to recognize that accepting “guys” as a label for girls and women is a particularly insidious example of that process.”

As author Audrey Bilger writes, many people–feminists included–are resistant to stop using the phrase; they insist “guys” has evolved to be gender neutral and/or will eventually have fully evolved into a gender neutral term. And, there’s also a reason it’s become common: it “seems so warm and cozy.”

But I agree with Bilger, and upon reading the article, I made a commitment to stop saying “you guys.”

So for the past two days, I’ve been trying to keep to this commitment – with fairly poor success. Not only have I said “you guys” without thinking about 800 times, I’m not even catching myself doing it! Thankfully Patryk has been calling me out with a snarky “WHO?” everytime I say it.

There was one moment last night when something in my unconscious made me say “y’all” instead, and as soon as I said it, I was thrilled! (Who would have ever thought I would be excited about saying y’all?)

Bilger wrote that it took her almost a year to eradicate it from her own speech, but hard as it is, I’m going to keep it up. Anyone joining me?

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Gendered Spaces: Online and Off https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/gendered-spaces-online-and-off/ https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/gendered-spaces-online-and-off/#respond Thu, 15 Nov 2012 20:19:06 +0000 http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/writingnotraging/?p=189

Photo by Del LaGrace Volcano

In their article Queer Blogging in Indian Digital Diasporas, authors Rahul Mitra and Radhika Gajjala carefully avoid falling into the trap of digital dualism, explicitly stating that “by blogging, [members of the Indian Queer community] have not somehow transported into a “virtual reality” that releases them from social, economic, political, material and discursive hierarchies.” However, what I gathered from their article was that these bloggers are able to create more gender-inclusive spaces in which their queer identity is not only accepted, but viewed as simply another part of their self rather than their defining trait (“Queer-identity-integrated-into-self”). This differs radically from their accounts of experiences in physical spaces; as communication scholar Larry Gross wrote “most of us survived in society’s sexual boot camp–high school–either by masquerading and passing, or living on the margins.” (Have you ever read a better description of high school?)

Thus, while “the internet is a critical resource for marginalized or socially suspect groups and subjects, proving a unique means to expres and transit often ostracized ideas and identities,” there is also a gap, or perhaps delay, in the way democratized spaces online are then translated into the physical world; unfortunately, it seems like such spaces may be rare niches–both online and off.

This is eminently clear in the medical treatment of the LGBTQ community. Though Ann Fausto-Sterling’s article “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough” originally appeared in 1993, at the time she revisited the article, in 2000, intersex conditions were still often treated as a “disease” with corrective surgies performed on infants and young children. Findings from two needs assessment studies in Philadelphia (in 1997 and 2000) indicate the health care needs of transgender individuals were not being met, and many had been denied health care. The story of one transgendered individual who had trouble getting health care for his cancer was highlighted in the 2001 documentary Southern Comfort.

We remain, in 2012, far from the ideal: acknowledging that “people come in an even wider assortment of sexual identities and characteristics than mere genitals can distinguish” (Fausto-Sterling). In fact, “intersex” isn’t even a word according to the dictionary of the word processor I’m using to write this post. Fausto-Sterling offered in 2000 what seems like a wonderful suggestion: “eliminate the category of “gender” from official documents, such as driver’s licences and passports. Surely attributes both more visible (such as height, build and eye color) and less visible (fingerprints and genetic profiles) would be more expedient.” But society seems to me still light-years away from implementing such policies.

[EDIT: I then wrote a blog post entitled “Navigating Gender-Exclusive Space.” Read it!]

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