All Women are Real Women

I'm sure we've all heard the phrase "real women" somewhere, it's been claimed by so many different kinds of women and if you asked different people their definitions of it I'm sure it would change drastically. There is no one type of woman that qualifies as a "real woman" because all women are real women! How cool is that!! Thin women, chubby women, women who wear makeup and dress up, women who go natural and wear really casual clothes, women who are trans*!!! THEY'RE ALL WOMEN. Don't call out women on not being real women, that's called being a jerk. (The same rules also apply to men for anyone who might comment about "real men").

Duck Dynasty Controversy

This is so stupid everyone calm down. This whole Duck Dynasty thing is so stupid from so many angles. Phil Robertson, the man who started it all, shouldn't have said something so stupid. Granted he was stating his beliefs, he really should've thought through it first! Also GQ shouldn't have even published the quote, they had to have known this whole thing would create some stupid huge controversy. The fact that he got fired from the show is also A&E really trying to say "Oh we're cool with gay people!!!! We're so cool with gay people!!! Look at how excepting we are!!!" As a Queer person myself, I don't think I've ever seen a show on A&E that had anything even in the remotest thing to do with the Queer community in general. And now it's just become another case of the "gay agenda" shutting down the rights of "red-blooded god-fearing Americans". (The gay agenda is actually that we want to make pizza and flannel shirts openly accessible to all LGBTQ people)((that was a joke haha)). Again eVERYONE NEEDS TO JUST GET ALONG CALM DOWN. This whole controversy is so dumb.

Holiday Time of Year

This is my favorite time of the year, because the holidays are so much fun and so cheerful! Everything is so warm and I feel like everyone's in better spirits this time of year (maybe it's because we get two weeks off of school). However there is one thing I reeeeeally dislike about this time of year, is that some people believe Christmas is under attack. My dad "watches" fox news (he really just turns it on and no one really watches it) and around this time of year everyone on there starts getting super worked up about how their christianity and faith are being tested because when they leave Target the cashier says happy holidays. My view on the issue is that these whiny fox news reporters really need to get over themselves. It's not that you're being oppressed, it's that other religions/holidays are being accepted and are being recognized. Because god forbid anyone dare try to become equal with straight white christian men, god those minorities are so oppressive. (I hope you can feel the amount of sarcasm I put into that sentence). Really, everyone needs to just get along. If we all would just take a second and remember that we're all people, everything would be okay.

One of the big topics I have been thinking about a lot recently especially, is the role of women in the media. Especially with the song "Blurred Lines" and it's trash bag singer Robin Thicke, who was quoted saying, "What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman." Watching the American music awards last night, every time his name was mentioned as a nomination it sent a pain through my entire being as a human. The song itself is about "blurring the lines of consent" between consensual sexual intercourse and rape. The video shows Thicke using women as objects and props and from the lyrics he's treating them as nothing but sexual beings put on this earth for him and only him. The song is deplorable. Many many people argue for the video saying "it's not about rape oh my god" or "I mean, it has a great beat" (If you like the beat not the song, may i recommend my favorite feminist parody of it here). Thicke is human trash by trying to propose that rape is okay if you "blur the lines of consent", and the song adds to our society's view of rape. Rape culture in America is disgusting, 89,000 rape cases are reported annually, but 60% of all rapes are not reported (statistics here). 1 in 4 college aged women reported being raped/almost being raped since they were 14. However, no one seems to care. Women who get raped were, "asking for it" or "deserved it" or "were sluts anyways". NO WOMAN DESERVES RAPE OR ASKS FOR IT. There is not a single piece of clothing someone can wear that beckons a rapist, nor should clothing be an excuse. That's like saying that if someone wore a hamburger suit, they'd want you to eat them. Honestly, men should know better. In my 12 years of public school, I've never heard a teacher say "Boys, don't rape." It's always "Ladies, watch your clothes" or "Ladies, keep a whistle and pepper spray in your purse at all times". Why is no one telling men to stop!?!!?! Okay and yes, women rape and men do also get raped, BUT the biggest problem in our country is MEN raping WOMEN. It's time to stop romanticizing male aggression towards women (BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS: when I was little, anytime a boy hit me I was told it meant he liked me). Honestly, do people really believe though that when a women is ""scantily clad"" that men everywhere foam at the mouth, and have the urge right there to rape. NO. Men can and need to learn self control when it comes to this topic.

Deadline Discussion

In America race is a huge factor in the criminal justice system. Over time, our country has progressed in terms of race relations, except in this area. People of color make up 30 percent of America's population, however they makeup 60 percent of the Prison population, and that one in three black men can be expected to be arrested in his life time. (Statistics found here) These statistics are shocking to say the least, because it doesn't make sense that so many people of one race could be committing all of these crimes. I think that race is a huge factor in capitol cases because today most of the people on death row awaiting execution are people of color. Most of the crimes in capitol cases also involve the murder of white people, while I'm sure there are crimes just as gruesome committed against people of color. Take many of the cases of murder on the south side of Chicago for example, if two black children and their mother are shot and killed in the street it's still a horrendous crime and it upsets people but that doesn't mean much is always done about it. However if this same crime had happened but the victims were white, I can guarantee the criminal would be on death row. From the film I think that this is further highlighted, many of the wrongly convicted men/men on death row were black, honestly I can only remember one white guy (however I don't have an award winning memory so). This is a huge issue that really needs to be fixed, because it's really awful that most of these people are probably where they are because of their skin color, not because of many of the made up reasons their opponents create to explain why they deserve to be killed. As progressive as our country likes to say it is, it's not?? all that progressive so I don't know where that came from, not having segregation doesn't like instantly absolve racism.

Compensation

Today on Twitter, a friend/teacher of mine posted this article by the New York Times about the lack of compensation received by writers and visual artists on many different projects. In many cases, artists/writers are approached by different companies "telling you how much they admire your work" only then to have them ask for you to do work for them, but not pay for it. Paying for it of course is "out of the budget" and out of the question for most of these companies. The article is right, artists and writers do the same if not more work than a lot of people in America's workforce. The fact that many people in our country believe that artists/writers should not receive money, and that their work is not important. This is mostly evident in the comments on the article, where multiple people express that they do not believe that artists/writers do any work, or any work that deserves even minimum wage. From my personal experience, ART TAKES A LONG TIME TO MAKE. It takes a lot of effort and time and sometimes has to be completely scrapped and restarted! I've spent up to four hours on small doodles, sometimes I've spent more than 10 hours! Artists and writers have it the hardest, they have to consult, then work, then show progress shots which the client might shoot down, keep working, show more progress, and the cycle goes until the piece is done! In my personal opinion, I believe there should be a minimum wage for artists. It's a job, it's work, and you shouldn't have to accept 15 dollars for a piece you spent 4 hours on. And all the people on the article commenting with "if you worked harder you'd get more" is just perpetuating the cycle of society's view of artists, that all artists are lazy and stuck up. And for some reason, a lot of people think artists are rich? I don't know where that one came from but it's true. 

Homework

So in media studies we were talking about the amount of homework students receive and how it's really way too much to even learn anything from. The amount of homework we get in high school is ineffective and doesn't do anything. It's stupid, useless busy work most of the time and when it isn't you know it isn't. But 99% of the time it's going to be busy work. For example, in Chinese we practice saying the new words in a new unit for about a week. and then at the end of that week, we have to call someone and practice again, the same thing we do everyday in class for a week. I think schools need to seriously change the way they run the homework system, it needs to be changed into something that's actually effective. I think if classes were just in general more interesting and tried to strike nerves with the students and try to emotionally connect, they would see a huge improvement in grades.

Last night I was hanging out in the kitchen and watching tv with my parents. We were watching 60 minutes and they brought up a story about how so many people in America abuse the disability system. Many people claim disability and then receive a check for it, when they really don't have any disabilities beyond maybe back pain or head aches, and as long as they have one of those lawyers like Binder & Binder who will "fight" for them in court, they will get disability checks. While watching this I was thinking about how many people have this idea in their head that so many people abuse welfare, when in fact there aren't nearly as many people who abuse welfare, it's almost none. And the people on welfare need it, because without it they can't eat or take care of families and they can barely even do it with it. Also, most people stereotype that every black single mother or black family is on welfare and are abusing it, however with the disability system, most of the people seem to be white people in the south, the kind who I would imagine are the ones perpetuating the stereotype stated previously. I think it's weird that so many people can abuse the help for disabled people, because there are people who actually need it. And if enough people abuse the disability system, then it will be shut down and made unavailable for the people who actually need it. Another thing I thought about while watching it was something I'd seen earlier that day. While driving with a friend, we saw a man who was severely disabled moving down the road, he could barely hold up his head or keep his hand on the control on his wheelchair. No one helped the man and everyone was looking away from him. We would have helped him but we couldn't. Why wasn't someone there to help him? This man needed help, where was that? Why aren't people like him being given help when they need it so bad.

Campus Speech Codes

Most of the schools I'm looking at are not in the database because I guess they don't cover art schools. They did have San Jose State University which is one of the, I guess, "normal" colleges I want to go to. They have a yellow light which is okay by me I guess. Personally I think that everyone needs to be able to say what they want unless they're really trying to insult and hurt someone. It's easier to say "oh everyone needs to just stop being such a baby about getting insulted it happens" than to think it because I and a lot of people I know are in minorities that are mocked and ridiculed in modern society without being allowed to have much of a voice. So I guess it's good for schools to allow everyone to say their ideas because then everyone gets to have their own opinions and for other people to get more exposure to different opinions about topics they're concerned with. The one rule that's the weirdest to me is about sending hateful material using the school's system. How are they checking? Is there some sad person who has to read every email received or sent using the school's system? Or is it done where one student sends another an insulting email and the other takes it to the dean and demands something be done to them?

FIRE seems very about letting the first amendment ruling universities and letting everyone say what they want regardless of content. But it almost seems like they want to provoke an environment where students are cruel to each other just because they can be? They never say "you should insult people because you can!" or "go offend EVERYONE!" But they seem to be prone to allowing students to openly insult each other because the first amendment covers their right to do so. Again I'm feeling internally conflicted because yeah you should have total free speech but you shouldn't be offending people. Unless it's something like one kid says "I hate dogs a lot" and then half the class gets mad because they love dogs! They love dogs so much how dare someone insult dogs they are all offended! Because that's not on purpose that's just some kid who for their own reasons hates dogs. However if a student says "gay people are bad and gross" it's pretty offensive and I'm guessing that they're quite aware of the fact they are offending many people, however it opens everyone up to a stage where they can converse their ideas about this topic in a way that could end up benefiting everyone involved. Which is a huge dilemma because where does it cross the line from uneducated offensive language to educated offensive language with intent to offend/stir something up to out right harassment?

not much to write about

I've decided to write about the shooting in Nairobi over the weekend. This was something that was very interesting to me because I heard about it while I was driving to take care of my friend's dogs yesterday, and I decided to listen to NPR for a while because sometimes it's really interesting? Anyways, they were saying, "20 confirmed dead in mall shooting" and already I was like 'wow wow wOW" but then i heard it wasn't in the US. Still, it was really shocking because we're not allowed to have safe places in any country anymore. I don't know it's just so weird to know that I could go to the mall and get shot or go to school and get shot. Especially with the fact that a navy base got shot up too, because that is wack. It brings in that whole "why am i here" thought, are we all here to just kill each other? what else is there to life? what can we do to find this magical meaning in life? I don't know man I wish i did.

Syrian Conflict

The Syrian conflict is relatively new to the world, but it still shows how horrible the regime these people are living under it is. The use of chemical weapons is by Assad is appalling and shows the true nature of the regime and the country itself. In my opinion. I agree with what Obama has decided, which is to take the weapons away from Syria. This way, we won't get involved in another useless war and risk thousands of lives. I was surprised to learn how intense the civil war is, needing the involvement of chemical weapons by the government against the rebellion. The rebellion doesn't sound like it's the best either, attacking back at the government and it's supporters. Also how none of the other candidates to take over Assad's job were much better than he is was surprising.

Freedom of speech in schools

Since we've been covering freedom of speech in schools over the past week, I decided to write my blog post this week about it. Freedom of speech in school is such a tricky subject,  because it seems like it is generally protected in school, but sometimes if it falls under a very specific set of guidelines, it's no longer allowed in schools. For example, the case with the students who had the sign that said, "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS". This event was ruled in favor of the school, however, had the students been fighting for legalization of marijuana their speech would have been allowed.
I feel like this doesn't completely apply at our high school, because some opinions about politics are so unpopular or so shamed that the people who support them don't feel like they can openly talk about them. The school and the administration also have an agenda, making sure that the topics introduced in a school setting are all under their control so that nothing will stray out of the opinions and ideas they want us to have. At SAGA panels, the idea that gender is fluid and isn't just male and female as well as the topic of transgender men and women were not allowed to be discussed. Seeing as this is an incredibly important topic, the administration is just putting a road block in the way of a discussion that could help out many kids who don't know where to go for help or what to ask about.

50th Anniversary of The March on Washington

When I look back on the march on Washington, I see this huge and  monumental event that changed so much in America in the 1960's. In reality however, there are so many problems that still exist with minority groups in America. During the election my dad watched a lot of coverage on fox news, which personally I find to be the most disgusting news network of them all, and one of the men on there, a white man, said he was shocked that minorities had voted more this time then the last election. I mean really? This guy never figured that maybe minorities want to see themselves represented in the government, or that at the simplest level, more people in minorities reached voting age. A lot of the statistics show that white people think that a lot more has improved in the way of race relations than what actually has. It has gotten better, a lot better, but it's still not good. It's just not as well broadcast as it should be. Discrimination still happens every where, to all minorities, but unless it's about a minority hurting a white person it doesn't really count. Trayvon Martin's case is a great example. Zimmerman killed him. You can't refute that he killed a kid much younger and smaller than he was. However, Zimmerman didn't even get involuntary manslaughter. Martin's death didn't even matter enough to be called an accident. His death didn't even count as the death of a person. So it's kind of hard to say when faced with that, that race relations are SO much better than they were in the 60's.

I really like watching horrible movies for the sake of watching a horrible movie. My personal favorite terrible movie is always Birdemic: Shock and Terror. However, Disney sequels are always pretty terrible. Hunchback of Notre Dame 2, is the worst movie ever. The knockoff of the movie, is better than the sequel. Treevenge is my favorite bad short film, it's so weird and very oddly done. Apparently there's a new birdemic out now, almost as horrible (if not more so) than the first.