Good Bye

This is the last post I'm making on this blog. I won't be using it anymore.
The issues I've covered on this blog still exist. They're still prevalent. I know I can't do much to change your minds now about them but if you have the time please look more into these topics and try to follow them in the news. I'm certain they'll be prevalent for years and years because they're issues that most people don't want to deal with, or say they care about when they don't.

bye

Progress Post 2

Another progress post on my project! I just finished the print I will selling at the Symposium next week, All the proceeds for it will be going to the Girl Scouts of America because they help young girls form themselves into successful members of society. Here's the print:

The print will be 5 dollars and I can take debit/credit cards! (thank you phone credit card reader). That sounds like a plug because it is but I really want to help out the girl scouts! I'm also working on the display which will include tv shows that have good messages about women/good female characters!

Women in Media project progress

This project has been really interesting! It's strange to see how few positive female characters there are in the mainstream media. Especially in the news, I never realized how sexualized women in the news were until I started this project. I think something important though is how many of the articles I read demonized the stereotypical "strong women" trope in media. An example of this would be any of the characters from sucker punch. While it's obvious they're physically strong, they're all WAY sexualized and don't have much to them other than being a "strong female character". (Kate Beaton does a good job of summing up everything wrong with strong female characters). The biggest problem is that this is what producers and writers think of when they think of a "strong female character" when really when people ask for that they really just want better written women. Instead of a two dimensional character, people want women who are more than an idealized version of women. More realistic women are really important because they prove that women are super important and not just for men.

Recently Brown paper has been put up in order to cover all forms of visual art in the school. This is a result of funding being cut to the art program, and the elimination of an essential class in the cycle of art class. This happens at a lot of schools, however Deerfield is one where there is enough money to not be cutting arts classes. Especially after an $89 million dollar referendum was passed in the last year. 

Art 1 is a class that is essential in the art class process, the normal process being Art 1-->Drawing and Painting-->AP Art. Art 1 teaches techniques that are essential for the next several years of art. Intro to Art is the class taking place of Art 1. I'm not saying Intro is a horrible, awful class, but it doesn't give the same kind of preparation for the next steps of the art class process as Art 1. Intro is also a semester long course, which is one reason why it can't give that preparation. 

Art isn't valued at Deerfield. We have great art programs right now that do amazing work for kids and open doors. The major student body however doesn't really think of Art as that important from my experience. It's something that's "cool if you can do it" but it isn't valued. Many students have never been to R hall (the hall where most fine arts classes are. 

I don't want this to be taken as "I hate sports", I don't, I think they can be very good for people and can create great experiences. Art does the same. So, I don't see why one gets so much more over the other. There are more kids in sports, but 1)fine arts is a required course 2)it does the same thing for some kids that sports does for others. In our community/area we should have enough money to be able to fund the Fine Art programs, so why don't we?

More things about Art

Art is everywhere. Everything you use and wear is art, a lot of foods are art. But I feel like most people take horrible advantage of artists and what they do. A lot of companies out there today don't pay artists who work for them. A lot of people expect artists to work "just for exposure" because it's good enough to just "get your work out there". Here's a twitter account that collects tidbits about this from craigslist and other websites people look for artists on.  It's really horrible to see these kinds of things, but what's terrible is that our culture tells artists that's okay. We're told that to work for exposure is great because "art is so useless" and that there's no other way to get your art out there. If you tell people they should make art for free just to get themselves out there, other people think that's okay. And when they do pay artists, it can be SEVERELY underpriced. Most graphic artists (illustrators/animators) take commissions in high school/college and continue to take them even if they get a stable job. I've personally lowered my prices on my art before because I just wanted work, I wanted exposure. It goes back to what I said earlier, society and culture tells artists they should work just to get out there. I don't know why but it seems like for the past 30 or 40 years we've perpetuated a stereotype that artists need to just work up to being famous in the sense that their name is said in every household, or that your art will be worth something when you're dead. I guess to end this I just want to say, if you ever have to hire an artist in the future, pay them. Don't continue on this standard of "for exposure"ing/underpaying your artists.

I think one of the things bugging me the most lately has to deal with, big shock, issues of being Queer in our society! Just a quick little thing however, since I am a queer person, I can call myself queer! I can say the queer community, i can say i have queer friends. Personally however, I don't think queer as a label should be used by people who are heterosexual/cisgendered. Sorry, but the word has a history of being used derogatorily towards people who are queer. Also realize that there are parts of the community who don't use queer to identify or don't like to use it as a term, I personally use it because it's an easy term. NOW to the point I wanted to talk about!

Allies. Here at DHS our GSA (known here as SAGA) has done a lot of work with ally week and trying to promote being an ally for the Queer community. I'm really not...okay with this? Allies do matter, but they aren't the people who get to make all the decisions and have all the rights to speak for queer people. I really don't like the "we need straight people to help us because there's more of them" mentality that happens often in the queer community regarding allies. 

Sexual Assault

Reading all of these articles is just crushing, it's absolutely disgusting. The fact that all these stupid guys get away with raping someone is just deplorable. I say this because I'm addressing the fact that women are raped mostly by heterosexual men, I will not be talking about the rape of men because while it is an issue, it's not the more prevalent issue. I think the biggest problem I have with this whole subject is that people can attack the victim. That they would call her a slut or a bitch or claim she had to have been asking for it. The fact no one tells these boys that they can't rape women, they can't hurt women, and that women are told to watch their clothing, carry pepper spray, know self defense, not get drunk etc. is HORRIBLE. Why aren't we telling boys these things? It's no one's fault but theirs. It's time to cut men down (for clarification I'm not saying make them feel bad about themselves, I'm saying not teaching men that they are better than others), there are so many problems in our society including sexual assault rooted in men feeling the right to things. It starts early when we teach children that they have to fit into a gender role, and consequently teach girls that they equate to less than what boys do. Example: a boy and girl are playing together, imagine they're playing with a doll house. The boy would most likely be stopped and told that he should do something "for boys" like...well anything but do something "for girls". However flip it around, the girl is more likely going to be told it's okay if she's doing something considered "for boys". That's a problem!! We shouldn't be telling kids they're wrong for that!! Our society puts such a high price on being manly and masculine which leads to this horrible notion that boys can do a lot more than girls. "Boys will be boys" is probably one of the worst sayings I've heard and when little boys hear it over time they feel like they're invincible. A lot of rape cases wouldn't happen if we just stopped telling boys they're invincible, that their actions are excusable because they're boys, and started teaching them they should never resort to raping women for their own enjoyment.

Hazing

Maybe it's just because Frat/Sorority life in general sounds really dumb to me, but hazing is so unnecessary. I don't understand people who defend it (like here) because I don't see how that brings people together. I would think this would make you hate them or at least resent them. I understand that sometimes going through hell with people can bring you closer, but I think hazing is the wrong way to do that. Public service, like building houses or doing some gross job needed to benefit the community, might be a much better way to grow closer. It's safer and actually has meaning in the world. The whole alcohol part to me is the worst though, alcohol is not something to joke around with. Annually there are around 50,000 people who get alcohol poisoning (many aren't reported) and 1 in 1000 die (source). The fact that frat life and hazing involves so much alcohol is terrible, and that people die from this at frats/sororities is horrible. Hazing really does need to be stopped, but to be honest I doubt we'll ever really get rid of hazing.

Bullying

The subject of bullying is a sensitive one that can raise a lot of emotions in people. Some people have felt the pain of bullying and others believe it's time to toughen up. I think it's time to get more involved, adults need to help these kids who suffer from bullying. It's not enough to just tell kids to stop, we need to buckle down and start punishing the bullies with much more severe punishments than the ones usually dealt out. Instead of slaps on the wrist, I think schools need to start dealing out suspensions for kids caught bullying. One thing we really need to fix is all the victim blaming, because that is so dangerous. For a kid to be bullied and then told to stick up for themselves and to suck it up is so bad for them. That's like kicking a dog and then yelling at it. Yes, we need to teach children to defend themselves, but most importantly they need to know not to bully/hurt people. Also to people who are upset that kids are sensitive to these topics because "back in their day people just toughened up". Culture changes, people evolve over time. 40 or 50 years ago, people weren't as open about emotional topics, and today we're much more in tune as a society to our own and others' emotions. And that's really great! Because now we think things through more, and we care more and get passionate!!!!

Outside Reading response 3

This book is prettyyyyyyyy cool. It's so interesting to read all about these different experiences from queer people about their lives. Every one of these chapters is a different story from a different person. One of the ones I just read was written a lot more playfully than most of the stories. It was about a person and how much they love gender-neutral bathrooms, specifically one in Austin, TX. The person talks about how hard it is to travel, to even go out in public, where there are not gender neutral bathrooms. When there aren't gender neutral bathrooms, it forces them to pick a gender if they go to the bathroom. I feel like this topic has become more and more prevalent in the news over the past year or so. Our own school has even added gender neutral bathrooms (this wasn't a huge announcement but was really only told to students who asked for them to be made including myself and a few other individuals). The best part about the addition of gender neutral bathrooms, is that you don't have to pick when you go to the bathroom. I've been worried at times myself if what I was wearing would cause alarm in the women's bathroom. I was so glad to hear about the experience of someone else who wanted/needed gender neutral bathrooms.

Outside Reading Response 2

So far, my book has mainly focused on FtM (Female to Male) Trans people. Which is very interesting because it talks about how one man has used his former experience as a woman to help with communication with males and females. I found that so interesting, because he was able to notice that there are very big differences in the ways men and women communicate in the work place and then use that knowledge to help him. He was able to earn promotions from his good work and his recognition with both the male and female halves of the workplace. I think that's cool because it's a totally different way of thinking from what someone who is cisgendered would think.

Online vs. Real Life

I watched this very?? Strange documentary on Netflix recently. It was about a website/virtual world called Second Life. The documentary itself focused mostly on several different users of the program and how it affected their lives. It made me think about some of my own friends who I only keep in touch with online, whether or not I've met them. I wanted to write this post to clarify that there is no difference between the friends you know and see mostly in real life, and the ones you only talk to through the computer, other than physical things and being honest. I've never had problems personally with online friends lying to me so I don't know too much about that. Most of my online friends I met first in real life. However, the fact that I can talk to them more often and about things we all have in common is incredibly important to me. Having someone to talk to is great, and if that person is online it doesn't make them less of a person to talk to. It makes them a different kind of person to talk to. I feel like it's easier to be open with people online, you don't have to worry about seeing them, or seeing their true physical reactions. It can be really reassuring. However, it can of course also cause a lot of different problems with not knowing how someone feels about something, as well as being an opening to an opening to online bullying. All in all, I think what I want anyone to take away from this, is to know that people with online friends, aren't really weird, they just have a different way of making friends.

Outside Reading Response

After reading the introduction to my book, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, I've gotten a short introduction into the lives of older transgender people. My personal experiences with trans people has always been only with people under 25, and I thought this was very interesting to read. Trans people have a higher rate of murder than average Americans, and higher rates than other gender sexuality minorities. People on average have a harder time being accepting people who are transgender than they are people who are gay or bisexual. However, that isn't to say that the acceptance of transgender people hasn't improved over the past decade or so. One of my favorite examples of this is a segment on What Would You Do? with one of my favorite trans celebrities, Carmen Carrera. (Watch the video, it's pretty good).