darklamb:

Yeah. That’s working out really well for us.

“What the heck do I tell my daughter? […] For Women’s Equality Day, I’m telling my daughter to fight.”

Today in Women’s Studies, we went over some of the key terms for the first chunk of material we’re covering, including:

• Feminism
• Feminist
• Sex vs. gender
• Masculinity
• Femininity
• Androgyny
• Oppression
• Prejudice
• Discrimination

We touched on so many different topics today that Professor Bowen said we’ll get to at some point during the semester… the mass media, the pop music industry, Katy Perry, socially constructed gender roles, socially acceptable “types” of gay/lesbian individuals, families who raise their children with no gender, and so much more.

I’ve already been provoked and stimulated and challenged and I’m excited to learn more about feminism. Why am I a feminist? Well, it started not too long ago, in 2008 when I started school at Penn State Brandywine. I quickly fell into a group of like-minded scholars in the first week of school. Most of them loved comic books, and though I struggled against them, insisting I would never read comics because they were lame or uninteresting, I was eventually sucked into the tantalizing world of Fables, Y: The Last Man, and Manhunter.

Until I began reading these series, Alexis was the only girl in the group who read comics. This was a role she was accustomed to playing, and was frustrated with the stereotype that only boys read comic books. This frustration led to the realization that many comics are incredibly misogynistic and sexist. Her firm stance on feminism and comic books not only led her to a research project titled “Flying in a Skirt,” but it also opened my eyes to a lot of the social, gender-based injustice there is in this world.

Led by Alexis’s convincing beliefs, the story line of Y: The Last Man, and supported by the feminist evolution of two of my favorite fashion bloggers, Tavi of Style Rookie and Arabelle of Fashion Pirate, I realized I had become a feminist, and I was proud to acknowledge myself as such.

I have become increasingly aware of the subtley sexist messages that peek through in pop music, snack food commercials, and magazine ads. I am painfully aware of the blatant sexism in a lot of other areas of media, and I have done my best to combat sexist comments when I hear them.

I just picked up A History of U.S. Feminisms by Rory C. Dicker, which I plan to read in conjunction with my Women’s Studies course. We’ll also be reading Transition by Chaz Bono and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. I’m ready to read up on everything that has to do with the feminist movements in our country and world today, and I’m ready to take a firm stand for what I believe in.

Keep questioning,
Sara

(Source: katespencer)