2/18/19
I watched Ellen DeGeneres’s Netflix stand-up comedy special “Relatable” over winter break and she talks about how coming out as lesbian negatively impacted her career for years. She lost her sitcom, she lost her money and she went into a deep depression. The Faderman reading made me think of this story Ellen tells about how coming out affected her public and personal life. In postwar America, women would deny their homosexuality “until their last dying breath” to escape public scrutiny and discrimination in the workplace.
2/25/19
This Nike ad was just released yesterday (2/25). It was interesting to read some of the feminist manifestos by different groups throughout history in the readings for today. To me, this ad is somewhat of a feminist manifesto in itself. Serena Williams, who narrates the ad, talks about how at one point, it was “crazy” that a woman would want to run in a marathon, or be a boxer or dream of equal pay in her sport. She draws on historical and notable moments in women’s sports, which are portrayed in the ad through video clips, and uses the rhetoric of women in sports being “crazy” to further her feminist message: “So if they want to call you crazy, fine–show them what crazy can do.” This commercial has been reposted on many of my social media friends’ pages and I have heard many groups on campus talking about it (even just now in the dining hall as I am writing this). Much like some of the feminist manifestos we looked at for today, this commercial is a testament to feminists’ refusal to be looked over or down upon.
3/4/19
This article is about Bree Mills, a 37-year-old lesbian woman who is a porn director and has a lucrative idea that will shake up the porn industry: what she is calling “the Netflix of porn.” I thought it was interesting how the author of the article comments on how none of her previous work in lesbian adult film was expected to succeed because “lesbian movies were long considered a money-loser in the adult world.” Her new venture, a subscription site to high-end niche porn is likely to succeed because she says that “Most of the time, what seemed to keep people as loyal subscribers was much more than the top-level porn categories,” which she describes as “big tits” and violent porn. Would such a site fail to contribute to the potentially violent and adverse effects of the porn industry and on rape culture?
3/11/19
Twenty-eight members of the United States Women’s Soccer Team sued U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination in federal court a few days ago alleging violations of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Most of the allegations had to do with smaller things, such as unequal hotel and travel accommodations. This news breaking made me think of the Faludi reading, which talks about the intense struggles and gender inequality women still endure despite their strides of progress in recent decades. It also made me think about my experience on Middlebury’s campus as a female athlete, and how often the men’s teams are privileged over the women’s teams.
3/18/19
3/18/19 — I recently watched the movie The Greatest Showman , a 2017 on-screen musical starring Hugh Jackman. It takes place in the mid-19th century and follows P.T. Barnum and his rise to fame following the creation and development of “Barnum’s American Museum” (eventually renamed to “Barnum’s Circus”). I was reminded of this film when I was reading the “Get Your Freak On” piece, and specifically when I came across this quote: “In the nineteenth century, the term freak appeared in descriptions of human oddities exhibited by circuses and sideshows. Individuals who fell outside the boundaries of normality, from hairy women to giants and midgets, all were exhibited as freaks of nature for the fun and amusement of live audiences” (120). And this is exactly who P.T. Barnum employs for his show for the sake of making money and entertaining New York City. One of the main acts in the show is Anne Wheeler, who does a trapeze performance; however, her brother and her are taken in to do the show because they are black. This greatly shocked me when a friend told me that was why they were in the show, but it makes sense given that black people were considered “abnormal” and “freaks” during that time.
4/1/19
Sabrina and I brainstormed our topic over break, and we want to do our digital media project on The Red Pill Movement. The name of the movement is based on the movie The Matrix, so we were planning to watch that. We are excited to look into how misogyny manifests online and how the “angry men’s rights group” perceives women and their place in society and heterosexual relationships.
4/22/19
The men’s rights movement/The Red Pill is what my group is doing our digital group project on, and in doing so, I am in the process of watching the documentary on Amazon called “The Red Pill.” One aspect of the documentary I found very interesting was the conversation about parental/paternal rights. It is definitely true that courts are more likely to give mothers custodial parental rights, and I have witnessed this firsthand with my dad’s best friend and my “uncle.” So, yes, that’s an example of a case where men are slighted under the law. However, I don’t think that conversation about parental rights needs to happen in opposition to the feminist movement or by undercutting the struggle and oppression women have faced throughout history. I think the Men’s Rights Movement makes some valid points and their argument is persuasive; but I don’t think it needs to be man vs. woman…we need to fight for equality.
4/29/19
The readings on #MeToo got me thinking about It Happens Here, the event on Middlebury’s campus that invites students to (either anonymously or not) share their stories and experience with sexual violence on our campus. I have been thinking about this event a lot lately, since one of my best friends will be speaking at IHH this Thursday. I think this event is extremely important and necessary on our campus to increase the visibility of the prevalence of sexual assault on our campus, but similar to #MeToo, it makes me wonder: how productive (in terms of enacting change) are these platforms? I think it’s extremely important that institutions and our society in general empowers survivors to share their stories…but does it stop there?