Feminist Students United!

Wednesday, April 20 at 6pm in Chapman 125

From Internet pornography to MTV, popular culture bombards us with sexualized images of idealized women and men, and conveys powerful messages that help shape our sexuality. These pictures jump off the screen and into our culture and are now so common place that they seep into our gender identity, our body image and especially our intimate relationships. The result is not a more liberated, edgy sexuality, but a mass produced vis…ion of sex that is profoundly sexist – a vision that limits our ability to create authentic, equal relationships that are free of violence and degradation. In this powerful multi-media presentation, Dr. Gail Dines uses examples from pornography, magazines, television shows, and movies to explore how masculinity and femininity are shaped by a consumer-driven image-based culture, and the ways public images spill over into our most private worlds.

Co-sponsored by the Carolina Women’s Center, Feminist Students
United, Carolina Against Slavery and Trafficking, Project Dinah, and
One Act, with generous support from Dr. Linnea Smith.

Here are some helpful reminders if you’re looking for tips on how to prevent rape.  These nine tips absolutely, positively can prevent many sexual assaults without fail.

1. Don’t get people drunk in order to control their behavior.

2. Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to sexually assault them.

3. When offering assistance to an inebriated person, remember not to take advantage of the situation and assault them!

4. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

5. Remember, consent not readily given the first time is NOT consent. If the person doesn’t excitedly say “Yes!” the first time you ask, be prepared NOT to ask again. You can practice only asking once in the mirror!

6. Remember, people go to laundry rooms to do their laundry. Do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

9. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

With this spin on the popular dialogue surrounding sexual violence, we recognize that while most men are not perpetrators, most perpetrators are men. The majority of sexual violence is men’s against women. It is up to men to end violence against women.

Feminist Students United is joining Project  Dinah’s (http://projectdinah.webs.com/) 24-Hour Rape Free Zone initiative as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month .  A Rape-Free Zone is a community effort to declare a 24-hour truce on rape and demand an end to violence and inequality.

To support this cause is easy: individuals across our University who are participating in the Rape-Free Zone will wear a T-shirt for a 24-hour period from 8am on April 15th to 8am on April 16th that states on the front: “24-hour Rape-Free Zone. Chapel Hill, NC.” The back of the T-shirt features part of a quote by activist Andrea Dworkin, “And on that day, that day of truce… we will begin the real practice of equality.” Below her words, the T-shirt reads, “I am taking a stand against violence” and includes a pledge that states the wearer can sign to declare their support for an end to sexual violence.

For 24-hours, individuals across our campus will wear one T-shirt, one T-shirt that declares our campus and our community is a place where sexual violence is not tolerated. As these people attend their individual classes, go to their jobs, see their friends, and party, they will be impacting hundreds more other people.

Feminist Students United and Project Dinah will be in POLK PLACE on WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13 from 10am – 2pm and in the PIT on THURSDAY, APRIL 14 from 11am – 2pm.  On April 14th, at Project Dinah’s SpeakOut! Against Interpersonal Violence (7pm in the Pit; rain location Bingham 103), T-shirts and pledges will be available for last minute students to pledge to wear the shirt during the Rape-Free Zone the next day.

If you have been wanting to get involved in a feminist group on campus in order to meet like-minded people, learn skills and discuss issues that are relevant to our lives, join us for a meeting!

Eventful Meeting Schedule

You are invited to attend any and all meetings you’d like!   Bring friends and more ideas for Eventful Meetings you want to see!

Courtney Martin is an editor for Feministing.com who came to UNC last week to speak as part of the Carolina Women’s Center’s Got Gender? week. The title of her presentation was Fag Jokes, Fishnets, and Fiancés: How Narrow Gender Roles Compromise Quality of Life and How to Get Liberated.  It has taken me a whole week to fully process why I was so agitated after her talk, and I will address this shortly. However, first I will provide a basic summary of her talk for those who missed it.

Courtney began by telling us about how she became a feminist in the first place. Her mother was a second wave feminist and so Courtney initially associated feminists with older women like her mom. Her mother would have other feminists over who appeared androgynous, shunning “beauty” products. When Courtney went to college, she heard a feminist speak who wore fishnets and wasn’t androgynous looking. She then warmed up to the idea of a feminism that looked different than her mother’s second wave version. She found that she could embrace “beauty and style” and still be a feminist.

She also spoke about ways we can show up for our gender and feminism in our everyday lives. She likes taking a “nuanced” approach to feminism through tactics such as speaking up at parties where she overhears friends making “fag jokes” or other offensive comments. For those who worry about being a downer when stopping people’s conversations to make them aware of the implications of what they’ve just said, she has a very simple solution for you: Do it anyway. This kind of work is very important and can create awareness among your friends, who can then create awareness among their other friends, and so on.

One of the more interesting aspects of her talk was about blogging as a form of online organizing. While she said that some accuse her of “sitting around in her underwear” trying to create social change from bed, she asserts that blogging can be used to raise social consciousness about feminist issues in an entirely new way. I totally agree; blogging is a powerful new medium that has the potential to organize large groups of people in a short amount of time. Blogs are great. Especially this Feminist Students United blog.

And now, without further ado….my critiques.

Her talk reminded me of a Women’s Studies 101 course. Since I have already taken this course, during her lecture I felt my eyes starting to glaze over. The title of her presentation was misleading; I felt as though she barely scraped the surface of how gender roles are embedded in our culture. Also, while she talked about using an intersectional lens in her articulation of feminism, her examples and language reflected a heteronormative slant. One comment that really stuck out to me was when she claimed that birth control “affects all of our lives,” assuming that everyone in the audience has or is planning to have heterosexual sex. As a queer woman who does not engage in heterosexual sex, and therefore does not need to take birth control, I felt left out of this conversation.

My biggest critique is that she spoke about gender strictly in the traditional female/male binary form, not acknowledging those who choose other gender expressions or choose to dismiss the notion of gender completely. When someone in the audience brought this omission up, she became defensive and accused the person of “other-ing” transgendered individuals. She then explained that she sees gender as being laid out on a spectrum. However, I feel it is important to note that her spectrum ultimately has two sides: female and male. If you are in the middle of her linear spectrum, you identify as being equally feminine and masculine. But what about those who do not identify as being male or female – those who identify as “ze,” “they” or “hir” rather than “she” or “he”? By locking gender into two categories, male and female, Courtney has herself effectively “other-ed” those who don’t identify as either of these two genders.

As Jody Marksamer and Dylan Vade so eloquently put it in a Trans 101 presentation provided for the UNC LGBTQ Center:

There are women and there are men. These are two options among a million. Female and male are not two endpoints on a line. There is no line, no spectrum. If there were a line, where would a sissy ftm fall compared to a butch dyke? Where would a butch mtf fall? Where would a fierce femme fall? Gender is much much bigger than a line. We cannot order people on a scale of masculinity/femininity. Gender is (at least!) a 3 dimensional space that allows motion. One way to picture gender is as a gender galaxy – a space with an infinite number of gender points that can move and that are not hierarchically ordered.

Anyone interested in further reading on this topic may want to consult this article by George Dvorsky and James Hughes, PhD: http://ieet.org/archive/IEET-03-PostGender.pdf

Feminists, we can accomplish so much more if instead of becoming defensive when someone challenges our current beliefs, we listen. The concept of gender and sexuality is ever shifting, and those of us who embrace intersectionality should be moving with it.

-Jessica Dilday

On February 12, FSU members joined approximately 1000 protestors and over 100 social justice groups at the 5th annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) march and rally in front of the legislature in Raleigh. We marched in support of the 14-point people’s agenda that demands educational equality, economic justice/good jobs/workers’ rights, and equal protection under the law. With the numerous attacks on reproductive justice happening at both the federal and state level right now, we thought it was especially important that we participate as feminists in progressive political action.

14-point People’s Agenda
1. All children need high quality, well-funded, diverse public schools
2. Livable wages and support for low-income people
3. Healthcare for all
4. Redress ugly chapters in NC’s racist history: the overthrow of the bi-racial, 1898 Wilmington government and the sterilization of poor, mainly black women from 1947-1977
5. Expand and improve same day registration and public financing of elections
6. Lift every HBCU
7. Document and redress 200 years of state discrimination in hiring and contracting
8. Provide affordable housing and stop consumer abuse
9. Abolish racially-biased death penalty and mandatory sentencing laws; Reform our prisons
10. Promote environmental justice
11. Collective bargaining for public employees and worker safety
12. Protect the rights of immigrants from Latin America and other nations. NC must provide immigrants with healthcare, education, workers’ rights, and protection from discrimination
13. Organize, strengthen, and provide funding for our civil rights enforcement agencies and statutes now
14. Bring our troops home from Iraq now

Photo by Chuck Liddy

Forward ever, not one step back!

Check out this blog post for more information about HkonJ!

When: Wednesday, February 9, 7pm

Where: Dey 307

FSU decided to watch a romantic movie — in honor or the upcoming Valentine’s Day. We are not endorsing this movie, just watching it together and opening up the room for conversations about sex, depictions of romance, couples, anything of that nature. The film has interracial couples, man-woman couples, woman-woman, and man-man couples. Some have been together for a while, some for just a night. The film is just over an hour, and we will talk and hang out afterwards.

All are encouraged to come with open minds and candy to share.

TRAILER — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4RcvDavBvg

Eric Amadio’s witty directorial debut looks at eight couples in varying stages of their relationship — all set in the scene of just having had sex — and examines how they deal with intimacy in the 21st century. Injecting humor in the dialogue and situations, Amadio (who also penned the script) makes the scenes of vulnerability and heartache palatable. The ensemble cast inclu…des Jane Seymour, Mila Kunis, Taryn Manning and Zoe Saldana.

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)

Each Friday, FSU’s giving a shout-out to one prominent feminist whose work for social change has made herstory. This week’s feminist is Sojourner Truth. Ms. Truth was born into slavery in New York as Isabella Baumfree (after her father’s owner, Baumfree). She was sold several times, and married a fellow slave, Thomas, while owned by the John Dumont family. When New York law emancipated all slaves in 1827, Isabella had already left Thomas and run away with her youngest child to work for another family. Upon discovering that the Dumonts had sold one of her children to slavery in Alabama after the 1827 law’s passage, Isabella sued successfully for his return. Isabella experienced a religious conversion and in 1843 took the name Sojourner Truth and became a traveling preacher. Ms. Truth connected with the abolitionist movement in the late 1840s, establishing herself as a vocal advocate of abolition and then of women’s suffrage. She raised food and clothing contributions for Black regiments during the Civil War and met with Abraham Lincoln in 1864 to challenge street car segregation by race. Ms. Truth again spoke widely after the War ended, mostly on religion, “Negro” and women’s rights, and on temperance, though immediately after the Civil War she tried to organize efforts to provide jobs for black refugees from the war. Ms. Truth remained active until her grandson and companion died in 1875, after which her health deteriorated. She died in 1883 of infected leg ulcers.

Quotation: “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” Goodness, yes.

Biographical information from http://womenshistory.about.com/od/sojournertruth/a/sojourner_truth_bio.htm

Gloria Steinem (1934- )

Each Friday, FSU’s giving a shout-out to one prominent feminist whose work for social change has made herstory. This week’s feminist is the glorious Gloria Steinem, feminist activist, organizer, writer and lecturer. Ms. Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine and New York Magazine and has authored several books, including Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words, and Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem. She helped found the Women’s Action Alliance, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and Choice USA and was a member of the Beyond Racism Initiative, a comparative study of racial patterns in the U.S., South Africa, and Brazil. Ms. Steinem has received numerous awards and honors for her social justice work. She is currently working on Road to the Heart: America As if Everyone Mattered, a book chronicling her more than thirty years as a feminist organizer, and with the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College on a project to document the grassroots origins of the U.S. women’s movement.

Quotation: “God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.” Gloria, Amen.

Biographical information from http://www.feminist.com/gloriasteinem/.