Guest Post: The Best Part of Feminist Bootcamp

The best part of feminist boot camp was the people.

Not necessarily the facilitators who really were awesome.

It was the people I surrounded myself with daily.

I was like a lot of people who on the beginning of this trip thought, “I give it a day and then we all hate each other.”

Except. After an entire week.

I loved them all.

You see these specifically pictured folks allowed me to grow as a person, as a professional, as a feminist, and as being.

The group taught me these things.

-One. I’m awesome. If you don’t see that you don’t deserve to hire me.

-Two. Tell yourself you can do it and fucking try your ass off until you do it. Which translated into. Write your manuscript. And get it published.

-Three. Tell others what is awesome about them, because as a society we don’t always tell people that.

-Four. Difficult discussion about race, gender, and socioeconomic status is important to have. Even if it is difficult.

-Five. Reach out. For help, for connections, for resources. More than likely someone will offer you a hand.

-Six. Don’t judge a person. Because it turns out after day one I was enamored with my roommates.

-Seven. Community can strengthen you. Reach out to one. Keep in touch. Remember support is necessary.

-Eight. Step out of your community. You cannot do the work that needs to get done if you are constantly talking to similar minded people.

-Don’t ya know. Brings people together.

Post by Jen Hindes. Visit her website here!

Guest Post: Why I Drank at an Establishment That Didn't Allow Women Until 1970

I recently have attended SoapBox’s Feminist Boot Camp in New York City. Which was amazing, and of course I would love to talk about in more detail, and will in later posts.

However on the packet of things to do in our “free” time was McSorely’s Old Ale House. It said, Go have a drink, because women weren’t allowed there until 1970.

Simple enough right?

Well then the discussion started. Why support an establishment that clearly did not support women and was only forced to because of legal regulations?

Essentially shouldn’t I become part of the boycott to create change?

Certainly I understand this line of thinking. In fact, had I been in New York for an entire year and had more time to ponder this idea I may have chosen that boycott may be the best possible outcome for this situation.

Or.

I could have a drink at McSorely’s and completely infiltrate “the man space.” I use the term man space here because well stereotypically this was the “man space.” For instance, as we waited in line to enter the establishment someone realized via the fancy phone that McSorely’s only serves ale. To which half of our group grimmaced because they are not ale drinkers. Perhaps straight whiskey, or a fancy cocktail, but not ale.

I on the other hand. Am an ale fan. A beer fan.

The line dwindled a lot faster than most had expected (we were inside within 5 minutes).

It was what was inside that made me certain coming was what needed to be done.

Inside we heard chanting from the back room, “U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.” although I have heard this from my own set of friends I do believe it is because there is a Canadian amongst us and we appreciate all forms of bickering.

This was because of a sports game on t.v. or better yet a perceived sports game on t.v. because when I turned around to look at the back room there were two t.vs playing sports games, but the no captions, no sound, and what looked to be no active watchers.

We stood at the doorway between the back room and the extremely crowded bar. When I say extremely crowded I mean it. There was not a comfortable place to stand. Or not to have ale spilled on you.

Indeed most of the participators seemed to be male. Some even acted male. Or as a women’s studies observer may say, “some patrons were acting their gender to the highest degree.”

Standing there we ordered our ale. It seems that waiting for the foam to clear was not in their agenda and therefore you ordered two half full glasses of ale for one price. Thanks.

Also apparently there was some type of waiter or runner. Working in a grey shirt and accompanied with little patience and a whole lot of, “excuse me girls.” or “excuse me honey.” and lastly, “babes get out of my way.”

This experience showed me that although you may allow women inside the man space. It changes little in action and in words.

But we did invade, explain to the runner that we were grown women who preferred the term women.

We took our tourist pictures (at my demand) and left.

But not before the runner said, “Goodnight baby”

By Jen Hindes

Feminist Boot Camp Winter 2012: DAY 6!

So by now you know that each day of Feminist Boot Camp has a theme, right? Day 6 is Philanthropy Day, which on FBC means trekking to no fewer than three organizations or foundations that either practice philanthropy, accept it in the form of grants, or both. First up: the NoVo Foundation, where we met with Caitlin Ho, who heads up their initiatives for Women and Girls. The initiative is currently working on improving the lives of adolescent girls and preventing violence against women and girls, especially in geographic areas of armed conflict. NoVo was started by Jennifer and Peter Buffet, who received 1 billion dollars from the Oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffet, in order to create a foundation where they can fund projects that they believe will help change the world. Caitlin was super-informative, and even though most of the FBC’ers thought at first that philanthropy was a rich white dude word that didn’t apply to them, we left with more awareness of the power of philanthropy, which was only intensified by the next stop at Do Something.

We met with Nancy Lublin, who founded Dress for Success and is now CEO of Do Something. We ended up spending quite a bit of time talking about their funding, especially since Do Something accepts corporate donations on a case by case basis and recently worked with Wal-mart on an anti-hunger initiative. Do Something is all about working with, empowering, and motivating young people to make change in support of social justice. They provide small grants for everything from starting a community garden to community arts projects, so are constantly working with young people to provide resources for their communities. This in turn creates strong youth leaders who in one case went on to found a school and orphanage in Nepal.

And then! Out of nowhere! We arrived at our last official pre-party feminist organization: Third Wave Foundation, created by our own renowned Amy Richards 15 years ago. Operating as a philanthropic activist foundation, Third Wave raises money from individuals and foundations to craft grants for youth-led local organizations. Specifically sought are young upstarts with new solutions to old problems, solutions that feature intersectional approaches to create economic, gender and racial justice. Third Wave is quite the community of donor-activists!

Finally, we headed to our end-of-session party at inoteca. Cheese, meat, bread, olives, goblets of wine were consumed. Conversations were held. When it was all over, the campers seeped into the night, their memories of Feminist Boot Camp seared into their brains FOREVER.

Au revoir Boot Camp Winter 2012!

-Charlotte & Rebecca

Feminist Boot Camp Winter 2012: DAY 5!

Monday! What a day! This being our career-themed day, we started off at the mothership of career-oriented feminism: Ms. Foundation HQ. There we met with Grace Potos of the Women's Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor who enumerated her four main focus areas in the effort to challenge the institutionalization of sexism: 1) equal pay; 2) workplace flexibilty; 3) female veterans and 4) getting women into higher-paying jobs. She encouraged us to ask ourselves to look into our motivations, keep our minds (and the figurative door into those minds) open, set a five-year plan, surround ourselves with people who inspire us, explore and be interdependent--not independent!

Next up was Suzanne Grossman, the founder of Love Your Job, who spoke with us about relationship building and gave us insider, straight-from-the-pros-style advice on business cards, setting up informational meetings with people we admire and making contact and maintaining relationships with mentors, peers and fellow feminists via various social media.

At this point, numerous platters of sandwiches were consumed--with relish! At the end of the smorgasbord, not one sandwich remained!

So then we scattered like dandelion seeds to so many internships. Some, such as myself, were happily screened a bevy of prospectively policy-changing documentaries at Women Make Movies. Otherd worked with Sanctuary for Families, Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, Sadie Nash Leadership Project, Bluestockings, Women's eNews, Hollaback!, and National Council for Research on Women.

Back at the hostel, we ate of bottomless containers of hummus and participated in various exercises with spoken word artist Kelly Zen Yie Tsai, who led us in a series of physical, verbally associative and poetry-formatting games. A respect for the unconscious and intuition were emphasized, as well as a willingness to both lead and follow--interdependently, as it were. We wrote about our fellow Feminist Boot Campers in haiku form and it was good. Finally, she shared with us a slam poem of hers that appeals in the anthology We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists. "You don't know who in the audience needs to hear what you have to say," she emboldened us.

- Rebecca

Feminist Boot Camp Winter 2012: DAY 3!

Today was Saturday! A day that was in no way saturnine!

We started off at the A.I.R gallery, an experimental feminist art space founded in 1972. We were pleased to dally amongst the artworks including Illegitimate and Herstorical and Portraits for Self Determining Haiti. Some of us spoke with Reena whose Anarcho-Syndicalist Equipment Loans operate on a “we trust you” basis. We learned that the space holds myriads of exhibitions—31 just last year during an 11-month period, including the recent inclusion of several international artists.

Next we traveled via very crowded, slow-time-arriving train to the illustrious Brooklyn Museum where we voyaged to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, a wing that’s been part of the museum for five proud years. One phrase that sticks out in my mind as a helpful summary of our art-centric Saturday is: “How do we re-write history so it includes all of us?” The answer, I find, was approached by traversing all three triangular sides (holding 13 Last Supper-reminiscent plates and placemats each) of Judy Chicago’s monumental artwork The Dinner Party, a work that features many known and obscure women of history and pre-history and includes vulvar imagery on painted china plates and historically and sociologically-specific embroidered runners, textile banners, theatrically oversized goblets, utensils and more. The project was completed over many years with many more laborers in the attempt to re-address what is considered monumental art and to re-appropriate traditional “women’s” artistry in order to re-understand the oppression of women and value of humanity! Wow, Dinner Party!

Also regarded were exhibitions Eva Hesse Spectres 1960 on the early paintings of Eva Hesse and an audio-visual-spacial exploration of Mary Wollstonectaft in The Spirit and the Letter by Matthew Buckingham.

Also of note: Boot campers seems pretty darned geographically savvy. I doff my hat and am impressed.

-Rebecca

After the art museum, some campers peeled off to take part in a video shoot for an upcoming Amy Ray (of Indigo Girls fame) music video! Check back next month for the finished product!

Jennifer and campers with Amy Ray

Feminist Boot Camp Winter 2012: DAY 2!

You know those days where you remember something that happened a long time ago, and then you realize that it actually happened that morning? Yeah, Feminist Boot Camp is full of those days. The day was so ridonkulously full that the group split into six groups in the morning to cover more of the reproductive justice organizations in NYC. Meeting with everybody from Merle Hoffman, founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center and feminist warrior to superhero lawyer Lynn Paltrow over at National Advocates for Pregnant Women to Dia Sokol Savage, a producer on some of the best-to-critically-dissect reality shows would’ve been a long day to begin with, but all of that was before lunch.

Brains were buzzing with potential discussions during lunch at NARAL New York. We learned about Crisis Pregnancy Centers and what they’re doing to prevent women seeking abortion from getting the medical help they need. CPC’s are increasingly leaving literature around college campuses, and one student said that a friend at her university had put stickers saying “Lying is an Honor Code Violation” on the materials. The folks at NARAL were super excited about FBC’ers getting involved with activism surrounding CPC’s on their home campuses.

Oh, you thought it was time to eat dinner, have a cocktail and pass out from brain exhaustion? Instead we got to hear from the co-founder of The Doula Project and one of her fellow abortion doulas. They talked about their experiences both founding and working on the Project as well as personal doula experiences and issues they’re encountered. The talk left plenty of people eager to get involved in some way, and at least a handful interested in starting something similar in their own towns. That’s the radness of Feminist Boot Camp: learning about activist work already going on and then incorporating that into your own life.

- Charlotte

Feminist Boot Camp Winter 2012: DAY 1!

{if these daily updates aren't up-to-the-minute enough for you, you can watch on Twitter by keeping an eye on #feministbootcamp.}

During Feminist Boot Camp orientation on Wednesday night, one of the participants stated her desire to “get more activist-y,” which perfectly sums up what we’re doing here. Other participants talked about being introduced to feminism and getting it right away, as in “Oh yeah, THAT’s what I’ve been all along!”

On the Thursday morning after we arrived and introduced ourselves to each other, Joyce McFadden conduced a discussion and workshop on how our sexuality is influenced by our relationships with our mothers, particularly early experiences of shaming and silence surrounding sex. Joyce was a wonderful speaker, adept at meeting everybody where they are. Many Boot Campers expressed that they wanted an entire day with Joyce, there was so much to talk about.

After feeding our bellies with burritos, we headed off to the International Women’s Health Coalition, where we learned about their mission, their partner organizations and the work the IWHC funds. We learned about everything from the possibilities of lowered STI rates through female condom usage to young feminists in India starting grassroots organizations to combat gender inequality. Audacia Ray, who is the Communications Program Officer, is also a sex worker rights activist and former editor of $pread, a magazine created by sex workers that recently shut down after a five year run. FBC’ers were able to attend a performance by the Red Umbrella Diaries where we heard stories from current and former sex workers, particularly about the intersections of racial and gender identities in sex work.

In between we ate delicious Thai food at Rhong-Tiam with Emily May, the Executive Director of Hollaback! It was fantastic to be able to spend more casual hanging-out time with Emily and Audacia, and hear more about their paths to and through activism. Excited about Day 2!

Meet Charlotte: Our Other Awesome Program Assistant!

I admit the phrase “boot camp” sends me running away from wherever that’s at. So why sign up as a Program Assistant for the Feminist Boot Camp? Oh yeah: meeting unbelievably amazing, inspiring, intelligent feminist activists, visiting organizations whose work I’m in awe of, and helping a pile of students do the same. When Carly asked me to write a blog post about why I wanted to be a PA, I imagine I had the same face I would if somebody asked me why I wanted a donut. Um, because donuts are the best thing ever and I need more of them in my life? Replace the word “donuts” with “feminist activism and activists” and you’ll get the idea.

I’ve lived in and around Chicago since graduating from college in 2006. Most recently I worked with ESL students at a community college, which was a surprise detour that I ended up digging. I’ve sold my crafty wares at Renegade Craft Fair, Pitchfork Music Festival, and the Allied Media Conference, and have found a hugely supportive crafty community. In the past I’ve written about music for the dearly departed Venus Zine about activist burlesque performers, gender identity, and lady cancer memoirs for the hella awesome make/shift (er, those were separate articles. Even after years of academia I couldn’t find a way to link all of those things); and burlesque performativity for a pile of Women’s Studies conferences. 

Over the next week, we’ll be participating in creating a powerful counter-narrative to the prevailing stories (or lack thereof) about what it means to be a feminist and an activist. I’ll be meeting y’all tomorrow, and I honestly couldn’t be more excited about the week we’re about to have.

Meet Rebecca, Feminist Boot Camp Program Assistant Extraordinaire!

Hello unknowable multitudes! My name is Rebecca and here's why I wanted to be a PA at Feminist Boot Camp: 1) I am in awe of the creators Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner; 2) I am in constant need of feminist stimulation; 3) I like camp and 4) It was fate! It's very exciting to be privy to and interact with the surprisingly vast and disparate feminist community in New York and I appreciate hearing the views, ideas and values of its unofficial, but devoted members. It's endlessly refreshing to come into contact with people whose understandings of gender and sexuality and ethics stretch beyond the mainstream, misogynistic limits with which we are presented by the greater culture! I have my own psychologically and sociologically-informed ideas about equality and acceptance and I'm sure you have yours, so let us, ya know, have a meeting of the minds that doesn't cancel any minds out! 

Hmm. About me: Recently, in the feminist world, I have had the good fortune of helping to organize NYC's SlutWalk, the one-of-many-international marches against sexual and domestic violence. Doing this I discovered there were a whole lot of cool people out there who are similar and dissimilar to each other is many ways but who all want to live in (and work to live in) a world without unexamined prejudice that stanches people's abilities to be themselves! So, that was enjoyable. I've also recently written about street harassment and gender roles for The Good Men Project and Hollaback!; gender non-conformity and the sexual appeal thereof (oh, and the movie A League of Their Own) for Feministe, and the psychology of sexism for Persephone. It's very interesting and re-orienting to learn of other peoples' feminist predilections, causes and provenances of feminist awareness and I hope to hear of yours! 

Stay tuned for more as Rebecca and her fellow PA Charlotte (who you'll meet tomorrow) blog about Feminist Boot Camp starting later this week!

Feminist Boot Camp in 2 Weeks!!

The countdown is on for Feminist Boot Camp Winter 2012--Two weeks to go!

This session we're excited to announce that 13 states are represented, including California, Wisconsin, Arizona and Connecticut. The participants represent a range of colleges – from near-to-NYC Wesleyan and Colgate to far-away Middle Tennessee State University and Franklin College in Switzerland. Some are undergrads, some grad students, and a few are out of school. We also have one Canadian and at least one mother on the roster!

This time around we are focusing on Sex & Justice, Reproductive Justice, Art, Careers, and Philanthropy—and will include meetings with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Doula Project, the creators of "16 and Pregnant", NARAL NY, the International Women’s Health Coalition, the Red Umbrella Project, the Third Wave Foundation, the Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and much more. In the coming weeks you'll meet our two Program Assistants and then be treated to daily updates from the front lines of Boot Camp!

Stay tuned...

(and follow us on Twitter! @soapboxfeminist)

Great New Blog Addresses Violence Against Women

"Violence Against Women: Support. Awareness. Activism."

Five students at Denison University were introduced to The Clothesline Project by a fellow group member. For the project, people organize a collection of shirts, with every color symbolizing a different form of violence against women-- battery, sexual assault, etc. They loved this idea, but wanted to make it more accessible.  So, they made it into a blog where women and others can submit these stories.  Along with this, they also added facts about violence against women, links to support websites and telephone numbers for those who are experiencing violence, and links to websites for those who want to become more involved.

Please visit the blog at http://support-awareness-activism.tumblr.com/

Soapbox at NWSA!

Just wanted to share a couple photos from our time at the National Women's Studies Association Conference earlier this month. The conference (in Atlanta this year) hosted an awe-inspiring number of workshops, students, and educators from across the country! Here are some shots from our booth--check us out next year if you missed us this time!

our booth--complete with bags (which you can buy online here) and books!

Our speaker portraits! And a life-sized cutout of Loretta Ross!

A close-up of our books--which you can buy online here!

Hey Girl: The Creation of Feminist Ryan Gosling

Feminist Ryan Gosling started as a joke.

I was having lunch with my classmates, bonding over the misery of having to slog through immense amounts of theory that was a consummate part of our lives as graduate students. That’s the dirty little secret of grad school; no one cares what you have to say until you can prove you know what literally every other person on the planet has said about it first. Academia, for all of its benefits, still deals heavily in the economy of old white men. Even feminist theory.  

My classmates and I, over bowls of soup and thick sandwiches, were talking about homework. The conversation shifted to reviewing our weekend activities. I told them that I had just seen “Drive,” and was surprised at how much I liked Ryan Gosling’s performance; he was never on my radar. I don’t find him attractive (I’m in the minority there). But he was on my mind. He was still on my mind later that evening, when I emailed them about the “Hey Girl” meme and included a link to the interview where he read some of them aloud. The man is charming, there’s no doubt. He was on my mind the next day when I was reading Michel Foucault for homework, and he was definitely on my mind when I decided to make a few funny pictures riffing off of the “Hey Girl” meme and post them for my classmates. Though I had originally posted them on my personal blog, I made a separate Tumblr account on Friday night so that my friends could find these pictures easily.

 By Saturday morning, it was posted on Jezebel, and I had over 5,000 followers. This “joke for my friends” was taking off, literally overnight.

 In three weeks, Feminist Ryan Gosling amassed close to 20,000 followers, with approximately 1,000 new followers added every week. I didn’t intentionally set out to make a derivative meme, nor did I intend for more than five people to see it, but I think its popularity has something to do with the way feminism uses social media. Feminists are strongly visible on Tumblr. The feedback has been amazing not only because I posted it in a space where feminists are largely organized, but because the Feminist Ryan Gosling blog is filled with inside jokes for anyone that has taken a women’s studies course. This is a joke just for us, the academic feminists who are usually labeled as joyless, humorless throwbacks to another era. All of the feminists I know personally are hilarious, engaging, thoughtful people, so it makes sense to me that something as silly as Feminist Ryan Gosling gives them a chuckle. I’m having fun with feminism, rather than making fun of feminism – that’s an important distinction.

 As someone who is always concerned with accessibility, I’m still uncomfortable with how inaccessible the blog can be at times. Part of the many-layered joke is that academic language is in a world all it’s own, and often sounds like an alien language to people who haven’t been indoctrinated. When you say things like “I’m just thinking about the problematic construction of the Third World woman in relation to Western feminism” outside of a classroom, you don’t sound intelligent – you sound insane. While making fun of academia is a small part of the humor, I’m hyper-aware that it can also be sort of alienating. It’s far more important to talk about these issues in a broad way than it is to keep them cushioned in a university setting. Is this blog part of the problem, or part of the solution?

 The comments and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive. This blog has struck a nerve or two, from those wishing Ryan Gosling actually spoke theoretically (it seems I’ve inadvertently created a form of “intellectual porn”) to others thanking me for finally taking the piss out of academia and alleviating the pressure of grad school with some jokes. There’s a small contingency of smug academics that seem hellbent on avoiding the joke and proving me wrong (completely ignoring my disclosure that I’m not an expert, just a student working through some dense theory), and a smaller faction of people who can’t get past the “hey girl” pejorative as part of the joke. There are a lot of people in the world who take themselves very seriously.

 But Feminist Ryan Gosling isn’t serious. It’s still a joke for my friends, a way to cope with the demands of graduate school, a mild escape through the image of a dreamy guy who, let’s face it, is sort of starting to grow on me.

Written by Danielle Henderson

Soapbox Speakers in New York Magazine!

Wow, this week New York magazine got a little dose of Soapbox in a BIG way. Not only does the cover feature Soapbox superstar Gloria Steinem, but we have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR other speakers highlighted in a feature about the feminist blogosphere. Author Emily Nussbaum got up-close-and-personal with Feministing.com editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Amanda Marcotte, Latoya Peterson, and Shelby Knox in her great article "The Rebirth of the Feminist Manifesto". Click the image below to read it!

20 Years Later... It's not over

This past Saturday, with the help of the Penn Women's Center, a group of students and I headed to NYC from the University of Pennsylvania to spend our Saturday at the Sex, Power, and Speaking the Truth Anita Hill 20 Years Later conference (you can still catch it if you missed it). And I must say there was no place I would have rather been. I was taken on a journey that began by taking a look into to the past at "what happened" twenty years ago, explored "what does Anita Hill mean to you," and ultimately used a critical lens to analyze the question "what have we learned in twenty years and what comes next?" Sitting in the audience among a diverse crowd of journalists, political leaders, scholars, and students, I viciously live tweeted the journey of feminism in my life span for Feminist.com.

As I sat in pure astonishment of the fiery conversations taking place before my eyes, a few of the panelists' arguments particularly hit home. In the second panel session “What Does Anita Hill Mean to You?” Rha Goddess from Move the Crowd and Melissa Harris-Perry from Tulane University spoke to a question about the current SlutWalk movements—what they deemed a step back for women. Rha proclaimed young women today do not have enough safe spaces to cultivate a healthy wholeness in their being. Harris-Perry spit knowledge and fire as she added that nor do they have a solid foundation of the fight women lead to grant us the rights we have today.

Harris-Perry rattled off dates, names, and events, recalling herstories with an impeccable flow, and cursed the fact that it wasn’t until college and by chance that she happened to come across these herstories. It is because of this, she argued, that the political becomes so easily lost in the personal as young women attempt to speak out in misguided and un-unified movements such as SlutWalk, She referenced the recent celebration of Columbus Day, Occupy Wall Street efforts, and the opening of the Martin Luther King memorial, and said the youth need to take a deeper look and reconsider the curriculum, asking critical questions about what we’re celebrating, protesting, and who else’s story is not being heard. Ai-Jen Poo from National Domestic Workers Alliance concluded that this is why more intergenerational spaces are needed, to preserve the wisdom and power that came before us.

The third panel session “What Have We Learned in 20 Years & What Comes Next?” also carried out with a bang. Kimberle Crenshaw, introduced as the “architect of intersectionality” from The African American Policy Network, answered with conviction—if we had moved forward from Anita Hill’s case 20 years ago, Clarence Thomas would not still be seated on the Supreme Court of Justice, and spoke of the DSK cases and Occupy Wall Street movement. She went into an enlightening frenzy expelling public examples of injustice after injustice she recalled from then until now, demanding that the “elevating of family formation and individualism over structural remedies perpetuates inequity.”  She culminated in a finite proclamation “we’re not over it and we’ll not let society get over it. Until we say it’s over, it’s not over!” There is still much work to be done. The audience erupted in applause. It was then that I became washed with a mix of emotions—enlightened, enraged, empowered, embarrassed. I am 20 years later. 

by Becky

Reflections on the Anita Hill Hearings from Amy Richards

Twenty years ago, I sat in my college dorm room glued to the TV watching Anita Hill's testimony before the US Senate Judiciary Committee (rabbit ears and all). Though many of my peers were self-defined activists and politically engaged--we discussed articles in The New  York Times over meals, we attended pro-choice rallies, we got enraged that our university was about to turn the site of Malcom X's assassination into a medical waste incinerator--this felt different; this felt personal.

 Just as we had talked about the invasion of Iraq or the fall of the Berlin Wall, we couldn't stop talking about "it;" angered equally by how "they" humiliated "this woman" and the audacity of the Senate committee.

 Though I was a woman, attending an all woman's college, I was reacting less to the gender implications  and more to the race implications -- a lone black woman and an all white committee. I had a raised race consciousness long before I had a raised gender consciousness -- let alone learning to connect the roots of both. It felt safer to advocate for something that couldn't be construed as "personal."

 Months after Anita Hill’s hearing, I watched Rodney King's verdict -- and then watched LA on fire and then walked through the streets of New York City as white shop owner's feared the same would happen there.  I had the same sense of race rage. Rage I eventually funneled into organizing a cross country voter registration drive and later into creating the Third Wave Foundation, a national organization for younger feminist activists. I wanted to give younger people a platform to be leaders on issues impacting them and wanted to create visibility on younger people's investment in issues of national importance.  

 I believed then -- as I do now -- that younger people are an asset to social justice movements because they aren't yet scripted on what is right/wrong, they aren't tolerant of hierarchy, even if they are intimidated by it, they aren't jaded by years of trying.

 Months after the hearing I was in the midst of a cross country voter registration drive, when I realized how short-sighted I had been -- if I live under the illusion of democracy without the reality of it, that punishes me, too. It wasn't just Anita Hill being persecuted and humiliated and disbelieved -- it was me; it was all women.

 A long phone conversation with James Farmer, a pioneer in the civil rights movement, helped me come to this conclusion.  When I asked him what advise he had for younger people inspired by his work. He said "believe in it."  Or in this instance, I believe her.



SlutWalk NYC so Inspiring

The SlutWalk.

I knew I wanted to go. I knew that despite the controversies (is slut a slur and playing into misogyny? Is there more risk for women of color to use the term "slut" as a protest, thus it's racially exclusive to march under that banner?), I supported the concept and the organizers. I knew that a bunch of my students at the New School had been working hard on it. I went (with my son and my mother).

It was amazing. Thousands of people marching, great signs, awesome energy. As we turned East onto Astor Place, I heard a swell of people yelling "Hey Rapist--Go F**K yourself!" together. The chant grew louder and more decisive. I turned to my left and saw a young woman watching the march, crying--and I felt like I knew why she was so moved. It's so important to allow ourselves to be in one another's presence and realize (once again--because it's easy to forget) that we are not alone in this struggle to end rape.

by Jennifer Baumgardner

Feminist Book Club: Sarah Waters

March 2003, the first time I saw "Moulin Rouge," marked a turning point in my life. I not only fell in love with "Moulin Rouge,"  but I also fell into a deep lust for Ewan McGregor, an attraction that made me feel sexual desire for the first time. As he was the first person who I ever wanted to have sex with, my crush on Ewan McGregor holds a special place in my heart. Since this crush is tied to my sexual awakening, it also marks my transition from childhood into adolescence, which, in a sense, formed the person I am today.

So imagine my surprise when, on my most recent viewing, I hardly noticed McGregor and instead felt intense lust for Nicole Kidman.

Not that this was unprecedented. I've been attracted to women since freshman year of high school, when I developed a major crush on a punk-rock, too-cool junior, whose studded belts were almost as enticing as her rosebud lips and porcelain skin. Yet, despite a few crushes on women since then, I never considered myself bisexual. Bisexuals, I thought, had to consistently like women. I wanted to believe my same-sex attractions were just phases, brief detours from my heterosexual identity. "I'm straight but not narrow" I told my friends.

But my preference has gradually shifted over the years, a point that my recent "Moulin Rouge" viewing confirmed. Now that the crush that defined my adolescence and sexuality has shifted to a woman, I no longer feel comfortable, or even like myself, labeling myself as heterosexual. I've been increasingly drawn towards women in the last few years, now equally as much as I am to men, and have grown discontent with seeing same-sex attraction absent or misrepresented in most media, and in the popular consensus. Identifying as bisexual has done more than complicate my feelings towards the media; it has also taught me the frustrations of being unable to express your desires. My family has made numerous derogatory remarks about bisexuality over the years, and constantly expresses their wishes that I could be "normal" and stop with the "feminist bullshit." Telling them I am bisexual would cause them to act with more intolerance than ever towards me, and would cause an irreparable rift in our relationship. So now when we watch television together and I see a woman I desire, I have to shut my usually unguarded mouth and long for her silently, stifling my feelings under a grimace.

Thus feeling censored and lonely, I began British author Sarah Waters's novel Tipping The Velvet looking for a novel to console and excite my sexually and emotionally frustrated heart. Tipping The Velvet begins as 18-year old Nancy King falls in love with male impersonator Kitty Butler, chronicling her journey to London and affair with Kitty, and her ensuing relationships and self-realizations. In the first part of the novel, as Nancy excitedly watches Kitty perform onstage and is overwhelmed by unfamiliar feelings, I immediately recognized my own feelings of confusion over sexuality and the intense longing that accompanies it. Truly, no author depicts longing as perfectly as Waters, not only in Tipping the Velvet but also in her other fantastic novels The Night Watch, Affinity, and Fingersmith. Waters not only conveys all forms of emotion so exactly that you feel you are living her novels rather then reading them, but she especially captures the intensified passions and confusions of same-sex desire under society's forced condition of secrecy. After a summer of feeling isolated in my own home because of my bisexuality, nothing was more refreshing than finding novels that--finally!--do not presume that heterosexuality is the default orientation.

Sarah Waters is a feminist writer not because she proudly takes on the label of being a "lesbian writer" but because she does not deny her characters any emotion or experience that society deems unfit, whether it is a lesbian relationship or a grisly abortion (shown in The Night Watch). She allows them a full human range of emotion and experience, thus affirming that women are people with compelling voices and stories. Because Waters's characters are fully developed people, I felt as invested in their lives as in my own; after reading the heartbreaking ending of Affinity, I literally could not concentrate at work all day because I felt just as hurt and betrayed as the novel's protagonist. Until discovering Sarah Waters, I felt alone in an intolerant household, but reading her books gave me friends and alternate realities to fall into.

During Feminist Summer Camp, Jennifer advised us to consume at least one piece of feminist media per month, and I advise you pick up a Sarah Waters book to fulfill this idea (Tipping The Velvet and The Night Watch are my favorites; I haven't yet read her latest, The Little Stranger). And let me know what you think!



Written by Zoey Peresman

Welcome to SoapVOX!

   This summer, I spent a week in New York City to attend Feminist Summer camp. That’s right. Feminist. Summer. Camp. When I first heard that term, even I, the Gender Studies student, who always chooses her politically correct words wisely, conjured up an image of unshaven women sitting in a séance, cursing men worldwide. This was far from the reality of the program. While some of us were, in fact, unshaven, I spent a week in the professional world of feminism, visiting the Manhattan offices of NARAL and the Ms. Foundation, interning in a feminist workplace, and attending feminist art exhibitions and benefits. I stepped out of the academic realm of feminism, and into the real world, and I loved every minute. I quickly learned that my feminist values and a professional career can happily coincide. When camp was over, I left with a phone full of new friends’ numbers, and an optimistic and invigorated outlook of my future.

    Yes, my friends, feminism is alive and well, and can be seen everywhere. We do not live in a so-called “post-feminist world.” In fact, I believe that since some blatant forms of discrimination are now illegal (women can vote! Women cannot legally be sexually harassed in the workplace!), the all too common, subtle forms of discrimination are even more dangerous. Gender discrimination and stereotypes are still widespread and can be seen in the workplace, politics, through healthcare, in home life, and in popular culture. Thankfully, because of programs like Feminist Summer Camp, young people who are passionate about ending gender discrimination and all of those –isms, are finding outlets to affect positive change.  The friends that I met in New York come from a diverse background and have varied interests, yet they all happen to revolve around the goals of feminism.

   This revamped blog is a way for my peers and I to share our everyday experiences with feminism. Whether we have experienced street harassment on the subway, learned a different culture’s gender norms while studying abroad, noticed sexualization on children’s programming, or received yet another angry phone call during an internship at Planned Parenthood, our days are filled with experiences that remain pertinent in the feminist fight. Reading about these instances through the eyes of a young feminist is a reminder that we may hail from a different generation, in which blogs are one of the strongest forms of activism, but we are just as stubborn and passionate as our sisters before us.

   I will be a contributor as well as co-editor of this blog. Newly graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, I am now starting a Master’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My fellow editor, Becky Duncan, is a sophomore at The University of Pennsylvania, where she is majoring in pre-med and women’s studies.

Our fellow contributors to this blog also attended feminist summer camp. We are at varying points in our academic careers, though most of us have either majored or minored in women’s studies. Almost all of us have extracurriculars or jobs that deal with feminist issues. And we are all passionate. Welcome to soapVOX.

[posted by Anne Peters]

TERM 2/Day 5: Philanthropy Day!

Today we were introduced to all kinds of philanthropic work--some of which even brought into question what philanthropy is! We started with meeting author and activist Courtney Martin, whose creative philanthropy project, The Secret Society fo Creative Philanthropy, was refreshing and accessible. We then shifted focus to international philanthropy with an introduction to the Novo Foundation--a unique, spend-down foundation that focuses their work on women and girls.

Afterwards, we had a grant-making workshop with the Third Wave Foundation; Third Wave is a foundation (started by our own Amy and Jennifer!) that makes grants to programs that empower women as well as queer folks. While there, we learned about the complicated and important task of determining which organizations and programs to fund, and how that funding is put to use enacting real change.

Finally, we closed our week with a Pop-Action lesson at the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics (SLAM), a dance studio owned and run by Elizaveth Streb. The Pop-Action technique of dancing, developed by Streb, was inspired by the lack of exploration she perceived in the more classical dance forms--and it was a ton of fun to try out!