What Can We Do?

In order to change the world, I think first I have to change myself. I have to get rid of all the stigmas that I have learned throughout my life and start to think about what’s wrong on the media and society. Once I have looked into my own prejudices and privileges, I can start inspiring people by doing what any other person would do. Work hard so that my community could prosper and try to think of the consequences of my actions and words before I act on them. And not wait for somebody else do the work for me. It is true what June Jordan said: “we are the ones we have been waiting for”. We can make a difference.

If all of us would do that, then there would be no discrimination and no oppression. But we think that is just wishful thinking. That not everyone is going to do that because humans are greedy by nature. Even if that might be true, we can still do something to change things for the better if everyone gives their support, as little as it may be, as long as it helps our society. Just as Angela Davis said, “please get involved, please try to make a difference, please try to turn this country around”.

Being a good Activist

I think a good activist is someone who just does not talk about changing but also act on them. Someone who acknowledges all the isms in society and cooperates on eliminating them by educating themselves reading “good books”, educating others, but letting their actions speak more than their words, and volunteer whenever possible. This has to come from your heart if you are really committed. You have to be optimistic because even though the world may not seem so perfect, you know that there is goodness in people. You have to be brave because the world may be against you when you speak up your mind or act. And you also have to be a good listener in order to understand that others are going through. One of the videos talks about one way to act is to vote and also run for office. In the US, we live by democracy and I think that’s a great way to change the world.

I don’t really know any other activists, but the videos of today showed me that Bell Hooks is a great activist because she goes to speak to colleges, has written books to enlighten us, and firmly believes in what she does.

Age Diversity

My social sphere is really not formed by all kinds of diversity. I say that I rarely encounter young people that much, specially kids. The place that I spent my life the most for now is college. I do encounter the elder more than the young people when I get home for break though. I like the interactions that I have with the elder, but it’s really hard for me to talk to the youth. I guess I think that I have more important things to do than spend it with younger people.

As a lot of people have said in their posts, we think that the elder slow us down in a world where everything is fast paced and some people think that they young don’t have anything new to say, or that they are not important because they haven’t lived enough. Young adults and middle-age adults are privileged because they can do anything they want, they are old enough to do them unlike younger people, and they have the energy and the capability of doing things that for the elder people is harder to do.

I think that we should consider what the young have to say. Maybe they have a better insight than some adults. And also we should encourage them in all the positive things because they are the future of society. We need to respect our elders because they have helped us built the culture that we live in. One way of doing that is giving them all the possibilities for them to do their dreams.

Living Old

A young person always thinks about the next thing to do on the to-do list, waking up for a new day and to be as active as always. But when you become older, you realize that you cannot do the same things you used to do. The young people never think about what’s going to happen to them when that happens, so they don’t even bother thinking about how the elderly deal with their situation. We take for granted that most of the elderly have been working and have been helping this country to grow. This makes me think that I am ageist. I always thought that when my time comes, then I’ll just die happy, but there are so many things to worry about than just that. The video “Living Old” presented me with a lot of questions regarding all these complicated decisions that we have to make. Like deciding if it’s time for you to go, or all the complications that sickness and living older brings.

Last year, my grandfather died, I think he was 80 years old or something like that. He was the first close person to me to die. I really felt hopeless but then I said to myself that live goes on. Ever since I was young I thought that when you died then everything would be okay. But I recently talked to one of my aunts and we were discussing death. She said something that I never thought before. She said that some people, even though they are old, don’t want to die yet because there are so many things that have not been accomplished yet, and they want to do something to help. This has made me think that ageism is wrong and the way I would be against it is to help the elderly accomplish all their goals so that they can rest in peace.

Gimp

When watching the video “Gimp”, I was blown away by their effort and body expressions. Their dance moves were really powerful and sometimes I would be in awe by how they wound make the dance seem like another able person doing it, but looking twice and seeing their muscular dystrophy it amazed me even more. It was something I don’t see every day. It made me think that they could dance just as well or even better than the usual able performers. It also made me think as to all the things that disable people could do that most people don’t realized.

I now prefer the definition of someone who does things different than able people instead of disable. They can do a lot of things that able people do, but they have to recur to other methods in order to do them. But most people think when they see disable people that they can’t do anything for themselves, or that they are cripple or retarded. All these names further the damage that we do towards disable people. Ableism forms our way of thinking by diminishing them with all these names, and also by ignoring their necessities. We need to change the way we see them and treat them as another person just like us.

Process Piece

I think my video turned out okay. But I did not know it was going to be hard to find people to interview. Most people did not want to appear in front of a camera or did not have any opinion on sexism. Another thing that I noticed was that when I asked the sexism question, all of the people answered with negativity and that made them answer what feminism is with negativity too. Also, the editing part was a little bit challenging but we were able to figure it out.

Works Cited:

http://ws405.blogspot.com/2011/01/key-terms-used-in-womensgender-sudiesm.html for meaning of sexism and feminism

Pornography

After watching some of these videos, I was shocked by one of these. One video shows a list of women and men who died because of different problems such as drug abuse, rape, or suicide. This shows that pornography is not helping anyone. Pornography does not help men nor women liberate themselves from sexism or misogyny. It even makes the situation worse. Men would create fantasies of real women who just care for sex or enjoy being treated badly so men would actually apply those things to them. This also targets young men and nurtures them thinking that way.