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.

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.

Beautiful Daughters and Trans Woman Manifesto

The video “Beautiful Daughters” and the article “Trans Woman Manifesto” taught me a lot of things that I did not know about transgender people. In the article, Julia explained that transgender women need to embrace their feminineness and fight for equal rights as a feminist. She encouraged other feminists to do the same because just as women need to be valued, so do trans women. She also explains all the oppression from different sides of society. She talks about how transphobia affects trans women by expressing insecurity about someone’s own gender. She also talks about how cissexism affects trans women because people who were born with their desired gender prejudice transgender people by saying that they are inferior to them and that cisgender people fit in the norm of a binary gender society. Finally she mentions misogyny towards women as a problem that affects trans women. This is true because in society we are ruled by patriarchy and when someone does not follow the norm, men tend to ridicule the, just because they don’t want other people to embrace their femininity.

We as people need to take into account all these prejudices against transgender people and help them by respecting their choice or the way they were born. We need to include them in society as normal people who just want to live happy, have dreams, and have a voice.

Biphobia

I’ve never heard the word biphobia before so when I was reading the book, it was the first thing that caught me attention. Even the squiggly red line appeared below this word just after I finished typing it. Biphobia is the fear towards the other and fear of the space between categories. We live in a binary world. Either you are a man or woman, or you like men or women, but never think of someone who may like both sexes. Just as Marcia and Robyn point out in their article, bisexualism has a lot of stereotypes that make other people neglected it or simply ignore it. One of the stereotypes of a bisexual is that people say that they are confused and haven’t really decided yet. Or they are “just experimenting”. And also that just because they are bisexual, they can like anyone, men, women, friends, etc, because people think they are willing to have relationships with anyone.

All these ignorant comments create a stigma that has built thanks to the heterosexual society in which we live in. These problems are closely related with the gay and lesbian community but because they don’t belong in a specific group, so bisexuals are also rejected by some people of that community. But there are people who are still fighting for equal rights for everyone. And in order for bisexuals to be respected, they have to create their own lives, music, art, and express to everyone that they can be a great ally in society to prosper.