Lisa's Ritual, Age 10

I know this is not one of the assigned readings, but it caught my eye because it was a poem.  Much like the ones my sisters wrote (I didn't because I wwas much to young to write, just young enough to remember) throughout our ordeal.  The only way my sister's is different is that it is a story of anger and revenge, not of acceptance.  If we would have accepted our abuse and done nothing, my family would not have survived, we would have been killed.  This poem portrays how a young girl feels after being raped by her father.  She draws a hot bath hoping that the feelings, anger, and pain will just go down the drain after she bathes.  After she bathes she curls up in the corner of her room against a wall, her sanctuary, where she is safe.  It is sad that she has to turn to a wall for protection from the person who is supposed to be protecting her.  I used to do this, except my safe haven was my closet, nobody ever found me there.  Rape and domestic abuse are such serious problems, but the screams for help are never very loud, train yourself to read further into the feelings, don't just shrug them off, you could be saving a life.

Domestic Abuse

Those of you who were on class yesterday, Wednesday, November 23 already know that I am a survivor.  A survivor of what you may ask.  I am a survivor of two separate rapes, one when I was 8 and one when I was 14.  Also I survive every day of my life as a victim of domestic abuse.  My father was very abusive to my mother, two sisters, and I.  After my mother filed for divorce my mother went to live in the Harbor House in Appleton and my sisters and I had to hide at different friends houses so we wouldn't be found.  Well anywho, during all of that we were stalked and we are still stalked to this very day reguardless of the restraining order.  Just a month ago my wonderful father tried to add my sisters and I on Facebook.  FANTASTIC!!!  .... Well, you all may think I am normal and happy but I suffer from PTSD and Chronic Major Depression because of my past.  My sisters and I are scared of a cookie, how's that for severe.  Well if you have any questions about my past, ask and I might tell you.  Or if you have had a similar past and want someone who understands to talk to, come see me slimmd60@uwosh.edu    But I am going to cut this off because otherwise I could go on for days and I do not want to miss Thanksgiving. 

"Maid to Order"

In "Maid to Order" by Barbara Ehrenreich, 2000, she discusses in the first few paragraphs how the maids of Merry Maids are made to scrub floors on their hands and knees and wear knee pads that were origionally meant for sexual activities.  This in itself is very degrading.  First of all, it is very straining on a person's body to work an eight hour day on their hands and knees, especially since there are things called mops that are much easier on the body.  Second, the kneepads were meant for blow jobs and the fact that they may work for being on your hands and knees all the time, it is still degrading that they are technically using a kinky sex oriented object for their professional work.  Next, Barbara speaks about how people speak to their maids.  If someone is being paid to clean your house because you are too lazy or "busy" to do so yourself, you should be grateful and nice to them.  This means, not allowing your children to mess up everything the maid just cleaned up as soon as they get home, especially if the maid is still there.  Also, this means not completely ignoring your maid and getting in their way by sitting in the same room the maid is cleaning and checking mail and just watching your maid like a hawk.  It's rediculous, what will people expect next, for the maid to call them "master" and shine their shoes as they walk in aswell?  Some people are so rude and quite frankly I would not be able to be a maid because of it.  It is hard enough to check out groceries at Wal*Mart and be crabbed at, much less cleaning up pee and whatever else is staining a floor for minimum wage and still keep a smile on your face.

November 20th

We did an activity on Tuesday about how many influential women we know work pink versus blue collar jobs.  All five of my women, my mother, two sisters, grandmother, and friend work in places that are dominated by the male gender.  My mother is an office manager in an office that is full of men, without her, those guys would be hopelessly lost .  My sister Gwen is 32 and is a supervisor for Charter Communications in Fond du Lac and she bosses around a predominate male group.  My sister Becca is a Lab Technition for Covance Incorporated in Madison.  Most of her coworkers are male and think they are God, but when they have questions they come to my sister for help and imput.  My grandmother is retired, but in her glory days, she was a meat cutter for Schwarzs' Supper Club in St. Anna Wisconsin.  She never took any crap from her male bosses from the day she started to the day she retired.  Finally my friend Tina works for AGAPE of Appleton with developmentally disabled adult MALES.  Granted this is like a nanny job, but it takes a lot of guts to work with men who are bigger than you who are prone to hitting and kicking when they get upset.  All of these women had to work very hard to get to where they are today, and half the time, men would be incapable of completing the tasks without some form of help from a WOMAN. 

Marriage and Love

I LOVE THIS PIECE.  I agree with the first paragraph when she says that marriage and love are on opposite poles.  It is true.  Look at my biological parents relationship.  My parents had gotten pregnant with my older sister before they were married.  Because of the pregnancy, they decided to get married.  So, they got married because of a new life that they had accidentally made, not because they loved each other.  Also, they stayed together for a while before divorcing because of us kids, again, not because of love.  And when my father became very abusive, she did not stick around because of LOVE, she stayed because of FEAR.  I also agree with Emma Goldman when she says, "marriage is primarily an economic arrangement."  I know so many people who have gotten married so they could share benefits of insurance and the like, not because of LOVE.  Also, look at the fact that marriage is a trend, an "everybody's doing it" case.  Marriage used to be for people of certain religions, and look at how people who are not even remotely religious are able to get married IN A CHURCH.  I suppose that has nothing to do with marriage and love but I figured I would throw that in there. 

my family

So, since this week was about families, I would like to tell you about mine.  I have a biological family of my mom, Gwen, Becca, and I.  The add-ons in my family are my step-dad and his 3 children, Crystal, Walter, and Adam.  my Mom, my sisters and I are very close due to the fact that we depended on each other to survive when my father (abusive prick) was around.  The only step-child that really fits in with our family is Adam because Adam actually sees my sisters, mom and I as actual family.  He is closer with us than he is his biological family.  The newest arrival into my "family" is my Goddaughter Emily.  She was born on Tuesday September 14, 2010 at 11:forty something in the morning.  I got to cut the cord.  :-D .  My family may not be perfect, but they are very special to me.  Without them I would be nothing. 

Riot grrrls

So, for our readings today we had to read Riot Grrrrls.  I got about 7 paragraphs in before I was irritated.  They want to be this feminist, good-for-girls, in-your-face, punk group, but they refuse to be in the media.  How is something so supposedly good for females supposed to spread unless you are right there in the middle of it all?  I have never heard of Riot Grrrls before and I am not sure I want to.  Just from their act of refusing to be on/in media it gives me the message that they want to be in hiding, and that they don't really want their message to spread.  What is the point of having a message if you don't want it to be heard?  Why even have a message if the only people who are going to hear about it are the people who have heard it a million times?  That is like knowing about STD's and not spreading information about them.  I stopped reading it after those 7 paragraphs.

Girls Rock (movie)

So today in class we watched the Girls Rock movie and I thought it was okay.  Of all of the people they could have interviewed, they only chose two that a girl my age could relate to.  The Korean girl I could relate to because I AM an outcast.  I chose to be different and I accept the consequences.  I also know what it is like to hate everything about yourself like the Korean girl did.  I am not the right size to make friends easily, and I have a personality that is sometimes "out there."  Also, I have been told that I am very intimidating at first glance, which does not make me very approachable by strangers and potential friends.  This fact also makes me very self-conscious because of the fact that most people make the assumption that I am "big and scary" and therefore not friend material.  The other girl that I could relate to was the girl with long blonde hair.  I, myself, have had a hard past including, but not limited to, drugs and domestic violence and rape.  So, I know how hard it is to be a functional teenage girl in society with all of the problems of a past bothering you.  She and I are also similar in the way that we both bullied our way through school so everyone would leave us alone over stuff that is none of their business.  These two girls are my favorite because they were not the snotty rich little girls who have everything handed to them like the other girls they interviewed.  The two little girls that they focused on, sure they have problems, but they are still young and resilient and are able to bounce back more easily, and they also have time to cope and get used to their problems because their problems don't exactly have solutions.  Overall this was a good movie, but rock camp for girls, for a week, is expensive, and even poor girls, wait, ESPECIALLY poor girls need boosters.  So, making generally wealthy girls feel good at a camp is all well and good, but what about the girls who cannot afford camps like that.  They, too, are faced with the same derogatory messages and images as people who are well off.  So, what about the less fortunate, how are they supposed to get the great feelings of being a woman?

What Girls Want

Honestly, I did not understand the point of this piece.  It was overly general and it tended to jump around.  It started off with divorce and moving and how stressful that can be.  Then it somehow morphed into a piece that says that teen girls need a place to hide when they are down, and that place should be an unrealistic, dramatization of love which will only let the girl down in the long run.  If authors want to keep showing how "easy" love can be and that the first encounter you have with love is the only one you are going to have, well then we can bet that the depression rates of teen girls will continue to rise.  I honestly wish that authors would write a story about how hard love can actually be and that it doesn't always happen overnight and that it doesn't always happen to be a muscular, mysterious, physically beautiful being.  Also, why does a girl need to blame stress to want to escape into a book where mythical creatures exist and love comes so easy.  I don't know, I guess I just didn't like this piece.

Prue Shows Her Knickers

First off I would like to wish all of you a happy Halloween... I think that's spelled correctly.  But anywho, I would like to eject my thoughts on Emily Oxford's piece entitled, "Prue Shows Her Knickers."  I honestly thought this was a really cute story.  It reminded me of when I was younger and just starting to morph into a woman.  I can honestly say that I have done something similar to that of Prue, but it was at my babysitters house instead, it was even for the same length of time and had the same outcome.  I may have only been around 8 years old, but after seeing him, I magically ended up with a "boyfriend."  Well back to the story, it is all so innocent.  The boy did not want to see because he was being a pig, Andy was only curious about the female body.  And Prue, well she had nothing to lose, who cares about a bunch of people she will no longer see after this adventure.  She was very gutsy though, I would have never done anything of the sort in a closet in school. 
It also interested me to see how mature Prue seemed compared to Andy.  I don't exactly know how to explain why I feel this, but I just felt that Prue was more mature over the whole ordeal. 

"If Men Could Menstruate"

I do not know about anyone else, but I found this piece by Gloria Steinem to be hilarious.  It is so true also.  My favorite quote from this story is, "Men would brag about how long and how much... I'm a three pad guy."  I read this to my boyfriend and he just looked at me and smiled and told me how true that is.  I have noticed in my past boyfriends, step-father, and male friends, that they turn into big whiney babies when they have the faintest ailment.  And honestly I would love to see a male menstruate every month for 7 days.  Even if they only did it once a month for 6th months, then they would understand the moods, soreness, pain, bloatedness, etc, that comes with menstruation.  It also made me laugh that pads and tampons were said to represent more manly things like John Wayne.  This made me think of "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour" when Larry the Cable Guy talks about if menstrual products ran NASCAR.  I loved this piece and I personally think that everyone should read it.

YAY BIRTHCONTROL!

Because we are on some of the readings about birthcontrol.  I would like to discuss my personal dealings with the forms of birthcontrol I have had.  Well, I had my first period when I was 12.  Until age 17 I still was not regular and the cramps and moodswings were unbearable for myself and for everyone around me, so I got put on birth control.  Well my family doctor put me on OrthoTricyclin Lo  which, for a girl my size around 200 pounds, was REDICULOUS!  This pill sent my hormones levels into a terrible tail spin which resulted in me getting put on Anti-depressants.  Also, this pill did not help with my moods, cramps, or to make me more regular, if anything, it made everything worse.  The next pill they put me on was just regular Ortho Tricyclin, and again, it was for women of average weights, not overweight teens like I was.  So, again, I had to try again.  This next time, I went to the Planned Parenthood in Appleton.  Thank God they actually knew what they were doing.  They diagnosed me with PMDD, premenstural dysphoric disorder, and put me on Yasmin, FOR FREE.  It was like a blessing from God.  My mood swings went away, I became more regular, and my cramps decreased.  But, I had to take it everyday at the same time, which, for a college student, is awfully difficult sometimes.  Sometimes I took it late, sometimes I forgot all together.  Because of this stupidity on my part, I became pregnant.  Well, needless to say, after I found out I was pregnant, I stopped taking my birth control.  Two months later, I miscarried and decided that I needed to switch my birth control method.  I stopped dating and continued to take Yasmin until I could research and decide upon a new method that I could afford.  Finally I settled on the plastic Intrauterine device called Mirena.  I had it inserted a month and a half ago and it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced, but it is free and effective for up to 5 years.  Now that I have had it inserted, I love it.  It was effective immediately and now that I have had it for over a month, I do not even realize it is even there.  I don't have to take it everyday, I just have to check my strings once a week at my leisure to make sure that it is still in place.  It is the best decision I have ever made.

Is that My Son Wearing a Dress

For this post I decided to blog a bit about "Is that My Son Wearing a Dress?" by Matt Cheplic (2010).  I understand the son's want to wear a dress.  When I was little, I wore little boy's clothes because I HATED dresses with a firey passion of a thousand suns.  My mother, after having 2 other girls who did the exact same thing, was more accepting of the concept and allowed me to do so.  But, when she had my oldest sister Gwen, it wasn't the same story.  Which is why I also understand the stance that the father took on this subject. 

My mom did not like the idea of letting her little girls run around in boy's clothes because it made her look like she couldn't afford to buy normal girl's clothes.  Also, my mother and the father in the text, were not happy because of the fact that little kids are mean.  Young children, when presented with something different, including girl's in boy's clothes and boys in girl's clothes, don't know what to do and often resort to teasing and sequestering of the one who is different.  It is rediculous, but that's how children are. 

What's Wrong With Cinderella

For this week I would like to blog about "What's Wrong With Cinderella" by Peggy Orenstein (2006).  I was wondering why the mother was so ungodly perturbed by everyone calling her daughter a "princess."  In my mind, being called a princess is a complement and it should be taken with gratitude.  I understand that it is over used and comes with certain stereotypes including; the favorite color of the child being pink, developing the snotty and helpless traits of a spoiled damsel, and even developing a poor self-esteem when the child does not have the funds or the body to look exactly like a princess.

Quite frankly, I do not believe that a child will become a snotty, helpless person, if the parents do their job.  If the parents choose to teach AND allow their child to do things for themselves, to develop some independence, then the child will not be helpless enough to depend completely on someone else.  Also, if the parents don't spoil their child, buying them everything the kid could want, then they will not become spoiled and will appreciate what they get because it is not everyday that they recieve a pretty dress or the like.  Also, if the child has to work and behave to get the reward, it is more loved and not so easily set aside. 

If Women Ran Hip Hop

For this entry I decided to collect my thoughts on "If Women Ran Hip Hop" by Aya de Leon in 2007. 

This piece makes me feel like it was written off of stereotypes of women.  Not all women are into pretty dainty places, especially for a hip hop show.  Honestly when I think of underground Hip Hop I think of a basement in some building that was cheap to rent, but then again, that could just be me.  Next, what is the definition of "too loud."  At a live show of any type, I would like the music to be loud and fresh, and the people who think the music is too loud, should back away from the speaers. 

Aya says "there would never be shootings cuz there would be onsite conflict mediators to help you work through all that negativity & hostility."  I think that is a bunch of bologna because honestly, I have seen a cat fight.  It may not have included guns, but man women are ten times worse than men when they fight.  Men can at least be separated when they fight, but women, oh no, they are almost impossible to separate.  and as for the mediators, that's like throwing them into the principal's office and telling them that if they don't talk their problems through, they will be suspended. 

I could honestly go on for a while about this one because it is based off stereotypes of a certain type of woman, and not all women. 
Perhaps if there are some comments we can continue this discussion via comments. 

Hold That Nose

Sorry this is so late, this has been a rediculous week, I know technically Sunday, but let's just say that my sisters internet is not very accomidating. But, enough of my excuses, this post I would like to write about "Hold That Nose" written by Lisa Miya-Jervis in 2003. 

The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that her mother was trying to gently pressure her into getting a nose job.  I do not think this is right.  If Lisa had wanted a nose job, her mother would have been made aware of the situation, but considering that Lisa did not want a nose job, her mother should have dropped the subject and let things be.  Although her mother tends to continue to offer to pay for a nose job.  Such gentle nudging toward a certain outcome can be irritating, but as long as that's where it stays, I wouldn't be worried about upsetting her mother.

Second, I couldn't believe that Lisa's father even said that Lisa and her sister wouldn't have existed without their mother's nose job.  It is incredibly shallow to say that and I know I would not want to be with a man who wouldn't have even given me the light of day if my nose were bigger than most peoples'.  

In my opinion, who cares if you have a big nose, or uneven ears, or even small breasts.  You will find people who like you for who you are, and won't try to pick out your imperfections (which everybody has you know).  Quite frankly, I believe that the friends that are made when you don't look physically attractive are better, more loyal, friends than the friends you would bake if you were physically georgeous.  Take what you have and learn to run with it, use your strengths to your advantage, and DO NOT let anyone pressure you into thinking you are anything besides a beautiful human being. 

"Still Needing the F Word"

Okay so,
At one point I read "Still Needing the F Word" by Anna Quindlen in 2003.  This piece really got me thinking.  I was blown away with how anyone can believe that the world is in a "postfeminist era."  Women still, on average, make less than men. 
Also, it made me irritated to see it written that, "being 'cute' trumps being smart for women in the social environment."  This irritated me because of the fact that I am positive that some of my female friends and I are more intelligent and well-rounded than a fair amount of our male peers.  The fact that strong, independant women are expected to hide their intelligence and act "cute" just does not satisfy what being a woman is.  To me, being a woman means being cute WHILE acting out your real personality.  So, being cute while being smart, funny, strong, and whatever other traits make up that woman's personality. 
When the writing says that "now young women find themselves facing not one, but two societal, and self-imposed, straight jackets," I believe that women have more than two straight jackets.  Women have to face more stereotypes than men, they are usually the main caretakers of their families, they also take care of their families while taking care of their children, plus many more along with the two that they stated in the text. 

These are some of my opinions about this text.  Please feel free to discuss this with me.

9-25-10

Greetings and Salutations everyone!
Well, this is my first blog for this class and, quite frankly, I am not sure what to write about.  So, I think I am going to start this whole shebang off with something from the media that has been upsetting me lately.

Ken Kratz, the District Attourney for Calumet County, is a slimy pig.  He has been found to have been sending inappropriate text messages to a girl he was supposed to be defending in court.  The woman was in court trusting Ken Kratz to get her abusive boyfriend put in prison.  While this was going on, Mr. Kratz was sending her inappropriate text messages, 30+ over the course of three days. 

As a female with a feminist perspective, this is outrageous.  Especially considering that origionally nothing was going to happen.  He was going to be able to continue prosecuting and possibly doing this to more helpless victims.  Now, many organizations, including; Harbor House, the state DA's, and even Govenor Doyle are getting involved to possibly and hopefully, get this slimy greasy man out of office, remove his pension, and give him the punishment he deserves. 


Here are a few links to follow. 
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20016890-504083.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/20/sexting-may-cost-wisconsin-prosecutor-his-job/

and here are a list of some of the texts he sent the victim
http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/local/Ken-Kratz-text-messages

Please, feel free to post your opinions.  I would love to discuss this someone on an educated level.