Ok folks! My blogging fire has been rekindled!
Recently, I have become very concerned that in May of 2013 (Graduation! Yay?) I will lose the ability to take interesting classes that don't necessarily pertain to my future as a social worker. I was bummed. When registering for this semester, I attempted to find an interesting class to jam into my already packed school/work schedule. The top contenders included:
Women and Islam
History of American Feminism (With one of my fav professors of ALL time, Dr. Megan Seaholm).
Fictions of the Self and Others
Women and Social Movements in the US
Black Marxism
Colonial Spanish American Art
Witches Workers and Wives (History)
Morality and Politics
Comparative Political Institutions.
Unfortunately I realized that I really didn't have the time this semester to commit to any more classes.
Then, just last night, a beautiful thing happened.
I clicked to my favorite source for news, NPR.org, and what should pop up on the front page but an article entitled: "Online Education Grows Up, and For Now, It's Free."
I couldn't have been more intrigued.
Inside, I found a link to my own personal cave of wonders, Coursera.org.
Courses are available in many disciplines, and from such institutions as Princeton University, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, Rice University, Penn State, Brown University and many others.
*squeal*
I am registered for "Women and Civil Rights," "Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act," and "Immigration and US citizenship."
And I just thought I'd share with anyone who happens to read this.
I hope it makes your day, too.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Hard Conversations - Gay Marriage
Disclaimer: I don't think I am a Christian. I believe in God, or... something greater than myself.
I like a lot of the stuff that Jesus said.
I like a lot of the stuff that the Buddha said, too.
I believe all religions hold some universal truths.
There are actually more things that these religions, and people in general, have in common than things that divide us.
I continue to be moved by the love, acceptance, humility, graciousness and kindness of some of my Christian friends.
I have been struggling and struggling to find the words to say, and struggling with whether to say anything at all, about the controversy surrounding the comments made by corporate CEO Dan Cathy.
I am conflicted.
I agree with the right: Cathy has the right to his freedom of speech, he can say what he likes.
I agree (much more so, let's not pretend this isn't subjective) with the left: By making statements that condemn gay marriage, Cathy is contributing to bigotry.
Mostly, I am tired of it. It honestly feels like a slap to my face every time someone uploads a photo of their chicken nugget box or the line outside the restaurant yesterday.
I am tired of the anger and aggression.
My first vitriolic response was to scream: "Could everyone please just grow a BRAIN? A frontal lobe would extremely useful right now."
But I'm trying to be reasonable here...
Why do I feel this way?
No, I'm not gay. I have friends who are, but that is the extent of the affect this issue has on me.
I believe, deeply, that everyone should have the right to marry whomever they choose; so long as both (or all) parties are consenting adults.
I think my lack of specified religion helps me out here. I don't see it as an issue of faith.
I also think it helps that I know some history, that a lot of other people know too, but I don't know that they made the connection. That's why this really gets under my skin and crawls around.
In 1967, here in the United States, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Loving v. Virginia.
This case involved a woman of African and Native American Descent named Mildred Loving, and her husband, Richard Loving, a white man. Virginia, along with many other states prior to the Loving v. Virgina ruling, had anti-miscegenation (intermarriage between non-whites and whites) laws in place. They had traveled to the District of Columbia, where their marriage was legal, in order to wed. When they returned to Virginia, a group of police officers invaded their home as they slept, hoping to catch them having sex (also a crime). On finding that they were married, they were prosecuted under Virgina's Racial Integrity Act. Both pled guilty, and were sentenced to one year in prison, deferred 25 years under the condition that they would leave the state of Virginia. The judge in this case said:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
This is an example of a case in which religious beliefs were the background of the decision to infringe on the liberty of individuals.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) eventually filed a motion on behalf of the Lovings to have the verdict dismissed as a violation of the 14th amendment, which states:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The supreme court decision ruled in favor of the Lovings, and overturned anti miscegenation laws in every state.
In 1967.
That wasn't that long ago. Only 45 years ago, my relationship with my boyfriend would be illegal; and you can forget about putting a ring on it.
The only argument made against gay marriage is religiously motivated. Bible believing Christians cannot accept homosexuality, and so then would not be able to accept marriage between homosexuals as right within their faith.
I understand that. That's fine. You can choose to believe what you will. I would like you to not be a hypocrite, however. If you oppose gay marriage on the basis of your faith, you should also oppose the following:
1. Round haircuts (Leviticus 19:27)
2. Playing football (Leviticus 11:8)
3. Fortune-telling (Leviticus 19:31, 20:6)
4. Pulling out during sex (Genesis 38:9-10)
5. Tattoos (Leviticus 19:28)
6. Wearing polyester and other mixed fabrics (Leviticus 19:19)
7. Divorce and remarriage (Mark 10:8-12)
8. Letting people without testicles into church (and tenth generation children of illegitimate children, Deuteronomy 23:1-2)
9. Wearing gold (1 Timothy 2:9)
10. Eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:10)
11. Wives defending their husbands by grabbing their husband’s opponent by the testicles (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)
Here are a few more off the top of my head:
12.) Sex with a woman who is on her period.
13.) Associating with women who are on their period.
14.) Stoning your son when he talks back.
15.) Allowing women to talk at church.
16.) Not killing every living thing that occupies the land we desire to occupy because "God gave us the land".
My point being that there are lots of things that personal faith and belief prohibit people from doing, however, if someone chooses to do them, you cannot prevent them on the basis of your faith alone. Laws, ideally, should be that which we as a society agree are in the best interests of everyone regardless of religious affiliation.
Also, did you know that Chick-Fil-a donates money to organizations that promote "family values" and candidates who oppose gay marriage?
Did you further know that in 2010 the Family Research Council, a conservative organization funded by Chick-Fil-a spent $25,000 lobbying congress NOT to condemn Uganda's "Kill the Gays" bill?
Yes, Cathy has the right to his free speech, to his opinion.
What I am resoundingly not okay with, is that his speech is louder than mine, and any other person who supports equality.
What am I talking about?
It's called Citizens United.
The supreme court ruled in 2010 that corporations have the right to unlimited, undisclosed donations to political campaigns because corporations are "people".
Disagree?
Me too.
This means that Dan Cathy's corporation, which donates money to anti-gay corporations, can heavily influence the direction of policy concerning gay rights.
One more thing. What if, the corporation donating unlimited funds to organizations of their choosing (without those organizations having to reveal the sources of their funds), was donating to say; an anti-christian organization?
I bet many would feel differently.
One reason we have separation of church and state, is to protect those in the minority from majority tyranny. You can read more about majority tyranny in James Madison's Federalist Paper #10.
The laws that currently prohibit gay marriage are discriminatory. And, dare I say, unconstitutional. They deny equal rights to gays and lesbians.
Not okay.
Marriage in the US confers many rights (1,138, in fact) that cannot be accessed apart from marriage.
Gays and lesbians and everyone else deserve these rights; unless you are saying that they are somehow not people. In which case we have bigger things to discuss.
I don't think a boycott is the answer. If it were we would have to boycott a whole whole lot of things.
I don't know what is.
I think knowing what you're talking about when you say you are against gay marriage, is part of it.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
In which moving isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I have a terrible penchant for building things up in my mind.
Something simple, like moving, becomes in my head a great and terrible beauty.
I imagine myself up and awake at the time when sunshine in the summer still seems clean, and not oppressive. I make Andrew's favorite breakfast so that we'll both have plenty of energy and be sparklingly happy.
I'm in a red and white polka-dotted headscarf(because in my imagination I am Rosie the Riveter?) industriously folding sweaters and placing them carefully in boxes, whilst cheerfully directing my big strong men (Andrew, and my three sweet brothers), where to put the furniture. There is not even a trace of sweat in sight in my moving fantasy, unless it is highlighting Andrew's biceps.
Yeah. That's me.
In reality, moving is waking up an hour later than the very latest I promised myself I would, eating dry cereal out of the box, and realizing in a panic that today is the birthday of someone important.
Moving is being covered in an abrasive combination of slick sweat and fine, gritty dust. And it is everywhere, not in nice places like biceps, but in your mouth, hair, and eyes.
Yuck.
Moving is sneezing and needing to pee, but realizing you already packed the toilet paper.
Moving is just Andrew and I, listening to "his" kind of music loudly when I already have a headache. At this point I am trying to be reasonable, although I can feel the monster within welling up to yell: "WOULD YOU PLEASE LISTEN TO SOMETHING THAT DOES NOT SOUND LIKE AN ACID TRIP????"
Moving is lecturing one another on what we have too much of:
Andrew: "There is no way you really need this many pairs of shoes."
Me: "Why do you have an entire trash bag full of mini-DV videotapes? That shiz is heavy, I can't believe you didn't back this stuff up digitally years ago."
At the end of this day, moving is lying on the carpet in the new place, with a pile of boxes and trash bags in the main room.
Holding hands because it's so hot we can't stand to be any closer together than that.
At the end of this day, I am still thankful for my life; for what it is, not for what I imagine it to be. I have a roof over my head, and someone to hold my hand.
Lucky me.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
How to Build Catherdrals
I am thoroughly enjoying pretend photography on instagram.
This is a photo taken of an art installation at the Blanton Museum of Art.
The Blanton is on the University of Texas campus and is FREE for students every day, and to the general public on Thursdays. The museum cafe is the lunch spot. The chef and I joke that one day I am going to just sit down and eat all the pieces of cheesecake by myself after finals. It is one of my very favorite places.
Although I had visited the Blanton many times before, I had somehow missed the fantastic installation by Brazilian artist Cieldo Miereles; How to Build Cathedrals. I really don't know how, it is quite large.
Anyway, on this visit to the Blanton with my three little sisters in tow (poor things, I don't think they were well amused), I managed to lose one of them and found her inside the piece. The installation is constructed of 600,000 coins, 800 communion wafers, 2000 cattle bones, 80 paving stones, and black tulle. It is absolutely beautiful. The piece, according to the blurb next to it, is supposed to examine the relationship between economic interests and the proselytizing of Catholicism in Latin America. Love.
YOU should stop by the Blanton soon and check it out.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
on surrogacy
The global phenomenon of surrogacy is a useful lens through which to examine issues of interest to feminist scholars. The new and growing surrogacy industry is fraught with problems including fair labor practices and disposability, control over the female body (who has it in cases of surrogacy?), motherhood and parental rights, and the agency of women in poverty in the telling of their own stories.
Here are some questions to help frame the discussion on surrogacy: How did surrogacy become an industry? Why is the industry flourishing in India? What are the long and short term consequences for the surrogates? For the children? For the intended parents? For ovum donors? Are the processes by which the surrogate pregnancy is created physically and emotionally healthy for everyone involved? What are the potential legal conflicts?
Let’s begin with the processes involved in creating a surrogate pregnancy. In our time, due to technological advances, the process of having children has become increasingly disaggregated for those experiencing fertility problems, or for gay and lesbian couples. For most families, if unable to conceive via invitro fertilization or other methods involving the sperm, and the egg, and the uterus of the intended parents, the fetus is compiled in pieces, most using the genetic material of the parents if possible, but if not possible, than with the most prime sperm and egg available through banks holding donated sperm and ova. There are obviously, many parties involved in the creation of these fetuses, in many cases as many as five individuals are involved in the traditional sense of “parenting” these children; the egg donor, the sperm donor, the surrogate, and the intended parents, not to mention the surrogacy agency, and sperm and egg banks. This can lead to complex legal disputes over rights or responsibilities of intended or biological parents, as seen in the documentary Bloodlines in which a two court cases involving yet unborn children conceived through surrogacy are highlighted.
In one of these cases, the originally intended parents decided they no longer wanted the twins that were being carried by a surrogate, and the surrogate was forced to care for the children herself and find them homes, while the intended parents never fully compensated her.
The criteria for ovum donors is very different from the criteria for surrogates, as Amarita Pande illuminates in her article “Commercial Surrogacy in India: Manufacturing a Perfect Mother-Worker”. Dr. Desai, who works for the clinic where Pande conducted her research says; “We have a different set of priorities for egg donors. In egg donors, we look at the woman’s age, intelligence, looks, education, family background, etc. For the surrogates it’s mostly the character of the womb.”
Pande compares the industry of surrogacy to the manufacturing industry, wherein a control tactic of the factory is to make the workers feel dispoable in order to illicit compliance. The doctor quoted above explains, perhaps unintentionally, one manner in which this is stressed to the surrogates: “We make sure the surrogates know that they are not genetically related to the baby; they are just the womb.”
Ovum donors within the US are recruited largely through advertising aimed at college students. The students are targetted with promises of payments of up to $20,000, a seductive sum for many facing heavy student loan debt, but the average payment is actually only about $4,000.
Though they are selected for their desirable genetic traits, these women are disposable as well. Once the ovum are harvested, the fertility centers no longer have any obligation to these women. They are picked over, by prospective parents. Some parents select for ethnicity, in particular, Jewish and Asian donors are sought after, and most if not all select for appearance and intelligence. The donors must participate in exhaustive interviews, ship their blood to laboratories for testing, disclose their entire family and medical history, and then undergo hormone treatments, and sign a contract promising not to engage in sexual activity until the final egg harvest surgery is performed, due to the increased likelihood of conceiving. The risks for the donors include complications ranging from mood swings, to infertility and even death.
For the surrogate, the risks are more pronounced, yet she is, as Pande points out, exploited to a greater degree. Especially in India, where the industry flourishes by recruiting women in poverty to work as surrogates, the worker should first be economically disadvantaged, and must be simultaneously a caring mother to the baby inside her, and a good worker, giving the baby up without hesitation at birth, and following the contract they have signed (though it is usually written in English, a language most Indian surrogates cannot read). Though they are encouraged to provide a maternal kind of caring to the fetus they gestate they are frequently reminded that they are only the vessel. This duality must sometimes result in the surrogate mother becoming attached to the baby, as Sharmila Rudrappa discusses in her article; Conceiving Fatherhood: Gay Dads and Indian Surrogates. According to Rudrappa: “many of the mothers felt close to the fetuses they bore; they called it “my baby.” Some husbands of surrogates thought of the baby as theirs, and “bereaved the loss of their new family member.”
Additionally, the reality of selective reduction of fetuses when more than one or two embryos successfully implants in the uterus of the surrogate, is an emotionally difficult experience also for the intended parents. Rudrappa’s qualitative study of gay fathers conceiving children through surrogacy in India poignantly relates the sadness and ambivalence of gay fathers Quinn and Antonio who, seeking to feel connection to their unborn, future children, when they are told by the doctor that she has to reduce the number of fetuses in order for any of them to remain viable:
“Yet, Quinn couldn’t help thinking that selective reduction would profoundly affect the rest of their lives. He was not sure why the two eliminated embryos were chosen. And he kept thinking, “if that nearly random needle had chosen another, who would have they have become? What was lost? And what will we tell our kids if they ever ask ‘what, you mean it could have been me?”
It follows that the surrogacy process also will inevitably lead to questions for the children conceived. Rudrappa explains how the telling of baby stories both before and after the birth of these children is an important part of creating a pool of history and origin stories for these children as a part of identity formation for them. Similarly to children who are adopted, these children will likely have questions about the mother whose genes they carry, and the mother who bore them. Unfortunately, the legal process in most cases closes the possibility of exploring those connections. Because most of the children “produced” by way of Indian surrogate mothers are still quite young, the emotional impact on the children remains to be seen.
Monday, May 7, 2012
So good!
I have become a raging feminist. Love it.
Please watch this video about women in media.
And this video about feminist tropes displayed in media.
I promise they will change how you think.
Please watch this video about women in media.
And this video about feminist tropes displayed in media.
I promise they will change how you think.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Final observation
Warning: This is one of the most offensive things I have witnessed in my life. I happened to see it because a friend of mine (notice I deleted the names) was tagged in it.
If you needed any evidence that racism is still alive and well... Here it is.
Jesus friggin Christ... If you are racist, do NOT eat at Cheddar's on a Sat. night. Its awful dark in here. — with ____
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