In Which I Came to the Motherland, Visited my Grandmama, and Learned about Problematic American Mothers in the '70s.

Hello again!

It's been quite an eventful week: (1) I've traveled to India, (2) battled (mostly unsuccessfully) the horrors of jet-lag, (3) fought (with increasing irritation) the bustling traffic, (4) started my internship in full swing, and (5) began reading some iconic feminist books.

I knew I was coming to India since a month ago- my grandma had scheduled a knee replacement surgery- so I actually had begun my internship with the National Organization for Women two weeks ago. However, because we aren't required to log those weeks as part of our "official" SP time-log, I was able to use those hours as a makeup for this week, which made it easier for me to travel without worrying about how I would make up the minimum requirement (15 hours a week).

One of NOW's board members (and my SP adviser), Kathryn Mitchell, has recently established a PAC (political action committee) for Arizona, and in the spirit of being politically educated, challenged me to the task of recording all the state, county, and local elections happening in Arizona this year. Initially, it had been sort of a mess- several Arizonian websites for city and county elections have not been updated since November of last year, which rendered it near impossible to collect accurate information. However! We have been bugging the local representatives with rather passive-aggressive emails, and there seems to be light now in the dark abyss of political information. 

As for my SP syllabus, I'm falling a little bit behind. Although I have finished The Feminine Mystique- a 1970 expose by Gloria Steinem which detailed the problem of middle-class housewives post WWII- I have not been able to finish the Kimberle Crenshaw paper which coined the term "intersectionality." For those who don't know, intersectionality is the concept that feminism belongs not only to the white, middle-class, educated women, but to all women, and really, to all people. Intersectional feminists fight for rights for POC (people of color), people of the LGBTQ community, and for people of varying socio-economic status. The term was coined in this particular paper. I'm hoping to finish it this week.

This week is going to be another jam-packed week! I have to evaluate different forms of media (3 different websites, Twitter handles, Instagram accounts, Facebook groups, and Google+ groups) for reliability for my internship, and I have to continue working on reading and researching the different waves of feminism in order to get a proper background to start working on my app. 

Stay tuned!

Introduction!

Hello everyone!

My name is Akanksha Mishra and I am a novice blogger. On the side though, I am a high school senior attending Basis Peoria. In order to graduate with high honors, I'm required to conduct a Senior Project (SP). SPs are a great opportunity to take the knowledge that we've learned in school and apply it to something that actually interests us. We get to leave school in February and venture out into the world- sounds fun, but really, I think I'm only going to realize just how helpless I am in the face of "real-world" scenarios.

I've always been sort of an optimist (even with that statement above, I promise); I like believing that everyone will see the good in other people and in other things. Yet, I've almost always been proven wrong- people don't like learning as much as I thought they did. They like staying ignorant, for it provides them with an excuse not to care. As Albert Einstein once astutely noted, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."One of the greatest examples where I've seen this phenomenon is through the knowledge and acceptance of feminism (*gasp* "How dare she utter the f-word?"). Feminism, by definition, is simply the belief that all people should be treated equally. Yet, a ridiculous stigma exists around the word, which includes everything from the belief that feminists are man-haters to the suspicion that they are all lesbians.

My SP is hoping to look at the dissemination of information about feminism in various forms of media. Hopefully, I will be able to understand how feminist beliefs (or stereotypes) are spread, and will be able to gauge the difference between the two extremes. My end goal is to design an app that will bypass at least some of the negative connotations of feminism- not only will it spread information in the traditional form (through news articles), but it will (hopefully) have interactive opportunities (e.g. a listing of volunteer opportunities in the area, a forum, etc). I am interning with the National Organization for Women, and I will be helping them not only in their daily activities as an activist group, but also with their newly-formed PAC, which will provide me with more opportunities to notice how people react to feminism news and ideologies.

Wish me luck and see you soon!