In Which I Spent Too Much on Coffee, but Not Enough on Cake Recipes

Hello again!

I was back to the grind this week. I met up with Kathryn several times at various Women Owned and Women Operated Businesses (WOWOB) so that we could ask for more interviews for our upcoming newsletter and for Kathryn's rapidly forming business.

The first time we met on Sunday, we actually carpooled together to an AZ NOW meeting at the Fare Trade Cafe at ASU. The meeting, which took a little over an hour, covered various topics regarding the day-to-day operations of the organization. The most interesting part of the meeting (for me, at least) was when Councilwoman Kate Gallego came in to talk with us about joining local government. It was honestly inspiring to see someone attempting to make changes at the grassroots level, despite of all the personal and professional hurdles people in government face.

She also did NOW a huge favor. April 4th is rapidly approaching- for those of you who don't know, April 4th is the Pay Gap Day, by which I mean, on average, a woman has to work until April 4th of a second year to earn all that a white, cis man makes in one year- and Gallego graciously got us a spot on City Hall that morning for a press conference and to protest. Several people will be making speeches, including the interim president of NOW, Kate Gallego, and your girl (!), so if you can, please join us! We will also be heading out to our local representatives' offices to give them cakes (that have slices cut out to represent how much women are missing), so if you can't come downtown, please let me know and I can drive you to the nearest representative!

Anyways, the rest of the week flew by, as Kathryn and I attempted to collect data on WOWOBs, drank a lot of coffee at said WOWOBS, and continued our research on local elections happening this year. The most tedious job I had to was collect information on all of the women running in the general election last year, so that we could compare the data to both the year before and this year. Hopefully all of this data collection will help the members of NOW further visualize the problems we are facing in local representation, and what we can do to combat it.

That's it for NOW! (I can't believe I haven't made that pun yet).

See you next time!

In Which I Admit I Cried

Hello again!

I have a new update for you! For once, this was a pretty slow week.

Post-accident, I basically took the weekend off; I slept for about 13 hours each day, watched some old cartoons, ate a bunch of comfort food, and whined to my dad and friends (hey, whining is proportional to more food. Don't judge me.). However, I wasn't about to leave my feminism at work. As I watched my cartoons on Saturday, I realized how my childhood viewings shaped the perspective that I have today. It may seem rather superficial, but the fact that I had strong female characters  to look up to as a kid made me much more approachable to the idea of intersectional feminism. Shows like The Proud Family, The Teen Titans, and Kim Possible, all of which featured female leads of varying personality (and some of varying color and race!) fought against the reality of my very white, very suburban neighborhood.

I discussed this with one of my family friends the next day when she invited my dad and I over for a (pity) dinner. She noted the dwindling number of female leads in the media as a person got older- although adolescent and even teen entertainment has several female leads, the variety of women in entertainment drastically decreases as the roles' ages increase. It reminded me of a documentary that I had seen last year in Feminist Club called Miss Representation. The film revealed several unnerving facts- women above the age of 40 make up only about 21.4% of characters in the mainstream film industry, only approximately 19% of the board of executives in the industry, and just 3.4% of mainstream movie directors- which forced me to realize that the battle is on all fronts of the media. What I find particularly cruel is the power represented by several childhood icons- Penny Proud, Kim Possible, Starfire, The Powerpuff Girls- is snatched as soon as the girl watching becomes (1) less "beautiful," or (2) older. Such helplessness with age is akin to the case of Benjamin Button. While men continue to grow and flourish with age, as literally with stretching skin and droopy eyes, women are forced to shrink themselves into younger and younger versions of themselves if they want to stay a part of the industry. Yet, there is no Oscar for "Best Deception for Age."

I'm sorry if all of this sounds very depressing, but it doesn't really get better from here.

In the past few days, I've been focusing on media psychology and researching how intersectionality originally gained steam. Because of that, I've been watching several videos from Kimberle Crenshaw. You might remember her from my initial discussion of intersectionality. I'll link her TED Talk below (as well as any articles I can find on the disparity among men and women in the media); her TED talk discussed the systemic invisibility of violence upon black women. As someone who has read her first academic paper upon the matter, it upset me very much that the situation has not improved since the late 1980s. For those still unaware, Crenshaw argues that in our current view upon social injustice, we tend to use a "trickle down" approach; in other words, we assume that racism is an umbrella term for covers everyone in a particular oppressed group, and sexism covers all women. Yet, we do not often acknowledge the intersection of the two, as well as other social injustices such as classism, ableism, and homophobia. So, in justice for the many fallen black women, Crenshaw had someone sing "Say Her Name." Say Her Name is a short song based upon a hashtag that was intended to bring awareness to violence upon black women.

I will admit I teared up a bit. It was incredibly tragic.

But you can't confront a problem if you don't know about it. Which brings me to my next news: for my internship this week, most of my time has gone to preparing for either the board meeting that Kathryn has on Sunday, or the AZ NOW State Conference in May. If you guys want to learn about feminism, feel free to join! It'll be on May 13, and students will get a discount!

I'll post a flyer up once everything's been finalized!

See you next time!

Also, here are the promised links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/older-women-hollywood_us_56cb4312e4b041136f17a2ce

https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality

In Which the Future Hit Me Too Quick (and I Got Rear-ended)

I start off most of my blog posts saying this, but what a week!

Monday and Tuesday were jam-packed! My adviser- whom you guys know by now as Kathryn- got accepted into Seed Spot's Women's Entrepreneurship Workshop. Since Kathryn wants to eventually establish her own business, this was extraordinarily important to her. A five day workshop, Seed Spot's WEW was also a great way for me to make up some hours; since it was related to feminism and women empowerment, Kathryn agreed to take me along with her as an intern and watch the shifts that women are making in the entrepreneurship business.

It was honestly amazing! I learned about design thinking, paper prototyping, how to conduct interviews with people without letting them know what your product is (in order to reduce bias), what weaknesses I should look out for in establishing a business, how to create a tangible solution, when I should outsource, and so much more. For someone who had never considered a career in business before, I was thoroughly interested and now, I think I might want to double major in neuroscience and entrepreneurship.

I think such a revelation was too much for my poor brain however, since I got a major headache on Wednesday. In order to recuperate, I took the day off.

But I think one day wasn't enough for my brain. While Kathryn was driving us to the workshop on Thursday (we carpooled, since it was all the way in Tempe), we got rear-ended on the SR 51. Luckily, Kathryn drives a Chevy Camaro, which has a lot of leg space in the front and because I'm so short, my head ended up not hitting anything but the seat behind me (yay for short people). However, due to the whiplash, my headache was exacerbated and Kathryn just sent me home for the week. Don't worry too much, because I think I'm going to do fine today!

I also released my survey this week, so if you want, please go take that! (The link's below).

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Dvt7S2Y8tTbv_Z4fOmnP0M-CusDTLF68QVflLwbr00A/edit?usp=drive_web


Cheers, and see you next week!

In which I Shamelessly Advertised

Yay! I'm now allowed to post my article that I wrote for the upcoming Central Phoenix/ Inez Casiano NOW Newsletter! Just a reminder to go sign up!

Truth Isn’t a Music Genre: There’s No Such Thing as Alternative

Haruki Murakami, a famous Japanese author, once proclaimed that “What we seek is some sort of compensation for what we put up with.” In other words, we seek validation. We seek validation for how we talk, how we look, how we run, how we behave, how we experience life. As social creatures, humans are fed by the presence of others, but in particular, we thrive with the presence of those who make us feel better, or even feel more legitimate. Such an experience has led to the echo chamber effect. No one goes out looking for a fight.  We prefer to cushion ourselves within our own social group and exist only within the framework that we establish. Often, we are blind to any opposing party simply because we make sure we are not exposed to them.

This lack of exposure has only been exacerbated by the presence of the Internet and the online media. Think about your daily, supposedly innocuous, routine: you get up and immediately check your phone. Many of us, especially the younger generation, gravitate toward social media, all of which has been customized to fit our particular interests. Google mail (also known as Gmail) even sorts each mail into subcategories for us and highlights the mail it thinks is the most salient. At the end of the day, we open up our laptops where all of our most visited sites are listed on the bottom.  We can click on Netflix and browse through selections that an algorithm has pre-selected for us. Then we go to bed and repeat the process.

The Internet has not broadened our horizons.  It has limited our perspective.

In the last week, I’ve been scouring the deep pits of the Internet, attempting to objectively evaluate both feminist and anti-feminist media. Frankly, I’ve had a terrible time. Media caters to its viewers, and viewers’ wishes shape the media. Although some relatively objective sites exist (e.g. the WHO page for violence against women), the viewership on said sites is little compared to the salacious, click-bait types of media. Anti-feminist sites, in particular, have a strong grassroots culture, and several of them are well aware of other anti-feminist media, which leads to a network of people believing the same thing, and not bothering to fact-check. My particular focus this week was on The Anti Feminist website, which not only pokes fun at feminist concerns regarding acceptance of sexuality and slut-shaming, but also paints men as the victim of the supposed matriarchy in the media. (Nevermind that white, old, rich, heteronormative men still own most of the major news outlets. *Cough* I’m looking at Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, and CBS. *Cough*) This red-pill philosophy demonstrates the problem we have created between our perspective and truth. To several of us, perspective becomes truth.

So I’m challenging you today. Try seeing the other side of the debate. Go read some anti-feminist arguments. Understand why people are upset with what you believe in, so that you can learn how to legitimately crush their argument. Because if we cling to our beliefs in desperation and refuse to listen to anyone else, how are we any different than the people we oppose?

In Which I Managed to Be Succinct

Happy International Women's Day!
(I know, I know, it's technically not International Women's Day anymore, but it was also A Day without A Woman; I took the day off and pranced around my house in red pajamas while watching feminist movies and documentaries.Sorry not sorry).

As always, it's been a whirlwind of a week. Kathryn, my adviser, has been more than cooperative with my demands to have extra hours (to make up for what I missed in India), and has been taking me along with her to her various meetings. This past Sunday, we had two meetings: one, with a professional survey writer, and two, with a group of talented writers and editors for the upcoming newsletter of the Central Phoenix (also known as the Inez Casiano) chapter of NOW AZ.

We met the survey writer in regards to the new NOW PAC surveys that Kathryn's creating. Kathryn wants to send a survey to every single candidate for citywide elections this year (side note: my hours of laboring to find information on local elections paid off!). Although we focused primarily on the issues that the NOW PAC survey had, Jenny- the professional survey writer- agreed to look over my survey as well. Hopefully she likes it and I can start distributing soon! (*fingers crossed*)

As for the newsletter, we have consolidated most of the information that was supposed to be coming out, so it should be releasing sometime this week. Go sign up for it! The link's below.

https://centralphoenixnow.wordpress.com/


See you soon!

In Which I (finally!) Had Reliable Internet, Actually Showed Up in Person to my Internship, and Learned About Echo Chambers

Hello, hello! It's been a rough two weeks- not only has my internet failed me at crucial times, but my computer decided it was going to freeze every other second, rendering it rather difficult to actually get any of my work done. But fear not! I have returned safely and with a rebooted laptop, so hopefully I will no longer have any hiccups on the way.

In what internet time I did have in India, I managed to work on a few things: one, I continued to update my elections spreadsheet; two, I began evaluating different social media in order to determine which sites were reliable sources of information; and three, I wrote an article for the NOW newsletter based upon my findings.

Finding information on elections has continued to be horribly confusing and rather frustrating. Although several city and county clerks have been eager to help us on our quest to catalog all of the upcoming elections in the state, it seems that several members of local government have contradicting information, which only complicates the process further. In fact, as of now, we have 4 different spreadsheets: (1) Cities/ Counties with Confirmed Elections in 2017, (2) Cities/Counties With Confirmed Elections in 2018, (3) Inconclusive Data, and (4) Cities/Counties With Possible Elections in 2017.

However, my other endeavors have been slightly more successful. I began digging through several feminist (and anti-feminist) sites in the past two weeks, evaluating for overall reliability about information on violence against women. I spent hours on the NOW website, the World Health Organization website, and even an anti-feminist website called (super-originally) The Anti-Feminist (warning: this site has several explicit mentions of non-consensual sexual activity, misogyny, and pedophilia). I also spent a lot of time looking through Twitter handles of popular feminist magazines and activist groups; I attempted to find anti-feminist Twitter handles for balance, but it seems that even the most popular of anti-feminists only has around 10,000 followers, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands that organizations like Ms., Bitch Media, and the Feminist Majority have- it would not be a fair comparison to put such different handles in the same pool.

(Side Fun Fact: As of February 20, Kellyanne Conway, advisor to Donald Trump, follows a Women Against Feminism Twitter account. The ironic thing is that said account is a parody created by Australian comedian Rebecca Shaw).

Anyways, I wrote an article for the upcoming NOW Newsletter based upon my findings. The most crucial thing which I learned- which is also helpful for my SP- is that social media has the tendency to create echo chambers. That is, because of the selective nature of the algorithms which most social media sites use, people often only see and connect with like-minded individuals, which leads to a polarization of thought. In other words, people's thoughts "echo" back to them in echo chambers.
I'll see if I can link the article to this blog after the newsletter is published.

For this week, I'm hoping to finalize my survey questions and start distributing them as well. Wish me luck, and see you next time!