http://annfriedman.com/blog/slutty-women-gifable-0
Shared from Ann Friedman’s blog.
Ann Friedman is the executive editor of GOOD magazine and the curator of LadyJournos!, a site that highlights the work of women writers.
Food For Him and For Her
•March 8, 2012 • Leave a Comment
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/03/07/food-and-masculinity/
This image from Sociological Images is a notice for a buffet on a BC Ferries vessel that travels between Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia. Women apparently need to know about the ingredients and dishes. Men just need to know food is available, in unlimited quantities.
On the east coast in Antigonish, a local diner that StFX students frequent, features a full breakfast for X-Men alongside a calorie-conscious breakfast — would that be for X-women?
Girl Power Anthems: The Ten Best
•January 28, 2012 • Leave a Commenthttp://www.spinner.ca/2012/01/19/best-girl-power-anthems/
Spinner Canada asked former guitarist for Titus Andronicus, Amy Klein, a writer, the founder of feminist art collective Permanent Wave to come up with the best feminist, girl-power anthems of all time. This week’s release of Ani DiFranco’s new album, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ was the impetus.. Click on the link above.
The choices span several musical styles and genres. I identify with the era of Carole King and Nina Simone. Patrick and I heard Nina Simone in concert at Ronnie Scott’s in London in the 1980s.
Art Works for Change
•August 19, 2011 • Leave a Commenthttp://www.artworksforchange.org/otbp_virtual.htm
Art Works for Change offers virtual walking tours of their exhibitions, as in the above link for Off the Beaten Path (2010) with artist contributions from 26 countries on Women and Violence. In 2012, this will be extended to a focus on Africa. A Yoko Ono print is featured in this exhibition along with an interview with her. Sadly, there are no Canadian artists in the exhibition. The Missing and Murdered Women associated with the Highway of Tears from Alberta to British Columbia comes to mind but the everyday violence and silencing of women’s voice, which features in this exhibition is the backdrop to the acts of violence that make headlines.
I did not find any commentary on the title itself — Off the Beaten Path. Kudos to those who chose this title — and its subtle ironies and double nuances around violence and making the hidden visible.
Word Cloud identifies Crystal Smith as a Feminist Popular Educator
•March 30, 2011 • Leave a CommentPosted by Dorothy Lander
Crystal Smith’s work on the Achilles Project and the Pixel Project qualifies her as a popular educator, which is the focus of the Woman Making Waves blog. Her work also illustrates feminist philosopher Sandra Harding’s assertion that gender relations are a central consideration in gender identity. To highlight Crystal Smith as a popular educator, drawing on images and performances from popular culture, I draw your attention to Word Cloud: How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes. http://www.achilleseffect.com/2011/03/word-cloud-how-toy-ad-vocabulary-reinforces-gender-stereotypes/
Harding, Sandra (1996). Gendered ways of knowing and the “epistemological crisis” of the West. In N. Goldberger, J. Tarule, B. Clinchy, & M. Belenky (Eds.), Knowledge, difference, and power: Essays inspired by Women’s Ways of Knowing (pp. 431-455). New York: Basic Books.
Crystal Smith is a social media and marketing writer who has spent many years working with non-profit agencies seeking gender equality and an end to discrimination against women. After being regularly disappointed by the film and television offerings available to her two young sons, she decided to write about the impact of kids’ popular culture on young boys.
Crystal is a member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada.
When not writing or blogging about boys and pop culture, she provides pro bono social media marketing services to the Halton Women’s Centre. She also works as the volunteer Blog Editor for The Pixel Project.
Word Cloud: How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes
March 28th, 2011
I’ve always wanted to do a “mash-up” of the words used in commercials for so-called boys’ toys. I did a little bit of this in my book, but now, thanks to Wordle, I can present my findings in graphic form. This is not an exhaustive record; it’s really just a starting point, but the results certainly are interesting.
A few caveats:
- I focused on television commercials alone (not web videos or website toy descriptions).
- The companies represented here are the big ones who can afford TV advertising. I looked most closely at the kinds of toys I have seen advertised during prime cartoon blocks on TV. (For example, Teletoon in Canada runs an Action Force block of shows in the after-school time slot and a Superfan Friday on Friday evenings.)
- I included toys targeted to boys aged 6 to 8.
- If a word was repeated multiple times in one commercial, I included it multiple times to show how heavily these words are used.
- I hyphenated words that were meant to stay together, like “special forces” and “killer boots.”
- For the record, my boys’ list included 658 words from 27 commercials from the following toy lines: Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Kung Zhu, Nerf, Transformers, Beyblades, and Bakugan.
- By way of comparison, I also looked at girls’ toys. The girls’ list had 432 words from 32 commercials. Toy lines on this list include: Zhu Zhu Pets, Zhu Zhu Babies, Bratz Dolls, Barbie, Moxie Girls, Easy Bake Ovens, Monster High Dolls, My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, Polly Pocket, and FURREAL Friends. (I have a full list of references for both list, with links, if anyone would like to see it.)
The results, while not at all surprising, put the gender bias in toy advertising in stark relief. First, the boys’ list, available in full size at Wordle:
Now the girls’ list, also available in full size at Wordle:
Slutwalk Toronto April 3, 2011
•March 29, 2011 • Leave a CommentPosted by Dorothy Lander
The Toronto Slutwalk is sponsored by the Motherhood Initative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI). See press release below. I have a hunch that we will witness the “strategies of subversive repetition” that identity theorist Judith Butler (1990) assigns as a way to resist subjugated gender identities. I invite any slutwalkers to post pics to this blog if they see themselves putting theory into practice. Here is a bit of the theory:
The task of subversive repetition is “not whether to repeat, but how to repeat or, indeed, to repeat and through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, age and ability norms that enable repetition itself” (p. 148). French philosopher Michel de Certeau’s (1984) distinction between strategies and tactics aligns with Canadian philosopher Lorraine Code’s (1991) distinction between knowers and actors. The “space of the tactic is the space of the other. … It operates in isolated actions, blow by blow. … It must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them. … A tactic is an art of the weak” (p. 37). For Toronto popular educator dian marino (1997), operating in the “cracks in consent … [ helps people] organize their rebellions” (p. 130).
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 3rd – MIRCI’s FEMINIST MOTHERS ACTIVIST GROUP WILL BE ATTENDING/MARCHING IN THE TORONTO SLUTWALK.
On January 24, 2011, during an on-campus safety forum held at Osgoode Hall Law School to discuss recent attacks on women at York University, Toronto Police Const. Michael Sanguinetti explained that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”
He later apologized, saying he was “embarrassed” by his remarks
but it is too late – WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!
“When we first heard about the Toronto Police officer labeling women and people most at risk of sexual assault as “sluts”, we thought about making noise and demanding for more than an apology. We have a constitutional right to a freedom of expression and a freedom of assembly so we’re using it. Putting that into action, we wanted to go right to Toronto Police Service’s front door at 40 College St. with impassioned numbers uniting against these damaging stereotypes. Thus SlutWalk Toronto was born. We are taking our frustration to the streets – literally.”
Join us for our walk. (taken from the official Slutwalk site):
http://www.slutwalktoronto.com
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN JOINING MIRCI/MARCHING WITH US – PLEASE CONTACT
ANDREA O’REILLY FOR FULL DETAILS: aoreilly@yorku.ca
We look forward to seeing you there!
MEDIA ABOUT THE EVENT:
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/955682
http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/swto-in-the-press
Mundo Mejor: Making a Better Place in the Yucatan
•February 20, 2011 • Leave a CommentMundo Mejor: Making a Better World in the Yucatán
By Dorothy Lander & John Graham-Pole
Culture es acción, es hacer, pero un hacer para expresar la idea en la materia.
- Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, 1965[1]
“Culture is action” is the epigram for Tara Underliner’s (2004) book, Contemporary Theatre in Mayan Mexico. We translated “action to express ideas in matter” in our embodied performances during our Day in Progreso on the Yucatán peninsula. This was the centerpiece of our Play with Purpose seminar at sea, organized through the Taos Institute (www.taosinstitute.net), the Houston Galveston Institute (www.talkhgi.com), and our hosts, the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Progreso (ITS) and Kanankil Instituto (www.kanankil.org).
At nine o’clock on Monday morning, February 7, 2011, we stepped off our cruise ship the Carnival Ecstasy onto the Yucatán. In sun-sparkled whites, our ITS and Kanankil hosts greeted us, shared a traditional Maya meal, and invited us to join in singing Michael Jackson’s “Make it a Better Place” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M6y_0VLB54). The thirty women of Yucatán who told George Ann Huck and Jann E. Freed (2010) the stories of their journeys also “were carried forward by their passionate desire for a mundo mejor, a better world.” This passion unfolded time and again in conversation and performance throughout the day in Progreso. We learned from our Kanankil Institute host and organizer, Rocio Chaveste, that kanankil is the Maya word for “conversation.”
Figure 1: Singing “Make a Better Place” (ITS, Progreso, February 7, 2011)
Our 5-day Play with Purpose seminar at sea was tied to the itinerary of the cruise ship Carnival Ecstasy. Reminiscent of Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1984) theories of medieval carnival, even the ship name appeals to excess and possibility, temporary and subversive desire and appetite, self reaching out to other, “I” relating to “We.” From the moment we stepped off the ship onto the port of Progreso, the “democratic, emancipatory and transformative genre of social expression [of modern carnival took over], … a meaningful revelling in the subversion of standard meaning. For a short time life came out of its usual legalized and consecrated furrows and entered the sphere of utopian freedom” (Quantz & O’Connor, 1988, pp. 100-101). Carnival legitimates expression of the unthinkable; how apt that we were (dis)embarking on our own utopian freedom on Monday morning, the very day that is so culturally linked to the start of the work week! “Carnival is the dialogue of the streets where laughing folk become con-spirators in understanding something new” (Lander, 2000, p. 236). Conspiring — breathing together — for just this short time as revelers, we were able to restore the intimacy so often distorted in the everyday officialdom of our professional and academic identities.
Figure 2: John Graham-Pole & Dorothy Lander; Mary Gergen & Ken Gergen; the Carnival Ecstasy
Carnival expression, especially laughter, collapses “us” and “them,” removing even language barriers. The global reach of Play with Purpose participants included Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Macao, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom. If you listen to the background hum on the accompanying YouTube video Mundo Mejor: Making a Better World in the Yucatán, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9uuqDeh4HI), you might suspect laughter is our lingua franca. Bakhtin (1984) conceptualized carnival laugher as victory over all that oppresses and restricts. “Only equals may laugh. If inferiors are permitted to laugh in front of their superiors, and if they cannot suppress their hilarity, this means farewell to respect” (p. 92).
Figure 3: Laughing participants disembark at Progreso
Symbolic of the “I-We” conspiracy were the Ola! greetings and invitations to support the local economy that greeted us from the moment we stepped off the ship into the photo-op embrace of Yucatán performers in Maya dress and onto the (tiá) aunt-niece artisans displaying the embroidered fabrics developed over three generations of a family business. Their signature calla lily design now graces our kitchen table in rural Nova Scotia. We learned that along with traditional fishing, the cruise ships are the mainstay of the economy.
Figure 4: Calla Lily Tablecloth from the Yucatán in our Nova Scotia Kitchen
In Progreso, participants were invited to create “real time” performances simultaneous with the students, faculty and staff from the Kanankil Instituto and the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Progreso (ITS), who had been developing their performances for three months. Building on the seminar-at-sea sub-title —Relational and Performative Practices in Everyday Life — we coordinated 10 simultaneous performances in the ITS courtyard, spanning themes of: community and social change; education and teaching; environment and sustainability; organization/business/work life; therapy/counseling. We were one of three groups on community and social change, and all the Yucatán performers were women. As the performance was without words, I have removed the background sound from the accompanying video (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9uuqDeh4HI).
Culture as action: these women performed environmental activism; they mimed complacency, taping their eyelids shut; they performed urgency, the clock symbolizing time running out. They performed struggle, illustrating that no sooner had some members cleaned up the environment, others were adding to the litter. They performed disease, signalling the link between caring for the environment and caring for each other, the “I” relating to the “We.” They performed “hope” and “we’re all in this together,” actually embracing the character of the villain used to symbolize the most flagrant harming of the environment.
Figure 5: Community and Environmental Change Practices
As an immediate effect of the performance, we could not in “all conscience” think and act the same about the water bottles and disposable plates and cutlery that subsequently served up our exquisite meal. At the same time, we could appreciate that much of the food we were eating was produced on the Yucatán, using traditional Maya recipes. Sally St. George, the leader for our community group performance, articulated the conflict that we were struggling with: the irony of the huge carbon footprint taken up by the cruise ship that we had chosen to bring us to this place. In carnival mode and surrounded by the very body of water that was still reverberating from the effects of the 2010 BP Deep Horizon oil spill, which flowed for three months before it was capped, we could not so readily distance the “I” from the “We.” We had to make meaning differently.
Through the deft translation of our group facilitator Victor, both performers and audience were able to share insights. The leadership of women in the environmental movement was a strong theme. In the spirit of carnival, we couldn’t tell faculty, students, and administrators apart. Administrator Lesley was wearing the traditional Mayan embroidered dress (huipil)[2]. In the performance of community change, they were equals. A recurring theme was our shared experience that children often take the lead on environmental change in their families.
Just as we were moving into a discussion about the role of political leadership in community and environmental change, as if on cue the Mayor of Progreso appeared. In this picture, Ms. Maria Esther Alonzo Morales underscores the leadership of women in the environmental movement, holding up two fingers — dos — to point out there were only two men in our group. In the accompanying video, you will not need a translation for the Mayor repeated appeals to “esperanza.”
Figure 6: Mayor of Progreso, Ms. Maria Esther Alonzo Morales, joins our conversation
Back in our snowbound home in rural Nova Scotia and sitting at our embroidered calla lily kitchen table, we took time to reflect on the insights and meaning-making that can only happen in carnival space and time. In keeping with our guiding research methodology of appreciative genealogy (see Dorothy’s research blog: www.womenmakingwaves.wordpress.com), we wanted to put these new meanings into historical context. What was the history of Maya women’s role in social transformations embedded in the dominant discourse that constructs their identities as guardians and defenders of tradition? Kathleen Rock Martin (2007) in her book on Maya poet and politician Araceli Cab Cumi reveals the long history of women’s political activism in the Yucatán — the site of Mexico’s first feminist congresses (1916) and the first Mexican state in which women held public office (1922). This day we met many more “organic intellectuals”: Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci introduced this phrase in the 20th century to identify thinkers and organizers within an emerging social group who communicate — perform — the world view to those outside it. From the perspective of contemporary feminist theory, it is easy for historians to dismiss this first feminist congress in 1916 for its “lack of sophistication, the ignorance of social theory, the confusion of ideas, and its mild mawkishness” (Foppa, 1979, p. 193); however, this discounts the symbolic and strategic power that this recognition of the first instance of organized feminism in Mexico carries.
What is the history of the Yucatán in the environmental movement? Whereas engineering and technology and the environmental sciences are dominated by male students and faculty in North America, women were the strongest presence at ITS, under the leadership of Direccion General, Lila Rosa Frias Castillo. Esther who dramatically performed “environmental sickness” in our group was an ITS engineering student. Lila’s farewell remarks to us collapsed family, community and professional identity, as she cited the wise words of her 90-year old father about the importance of “humbleness” in her academic and community leadership. Lila performed a poignant reminder that our best leaders marry the soft and hard sciences.
The Yucatán Living website offers a fitting close to our carnival reflections on culture as environmental action (http://www.yucatanliving.com/news/sisal-progreso-and-tixkokob.htm). Although feminist historians dismiss the 1916 feminist congress in Mexico for its antifeminist tone, especially its call for “male rather than female education,” (Foppa, 1979, p. 193), our partication in the women-led performance of environmental activism at Progreso leads us to conclude that quite the reverse has emerged into the 21st century, including this community exemplar of conserving the mangrove habitat in Progreso.
For years, the mangroves in Progreso have served as little more than a dumping ground for everything from old bed springs to bags of regular garbage. But no more! Several weeks ago, a group of students from the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Progreso, accompanied by members of the IX Naval Zone, visited the mangroves in search of black mangrove seeds. Those are the ones that grow up to have those exotic looking air roots that are so great for holding down erosion. The collecting of these seeds is part of our new reforestation program, in which mangroves figure prominently. However, upon arriving in the mangroves at Progreso, the students and naval personnel were shocked at the amount of trash found there – enough to seriously damage the entire ecosystem of the area. So they set about to clean it up as part of the Navy’s Ecological Saturdays project in Progreso. Fifteen students from the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Progreso and 30 members of the Navy spent an entire day cleaning in the mangroves and removed hundreds of kilos of trash. As the trash went away, it was not lost on anyone that this area is quite capable of becoming a tourist attraction. Mangroves provide habitat for such a diverse population of animal and plant life that is would be the height of foolishness to ignore this very special treasure that has been right here in Progreso all along.
Figure 7: The Mangroves of Progreso
In the carnival atmosphere that we experienced on the Yucatán, organic intellectuals are a committed and eloquent presence.
Works Cited:
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984). Rabelais and his world (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Foppa, Alaide (1979). The first feminist congress in Mexico, 1916. Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5(1), 192-199.
Huck, George Ann, & Freed, Jann E. (2010). Women of Yucatán: Thirty who dare to change their world. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing.
Kintz, Ellen R. (1998). The Yucatec Maya frontier and Maya women: Tenacity of tradition and tragedy of transformation. Sex Roles, 39(7/8), 589-601.
Lander, Dorothy (1999). Telling transgression: A bridge between contract and carnival in making student services policy. Journal of Education Policy, 14(6), 587-603.
Martin, Kathleen Rock (2007). Discarded pages: Araceli Cab Cumi, Maya poet and politician. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Quantz, R., & O’Connor, T. (1988). Writing critical ethnography: Dialogue, multivoicedness, and carnival in cultural texts. Educational Theory, 38(1), 95-109.
[1] Alfredo Barrera Vázquez (1900—December 28, 1980) was a Mexican anthropologist, linguist, academic and Maya scholar. He is noted for both his research into the historical Maya civilization of the pre-Columbian era and his contributions promoting literacy in Mayan languages and the culture of contemporary Maya peoples. He has been described as “perhaps the greatest Maya scholar to emerge from the actual land of the Maya” (accessed on Wikipedia).[
[2] The huipil is the tunic-like dress with underskirt that is a Spanish modification of Pre-Conquest Maya dress and also a key element in Maya women’s political self-presentation (see Martin, 2007 on Araceli Cab Cumi, Maya poet and politician). Ellen Kintz’ (1998) analysis of Yucatec Maya women of different ages in different families suggests that creative expression through textile/huipil designs produced for the tourist industry is of critical value in the preservation and/or transformation of Yucatec Maya culture. Culture as action!
