A Lovely Dream

Women want birth control, we must be sluts!

In response to Rush L. who said women who want birth control available from their insurance companies, are prostitutes.  

May 23, 2012

  Brrrring!

“Hey Mom, I was in Somerset studio magazine this month.”
“That’s great!  So, have you met a guy yet? I worry about you.”
 I like guys, I really do. They are cute and sexy, and usually know how to put up shelves that don’t fall down, but a relationship with one is something I’m not ready for.  I’ve had boyfriends but as I get older, the less bullshit I am willing to put up with and the more I enjoy my own company, and the company of my dogs and friends.   I’d like to fall in love again, someday.  Not today.  Today I’m gonna read, and paint, and write about feminism.
Society, including my mom, thinks life for women doesn’t really start until they get married.  It’s not so easy to convince all of the women who are now divorced.

41 percent of first marriages end in divorce.
60 percent of second marriages end in divorce.
73 percent of third marriages end in divorce.

It is always amazing to me when I bring up feminism and women say, “Hell no, I don’t hate men!” Feminism has nothing whatsoever to do with the liking or disliking of men.  It is the establishment of an equal place for women in society. In the workforce, in politics, and social rights.

Thing of the past, eh? If your only knowledge of feminists is angry women ranting that men should be eliminated from the planet, you need to get a cup of coffee and listen to me.  Because this is very important.  It’s not about opening doors, it is about money. Today, women college graduates earn approximately 65 cents for every dollar a college graduate man earns, working full time.

Statistics on how much women earn:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2013/04/09/59698/the-gender-wage-gap-differs-by-occupation/

Traditional values tell us that men are the heads of households and therefore need to get raises and promotions.  But in reality, 84% of custodial single parents are mothers.  And 24% of those families headed by single mothers are living below the poverty level.  This means millions of children are living in poverty.
If you are a woman who is taken care of and feels these issues do not affect you, all I can say is, your mantra should be THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I. Because anything can happen.  You may find yourself single or worse, single and older, and out there with the rest of us making 40% less than men for the exact same work.

THIS is feminism - the desire for women to be valued by society every bit as much as men.  If we were paid the same as men, then it wouldn’t matter if a guy didn't pick up the check. 

Gender roles are socially constructed and formed through early learning patterns that are continually reinforced by both men and women.  Gender roles hurt men as well as women, so it’s not just about getting men to understand, it is about educating women, too.  Society pits women against one another.  It says, sure you can have a great job, but you better look like a fashion model while doing it.  And, if you are a woman in a powerful position, sexist jokes are to be endured, lest you start believing that you really ARE equal.

Women comprise only 20% of the Senate.
Women comprise only 17% of the House of Representatives.
And yet women comprise 50.8% of the U.S. population.
That’s approximately 7 million more women
in the United States, according to the 2011 census.

It's not that there aren’t any women in high offices, anymore than there aren't minorities in high offices. There are a token few.  The day has hopefully arrived already when we all would say “this is my friend, Tanya,” rather than “my black friend, Tanya.”  Feminism won't be as much of an issue when everyone - men, women, and minorities - are equally represented in high-ranking positions.  Statistically right now, the vast majority of the power brokers are all rich white men in their 50s.

Princess = Daughter of a Monarch

Is giving up dedicating one’s life to finding the perfect guy to buy us stuff really taking away a girl's childhood?  What if Prince Charming never comes? What if you grow up and get date raped instead?  Children should have stories but ones that are empowering. One where the girl wears glitter and is a Fairy in charge of all the other fairies. Who is president of fairy land, not waiting for the boy fairy to keep her locked in a castle while he makes important, princely decisions all day long.

Look, I like glitter and pink.  Unlike society and the media would have us believe, feminism is NOT about giving up one’s femininity. It’s about demanding respect and fair treatment.  It’s about the idea girls are bombarded with since the time they are born to grow up and be taken care of. Can we have equality and still wear red lipstick?  Look, I spend way too much time thinking that if my clothes looked better and my hair were shinier, the world would value me more. And if I watch any amount of television, these self-deprecating thoughts are reinforced.  Yes, we women need to rein in this whole physical appearance self-improvement crap and RADICALLY love ourselves, right now, just the way we are.  We need to love and value MORE the person we are once the makeup comes off.

Think about when you were a kid.  I liked playing house, too, but how much of that was trying to be like mommy, the woman who meant more to me than anything else in the world at that time?  Did I really want to pretend to be baking cakes or was I just trying to emulate my mom because I thought that was what was expected of me?  (Let’s see, I’m 45 now and I hate to cook. You figure it out).

Gender roles are culturally learned and change over time. Gender roles help form who we think we are, in daily life, in politics, in what we wear, how we walk, how we talk.  It is our identity, and the identity of others.  How wonderful would it be if children were allowed to follow their own hearts and abilities even at play?  Perhaps then girls wouldn’t always be expected to take what is deemed the subservient role later in life but be treated as true equals in the workplace, both in value placed upon them as employees and in wage equity.

 

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Open Letter to Facebook

The below is a repost from this website:
http://www.womenactionmedia.org/facebookaction/open-letter-to-facebook/

You can see the pages in question and the advertisers ads, like DOVE, here:

http://www.womenactionmedia.org/facebookaction/

..................................................................................

May 21, 2013

An Open Letter to Facebook:

We, the undersigned, are writing to demand swift, comprehensive and effective action addressing the representation of rape and domestic violence on Facebook. Specifically, we call on you, Facebook, to take three actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.
2. Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

To this end, we are calling on Facebook users to contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence, to ask these companies to withdraw from advertising on Facebook until you take the above actions to ban gender-based hate speech on your site. (We will be raising awareness and contacting advertisers on Twitter using the hashtag #FBrape.)

Specifically, we are referring to groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about. Pages currently appearing on Facebook include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus, Kicking your Girlfriend in the Fanny because she won’t make you a Sandwich, Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs, Raping your Girlfriend and many, many more.  Images appearing on Facebook include photographs of women beaten, bruised, tied up, drugged, and bleeding, with captions such as “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up” and “Next time don’t get pregnant.”

These pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women’s bodies.  In addition, women’s political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content – prohibited by your own guidelines – remains.  It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse.  Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

The latest global estimate from the United Nations Say No to Violence Campaign is that the percentage of women and girls who have experienced violence in their lifetimes is now up to an unbearable 70%. In a world in which this many girls and women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime, allowing content about raping and beating women to be shared, boasted and joked about contributes to the normalisation of domestic and sexual violence, creates an atmosphere in which perpetrators are more likely to believe they will go unpunished, and communicates to victims that they will not be taken seriously if they report.

According to a UK Home Office Survey, one in five people think it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit or slap his wife or girlfriend in response to her being dressed in sexy or revealing clothes in public. And 36% think a woman should be held fully or partly responsible if she is sexually assaulted or raped whilst drunk. Such attitudes are shaped in part by enormously influential social platforms like Facebook, and contribute to victim blaming and the normalisation of violence against women.

Although Facebook claims, in a narrowly-defined defense of free speech, not to be involved in challenging norms or censoring people’s speech, you have in place procedures, terms and community guidelines that you interpret and enforce.Facebook prohibits hate speech and your moderators deal with content that is violently racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic every day. Your refusal to similarly address gender-based hate speech marginalizes girls and women, sidelines our experiences and concerns, and contributes to violence against them.  Facebook is an enormous social network with more than a billion users around the world, making your site extremely influential in shaping social and cultural norms and behaviors.

Facebook’s response to the many thousands of complaints and calls to address these issues has been inadequate. You have failed to make a public statement addressing the issue, respond to concerned users, or implement policies that would improve the situation. You have also acted inconsistently with regards to your policy on banning images, in many cases refusing to remove offensive rape and domestic violence pictures when reported by members of the public, but deleting them as soon as journalists mention them in articles, which sends the strong message that you are more concerned with acting on a case-by-case basis to protect your reputation than effecting systemic change and taking a clear public stance against the dangerous tolerance of rape and domestic violence.

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence  remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence.  We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue, to bring your policy on rape and domestic violence into line with your own moderation goals and guidelines.

 Sincerely,

Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project

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[link] An open letter to Facebook (fighting hate speech against women)

Activists Pressure Companies To Boycott Facebook Over Its Content Promoting Violence Against Women

Art and Volunteering

Are you moody? Envious of others? Do you feel like something is missing from your life? Do you stress over your weight or if you are pretty enough or fear getting older? Are you sad because someone you love died? Does life feel a bit, eh? I want to introduce you to the place I volunteer once a week.
 
TURN CITY CENTER FOR THE ARTS

With the help of Carol Clayton who donated supplies, me and my friends Courtney and Cody decided to bring art journaling to people with disabilities. How did I do it? I looked up art and the disabled online and found this center. I went there and said, hey, let me do this, and they did. I have never taught the disabled before but it didn't matter. I went into my first class with love in my heart. And you can too.

I have 13 students and each one of them has a journal. I chose the one Michaels sells called Artist Loft that has a canvas cover they could immediately paint and make their own. Having something entirely their own where they can make the decisions was most important because I knew they are told everywhere else in their life what they can and can't do.  Having a journal is more than an art project, it is a place to BE. All of the students are at different levels and physical abilites but all of them love to journal. It took a few weeks but we learned what each of their personal needs were and each class I make sure everyone has the materials to make them happy. 

Stamps and stencils and paint and water soluble crayons and markers and stickers and scrapbook papers, all of it is laid on the table and I tell them to play.  And just like every other student I have ever had who is a beginner to art journaling they are afraid to mess up the page.  So I remind them, to make wonderful pages we must first experiment. If you do not play with your materials then you will never make great pages because you won't have control over what you are doing. I give you permission to play! That is what is so wonderful about it. Each page is a new opportunity to make anything happen. Experiment and play and see what comes up. All of it can be turned into a background layer for more serious work if you want, or it can just be free expression. 

And each client has different needs. For some who cannot speak or hear, placing pretty objects into their books by themselves is a great cause for joy! Or spraying a stencil of a seahorse. This is magic for them! And it all happens inside their book where they are in control.  I have learned a lot about my own art journal after working with them and how anal I can be trying to compose a pleasing page. Or how hard I can be on myself when something doesn't turn out perfectly. I want the freedom to play and try things and have it be okay that I JUST LIKE SPARKLY THINGS. Imagine,  a grown woman with a page of soft, glittery hearts to look at. I am not ashamed to say I like it just as much as my students do.We all need help and encouragement. And you don't have to be a fine artist to spread art journal joy. If you love it, you can bring it to others. You can bring it to children or to the elderly. You can bring it to a small group. Just start spreading the joy.  It is NEEDED. As miserable as I can get missing my dad who is now gone, I lose myself in the smiles from my students who know they are not as capable as everyone else. Most have walkers and maybe can't hold a pencil with any coordination.  Courtney actually holds the hand of some of our more challenged clients and guides them into making an image.  It is magical to see.

And do we have a lot of spare time for this? Ha. I have just as much spare time as you. I have none. But it is exactly when we are most busy that our soul needs to give.  We can get caught up in the meaningless things of the world. We can start to feel sorry for ourselves. All of that disappears when we help those less fortunate than us. And instead of depressing us, we are lifted out of our misery. 

I made this painting to add color to our art room and for the students to be happy when they saw themselves in a painting doing what we do in class.  Here is a link to the students; can you figure out which one is which figure?

 

If you can donate any art supplies at all it would be very helpful!

Click here for the contact page.

 

Nina LOVES spraying and the color purple!

and yes, my hair. I'm getting to that.

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Living in the Answer

“When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away.” Alcoholics Anonymous


You know what you have to do, you just don't want to. Whatever that thing is. And so you continue on and don't like where you are at but are unwilling to change your whole life. Because that is what it takes. Whether you want to eat healthy and exercise or go back to school or get a divorce or become an artist or writer.  Staying stuck is more comfortable then doing.

  But I am a fan of doing. Doing is awesome. Afraid of making the wrong choice? If you are passionate about something and keep thinking about it - do it. It may just be a stepping stone to what you really want to do, but aren't aware of yet. But if you stay stuck if you stay miserable you WILL have more of the same. Period.
  Now, people in your life won't like when you Do. Even if they think you are miserable the way you are now too, they are used to you this way.  It may suck to hear you whine all the time but its comfortable for them. When you start to DO, when you eat better and and go for walks and grow stronger, when you start school, when you become bigger than who you have been, unless they are growing along with you then they might not see you as much.  Whatever need you filled for them won't be filled by you anymore. They will not like this. So when you are successful is often a time you loose your friends.

But it's okay because new friends are waiting for you out in the place where they are doing things too. And that's where you want to be. In the middle there will be change, but DO your thing anyway.  What is the alternative?  Staying stuck in dysfunction, in boredom, in a life half lived, you have the power to change that. YOU can be way bigger than you are now. 

   This way you have been living, whatever it is that is making you sad and feel small and crappy, stop it. Start living in the answer.  Get off the couch.  Stop worrying what people are going to think of you. Start being YOU. For petes sake already, you and me, no more distractions. No more whining about how it could be and oh how we'll never get there.  Live it now. Let's drop all the bullshit and BE THERE NOW.  You and me.

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