Tag: equality

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White supremacy is like water

White supremacy is like water. It seeps into every crack and crevice. It pools in low areas, creating a narrative of normalcy for all other isms to thrive. It drips from the mouths of agents who seek to maintain control and it eats away at the resolve of those who attempt to contain it. It consistently searches for a river that will help it travel to those who do not have access to it.

It is in you and me. No matter the color of our skin or the environment we were raised in. Just like the 60% of our body that is water, it flows through us in ways that we cannot control, but with an understanding of how to contain it, we can move forward.

Unlike water, which we need to survive, we do not need white supremacy. But in order to tear it down and build a better future, we have to agree that it isn’t a necessity. That, in fact, we can live good lives within a structure that does not rely on one group of people being considered superior to all others. That we are all genuinely equal and can live in community with one another. Helping each other, rather than calling each other out. Pulling people close, rather than pushing them away. Understanding that if we don’t work together as one human race, we will lose the ability to have our home on earth.

When water freezes, it does even more damage. It can burst pipes and cause vehicles to spin out. It can wreak havoc on a community. White supremacy has frozen our systems of governance, commerce, and justice. It has seeped in and allowed the systems to stay in place that favor the few over the many.

White supremacy is like water, but we can turn off the faucet and stop the damage. We can listen to those who have been oppressed in this supposedly free nation and learn how to dismantle the white supremacist systems. We can stay engaged and do the work to move forward. We can stop the flow of misinformation shared online, in the media, and person to person by talking to one another about change. White people need to talk to other white people about white supremacy and how to stop the flow. The faucet has been steadily dripping over the years and it is time to gain control, once and for all. When everything is soaked, it may seem impossible to find the surface, but can do it together. Dry ourselves off and move forward as a people.

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The End of Roe

When I saw the leaked draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, concerning the overturning of Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, on 2 May 2022, I was stunned, but not surprised. After all, my last post on this blog, just 2 weeks before was on the topic of Bodily Autonomy. Readers here know that I have always been pro-choice and I am consistently grappling with those who are not. Pro-choice seems like a pretty obvious way to be as it accounts for the life of the pregnant person first and foremost.

I am greatly disheartened by the trigger laws in individual states across the country, including my current (Tennessee) and former (Alabama) states of residence. In Let’s Talk About Tennessee’s Trigger Law, the Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood blog does a great job discussing these trigger laws in general, as well as what could happen in Tennessee specifically if Roe and Casey are officially overturned. The Human Life Protection Act will set the state of reproductive justice in Tennessee, along with 12 other states that have similar laws lined up, back 50, but what feels more like 150, years.

As a person having lived the better part of 40 years in Western New York, I have resources that will allow me to visit the state if I ever need access to abortion care. But, unfortunately, I am among the few with this privilege. Many people who will need this healthcare do not have a direct resource in a state with legalized abortion. With the passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), in January 2019, the NYS legislature “legalized all abortions up to 24 weeks of gestation.” (wikipedia.org) This also decriminalized abortions in the state as prior to the act’s passage, abortion was “included as part of the penal law under homicide, and could be charged as a criminal offense.” (wikipedia.org)

The Tennessee trigger law will do the opposite of what the NYS RHA did, by making “abortion not only illegal but also a felony.” (plannedparenthoodaction.org) This, as I stated above, will set the United States back in our struggle for reproductive justice, but we cannot give up. The people who fought for the initial right to choose and who won this right with Roe had to sacrifice a lot for the cause. We cannot let them nor the future of reproductive justice down by being complacent. We must stay informed and keep up the fight!

So, after my initial shock over the leak wore off, my next step was to get more information. My first love, after all, is research. It helps me to work through all of the emotions and channel them into action. This led me over to SCOTUSblog (an excellent source for all things US Supreme Court) for more information. In the weeks since the leaked opinion, SCOTUSblog has been tracking all the news on the leak, along with movement on the case itself, here: Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and I strongly suggest perusing that archive. Knowledge leads to action, action leads to movement, and movements can change the world!

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Bodies, Autonomy, and Perceived Selfishness

Is it real or is it brainwashing?

I used to think it was wrong to disparage people socialized as women who chose to stay at home with children and not pursue any outside employment, schooling, or general interaction with adults aside from their neighbors, family members, and spouses. After all, anytime someone like me – childfree by choice – made a comment about not wanting to be a mother I would hear about how rude it was to imply that women who made the choice to be ‘stay-at-home moms’ were somehow inferior. As if that had anything to do with my personal choice to be childfree. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t believe any choice a person makes is inferior, but hear me out for a moment. I don’t believe that people socialized as women actually CHOOSE to be stay-at-home moms. I’ve come to this conclusion after much observation and a long conversation with my own mother who floated the idea that perhaps they are not choosing it so much as being coerced into believing that it is required of them.

This goes for those in cultures that prize motherhood in a way that is imposed upon them through rhetoric and religious beliefs. Complementarianism mixed with bullshit ideas about gender roles has created a toxic stew of beliefs that force some people into situations that they may not have chosen if they had other options. This is not about being a mother or a parent, in general, this is about the role of staying home with the children and forcing yourself to believe that you don’t want anything more for your adult life. That you are unable to do anything other than stay home with your children because others have made you believe you cannot do anything else. This, my dear friends, is brainwashing, plain and simple.

Now, I know -this seems like the ramblings of a childfree by choice feminist killjoy, but truly – I do not believe that these women who say they only want to be stay-at-home-moms are being truthful. I think they believe this because they have been made to by their upbringing, their partners, or the heads of their churches. To put mothers on a pedestal and make them believe that their ultimate goal in life should be to only raise children and take care of a home is doing these mothers a disservice. Every human has the capacity to do multiple things throughout their lifetime and motherhood is no different from any other profession. Of course – in the beginning, someone has to stay home with the baby humans, to keep them alive, but egalitarian parents seem to accomplish this just as well as complementarians, with the added bonus of all parents remaining equal. With a little help and support, parents can raise their children and have lives outside of the home. It is happening every day and it isn’t strange or different.

The glorification of motherhood and the backlash people socialized as women feel if they vocalize the fact that they do not want to be a stay-at-home-mother is damaging to society as a whole. We have cultivated a traditional sense of motherhood that has been detrimental to all people, parents or not. This sense of what people socialized as women should want is toxic and feeds into the self-loathing they feel regardless of the route they decide to take.

Of course – people socialized as men don’t get this same treatment when they say they don’t want to have kids. It is always and only people socialized as women that bear the brunt of vitriol from others. That vitriol, of course, is outwardly facing internal pain, but that is a whole other avenue of psychology that I’m not going to try and tackle here.

Critical thinking skills are essential

The conversation with my mother actually got me thinking a lot more critically on this topic. I have always believed that being a parent is a choice that each of us makes, independently of any other forces in the world, but I also realize that there are many people who make their life choices based on their surroundings. They listen to the people in their family, friend groups, community, and/or church elders to determine their choice. They may not listen to the voice in their own head that tells them what they truly want because the messages that they receive from the outside are too loud. They also might not have the critical thinking skills to determine exactly what they want versus what the world wants for them. At worst, they might not know that they have other choices.

The points above, coupled with the fact that stay-at-home-motherhood is put on a pedestal in our culture, makes for a conversation that is almost impossible to have. Or, at the very least, it is impossible for someone like me to have. Someone who has chosen NOT to have children. Someone who has listened to the internal voice that told me I didn’t want to be a parent. Someone who did a wealth of critical thinking, questioned my gut reaction, and still came to the conclusion that I did not want to be a parent. I did not arrive at this conclusion quickly, easily, or without thought. I did the work to get here. I do not believe that those in the complementarian style of life do this critical thinking. They just move forward with what they have been taught to believe and they never question it. At least not in the beginning.

A wedge emerges

The day after the conversation where my mother asked the question; ‘but do they really WANT to be stay-at-home moms or are they merely socialized to believe that is what they want?’ I woke up with my brain buzzing. Do they truly, deep down, want to be ONLY stay-at-home moms or are they just saying that because it is what they believe they have to say? Why don’t we ever give people socialized as men grief for having a job and children? Why are only people socialized as women in the hot seat when it comes to child-rearing? Why are people socialized as women put in a position to have to ‘make a choice’ or try to ‘have it all’ or ‘go childfree for a career’ when people socialized as men can just do all the things and there are no conversations about it. There are no think pieces (a quick search returns SO MANY for ‘women’) written in major publications on why people socialized as men can or can’t have it all.

And here is the crux – people socialized as women are pitted against each other in this conversation because if one person says “I don’t want to have children” another will ask “why? children are gifts from G-d and we should be happy to be mothers”, therefore continuing the lie of motherhood as an imperative.

There are people who want to raise children. There are people who want to have careers. There are people who want to raise children while having careers. But there are not people who want to only raise children and never have any other work. The idea that there are people socialized as women who are ‘born to be mothers’ or only and forever want to stay at home raising children because they don’t have any other interests is a bullshit myth that has been instilled in people socialized as girls and women for centuries in order to make the white supremacist patriarchy function.

Throughout history, when people socialized as women show ambition for anything beyond raising children, it is tamped down by the forces in society that maintain the status quo. If people socialized as women collectively agreed that we can be parents and have careers, just like people socialized as men can, then perhaps we would be able to crush the stay-at-home mom expectation that harms people socialized as women who think they have to be doing that job in order to be good.

In an excellent piece by Jill Filipovic (jill.substack.com), the myth of stay-at-home motherhood is shown in all its toxic glory through MLM schemes. The piece focuses on the new documentary about LuLaRoe, which connects directly to what I have stated above. No person socialized as a woman is born wanting to be only and always a mom with no other outlets in her life. This is why MLMs are so easily ingrained in traditionalist communities. They promise an outlet for stay-at-home moms to interact with other moms, without leaving home to do so, and in the process, they take these people socialized as women (and sometimes people socialized as men) for a ride financially. Something framed as empowering is really a scam that ends up becoming an extremely expensive hobby.

There is also something to be said for the infantilization of people socialized as women in society. Traditionalist people socialized as men see their wives as inferior to them by design and although they are tasked with the huge responsibility of keeping small humans alive, the moms are often seen as children themselves who cannot make decisions. So, when one of them is scammed by an MLM scheme like LuLaRoe it confirms the narrative of childlike behavior, further pushing them into the realm of the home and not allowing them to seek out other career opportunities or even have hobbies that take them away from the home and their children. And when a mom decides to go out and get a job to fulfill the need to be a participating member of society or contribute monetarily to the home (not to diminish the fact that domestic labour is already contributing GREATLY to the home, but as unpaid work is devalued) her jobs are often devalued by these traditionalist communities as hobbies. They are seen as ‘little jobs’ that are not really contributing anything to the bottom line, even if they have the potential to contribute a great deal to that home budget.

Double standards

Social media allows toxic positivity and traditional motherhood tropes to thrive virtually unchecked. I have witnessed comment threads in which people suggest stay-at-home moms who attempt to go out in the world to work or have a social life are being selfish. Giving pointers on how to have a job and still ‘keep house’ is a common occurrence, but only on the comment threads of people socialized as women. Those parents who were socialized as men never get pointers on housework or raising kids, even when their threads are full of leisure activities, let alone when they talk about work opportunities. The double standards abound and it creates an environment where mothers are held to a more stringent standard than fathers. This is a toxic loop that we are still having a hard time getting out of, even in 2022. The political climate of holding back on or, worse, rolling back legislation that provides equal rights adds to the issue. If paid family leave is not available then mothers end up having to leave the workforce for long periods of time, setting their careers back and lowering the standard of living for their families.

Add to this, the mothers who think they know best what other mothers should be doing. The ones who talk about how to work, take care of the kids, clean the house, do the laundry, and get dinner on the table, without ever thinking that perhaps the father in this scenario could help out as well. And that also completely leaves out single parents who have to do all of these things on their own and don’t have the option to just stay at home with the kids. If you have a partner, you should be sharing in all of the home duties as well as bringing an income into the family. Adults should work in and out of the home, no matter what gender they were socialized into.

Honestly – my partner and I share the household chores and we do them on Sundays. It takes about 2-3 hours of our time to clean our home from top to bottom. Every season we do a larger cleaning, also on a weekend. During the week we share the responsibility of cleanup after dinner. One cooks, one washes dishes. And we, together, keep our home and clothes clean. These responsibilities add up to maybe 8 hours per week total. So, if there was one person doing this type of work, why would they need to stay home and not have a job? The answer, obviously, is that they wouldn’t. The framing of ‘stay-at-home-mom’ as necessary is a myth. Yes – someone has to stay with the children as they grow, but once they are in school and on their way to adulthood, the person who stayed home to raise them should be able to re-enter the workforce or education system or any other outside of the home outlet they wish to pursue. They should not be relegated, forever and always, to the role of housewife. This role was created simply to control people socialized as women and nothing else.

Why does any of this matter?

On the individual level, people socialized as women are being made to feel like garbage when they want to raise children and have a career. At the think piece level, people socialized as women who stay at home with their children are interviewed to glorify the traditional stay-at-home mom role while lashing out at people socialized as women who are raising children and cultivating careers. But these are merely tools for the patriarchy to continue control. Wedges that are placed between people socialized as women so that we will continue the infighting, rather than looking outward as a collective at the harm that these myths have caused over time.

There are so many people who have set aside their ambitions because they didn’t think they could raise children and pursue a career and they were, frankly, duped. They can do it. With help. And that is the point. Raising children does not require some special skill that only people socialized as women have. It merely requires adulthood and knowledge. It requires assistance from others and the support of a community that cares for it’s young.

It also requires universal daycare and pre-K, universal healthcare, paid family leave for 6 months after the arrival of a child, a $20 minimum wage, and universal healthcare. It requires community care. You know – the basic things to live. The stability to live life with dignity. Needs met. We put tax dollars toward so many other things in the United States that do not benefit the whole of society, and yet we don’t see the need to fund these basic services for all. It is truly disgusting.

Because people socialized as women are made to believe, over our lifetimes, that we are not able to do all the things, we fall into the patterns that society has laid out for us. Some of us have children and stay at home. Some of us don’t have children at all. Some of us have children and careers but struggle to make ends meet. If we dropped the myth of motherhood and came together as a collective of people fighting for a common goal of equality, we would see a better world.

As a collective, we can lobby the government to get the things we need so that we can have it all, no matter what having it all looks like. We can stop resting on the myth that people socialized as women are ‘meant to be’ mothers and if they choose something else they are going outside the norm and smash that myth into a million pieces through our organizing for the rights of all people to have support in our ongoing efforts, parenting or not.

This past week

The above conversation about raising the young is all fine and good, but there is another force at play that reared it’s ugly head again last week and that is the right for people with uteruses to have the ability to choose what they want to do with said uterus. Yes, I am being very specific here because there are all kinds of people who can create, grow, and bear children and all of us are at risk of losing our rights.

First Texas, then Oklahoma, and just yesterday, Kentucky, have basically made abortion illegal in their states. At present, we still have Roe v. Wade to uphold the bodily autonomy of those with a uterus, but if the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization moves forward, it could send the decision of viability back to the states. The issue in the case is “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional” (scotusblog.com) and if found to be true would essentially overturn Roe. With near total abortion bans setup in many states across the country, to be triggered with an overturn of Roe, we are truly on a path backwards. Women are people. All women are people. All people with uteruses are people. And at the end of all of this, if we overturn one of the most crucial Supreme Court decisions we have seen in recent memory, we are telling all people with uteruses that we are, in fact, not human.

How can we retain our rights?

The good news is that many pro-choice groups and organizations, across the country, wrote amicus briefs, in September 2021, in support of the defendant, showing a great deal of pushback to the draconian reversal of human rights that the petitioners seek. Contacting legislators through phone calls, text messages, emails, and marching to capital buildings with our message of equality will continue to pressure these officials. Holding them accountable through our votes is another avenue of resistance. We need to stay aware and remain vigilant in the protection of equal rights for ALL, not just for those in power.

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Christianity’s History of Oppression aka Hypocrites of the High Seas – a series

Hello lovely readers! I hope you are having a wonderful evening and are ready for some meaty material. I have been studying Christian Patriarchy, MRAs, and other misogynistic practices for a little while now and decided to write a multi-part series detailing some of the information that I have come across in my travels. So, without further ado, here is the first segment in the series. I hope you enjoy it and, as always, please share this piece with friends and enemies alike!

You might not think that Evangelical viewpoints have anything to do with you. If you come from another religious tradition or no religious tradition, you may feel comfortable living in America, because it is known as the home of the free. We take for granted the separation of Church and State and we couldn’t possibly be like other countries that have national religions and oppress their people based on religious doctrine.

If this is what you think, I will give you a moment to Google and mull that thought over.

Unfortunately, the separation of Church and State that we have always assumed was our earthly right is being eroded in our country. It has been for many years, but with this POTUS* we see the agenda much more clearly. Not only did he promise to dismantle women’s, gay, and civil rights, but he has shown himself to be a white nationalist and a misogynist. He was the one candidate on the Republican side of the aisle that was willing to do whatever it took to win and what it took was promising the Evangelicals that he would be their guy.

“Still”, you ask, “does this really affect me? I mean – I feel pretty safe here in America because I was born here and I pay my taxes. I think I can overlook the craziness of this administration because in a year we will be rid of this POTUS*.” And my answer to you is, YES. It affects you. It affects every single one of us. It even affects the Christians that think they are doing what is right. We are moving toward a nation that is not free and that will hurt EVERYONE.

How do we fix it? First, we need to understand the people who are lobbying for changes in our society. Evangelicals have a specific belief system that prioritizes the power of men over women. The most obvious example of this is something called ‘Biblical Patriarchy’ or ‘Christian Patriarchy’. This form of patriarchy is not very different from the definition of patriarchy that exists in modern society, and it could be said to be the basis for this modern understanding. Christian Patriarchy touts the idea that men are the head of the household inasmuch as they oversee their wives and children and direct their lives. Women are, in this scenario, considered helpers and their domain is merely the home. According to a literal reading of the Bible, women are responsible for raising the children in the way that their husband has set forth. Here is an example of this structure that I have seen shared in many online forums to describe this movement, with verse references:

Original creator unknown – The Biblical Model for Godly Homes

That last line is chilling. They have, 100%, worked in that direction and with the current administration they are getting many of the things that they have been striving toward. But why are they so powerful? How did they get someone elected who would move America away from the separation of Church and State and toward a ‘Christian’ nation? The better question is how can we turn this ship around? If we don’t understand the Christian Patriarchy Movement, we are defenseless against what it could do to hurt our Egalitarian society. We have issues with Patriarchy, on the daily, in our secular lives, but adding Christian Patriarchy to the mix takes the struggle for equality to another level.

Again you may wonder: What exactly does this have to do with me? Christian Patriarchy spreads across all denominations of Christianity. It is not just centered on Evangelicals, although we often see them as the largest faction within this movement. Evangelicals have successfully lobbied all levels of government to put their agenda front and center.

Consider this movement as a cruise ship. The Evangelicals and other Christian Patriarchy movement folks are all on the cruise ship and they offer everyone a ticket to their cruise but in order to board you have to leave behind some of the pieces of your identity that you may or may not be able to shed. In essence, you are either on the cruise ship, willing to get on the cruise ship, lost at sea on a raft or small craft, or simply treading water, for eternity.

  1. First you have to believe in their God and only their God.  Being born-again is essential, so if you are anything other than a Christian before you set foot on the ship, you need to change your religion.
    Several States have passed bills to display “In God We Trust” and/or the 10 Commandments in front of or on government buildings and on public property. This is in opposition to the Separation of Church and State, but the Evangelical folks don’t believe that it applies to them. To them, the separation isn’t protecting them, it is restricting them. Bonkers.
  2. If you are a woman, you need to put men in charge of your body (preferably White men, but we’ll get to that in a moment).  If you are a feminist, you can’t get on the ship.
    The current POTUS* has installed two judges that are anti-choice and successfully won a majority of conservative judges on the SCOTUS. This is a move toward dismantling a basic right for women to control our bodies. Christian Patriarchy folks also believe that birth control kills babies (because of course people who don’t believe in science wouldn’t understand how medicine actually works – clue – birth control pills DON’T actually kill babies, they prevent ovulation) so the next step in the legislation of this kind is to outlaw birth control pills. This is a thing that could happen in the near future if we don’t fight against it with actual scientific facts, legislation to retain the rights of women to have basic healthcare, including contraceptives, and elect more progressive people to overturn the conservative seats in the US Senate. Basically, feminists have won many rights for women that allow us to control our bodies and futures, and the Christian Patriarchy peeps do not appreciate that. So – no cruising for the feminists.
  3. If you are anything other than CIS and heterosexual, you are unable to board. All the LGBTQPIA2S+ folks are out of luck.
    Legislation in this area started with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), bathroom bills that require individuals to present ID to prove their gender identity matches the sex that was assigned to them at birth, and bills that give cover to adoption agencies that favor straight couples to gay couples going as far as allowing these agencies to use religion as a means to discriminate against couples if they do not meet the criteria of sexual orientation. And we all know about the ‘Hobby Lobby’ case and what I like to call ‘it’s just fucking cake’ legislation. So I guess there will be no LGBTQPIA2S+ folks on the ship either. My goodness how boring it will be.
  4. Can I get on this cruise ship if I’m not White or is there a segregation clause as well?
    Well – there isn’t a segregation clause, per se, but you would need to denounce affiliation with any group striving for Civil Rights in the United States or that the cruise directors generally deem unnecessary or unworthy. This would include Black Lives Matter, the Black Panther Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, the NAACP, Affirmative Action, and any other group that is striving to help people of colour gain equality in the United States. This also extends to anti-fascist (and therefore anti-nazi and anti-white supremacist) groups, anti-hate groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the ACLU, and any other group that seeks to make things fair across all of humanity. If you are or have ever been a member (or ever shown an affinity even for any of these groups) you will not be permitted to board.

So after all of that I say – keep your damn cruise ship, conservatives! Travel the high seas with your posse of bigots and leave the land to the rest of us.

If only it were that easy. Since we cannot exile the zealots to a ship, we have to continue fighting for our own rights here in America. We have to make this land free for EVERYONE, not just the conservative, White, religious folks. To do that, we have to join organizations, fund causes, and march. Our lives truly depend on us all partaking in the experiment that is America and getting active is the only way to ensure a better future for all. Rise up and stay standing for human rights!

Peace and keep up the fight!

Chantale – aka hippiegrrl

A few appropriate links:
Southern Poverty Law Center Hate Map – You would think that the deep south would have the most hate groups, but check out New York and California!
ACLU
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Human Rights Campaign
Black Lives Matter
NAACP
Poor Peoples Campaign
Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Homophobic Tumblr post transformed into a LGBTI dystopian YA novel

Next up in this series: Twitter, Trolls, and Trumpsters. How are these movements connected to organized religion? Get ready for some interesting information to aid in your fight for good. DWP!

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Leaving Senseless Fear Behind

Each one of us, as an individual, is a product of the environment that we were raised in. We carry with us the information that we received as children and we take that data and use it to navigate our lives. Some of us receive messages of hope and love, while others receive messages of fear and danger. For some of us, the messages can get jumbled up and we have to decrypt them in order to move forward. I received many competing messages as a child and this required my critical thinking skills to be honed at an early age. I needed to take in everything and move forward with the information that seemed the most rational.

I was lucky to have open-minded parents who did not judge people based on their race, religion, gender, etc. but with my extended family, I was not so lucky. My Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents on both sides of my family each had their own understandings of other humans and they were extremely biased toward white people. Some of them were outright racist, while others were passively racist, but not one among them was open to the possibility that people of color could be good humans. After all, you can spend your whole life never saying a bad word about another person, but if you let others degrade a group of people in front of you without speaking up, you are just as complicit as the outwardly racist individuals among us.

I learned early in life that I was to fear certain people – specifically black men. I would say that I do not know where this fear came from since we lived in a segregated city, but now that I am older I know exactly what it was about. It was drawn from the myths that surround black men in America. Myths fueled by the fact that my Nana grew up in Andalusia, Alabama, where Jim Crow was the norm. Myths fueled by my grandfathers and uncles feeling slighted by Affirmative Action and supposedly losing their jobs to the [word I refuse to use here]. Myths instilled in me so that I would not bring home any black friends to watch television or swim in the pool at my grandparent’s house. Myths that would make me afraid to walk alone at night on campus for fear of being jumped by a random person of color. Myths that would frame my views on white men and make me let go of any damage they may have done because they were seen as the protectors. Myths that continue to fuel the racist actions of Americans that see a danger in faces of color when, at the end of it all, white people are really the danger.

White people have been oppressing all other races of humans since the beginning of time. Myths of people of color being dangerous were touted in order to protect the power that white people have always held. If black and brown people are deemed dangerous, then white people can continue to hold on to the structures that keep these people enslaved. If the myths surrounding people of color continue to be upheld by racist whites in America, then men of color (and women of color and children of color) will be tagged as dangerous and, therefore, considered dispensable. If this is a thought that has never crossed your mind, you are not paying attention.

Here are some of the names of victims of this power struggle that you might want to look further into if you have no reference for them: Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Jordan Edwards, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland. And these are just the people that were reported on the national news. For an even wider view, take a look at this page on the Mapping Police Violence page that lists all the unarmed people of color killed in 2015. There were over 100 people. If this is not an epidemic, I do not know what is. White privilege has caused the horrible disease of racism to fester in this country for far too long.

When I was a child, I had a few friends at school that were people of color. Although I lived in an area of town that was almost fully inhabited by white folks, I went to an integrated school. It may seem odd, since I lived in Niagara Falls, NY, but the city had to bus kids from one end of town to the other in order to integrate the schools. This meant that although we went to school together, we rarely interacted outside of that space. The entire time I was growing up I never attended a birthday party for one of my friends of color and they never attended mine. There was a black family that lived on my grandparents street and I would go over to their house to play with the girl that was my age, but when I invited her over to swim in my grandparent’s pool, my grandparents told me they didn’t want her to swim at their house. It was sad and demeaning for my friend and it made me see clearly that my grandparents were not the wonderful humans I had always thought them to be.

Up until that point in my life, I had seen them as perfect rather than human beings who are fallible. I was shielded by my mother from their racist attitudes and as a child I was not observant. Until that day, I never noticed their racism, but after that, I saw it everywhere. After that day I started questioning them at every turn. When my uncles would make racist comments I would yell at them. When my grandparents would complain about people on television that were not white, I would question them. I became the annoying little kid that was always making a fuss over what they perceived as nothing.

As I grew into a teenager, my questioning went from being precocious to annoying. They hated that I was always telling them how to ‘behave’. They continued to instill fear of black bodies in me, but I began rejecting that fear. In high school, I started hanging out with a more diverse crowd of friends. I stopped bringing my friends over to my grandparent’s house, no matter their race because I no longer wanted to incorporate my friends into my family. I started to compartmentalize my friend groups and stopped overlapping in order to appease everyone.

By the time I went to college, I had successfully separated my family from my friends. I had one friend, in college, that I brought home for events, but other than that I kept my friends at arm’s length from my relatives. This, I believed, was the only way to have a diverse set of friendships without the torture of having them be around my family members. Of course, this was also a way for me to be comfortable in the situation and, I admit, it was a cop-out. I was trying so hard to make everyone happy that I was ignoring the fact that my family was not improving their understandings around people of color. They were remaining in that space of fear and myth that they had always been in while I was evolving away from them. I pretended that everything was fine when I was around them, but inside I was tearing myself apart to make everyone happy.

Now, as an adult, many of my racist relatives have passed away or I have drifted from them. My younger cousins have turned out to be more open-minded than the older members of my family, so I continue to interact with them. I have one uncle, in particular, who was one of my closest relatives growing up that I have almost completely cut ties with. I text him on his birthday and on major holidays, but that is where our interactions end. I do not see him in person anymore because I cannot handle his views on life in general, and more specifically his views on people that are not white.

That is my personal origin story of fear. How I have come to understand the ways in which I was inundated with misinformation at a young age and how I slowly came away from that bad intel. But I am only one white girl. What about the rest of us? What are we doing? Why are there black men being killed in the streets, for no reason, while white men who inflict terror are safely captured? Why are black bodies feared? Why are criminals who are people of color branded as terrorists, while white criminals are framed as disturbed? There are many answers to the questions above, but there is one thing that can connect it all. The struggle for power. Gaining and holding on to power. Grabbing the power that many white people feel is their God-given right and never letting go. If this means that everyone else must suffer, well, they just do not care about that. Power is all engrossing and can flood the world with misinformation that allows horrible events to take place on a grand scale. Power is what has led to us having the worst possible person as POTUS and power is what will continue to keep unqualified, sexist, bigots running the world.

Power is what caused white men to purchase black people and bring them across the ocean to work the fields. Power is what caused white men to rape black women and then turn their own offspring into slaves. Power is what caused white men to lynch black men for acts that were almost never criminal offenses. Power has been the catalyst for every bad thing that has happened in this world and power continues to drive all the decisions that are made in this country by white men.

The struggle for power has created myths around the powerless. Myths like the ones I mentioned above that made me believe in theories about other people that were beyond incorrect. Power has caused white people, and straight white men, in particular, to strive to be number one at all costs. And that cost has created a caste system in America that is predicated on the rich maintaining the power and continuing to oppress everyone else.

So how do we fix this system of abuse, terror, misinformation, and fear? I do not have an immediate answer to this question, but what I do know is that we must bond together as humans. We must use collective action to drive the forces of power that oppress those with less power into the darkest recesses of human history. We need to protest and vote. We need to listen to each other’s stories and take action directed by the oppressed. As white people (and white women, in particular) we need to be mindful of each person’s story and not just work in our own self-interest. We need to learn from others how to move forward. We need to be silent and allow a space for women of color to lead, but we also must speak up when it is clear that we can move the narrative of life in America to a better place.

We need to STOP being complicit in the oppression that is inflicted by the straight, white, men in our life. We gain nothing from being on their side. Because, in the end, those that seek to retain power will see us as a hindrance to their agenda, even if we are their sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, daughters, wives, or friends. We must speak up when necessary, listen and defend when needed, and use our vote to move policy to a more progressive place. Conservatism and capitalism are the siblings of oppression and the only way to make the Constitution of America a true reality is to dismantle the patriarchy that has oppressed us for eons and move toward an equal and open society. With liberty and justice for ALL.

 

Peace and resistance,

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

 

Appropriate links:

Mapping Police Violence

Black Lives Matter

Refuse Fascism

ACLU

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Be Better

We are all human beings. We live our lives the way we see fit and we move through life with different goals in mind. Some of us judge others and some of us do not. Recently, I have had several interactions with a certain dude on Facebook that is not exactly cordial, to put it very mildly. The topic of discussion is always Christianity and it always ends with me questioning how he can have hatred toward specific groups of people (and see that hatred as an integral part of his religious belief system) and he tells me I am not a true believer.

This does not bother me as much as it might bother others because he is right about one thing: I do not believe in the same God that he does. I am not a true believer in the ways of Christianity that the Evangelical movement would have people believe are right and true. I believe in the beatitudes. I believe in a loving Jesus, that was open to all people and did not judge them even when he saw their sins. I am not an every Sunday Christian, but I am also not an atheist. None of this really matters because it is not his or anyone else’s business what I believe, but he often takes it upon himself to tell me that I am different because I do not believe what he does.

My main issue, during these conversations/debates, is that he does not believe in Transgender people. He does not believe they exist. Here is the thing though – it does not matter if he does not believe in them because Transgender people DO actually exist. His belief system does not make things that actually exist in the world disappear. It simply makes him an asshole for treating people with disrespect because he does not ‘believe’ in them. Just because he thinks that being a homosexual is wrong, does not mean that people in the LGBTQ community will wake up one morning and start being straight, cis, and binary. Just because he does not believe that a woman should be POTUS because she should only be a helpmeet for her husband (because, you know, all women should be married to men and making babies – not working and certainly not being bosses) does NOT mean that a woman will not be President someday. Times change and we should change with them. New information comes to light that changes the way people think and feel and we should adjust for that. Science finds variations in the reality of humanity and we all learn new things about the world. Some of us trust new information and some reject it.

If you are one of those people that truly believe that people you consider different should stop being who they are, on a fundamental level, then perhaps you should also stop enjoying the fruits of their labour. Here is a list of all the things that you cannot enjoy if you are going to denounce other humans because they are different from you in ways that you deem ‘wrong’ as an Evangelical:

  • Musical theatre – The theatre is a place for creativity and openness. Musicals are written by and for people that have open minds. Even if the musical has a religious theme (Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Godspell, Children of Eden, etc.) that does not mean that all the performers, directors, writers, and tech folks are straight and/or cis. The musical theatre community is known for being an open place for ALL people to practice their talents and feel safe. So – musicals are, for lack of a better word, OUT!
  • Pop music – If it is meant to be played on the radio and for the consumption of the general public, then there is most likely at least one LGBTQ member of society involved in the creation of said music. And hey, you never know, so better safe than sorry, right? I guess you have to remove that radio from your car and give up that Spotify account now, eh?
  • Literature – There are books in the canon written by and for LGBTQ people. There are books that have stories that revolve around LGBTQ lives and allow for people in the LGBTQ community to see themselves in these stories. This is a positive step for the literary world as literature should continue to tell the stories of people from all walks of life. I suppose you should stop reading anything but the bible, then – but wait! Even the bible has LGBTQ themes within it. I guess you have to put that book up on the shelf as well. Unfortunately, that will mean that your learning will be stunted, but, then again, it seems like learning is not really something you find important anyway, so start discarding those books! And I suppose you need to stop going places where books exist so that means that libraries, bookstores, and Amazon are now all off limits.
  • Television – This one is probably going to be hugely difficult, but did you know that many writers, producers, actors, and showrunners are actually from the LGBTQ community? There are new shows coming out every season that tell the stories of this community – again a positive step, just like in literature – but for you not so much. So you better shut off that television – maybe sell the television to some sinner to get it out of your life altogether.
  • Movies – see Theatre and Television above. Are you getting the picture?
  • Food – This is a funny one, but did you know that a lot of LGBTQ people actually work in the restaurant industry? When you go out to eat there could be an LGBTQ person making your dinner – or serving your dinner – or making money off the restaurant chain you are eating at – or sitting at the table next to you. Perhaps you should stop leaving the house altogether? You could always order one of those online food service things, but then there could be LGBTQ people putting the boxes together or delivering your mail.
  • All things Disney – This will be especially hard to hear for some Evangelicals out there that are Disney fanatics, but did you know that Disney is a gay-friendly organization? In fact, there are many Disney characters that are actually gay. Disney is also an inclusive company. Oh, the horror. How will you enjoy your heteronormative views around the Disney princesses if you know that a few of those princesses might actually be lesbians or feminists or powerful on their own? Modern day Disney princesses don’t even need the prince to save them because they are no longer damsels in distress. It is pretty awesome, but I guess if you are an Evangelical this disqualifies Disney as well. Better unpack your bags and stay home – no Disney vacation this year!

I think you get the point. LGBTQ people exist in the world. Lesbians exist. Gay men exist. Bi-sexuals exist. Transgender people exist. Queer people exist. Genderfluid people exist. Intersex people exist. Polyamorous people exist. Pansexual people exist. These people are everywhere and they are all a part of the wonderful fabric that makes up humanity. We are never going to go back to a time where people have to hide because of who they are as humans. Those of us who are allies to people in the LGBTQ community will forever stand beside them and fight for their right to be who they are and not have to live in fear. Religious fanatics who think LGBTQ people do not deserve to exist need to change their minds or become hermits. There is really no other option. Sorry, dude, but I’m not going to stop advocating for my friends and if you don’t like it, I guess we won’t be talking much anymore either.

Peace,

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

footnote: Since this post was started (14 December 2017) I hid the aforementioned dude’s feed on Facebook. I also hid his wife’s feed. This means that I will be somewhat out of touch with the goings on in their lives, but it is just easier this way. Eventually, I will unfriend them, but I’ve been lackadaisical when it comes to cleaning up my feeds. I am far overdue for a purge though, so, maybe April or May? Oh, but don’t worry, dear readers, I am still keeping receipts of these interactions which I will be archiving over on my latest tumblr.

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The Teens Are Alright

Yesterday was a wonderful day for the future of the United States of America. Teenagers across the country walked out of their classrooms to protest the gun violence that has become all too common in American schools. They also walked out to honor the 17 people that were killed last month at Stoneham Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida. The walkouts showed that collective action is alive and well with Generation Z and it made me seriously optimistic, for the first time in a while, about the future. Before I go on, though, I would like to say that the Black Lives Matter movement has had teens involved from the beginning. Yesterday showed the collective will of teens across a diverse spectrum of humans across this country, which was heartening, but we have to give it up for the teens in the BLM movement that have been showing up for many years now to protest violence against communities of color by the police. If you are looking for inclusiveness and action, look no further than this movement (https://blacklivesmatter.com/about.)

When I was a teenager, I was not civically engaged. In fact, I did not get politically motivated until I was well into college and had experiences that changed me. The first rally I attended was in undergrad and the reason I decided to go was that I thought Ani Difranco was going to perform. Yes, I realize that makes me sound selfish, but that’s how I was as a teenager. I guess it was good that Ani was listed as a performer, though, because that first rally really changed my perspective about what can be done when people get together to make change happen through collective action and civic engagement. Although Ani didn’t play, and in fact, she didn’t even attend, that ‘Take Back the Night’ rally opened my eyes to the struggles that women on my college campus were facing. It was one of the first ‘me too’ moments that I encountered and I was already 19 years old. I guess that I should feel lucky to say that, but it also makes me kind of sad.

In my senior year, when I was 16, there was a tragedy that occurred at my high school. A teenager who had recently transferred from Niagara Falls High School to Lasalle Senior (LSHS) was crossing the street to meet her mother after school. The front of LSHS faced a very busy road (Military) and there were no crosswalks. As she was walking across the street, one of the students came barreling out of the student parking lot and hit her. She was killed on contact and there were several student witnesses. It was a horrific accident that sparked a student movement. A week later there was a walk out and the students walked from Military Road to Main Street (5.5 miles) to assemble for action in front of City Hall. The students demanded a stoplight and crosswalk in front of the school and shortly thereafter a light was installed. This was protest in action and I was not involved. I was sad about the death of a classmate, but I wasn’t engaged enough in politics to actually participate in this action.

Looking back on it now I can’t quite fathom why I decided not to walk out. After all, I was raised by a family of union workers. My Papa and my mother both worked for the New York Power Authority My Nana had worked in the steel factory during WWII. My dad worked at Carborundum and then later for the Carpenter’s union, where his father had also worked. My uncle worked at Nabisco. Having so many union members in my family, you would think that I would have been on top of any peaceful protest and collective action that came my way, but I just wasn’t. My teenage apathy overrode my desire to assemble and I regret that each time I think about it.

Having lived through that time and saying quite certainly that most of my peers in the 90’s were also apathetic, I’m happy to see that teenagers today are not. They are engaged and enlightened. They understand how to keep the light shining on a topic of concern and to feed the flames of social media to continue to overcome the daily news cycle churn effect. They are adept at working with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get their message out and they have resilience. They will continue to fight for themselves and future generations because they know it is important. Guns are a scourge on our nation and with an activated young citizenship, we might just be able to move away from the violence that has come from complacency. A shift in the conversation around guns has started, again, and if these teens can keep the heat on, they might just make a real and lasting change. We, as adults, need to let them do their thing and be there to support them. We need to stand by them and move forward together as a nation to a better day.

Yesterday was a wonderful day for the United States of America and, with enough protest and pressure, all our tomorrows can be great as well. We just have to continue the civil disobedience and make a better nation for ALL.

Peace and happy marching!

Chantale

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Topple the Patriarchy

Last week felt like a tipping point. I realize that, over the years, there have been many moments that felt this way, but last week really (REALLY) did.

So, can we finally talk about sexism and the ways to combat it and change the course of our future in an open, honest, and realistic way? Is it finally time for those of us that have been shouting about feminism and the need for the fall of the patriarchy to finally have our voices heard? Is it time for feminism to embrace intersectionality and come together as one voice to stand up for what is right? Finally? After years and years of struggle can we finally see a light for all those who are marginalized?

If you think that Hollywood is the only industry where sexual predators exist you would be wrong. Sexism exists in every industry in the world. That’s right – it isn’t just an American problem, but we certainly take it to new levels of disgusting. The only way we can ever fix the problems that we have across industries is to dismantle the system that is holding women back from true equality. We need to topple the patriarchy!

Patriarchy
noun
1. a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father’s clan or tribe.
2. a society, community, or country based on this social organization.
3. a social system in which power is held by men, through cultural norms and customs that favor men and withhold opportunity from women:
The corporate glass ceiling is one consequence of patriarchy in education and business.
4. (often initial capital letter) the men in power in a society (usually preceded by the):
The Patriarchy is vested in maintenance of the status quo.
source: Dictionary.com definition of patriarchy

The patriarchy is not an inanimate, nebulous thing that is casting a shadow over our world, but a strategic set of systems, put in place thousands of years ago, to continue the oppression of humans that identify as female. Feminism seeks to right the wrongs of the past by bringing equality to all humans. Feminism, as a concept, is relatively new in human history, but the fundamental understanding of fighting for equality has been around since the beginning of time. Women have always struggled to be equal to men. Women have circumvented the system in order to bring about more equitable circumstances, but that has never been enough.

Feminism
noun
1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3. Older Use. feminine character.
source: Dictionary.com definition of feminism

In the waves (are we up to 4th wave now?) of modern day feminism, the concept of intersectionalism has been de-emphasized. Giving space and voice to WOC, Lesbians, Trans women, and disabled women is an important, and necessary, step toward full social justice. If we do not include the voices of all women, we will continue to bear the burden that comes with our separate struggles. WOC, Lesbians, Trans women, and disabled women have to deal with additional levels of marginalization that white women don’t even think about. The privilege that is afforded to white women in the movement needs to be examined and broken down. White women need to listen to marginalized women. The act of listening requires silence from white women. It requires all women to create a dialogue in an atmosphere where all voices are magnified and all women feel trusted and heard.

Intersectionality
noun
1. the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual (often used attributively):
Her paper uses a queer intersectionality approach.
2. the oppression and discrimination resulting from the overlap of an individual’s various social identities:
the intersectionality of oppression experienced by black women.
source: Dictionary.com definition of intersectionality

In the 1960’s feminists took up the act of gathering in groups and sharing stories, which began the act of consciousness raising within the movement. Although the concept was not new, as there had been a long history of talking circles in India and Native populations of the Americas, feminists found that sharing stories allowed them to be enlightened by each other, sometimes seeing something of themselves in other women’s remembrances. Unfortunately, these consciousness raising sessions were usually homogenous and therefore did not benefit from the gains that could have been made in a truly intersectional gathering of feminists. The 1960s also saw anti-feminist factions drive wedges between groups of women that had previously been united, festering resentment across the movement. This tactic was successful in splitting apart a struggle that had been united in the fight toward equality for all women. In our current day feminist struggle, we need to find a way to dispense with the wedges that have kept us apart and work together toward equality. Women are a force to be reckoned with, but only when we are united toward a common goal, keeping in mind our differences and additional burdens, and working in an intersectional manner toward justice.

“It was the first time I witnessed the ancient and modern magic of groups in which anyone may speak in turn, everyone must listen, and consensus is more important than time. I had no idea that such talking circles had been a common form of governance for most of human history, from the Kwei and San in southern Africa, the ancestors of us all, to the First Nations on my own continent, where layers of such circles turned into the Iroquois Confederacy, the oldest continuous democracy in the world. Talking circles once existed in Europe, too, before floods, famines, and patriarchal rule replaced them with hierarchy, priests, and kings. I didn’t even know, as we sat in Ramnad, that a wave of talking circles and “testifying” was going on in black churches of my own country and igniting the civil rights movement. I certainly didn’t guess that, a decade later, I would see consciousness-raising groups, women’s talking circles, giving birth to the feminist movement. All I knew was that some deep part of me was being nourished and transformed right along with the villagers.”

Steinem, G. (2015). My life on the road. p 36.

After raising our consciousness as a united group of women, the next step is to deconstruct the structures in our society that have been keeping women down for so long. In order to truly dismantle the patriarchy and break down the barriers to success for all, we have to start taking a long look at all of the industries and organizational structures in our world. This is not just a problem of Hollywood or Silicon Valley or the Media. The problem exists in offices large and small, where women still make up a small percentage of senior staff and an even smaller percentage of C-level positions. The problem exists in the home where women are still expected to work a “second shift” (Hochschild, 1989) to keep the household running or to simply work in the home as an unpaid labour force. The problem exists in organized religion, where women have been made subordinate, for centuries, by dogma and male interpretations of sacred text.

Until women can hold places of power in all industries and institutions, we will not be equal. Until the work that women do in the home is valued in the same way that work outside the home is valued, we will not be equal. Until power is evenly distributed across sex and race, we will not be equal. Until we are able to open the doors of opportunity to every citizen of the world, we will not be equal. And until we are equal, the acts of abuse, harrassment, assault, and rape that are committed by so many men in power, will persist.

One other thing though – until women who gain power can stand up for other women, we have gained nothing. There are still women who believe that it is better to stand behind a man than to help their fellow sisters. There are still women that are willing to be shills for the patriarchy. There are women that voted for the current predator-in-chief, knowing that he is unworthy of the White House. There are women who will cover for abusers and harrassers. There are women who are apologists for men that cheat. Perhaps some of these women are afraid, and to them I say that there is help out there. There is someone that is willing to help you come away from the person that is dragging you down and move forward with your life. There are people that can assist you in deprogramming from the crap that you have been fed your whole life about being inferiour. There are resources available to move away from the hatred that is the patriarchy and to move forward, surrounding yourself with people that care about equality.

And there are men that care about equality as well. You don’t have to stay with an abuser or continue to be an apologist for the men in your life that abuse others. You don’t have to stay with a cheater and continue to be lied to and deceived in the service of someone else’s inability to be faithful. You don’t have to vote the way the men in your life vote and you don’t have to take their shit. There is a network of people that believe in justice for all and that network is made up of feminists. Feminists are the only people that will ever, in the end, fulfill the real promise of the United States and bring about liberty and justice for all. Join the movement and together we can topple the patriarchy!

 

Peace,

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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Standing Up To Racism part 1

Last month I decided to jump back into Facebook friendships with a few people that I had lost touch with (aka unfriended). Most of these people consider themselves to be conservative. They are also white and middle class. They have all lived in what they consider to be safe spaces and have not had to struggle to survive. Basically, they are living the American Dream as it has been sold to us. So why would any of them be opposed to helping other people reach their full potential? Why would they dislike people who do not look like them? Why would they argue the opposite opinion on Facebook, even if it looks like they are siding with racists, simply to provoke an argument or, what they perceive as, raise awareness? Why would people who consider themselves Christians agree with arguments made by racists?

Here is what I think – There is a core of racism that has festered in this country since Columbus arrived and white people that make arguments that are counter to the struggle to move forward out of this racism are also racist. The core of this national racism is with the white supremacist groups, of course, and they make no bones about being straight up racists. They are honest and do not care if people perceive them as such because their agenda is to make America fully and completely white. So – they are horrible people, but they are honest in their views and how they present them. They fly confederate flags in order to let you know that they are a part of a group of people that hate everyone that does not look like them. They do not hide this hatred.

The second ring of racism that exists, around these core racists are the apologists. People that argue against liberation and for the same policies that racists want to see continued or enacted. This second ring of people are more subtle and, until something happens in the country to trigger them, they stay relatively quiet in the face of racism and hatred. They do not advocate for oppressed people, but they also do not speak up for racist whites, until they either feel the pull of an argument or they are potentially in the crossfire of the march toward true equality.

Here are a few comments that fall into the category that I am speaking of above. Comments that will alert you to the existence of a subtle, second ring racist:

  • “Affirmative action is not necessary. Everyone needs to work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
    • This is subtle racism because it does not take into account the systemic oppression of POC within the history of our country. It does not look at the systems that have been set up within education and industry that work against people of color and continue policies of oppression within institutions.
  • “There is nobody left in this country that was alive during the Civil War, therefore the Civil War is no longer a problem. Everything was solved by the South losing.”
    • This statement does not consider the fact that, as humans, we are all descended from other humans. If you had ancestors who were slaves or slave-owners, you would still have a connection to the atrocities that were done to or by your ancestors. White people that have ancestors who were slave-owners have an even greater responsibility to make the wrongs of their ancestors right. They should be standing up and denouncing the people in their family history that committed these atrocities, calling out everyone in their presence that is racist, and fighting for equality for all.
  • “We don’t need to tear down statues of Confederate generals because sometimes we honor things that people don’t like and they just need to deal with it.”
    • I have no words. This is just. Wrong.
  • “The Confederate Flag is a symbol of Southern pride and people should not equate that with slavery.”
    • The confederate flag is a symbol of the South’s contribution to the Civil War, which was to fight to retain slavery. Due to this fact, the confederate flag is a symbol of hatred and racism. If you fly this flag either in front of your house or in your front window or on your basement wall you are a racist, full stop.

These are just a few of the comments that I have noticed on my travels through these new Facebook friendships that I entered into last month. One of these friendships ended abruptly when the ‘friend’ used the n word on one of my comment threads. I asked her to remove it and rather than doing that she tried to explain it away. She said she was ‘trying to make a point’ and she was, but not the point she thought she was making. The point was that she is a racist. So, I removed the comment and I unfriended her the next morning. When she wrote back to me in a private message I ‘broke up’ with her, which is to say that a friend I have known since I was 5 years old is someone I will no longer be speaking to. Some people change, some people don’t. But we don’t have to connect ourselves to racists anymore. We never should have in the first place.

Another thread (which I luckily took screenshots of before it got removed – more to come on this later) involved a comment made by a friend of an FB friend that was blatantly racist. When I called him out on it, he asked me if I was calling him a racist. I said yes, because he is and he asked me again. I assume that if the thread was not removed that it would have devolved into him attacking me for calling him what he actually is. It is disheartening that these types of exchanges are getting removed in order to ‘keep the peace’ when a way to make the world a lot more peaceful would actually be to call them out. And those that hide or side with these racists are culpable. Enablers are also part of the problem. People have this idea that if they remain bystanders they are safe, but they are not. Bystanders need to stand up and speak out. Racists deserve to be shamed. Perhaps that will change their minds. Or it won’t and at least we know who they are. Shine the light.

I will continue to chronicle the racism that I see in my Facebook feeds and stand up to these assholes. I will call them out for their racism and I will not back down from my convictions. We have to make this world better and that means shaming racists until they either change or go away. I’m not clear, yet, on what ‘going away’ looks like, but I am happy to know that the racists are actually not the majority of America. They might think they are, but they are not. And we will show them this fact by pushing them back into their dark corners.

Peace,
Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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March On

Yesterday we marched. In large numbers, we hit the streets of the States and across the globe. We marched to show our determination and our strength. We marched to show our displeasure with the forces that be. We marched to wake up the world to the fact that America is not okay with the latest situation we find ourselves in. That despite the ramblings of our current President, and the lies that his administration will propagate to make him look like a competent leader, we are not glad to have him as our representative in the world. His politics and his hatred of all those different from him will not be tolerated by the majority of the citizens of this nation.

 

Yesterday I marched with the writer, my mother, my father, work friends, school friends, and 2500+ WNY residents committed to peace and justice in our time. I marched with the names of those that could not be there (but would have been had they lived to see this day) resting on my heart. I marched with thoughts of those that are still with us, but currently living under the haze of conservative values that blur their own best interests. I marched for my niece and nephew who, I hope, someday will grow up to be empathetic to all humans, not just the humans that look like them and believe in the same things they do.

 

Yesterday I marched, today I write, and tomorrow I get back to work. The march is not the end point, but merely the beginning. The next 100 days will be a time that tests us all, including our new President. We must hold him to the highest standards we can and keep those that seek to change the strides we have made, over the past 8 (plus 144) years, in check. We must hold their feet to the fire and insist that they keep ALL the citizens of our country and the world in mind when crafting policies. We must continue to push for inclusiveness and diversity in our institutions and work for the equality that we all deserve. We must continue to hold our own progressive organizations to an intersectional standard and consider all points of view when moving forward with our own policies. We must be better people than those that we are fighting. We must consider to march and plan and move and make change. If we fall back to sleep we could lose so much more than just an election. We could lose our ability to function in the world. We need to be vigilant and work hard. Social justice is not easy work, but it is ever necessary.

 

Peace and happy organizing!

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

 

Get involved!

League of Women Voters of Buffalo Niagara
WNY Women’s Foundation
American Association of University Women – Buffalo Branch
Coalition for Economic Justice
People United for Sustainable Housing
Pride Center of WNY
Spectrum Transgender Group of WNY
Citizen Action NY
WNY Peace Center
Occupy Buffalo
New York Civil Liberties Union
hippiegrrl activism page – Soon to be updated!

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Seriously

So, I was thinking that I would go in a different direction with this blog. Something outside of the realm of citizen action. At the time I made this decision, I believed that we were going to elect our first female POTUS and continue with another 8 years of change for the better. At that time, I did not realize that we would be left with the most horrible man in that position. A man that is the antithesis of positive change. A man that would rather build a wall than build bridges.

With that – I feel that the original focus of rise up buffalo needs to remain. This space needs to be a place that residents can come to see what is happening in the city of Buffalo and the surrounding area. A listing of current and future events. Posts that discuss topics of interest to the activist community. Moving forward I will try to be more prolific in keeping rise up buffalo updated. I will also be looking for assistance in this effort.

Rise up buffalo has been around for quite a while (10 years as of 18 May 2016!), but has not been active for a while now. This is mainly due to my inability to keep things moving on my own. I have been busy with other things, but there are really no excuses. Going forward I promise to be more on top of the goings on in Western New York activism. As I said above, I could really use some help with this. I am always looking for guest posters, so please let me know if you would like to volunteer some of your words to the cause.

We must stay vigilant and continue to be allies to one another. Now, more than ever, it is important to keep our marginalized friends and family members safe. Continuing to be up to date with the activist community is a good step in that direction. Thank you for joining me on this renewed journey. Our new POTUS may end up being a devastating force, but together we can keep ALL of our leaders in check. We can write letters and make phone calls and assemble in the streets to peacefully resist the future direction of the this most wonderful country. At the root of it all, we are a great country, we just need to be sure that every single citizen has an equal voice and equal rights as we move into the future and away from our disgusting past.

Peace and happy organizing!

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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You Better Vote

“I was just a girl, in a room full of women, licking stamps and laughing. I remember the feeling of community brewing, of democracy happening.” – Ani Difranco – Paradigm

The election is in 3 days. As I sit here at the coffeehouse and think about all the years of struggle that women in the United States of America have had to endure just to get to a point of almost being equal to men, I realize that although we have a woman as nominee of a major party for the first time in history, the actual historical moment is being downplayed. It is being under-emphasized. It is being overrun by a man and a party that do not want to let go of their power. They cannot imagine a world in which the United States of America is no longer theirs, alone. No longer the nation of straight, white, wealthy, men. It is a true melting pot. And in 3 days, it will be a nation where anyone – regardless of their sex organs and gender representation – can be the leader. A nation where, only 8 years ago, we finally smashed the restriction of race to this highest post. A nation that can now, finally, continue to smash the white privileged patriarchy that we all suffer under.

The election is in 3 days and although it seems like an eternity to wait it is nothing compared to the 94 years we have waited, since the day that we were given the right to cast our vote. Nothing compared to the 144 years that women had to wait for that right in the first place. Nothing compared to the 72 years that suffragettes waited from the beginning of the movement to the day they were allowed to legally cast a vote. In 3 days, all this waiting will finally be for a reason, rather than always being for naught. We will finally win the highest office in the land. Then, finally, some real shit will get done around here.

The election is in 3 days and Secretary Clinton is already poised to be one of the most effective Presidents in our country’s history. She has already fought for the rights of women and children for decades and she will continue this work in the West Wing. She will continue to ensure that women have the right to reproductive care and autonomy over their bodies. She will continue to fight for the education of our youth and training for those currently in or returning to the workforce. She will continue to keep our country safe and fight for the rights of the disabled, low income families, the lgbtq community, and continue the fight for racial justice. She will fight for the rights of all, regardless of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, ability, or age. This is what we truly need for the next 4 (or 8!) years. Our country needs to be able to continue down the President Obama path. We need to continue to improve our employment numbers and secure the rights of all people. We need Secretary Clinton to be President Clinton.

The election is in 3 days and the future of our country hangs in the balance. If you are thinking about skipping the voting booth, you are making a mistake. If you are thinking about voting for Donald Trump, you are a racist, full stop. Do the right thing. Make your way to the polls and vote for Secretary Clinton. Let’s make this happen, together. The choice is clear. We must let the bigots know that we will not stand for their way of life. We must let them know that the United States of America is no longer for them. It is for those of us that care about each other regardless of what we look like. The United States of America is not for racists or sexists or homophobes or transphobes or xenophobes. It is not for people who cannot see the value of every human being. Or at least, in 3 days, my hope is that we will see that it is not for these people. Let’s make sure that this nation does not turn into a nation of hate, but remains a nation of hope. Let’s make sure we continue to grow and evolve and allow our citizens to dwell in a nation where each of us is free to practice our religion, practice our traditions, and practice our love in peace. That is what the United States of America is all about. Freedom. Let’s keep it that way by voting for Secretary Clinton.

Peace and happy voting!

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

Please vote – so much is at stake.

A video for your viewing/listening pleasure:

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Women Really CAN Do Anything

Remember when we were kids, in the 80s, and the teachers would say, “you can be anything you want to be”? They encouraged us to work hard and we would succeed. I get that we were raised in a time when that seemed to be true, but as a girl I never had the feeling that it was.

This year, we are finally seeing a shift toward the ideals we were taught as children. But it is not without pushback. Unfortunately the pushing back is not just coming from the standard, “other side” contingent, but also from inside the party of progress.

Bernie Sanders ran in the Democratic Primary to push the party in a more progressive direction and this was truly a good thing. The unfortunate outcome of his campaign, though, was the creation of BernieBros. These (mostly) dudes refuse to give up, even in the face of Senator Sanders concession on the floor of the convention. They continue to complain on social media and attack those who are trying to be happy for the historical progress we are making with the nomination of the first woman for President on the Democratic Party line.

Let me pause here to just ponder that last sentence. The first woman, in 240 years, to get this far in a presidential race in the United States. This is extremely important. It is a moment in time that we must recognize as important. Whether you vote for her or not, you must at least admit that this time is important.

But why? Why is it such a big deal? Well, think back to how I started this post. When I was a little girl, growing up in the 80s, I was told I could be anything. But people don’t truly believe that things are possible until they can see other people like them doing those things. Until a woman leads the United States, other women cannot truly believe it is possible. Someone has to go first. And it is important.

So, if you have children, especially girls, you need to have them watch the DNC tonight when Secretary Clinton accepts the nomination. It is an important part of our history and it shatters a glass ceiling that has been sealed for 240 years. We should be sharing this moment with the young ones. We should be celebrating. This is a wonderful time and I’m not going to let the BernieBros, or the Racist Trumpites, or the Evangelicals who are afraid of female power, get me down.

My one wish, that will unfortunately not come true, is for my niece to see this moment. She should be exposed to this wonderful time in history and all the doors it opens for her future. She should be taught that she can do anything she wants and see other women who are doing those things. She needs strong female role models to counteract the messages she is fed through fundamentalist sources. I cannot change the path of the future for her, but I hope that someday she finds it on her own. Women truly can do anything and my wish for her is that she has the opportunity to see and feel that fact.

Enjoy the convention. Let the moment wash over you. We are a part of this awesome time in history and we must carry it through into November!

Peace,
Chantale aka hippiegrrl

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The Future of Feminism

The future is bright for those in the feminist movement but our work is never done.  With that in mind, I feel it is a good time to put down my thoughts on the future of feminism and the next generation (are we going to call them 4th wavers?) of women and men that will keep the movement strong.  One of those women will be my niece.  She is yet to be born, but I vow to be a good influence on her sense of self worth and equality.

Here are some of the things I hope for her, and all women growing up in the coming years, decades, and centuries.  This is as close as I will ever get to words of wisdom, so I hope they are taken in the spirit they were intended. Keep them in context and understand that I say the following out of love and commitment to the movement and all those that will carry on the legacy.

Always know who you are and don’t let others bring you down

This is a tall order as society places many restrictions on a woman’s sense of worth.  We have to fight every day to feel good about ourselves, beginning with the way we look when we leave the house, to the things we do once we are out there in the world.  Men do not encounter the level of scrutiny that women do when it comes to appearance and choice of task (whether it be staying home with children or taking the business world by storm.)  At the end of it all, we must know ourselves and our own personal strengths and limitations.  These must be learned through our autonomy as humans and never fostered by negativity from outside.  Be you.  Let the negativity roll off your back and march ever forward.  The only opinion that matters is your own.

The choice is yours

Your body is your own and nobody can make choices for you. You must choose for yourself. Do not misconstrue this to mean that you are alone in the world for you are not. There is always someone there for you no matter the situation. In my life, I will always be the open minded and honest hearted person who will support my niece (and every other woman in my circle of family and friends) NO MATTER WHAT their choices are.

You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to

On too many occasions in life, I have been told to smile. This is my face and I don’t have to be happy to make you feel okay about yourself. This is actually a pretty common theme. If women do not make themselves into something that can be well presented to the world, they are looked down upon. When women don’t wear makeup or don’t have perfectly coifed hair, when they don’t make themselves appear to be happy even when they are not, they are thought to be assaulting others with their lack of “upkeep”. This, I must say, is bullshit. We should be able to look and feel any way we want without criticism or complaint. This is who we are and we will continue to live strong, healthy lives whether we smile or not.

Being smart is cool

There will be times in your life when you are made to feel too smart. As if women who are smart somehow make men feel inferiour. Well, I have two things to say to that; first it is nonsense and second, even if it is true, so what? Men have made women feel inferiour for eons for a million little things, so maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. If a smart woman makes you feel inferiour, maybe you need to assess yourself rather than turning it back on her. Smart is awesome and there is no reason to dumb yourself down for anyone, especially not a man.

You don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy

This does not mean that you should be alone. Having a significant other is a wonderful experience, but not for everyone. The point of this is that you should never need another person in your life to know that you are okay. You can take care of yourself and you should never feel like that is impossible. Of course we all need help sometimes, but that doesn’t make us weak or needy, it makes us human. So, whomever you choose to spend your days and nights with is your choice, but never feel that you have to have someone in your life to feel worthy. Self worth comes from inside, not from the musings or gaze of another.

You are worthy

No matter your sex, gender representation, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, or level of ability, you are special and worthy. Never let the world make you believe you are not. Society is a tough place for all of us to navigate, but knowing deep down that you are who you were meant to be can go a long way to keeping you healthy and happy. Knowing, also, that you have people that believe in you and know you are who you were meant to be is invaluable. Keep a network of like minded and supportive people around you and you shall never fail.

I could go on all day, but I think you get the gist. Women are just as strong as men and can do anything they set their minds to. As feminists, we need to stick together, stay united in the movement, and push forward toward full equality. Someday, it will be a reality, and in the meantime, keeping the positivity flowing around each and every woman is the only way to find true self worth. We must support one another and keep up the fight.

Peace and Love,
Chantale (aka auntie chanti/hippiegrrl)

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Riot Grrrl: Better Late Than Never

The 90’s were a time of new music with an undercurrent (and sometimes blatant current) of radical feminism. L7, Sleater-Kinney, Bratmobile, and, the leaders of feminist punk, Bikini Kill. Back then, I listened to the music, but I wasn’t fully in the scene. Living in Niagara Falls and attending school in Buffalo removed me from the angst-ridden, raw intensity of the scene in Portland, DC, and NYC. My life was pretty good and, as such, I didn’t have much to riot about.

 

I did create a ‘zine, but it was focused more on movie reviews with occasional pieces on homophobia. I was in touch with the sexism, racism, and homophobia of my hometown, but I didn’t quite yet know how to express my rage. Riot Grrrl culture would have saved me, had the internet existed. This, I suppose, is where the disconnect began. In the early 90’s, before the prolific nature of the internet could infect our homes, we had to get our music and cultural news from MTV and the radio. Living in Buffalo afforded me a wealth of great music, coming out of Toronto, Ontario, on CFNY, but not so much a wealth of female voices. I saw stories on MTV news about the Riot Grrrls movement, but that movement never really made it to Buffalo. Sure, we did “Take Back The Night” walks every year at school and we had speakers come in and talk about women’s issues, but we didn’t have anything on the level of Riot Grrrl. There was no Kathleen Hanna to scream for us in Buffalo and Ani Difranco was pale in comparison to that level of rage.

 

So, my path leads me back to Riot Grrrl. It always, inevitably, does. I may not have had a name for it in the 90’s, but radical feminism has always been a huge part of my existence. I’ve always been outspoken in my defense of women, myself and others, and have tried to convey my utter disgust for the lack of feminist sources in my hometown. The difference though, between Kathleen Hanna and myself, is that I am not as motivated as her. Although we share a birthday, (12 November, along with Neil Young, Grace Kelly, Charles Manson, and Ryan Gosling) she is way more fierce!

 

She got up on the stage and screamed out the reality of her own life and the lives of others. I could barely write a word about my life until the last few years. She yelled at the audience to bring the ‘girls to the front’. I kept my mouth shut, while growing up, through a lot of patriarchal bullshit. She stuck to her principles in the face of complete and total sexism. I let shit go. She always stayed true to herself and the cause of radical feminism. I let my desire to be liked get in the way of my activism for too long. Not any more! I am revitalized! After watching “The Punk Singer” documentary, I am reenergized and ready to move forward.

 

Since we moved into the 21st century, the riot grrrl movement seems to have fizzled. There are still pockets of the radical feminist scene, but the overall music and zine culture that was directly connected to riot grrrl has dwindled. My question then is, what happened? Was the scene not sustainable without big figures like Hanna? Was a change in music the death knell for grrrl punk? Or did the boys just retake their places at the top? Why do women need to continuously fight for their places in music?

 

Feminism is not dead, but the patriarchy wants it to be. The second wave feminists are still pushing ahead, but the ERA is still not ratified. The third wavers have taken the struggle online, but the social media spaces are crawling with misogynists waiting to pounce. Women are baited with articles about career women vs. stay at home moms, shifting our focus from feminist goals. We should be gathering together and fighting for our lives. There are too many attacks, in the United States (not to mention around the world), on our collective rights as women.

 

The powers that be, which often include other women, wish to take away our right to control our own bodies. They want to take away our agencies and our voices. They want to make us helpless and powerless as a group so they can continue to control us. The patriarchy will never quit fighting so neither should we. We have to push onward. Continue marching! Continue running for office and retaining feminist values while leading! Organizing as if our lives depend on it, because they do! And never believe the media when they say that feminism is dead. It is alive and kicking and we will continue in the riot grrrl path. Never compromise! Never concede! Never go back!

 

Peace and Happy Patriarchy Smashing!
Chantale

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Good vs. Evil aka Binaries and Why They Are Not Useful

Last week, the writer and I received a note in the mail. Inside the note was a printed sheet that listed sermon notes from a service attended by a family member. The sermon was purported to be about Gender, although I would argue that it was actually about Sex, as Gender is a social construct that is carried out by individuals according to how they feel, and, in this sense, is fluid. Gender is how one performs their masculinity, femininity, or neither, to the world.

Sex is connected to the sexual organs that one possesses and is not connected to the Gender representation that one performs. Sometimes the Sex and Gender match up, but more often than not they don’t. For more on cis, trans, sex, sexuality, and other fun gender studies terminology, please refer here: Why I Am A Feminist.

Now that I have reiterated the differences between Sex and Gender, let me return to the sermon and it’s notes. The beginning of the notes had the usual biblical information. God made this and God made that. Yadda yadda yadda. God made a woman and God showed Adam he needed her. And so on. Then we get to a section about the different Evangelical views on gender (sex) roles.

Egalitarian view: God made men & women equal – and they have the same roles regardless of gender.
I like this one and, honestly, I am extremely surprised to see this on the list. I was under the impression that Evangelicals did not believe this. The next one is more in line with what they actually believe, so here goes…

Complimentarian view: God made men & women equal – but they have different roles based upon gender.
This is the view that this particular preacher states the bible teaches and he is correct. The bible does teach this. It teaches that women are the property of men and that patriarchy is the only way to live. It teaches that slavery is the norm and that we should never eat shellfish or cut our hair. It teaches many things that do not have bearing on the world today.

It also teaches really awesome and good things, but, sadly, the Evangelicals never seem to get around to that stuff.

After all the introductory information is presented, the real important (and scary) part is this:
There is a call to battle at the end, the gist of which is that anyone who does not believe women are subordinate to men is an enemy. Enemies seek to distort the Bible. So, I suppose this means that if I want to work and drive a car, I am an enemy. Since I studied Sociology and received not 1, but 2 (!) bachelor’s degrees, I am an enemy. Since I have a vagina, but I choose not to use it in the service of procreation, I am an enemy. Since I am pursuing a Masters degree and working a full time job, rather than staying home and raising children, I am an enemy.

You know what? I will settle for that then. I will settle for being an enemy. If that is what they are going to see me as, there is really no way to fight it. They will always and forever see me, and anyone that agrees with me about civil rights, as an enemy. I was not preparing for battle prior to receiving these sermon notes, but perhaps I should be. In the end, though, I prefer to just be me and let everyone else be everyone else. I prefer to love each other, just as the person that they worship told his people to do. I don’t need to go to church on Sundays and pray to a deity in order to be a good person. Nor do I need the threat of hell fire to make me act civil to other humans. Organized religion ruins spirituality in very deep and profound ways.

I have seen supposed Christians standing outside of clinics, screaming at women. Is this what Jesus wanted?
I have witnessed supposed Christians standing on soapboxes screaming at passersby to convert or burn in hell.
Is this what Jesus wanted?
I have noticed supposed Christians who talk ill of one another during the coffee hour, after the sermon.
Is this what Jesus wanted?
I have heard supposed Christians be passive aggressive in their dealings with other people.
Is this what Jesus wanted?
I have been in the presence of supposed Christians screaming at gay and lesbian folks for the way they were born.
Is this what Jesus wanted?
I have received tracts from supposed Christians who say they want me to be saved, but only on their terms.
Is this what Jesus wanted?

No! Jesus wanted us to love one another. Jesus wanted us to be good people. Jesus would probably tell these supposed Christians to chill out.

Life is not about binaries, but fluidity. When we think about a situation, we should have the ability to open our minds to ALL the possibilities, not just those that have been imposed upon us. Imposition results from all different areas of life, but no other place is it more prevalent than in the modern day Fundamentalist movement. The bible is held to be truth beyond a doubt and questions are looked upon as evil. You either believe or you do not believe, and this is dangerous as it leaves no room for the bulk of humanity.

We are all individuals, moving through space and time in different ways and at different speeds of living. We do not all see life from the same perspective and, therefore, should not feel beholden to any book or opinion of a man on a pulpit. We each create and recreate our lives based on what we encounter from day to day. Belief evolves over time, just as everything else evolves. Change is constant and we need to move with it. Having the ability to shift gears and understand your reality without relying on the dogma that has been inflicted upon you over time is important. Without this ability new situations can be daunting and, at times, even overwhelming.

In the end, you can, and should, live for yourself.

Whether you believe in something or you believe in nothing, the one thing we should all believe in is each other. We should be open and accepting. We should not just tolerate, but embrace difference. We should live our lives in the best way we can and in the end it will all work out. If not, who wants to spend eternity with a deity that punishes humans for their very nature? Not me. Would you?

Peace,
Chantale aka hippiegrrl

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Nice To See You! How Have You Been?

I realize that it has been almost a year since the last update here at rise up buffalo.  To my readers, I am truly sorry.  Life has become chock full of things to be done and this web journal had to be put on the back burner for a bit.  I should have mentioned that, but sometimes life takes off before you have time to give notice.  Anyway – we are back now and hopefully there will be weekly updates of goodness for you to ingest.  

Here are some of the things that have been happening elsewhere, but are, in many ways, connected to rise up buffalo:

For all you gender studies folks, and those of you that could use a couple lessons in gender studies, we present not just girls, a place to learn and pass it on.

Are you interested in wiping out hatred? Squashing bullying? Eliminating racism and discrimination? Join us at Hatred Be Gone where we will attempt to put a positive spin on the negativity that comes from discrimination and hatred. Moving toward a world without hatred. This includes the hatred perpetrated by those that are discriminating in the name of religious beliefs. This is the worst type of hatred, couched in the words of scripture or a system of belief. Hatred Be Gone! Poof!

hippiegrrl explains it all is up and running! We are finally on our own server. All the old posts from Backwash.com are archived here, as well as the new goodness. Please pop by and check it out when you have a moment to spare.

In the future we will have a landing page for all the “hippiegrrl” properties, but for now we are scattered across the interwebs. Safe travels and see you again soon!

Peace,
Chantale

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With Liberty and Justice For Some

We live within the confines of our environment. Although there are dreamers amoung us, the majority of the human race just goes with the flow. This is why it is so hard to come up from our country’s racist past. Why is it so difficult to look at a situation and really see it for what it is? Mainly because it is easier not to try and understand the underlying causes of racism. It is easier to just move forward with life, live in a bubble of understanding about our immediate needs, and not question the norm. This is laziness at its finest. True understanding is difficult. It requires hard work and perseverance.

In America we would rather watch reality television and be hyper consumers than think about our history or future. We walk around in a daze, brought on by fast food and the need to pay bills, while ignoring the bigger parts of our being. We miss out on the important things in order to focus on the garbage. The media easily shifts our focus away from wars, in other countries and down the street, by “reporting” on the latest pop culture phenom and his or her fall from the pedestal of fame. We buy in to this focus shift through our own retweeting and sharing of senseless memes, or worse, memes that make fun of marginalized communities. We continue the cycle of nonsense that the major media creates, through social media outlets. This is not to say that we should give up Facebook, twitter, tumblr, Instagram, and everything else online, but that we should be more thoughtful (and, even better, thought provoking) in our interactions on these sites. Social media is a tool for change, but until we focus, it will continue to be taken over by the masses who do not care about real social change.

I suppose this sounds like the rantings of a bitter feminist who does not want anyone to have fun, but that is not the case. We should all be able to have fun. Our lives should be enjoyable and we should, each and every one of us, expect the following things out of life.

1- to be able to have a job that we love, or, if our preference is not to work, to be able to make that happen in our lifetime.
2- to be able to work in an environment free of harassment and maltreatment.
3- to be able to have the family structure that we strive for, without restriction, and all the benefits that come with that family structure.
4- to be able to pursue an education without having to pay off the debt of said education for the rest of our living years.
5- to be able to walk down the street, in any neighbourhood in the country, without being followed or made to feel unsafe and certainly to not be attacked verbally or physically.
6- to be able to make choices about our bodies without the interference of other bodies.
7- to be equal, each of us, all of us.

There are many more ways in which our lives can be enjoyable, but these should be what we expect, at minimum. After the past week of events, it seems that we cannot even have all of the above things fulfilled in this country and that is sad. Pundits are always floating the idea that America is the greatest country in the world, which is, by the way, baseless when you consider all the injustice. Would the greatest country in the world seek to limit the rights of half its population by sneaking through restrictive legislation in secret special sessions? Would that nation allow a young person, who was unarmed, to be brutally killed by an older, armed man, and then put the child’s friends on trial rather than the perpetrator? Would that nation set standards for voting only to revoke those standards 50 years later in the name of progress? Would that nation try to sidestep its racist past by being apologists for a frame of mind that still exists in the southern most reaches of its land mass? No! A great nation would not. On the birthday of our country, it is shameful to see what we do in the name of a great nation. We hurt our own people and we send our citizens to other countries to fight and die for these ideals. What we should be doing is having a very real conversation about equality, in this so called great nation, and how we can truly be a beacon for the world. How we can own up to our past injustice and move forward. How we can lead the charge for human rights by example, not by rhetoric.

When a parent tells a child what to do, maybe the child will do it, maybe they won’t, but when a parent models behaviour to that same child, the child will eventually mirror those behaviours. As a young nation we have had massive growing pains, but it is time now to grow up. To be a decent society that treats all human beings equal. To be the best we can be. I know we have it in us, but we need to bring it out. Bring up the best and call out the worst, then move forward, together. If we need a model, we can always look to an even younger nation to the north. They seem to be moving in the right direction. They stumble at times as well, but they are also pretty damn good at standing up, dusting off, admitting wrong, and moving forward. That should be our goal. Lets make it happen, together.

Peace,
Chantale

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Evolving Out of Racism

How do we live here? How can we continue forward knowing that this has happened and continues to happen. Paula Dean is not the first racist to be “found out” and she will not be the last. The problem lies in the fact that she cannot admit she was wrong. That is because she doesn’t believe that she was wrong. She is a member of a Southern society that still believes it is okay to oppress those who are different. The problem is that she should be rising above that. It is possible. Let me demonstrate, from my own life, how it is more than possible.

I was raised in Niagara Falls, NY. That is not where my history begins though. My family has roots in Alabama. We did not discuss this when I was a child, but I’m pretty sure that someone, somewhere in my family tree, was a slave owner. I can guarantee that one of my ancestors was a Confederate soldier and that my great grandmother and great aunts were members of the daughters of the confederacy. I am sure that more than one of my family members, maybe even to this day, flew a confederate flag in front of her/his home. Since I am a conglomeration of all the parts of my family tree and the social construction of my environment growing up, I came out different from those distant (by space and/or time) Southern relatives.

Not to put it all on the South though, I have to speak about the city in which I grew up. As I mentioned, I am from Niagara Falls, NY. Being a Northern city, on the border of Canada, you would think that we would be more evolved than the South. You would think that with all of the immigration to the factories on the waterfront, that we would have a much more open and honest way of dealing with one another. You would think, that we would be a diverse city culturally. You would think, but this is not the case. Yes, it is diverse, but it is also one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Buffalo, too, is highly segregated and actually has made the list of top 10 most segregated cities many years over. I am not certain what causes this segregation. It could have begun with a need for communities to stick together and then turned into a way for communities to stay separated.

So, other than being segregated, Niagara Falls is also a haven for bigots. Again, I am not certain how this came to be, and nobody ever wants to say anything, but today is the day. Today is the day that I stand up and say, “I was raised in a city where bigots run free. Where racism, misogyny, and homophobia are rampant and where the individuals who propagate these attitudes go unchecked.” I am not proud of this, but that is why I need to say it. If we don’t speak our truths we cannot come past them. This is the lesson that Paula Dean will never learn. If she isn’t truthful in saying that she did use the n-word and that she wants to understand why that is bad, she is doing herself, and her followers, a dis-service.

There were many events over my time in Niagara Falls that shaped me. Luckily, they made me evolve away from the norm in my city and try to be the best human being I can be. I saw how people treated each other and, more often than not, spoke behind each others backs, and I decided that I didn’t want to be that kind of person. Some people say that we shouldn’t judge each other, or that only God can judge us, and that may be what they believe, but that doesn’t give a free pass to people here on earth. You can believe whatever you want about the end of the world, but I would think that the best way to get to where you want to go is to be kind to one another while you are here. Since we don’t really know what is going to happen, the best bet is to remain civil and treat each other with respect. You don’t need religion to be a good person, you just have to care about other people. And, sometimes, those with religion are the ones doing the most oppressing, so I don’t think we should even use faith as a marker for good.

I can never understand the plight of the oppressed, in the way that they can, and so I understand that I am limited. However, I am a woman, which means I have a slice of oppression that is all my own, and, in this way, I can empathize. I can be an ally to all oppressed communities because I am oppressed as well. And, on top of that, if I were a Rich White Man (the least, if at all, oppressed), I could still empathize and be an ally.

So, instead of wallowing in the past and the reasons why some of us are still steeped in bigotry, let me rise above that and talk about being an ally. This is what Paula Dean should be doing. She should be reflecting on the error of her ways and coming past it. She should be embracing the communities that she offended. Rather, she has decided to say “I is what I is and I’m not changin” and that is where she has stumbled. She has not evolved and, therefore, cannot be an ally. But you can, so here is how:

Step One – Own up to the past.
This can be your individual past (as in Paula Dean and the ways in which she has been racist through her words AND actions over time) or it can be the past of your relatives; ancestors. I have both Native American and Confederate Ancestors. They are actually on the same side of my family. So, the oppressed became the oppressors or vice versa. I also have Italian, French, English, and German ancestors and they all, each in their own ways, have been oppressors or the oppressed. We all battle, in this country, to reach for the American dream and, unfortunately, it sometimes makes us step on others to get to that unattainable top.

Step Two – Own up to the present.
In understanding your history, you should be able to more clearly see your current state of being. If you still hold on to bigoted ways, you should be able to think about the why and how of it and suss it out. Sometimes people feel they have been wronged by groups of people, when, in reality, there are individuals that have been the catalyst. An example may be the worker that doesn’t get hired based on affirmative action. This has been a hot button issue for the bigots amoung us. They believe that affirmative action (and apparently so do many of the U.S. House of Reps) is no longer necessary or good. They think that it causes reverse discrimination. They would be wrong. Affirmative action insures that schools are integrated and that the past does not repeat itself. With the history of our country as it is, we need affirmative action forever. It is not something we will ever be able to let go of, else we repeat the past. Of course, that is what will happen with the South and voting now that the VRA has been gutted. Jim Crow will be the new standard if the people don’t rise up against voting restrictions and redistricting.

Step Three – Empathize
Even though you are not able to fully understand the lives of the oppressed, unless you are in their shoes, you can still be empathetic. Being a bigot is not being empathetic. Saying you are sorry does not demonstrate your willingness to be better. Only changing your actions does that. Show you are sorry by doing things differently.

Step Four – Work together
There are many ways to work for a cause. Volunteering at an organization that helps forward the cause of an oppressed group is one way. Another way is to combat bullying and hatred online through the deflection of social media noise. When you see pictures and memes of poor people used for the enjoyment of tge masses, do not send them on or “like” them. When you see memes defending racist thought or bigoted people, do not send them on or “like” them. When you see memes that are disparaging to any group of people or individual, do not send them on or “like” them. Now, the trick is to recognize these memes when presented with them online. When you see a picture that depicts someone in a hateful manner that might be a clue. When you see videos depicting the plight of the oppressed with funny captions by the poster that might be another clue. A third, and major, clue is the confederate flag. If you see that anywhere online, do not engage, but back away and report it. That might be a symbol of the South, but it is more than just a flag. It is a symbol of oppression that should not be continuously used to denigrate and destroy. It should be retired. It should be burned.

Step Five – Be Open To All Humans
Being open minded is the best way to combat bigotry and hatred. Understanding that we are all, each and every one of us, human beings and that we should treat one another with respect, is the first step toward evolving from racism. Anyone can do this. Anyone can evolve. In fact, we are all evolving now. We just have to learn how to be on the right track for that evolution. On the kind, open, honest, and non-racist track. Go there, it is nice.

Thanks for listening. If you think this was a tirade just imagine how much I edited out. Hope you will follow me and help to make this world a better place for EVERYONE. After all, we can never have true equality until everyone is equal.

Peace,
Chantale

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Words

Today, we saw change on a grand scale. DOMA was killed. Prop 8 was killed. LGBTQ folks can move forward with the struggle, with a little bit of it behind them. I am there too. Fighting for equality for ALL. Until we have it, there is no rest. Until we understad how our words pierce through others, we can never be fully equal. Until we move away from the garbage that is our past, we can never fully be one. Until we let go of the chains of the people that came before, we can never move forward. We must break free and understand each other within the context of the future, not the past. Stagnation is never a good thing. Evolution is the only way to go. Let’s evolve together and show that we can be better than we have been. We can have a bright future and stop recreating the past through oppression and dominance.

“Seeing the world through anothers eyes, is like bustin a window in a house of lies, and in the end you make up your own mind.” ani difranco ~ promiscuity

Last week was not so nice. Before the writer and I left for our favourite spot in Canada, we had an evening out with friends and family. Everything was going great until one guy decided, in his wisdom, to discuss how if he were married he would “never let his wife mow the lawn.” I am not quite certain how we got on the topic, or why we were talking about mowing the lawn, but the word ‘let’ struck me. I immediately barked back, “why do you have to go there?” He looked at me, confused, and asked, “what did I say now?” The defensiveness of his retort should have stopped me, but my feminist sensibility had taken over; I was off and running. Note: This entry is not meant to be an apology, as I have nothing to apologize for, but just a way to suss out exactly what I meant when I stated that the word ‘let’ was hurtful. To deconstruct a word or words. To better understand why one would choose this particular word. To understand how it sounds outside of the speakers head. These are the reasons for this entry.

“I search your profile for a translation, I study the conversation like a map. ‘Cause I know there is strength in the differences between us, and I know there is comfort, where we overlap.” ani difranco ~ overlap

Let – to hinder or prevent. I do not like to use dictionary definitions in my writing, however, at times it is necessary. In order to understand a word, fully, we must first see what the definition is. Using the word let, in the context that it was used Thursday night, is basically to prevent or not allow another person to do something. Not permit them to mow the lawn. He backtracked, after being called out on the word let, and said he meant he “wouldn’t want her to have to mow the lawn.” Well, if this is the case, why don’t you say it? Why would you say you wouldn’t let someone do something if you really meant you wouldn’t want them to have to do that thing? You wouldn’t. ‘Let’ was actually the correct word.

What this guy didn’t understand was what the word ‘let’ implies. In the context of a man ‘letting’ a woman do something, or not do something as is the case here. Using that word is a continuation of the power dynamics implicit in a patriarchal society. By saying, “I wouldn’t let my wife mow the lawn”, this guy might think he means well, when, in actuality, he is continuing the language that oppresses a whole group of human beings. He would say this is too big an idea, but that is the point. It is all about the big ideas. If we don’t look at the big picture, as mirrored through individual lives, we don’t see the consequences of our speech. We don’t see the trajectory of history and how using the language of oppression pushes a message of submission. The word let implies that this hypothetical wife will obey her husband, without question. This is not an egalitarian union. Although it is in his head, the language he uses forms his frame of reference for the future. This is the sad truth and why ‘let’ really does mean so much.

The next level of discussion was to turn it back around on me. I am a feminist, and, as such, I have the distinct pleasure of suffering fools. People call me names and talk about me as if I’m a mega-bitch, just because I believe in true equality. My striving for this equality has made me into a nemesis of those that rely on the status quo. By telling me that I’m over thinking or nit picking by calling someone on the word ‘let’, the patriarchy continues to thrive. By putting all the blame on feminists for the way the world is, the anti-feminists win.

After about 5 minutes of debate and argument, I thought we had come to a good conclusion. I explained why the word ‘let’ might be hurtful and he said he understood. I could tell he was appeasing me, but I also felt that we had reached an agreement. An empasse, yes, but an agreement nonetheless.

“I know the biggest crime, is just to throw up your hands. Say this has nothing to do with me, I just wanna live as comfortably as I can. You gotta look outside your eyes, you gotta think outside your brain, you gotta walk outside your life, to where the neighbourhood changes.” ani difranco ~ willing to fight

This time, I fought back. This time, I didn’t back down. This time, I continued to argue until I drove the other person to the point of name calling. That is where the debate ends. Devolving into argumentative, playground tactics is base and I will not give it time. We would not discuss this again. That is, until, I heard what he said behind my back, after the fact.

I have the decency to call people on their crap, to their faces. Anything I bitch about or mull over in private, I will also say to your face. That is not true for everyone and that is why it is so difficult to change hearts and minds. When someone that is a misogynistic pig tells you they understand, to appease you, don’t believe it’s over. After all, they will fight dearly for their way of life to continue. Change is difficult and, for some, it is never to be.

If you have a story about change, or lack thereof, please post in the comment thread. Or just rip me apart. Either way, debate is educational. It is the only true way to make change happen, so bring it!

Peace,
Chantale

Thank you to ani difranco for the continued inspiration. I am trying my best to be a Phoenix. It is a long and difficult road, but we will all get there someday. Together.

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On Allies and Cataloging Practice

While watching my favourite weekend morning show, the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, I was struck by the idea of cataloging practice and how it can be demonstrative of a critical point in social movements. This moment of clarity, however fleeting, made me giddy in knowing that I may have truly found my calling. Finally.

So, to better demonstrate my point: the topic at the top of the show was on “How to be a good ally”, referring to social movements in general, but the marriage equality movement specifically. In order for movements to move, for lack of a better term, there needs to be allies from outside the community. Harris-Perry used Viola Liuzzo as an example of an ally to a movement. Liuzzo, a white woman from Tennessee (by way of California) joined the march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, and was gunned down for her ally-ship. She was in the midst of driving marchers back from Selma to their far reaching locations, when she was shot. Being an ally is not always a good experience, and sometimes, as demonstrated in this situation, can be deadly, but it is still important and necessary work. It is something that one does because they are moved to, as Liuzzo was, regardless of the consequences. Ally-ship is important work, but movements must reciprocate.

In cataloging, this would be referred to as a cross reference. Without the broader and narrower terms, we cannot find the information we need. Information seekers cannot understand the whole picture of what they are searching for, if the sources are not cross-referenced.

For example; a book is received in circulation that has many topics it deals with. Perhaps it is a Sociology text that deals with social movements. This book would encompass such topics as civil rights, feminist theory, marriage equality, socio-economic status, and race relations. According to Library of Congress subject headings, the cataloger needs to determine the broad purpose of the text and catalog it within that subject heading. So, the book would appear on the shelf in the Sociology section, sub section: Social Movements. But cataloging does not end there. It is merely the beginning. The book deals with more narrow subjects such as civil rights and marriage equality. In order to assist information seekers in finding this book when they are searching for gay marriage, a cross reference needs to exist for this narrower term. In the catalog, when searching gay marriage this text should appear, just as it should appear when searching the broader term of social movements.

This demonstrates the same concept within social justice. If you look at the full social justice movement as rows of stacks, with a network of individuals as the cataloging system, we see how ally reciprocation (cross reference) comes to be of the utmost importance. If one organization assists another in their struggle, but the struggling org does not reciprocate we lose the cross reference. This weakens the network (catalog) and movements lose steam. So, both cross reference, in cataloging, and ally reciprocation, in social movements are not just important, but imperative.

Overall, the understanding that comes out of librarianship and social justice is the need to work together as a community. If there is a crack in the system everyone loses. Social movements are a web of activity that needs to remain intact for the good of all. Without civil rights, there can be no equal rights. Without equal rights for minorities there can be no marriage equality or reproductive rights. Without marriage equality and reproductive rights there can be no healthcare reform. Without health care reform, there can be no workers rights. Without workers rights, there can be no environmental justice. Without environmental justice, there can be no local food movement. You see the point. It is a huge network of active participants that needs to overlap and dovetail and continue to strive toward cohesiveness in all things human. For the overall movement should be, just as Sociology was the broad term for the text in my previous description, Human Rights.

So, let us struggle in solidarity toward this main goal of equality for all, and along the way we can pick each other up, assist in individual goals for each community, and move toward a better world for everyone. We must work together as a community of progressives if we expect the goals of peace and justice can be achieved in our lifetime. The struggle continues, but we don’t have to go it alone. We always have each other.

Peace,
Chantale

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What Is A Family?

This week, the supreme court will hear arguments to overturn both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8. These two pieces of legislation have brought injustice to a segment of the population for many years now and it is time to end the inequality.

A poll that came out this past week showed that in the 20 years since DOMA was signed into law (Bad Clinton. I love you, but c’mon man. What were you thinking with DOMA and DADT?) that public opinion of gay marriage has shifted greatly to the side of being for, not against, it. Just ten years ago, only 37% of the population would say they were for gay marriage, whereas, 53% say they are today. This is a huge stride and one that can make anyone who survived Stonewall proud. These are the days of change. We WILL see it in our lifetime and times are good.

But, there is always an opposition to good sense and that is where the lawyers defending prop 8 come in. The basis for their claim that upholding Prop 8 is the right thing to do comes from a traditional view of marriage. To quote them directly, “The concern is that redefining marriage as a genderless institution will sever its abiding connection to its historic traditional procreative purposes, and it will refocus, refocus the purpose of marriage and the definition of marriage away from the raising of children and to the emotional needs and desires of adults, of adult couples” (Charles J. Cooper, lawyer representing the proponents of Prop 8).

This got me thinking about my Sociology of Family class, from a few years back, and the first question we were asked and discussed in depth.

What is a family?

Of course, the first answer that was yelled out, from the back of the room, was two parents and their children. Ah ha! Two parents. Not a mother and a father, but two parents. This is telling. Later, this same person went on to say that he believed two parents were a mother and father, but the first reaction was two parents. This definition, although inclusive of same sex couples, does leave out many other people.

How about single moms or dads and their children? How about same sex or opposite sex couples with no children? Are these not families? Are a woman and man that want to get married, but hold off on having children (possibly never having biological children at all), not a real family? Well, if that is the case, I guess the writer and I will have to hand in our marriage license pronto! By defining family in such narrow terms as two parents and their children, it leaves out legions of others. We all become outsiders in this pursuit of narrowly defined family.

This is why DOMA and Prop 8 must go and that no new bills should be brought to any legislature in any state that try to define marriage as one woman one man. This is too narrow a definition for marriage, which also leads to an even narrower definition of family. So, go go Supreme Court! Do us justice now, so that we don’t continue to slide back into the injustice that was around when the country was formed.

We are supposed to be always looking ahead in America. Leading the world with innovation and equality. Well, we have fallen down on the promise that is a free society and if we don’t pick up the pieces and start making it right we might as well forget about that promise.

After all, this same day in history, 26 March 2013, North Dakota passed the most sweeping restrictions on choice since prior to roe v. wade released us from the burden of laws on our bodies. They are attempting to roll back women’s rights, but hopefully the voters won’t let it stand. Two steps forward and one step back.

We will get there someday, slowly but surely, rights for all living, human beings. And by the way, that means breathing on ones own, not just the potential to do so. Just sayin’.

Peace,
Chantale

links:
Full transcript of Supreme Court Arguments On California Gay Marriage Ban – 26 March 2013
‘It’s Bad For Business’: Employers Side With DOMA Opponents – a reason to actually LIKE Starbucks.

love is love is love.

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Let’s Talk About Gender (and Media)

Earlier in the week, I posted an article to Facebook, from New York Magazine. It was titled “The Retro Wife”. Maybe you saw my post, or the comments that transpired after the fact, maybe not. Either way, I have decided to get up on my gender studies soapbox and write a post. This is one of the great things about having an online journal. If something sticks with me for more than 24 hours, I can write about it. Good for deconstructing ideas and gathering my thoughts.

Every night, when I settle down to watch my favourite shows, I notice something about the commercials that come between. Even on such progressive networks as MSNBC, there is still an undertone of difference in some of the commercials that are aired by the sponsors. This is something that I find across the board, but let me explain precisely what I mean by undertone of difference.

Commercials advertise products. They have since the beginning of television and before that, businesses used radio, newspapers, magazines, and other forms of media to advertise their products. These products are geared toward demographics, which are made up of specific people. With this in mind, you would not see a tampon commercial that was geared toward cis gendered males, simply because that is not a product they need to use. However, when I say an undertone of difference, I mean that a tampon commercial can play to the stereotypes in our society about menstruation. Just as other commericals play to other stereotypes. This is a marketing strategy that has been used for many decades in advertising and it will continue to move forward in such a way. The undertone of difference creates a problem in society that continually perpetuates. If a product is marketed directly to you and you are being told that you need it because of some thing that is essentialist about your being, that is a problem. Of course, tampons will continue to be marketed to women, but there is a better way to do it than shaming.

For years, I have noticed these things about advertising. Since I was a child, I have felt that undertone of difference while watching television or going to movies. This difference transcends entertainment and moves into the real world when we take the things we learn from media and implement them in our lives. Sociology gave me the terms I needed to better understand the undertones I already sensed. However, it did not alert me to anything I was not already keenly aware of, as a cis gendered female, in American society. For this reason, I have felt the need to speak up. I feel the need to investigate and research and then write down my findings. I feel a push to better understand why there is an undertone of difference in the first place and work toward change.

There are companies that are coming around, slowly but surely. Amazon, a major player in online consumerism, released a commercial, in February of this year, that supports gay marriage. That, in an of itself, is a good thing, but the way that it is presented is even better. It depicts a woman and man sitting in side by side lounge chairs on the beach. The woman is reading on a kindle and the man is using an ipad. The man is struggling to read because of the glare and the woman tells him about how great her kindle is. The man then states “Done!” and proceeds to say he just bought a kindle “let’s celebrate! how about a drink!” The woman says “yes, my husband is bringing me one right now” and the man says “so is mine!” They both turn to see two men at the bar, purchasing beverages.

Now I realize that this is, from a marketing perspective, a way to gain more of the lbgtq community, but it also does something broader. It shows us changing attitudes about the culture. Advertising can, and should, do that. As we move forward into a more equal future for all, advertisers should continue to get on the bandwagon, as Amazon has, and push the envelope. Seeing depictions of oneself in media strengthens the ways in which we interact on a personal and societal level. Moving us forward through messages of positivity is good for our culture as a whole and, at the same time, good for business.

So, when I see products being created like “Bic for her” or “Dr. Pepper Ten” that put people into distinct categories and pit the sexes against each other, I cringe. Honestly, the first time I saw a Dr. Pepper Ten commercial, I thought it was a spoof and at the end they were going to do one of those needle scratch moments and say “Dr. Pepper is for everyone!”. But they didn’t. They just moved along with the same tired trope of making the ten calorie beverage seem more appealing to cis gendered males in a stereotypical way. 2013? Disappointing.

So, where do we go from here? How do we continue the trends of good advertising that cater to ALL people rather than to those who identify as just male or just female? How do we move the media in a way that will also move the culture? That is a work in progress that I believe those people in media who want to move it are doing. Slowly but surely. People like Melissa Harris-Perry and her nerdland staff and places like the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. TV programs like My So-Called Life and Will & Grace that started pushing the envelope and opening the door to equality. Websites such as Feminist Frequency and Feministing that continue to show us how examining and better understanding pop culture, through a feminist lens, is the way to true gender equality. We are moving forward. Change is slow and grueling and although we may not get there in our lifetime, if we could just keep moving forward, leaning in, setting our sights for true equality and moving our ship in that direction, our country can eventually achieve equality of all people. Not just the people that have the loudest voices or a specific set of sex organs, all people.

/soapbox (for now)

Peace,

Chantale

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2005.10.30 – what if?

What would our country (the United States) be like if we hadn’t lost JFK, Martin, Bobby, Malcolm & Lennon? Would we have true equality? Would we see less of a gap between the upper class and everyone else? I feel that our country would be much more well adjusted if we didn’t have so many senseless losses of great leaders and progressives in the 20th century. Instead we are much like the angsty teenager of the world whose father and mother were lost in a tragic accident. We have lost focus as a nation and seem apathetic to the needs of others around the world. We are needy and self-centered and only care about what we can acquire as a commercialistic democracy.

Our leaders are consumer whores who will sell the soul of our great nation for a little oil and a pat on the back from big daddy. When tragedy strikes our shores those who are supposed to protect us are nowhere to be found and the disenfranchised amoung us are left to fend for themselves.

Someday we will come back to the ideals of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Eventually we will have to reconcile our wicked ways and come back to the peaceful thoughts of John Lennon. Not that we will go back to being hippies (although some of us wish that we could) – but we could learn a few lessons from the sixties. We should have seen this coming, but we never see history repeating until we are already in the midst of the repetition.

If King were only alive today or Bobby Kennedy or Malcolm X. Yes, Malcolm was radical in his ways, but he had the right idea. Empowerment of the lower and middle classes in this country is the only way to truly change our course. When the disenfranchised stand up and start speaking out we will finally see a change. When the black, brown, red and poor start to organzie we will see a shift.

Two weekends ago the “Millions More Movement” gathering, which celebrated the ten year anniversary of the Million Man March, showed us a glimmer of hope. With the coming together minority citizens, hopefully bonds were formed and plans begun. With these crowds returning to their communities to organize this could be the start of something fantastic. The rise of the weak against the strong. The poor against the rich. Not in a confontational manner but in a way that shows the abilities of people to become more together.

I hope the establishment is shaking in their cowboy boots. Not for fear of danger, but of the rise of the working class. The movement of people toward better lives. The movement of people toward safety. The movement of people toward what is rightly theirs in a democracy such as ours.

A movement of great proportions that will change the future of this nation and help us grow out of this angsty teenage stage and into a mature – fully functioning – well adjusted – globally and locally conscious adult. On that day we will be complete and America will be great again. We can only hope to see it happen in our lifetime.

So what are you going to do to make this happen?

Peace,
Hippiegrrl

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2003.4.16 – feminism in the 21st century

We’ve come a long way, baby! Degrading as that statement may seem, it is actually very true. We HAVE come a long way, but the only way to know for sure that the struggle was not in vain is to continue on with it. We cannot just rest on the laurels of our foremothers who fought for the big stuff. We have to rise up and continue in their honourable footsteps.

Equal rights are not fully won with just the right for women to vote or equal pay for equal work. Feminism has to evolve into the 21st century and be a force to sustain these rights while winning new battles for women. Many times, in our society, women are treated unfairly in the workplace by other women. This is the most tragic event of all. Whether it be for reasons of contempt towards one another or ladder climbing, maltreatment of women by women is unacceptable.

It is an undeniable fact that, in organizing, petitioning and speaking out to free the slaves, American women learned how to free themselves. -Betty Friedan – The Feminine Mystique

In the early days of women’s rights, the feminist movement moved parallel to, and many times in conjunction with, the civil rights movement. Women were getting out and speaking up for the rights of blacks in America and, in turn, realizing that these rights should also be extended to themselves. With the notion that every human being was and is important, we see the struggle that would befall the most noble of feminists. In the process of helping to free the slaves and secure their civil rights, women saw something that they too wanted. Equal rights.

Feminism was a movement of resilience and militant pride. In recent years, feminism has begun to be looked at as a bad thing. Many factions have been ever increasingly more critical of feminists. Taking the example of two or three militant femi-nazis and making the whole group of feminists seem to be that way. This is yet another way for the establishment to dumb down the concept of equal rights for women. A way to make it seem unnecessary and even, in some instances, dangerous to be a feminist.

Every glamour magazine that sits on a shelf, screaming from its pages to the teenage girls of America, is a factor in this anti-feminism. Every add on television that makes a girl or woman feel less than she is contributes to anti-feminism. Each and every day that a girl or woman is taunted or made to feel inferiour results in the persistence of anti-feminism. Anti-feminism is a force in this country far stronger than the masses would give credit to. The ability to make women feel guilty for not spending every waking moment with their children is a form of anti-feminism.

Society still perceives career women and working mothers as a short phase in life. It is supposed that eventually these women will come around and learn to love staying at home. The assumption in that is that every woman is exactly the same and does not want to reach for a higher goal then marriage and motherhood. That the education of women ends when they become mothers. This is obviously not so, or we would not have so many career women as it were. In so much as it is possible for women to learn as well as men, so is it necessary for women to be afforded the luxury of both children and work. Women should not have to be “tied down” to family, giving up dreams of work success, unless they choose that as their goal. There are women who truly want to be housewives and nothing more and feminism extends them that choice as well.

The central theme is choice. The ability to choose career, family, home. The right to be able to choose whatever, whenever, and however without the consultation of a man. This does not, by any means, lessen the role of man in society. If anything, men are strengthened by feminism as well. They are able to have more openness in relationships because their wives/girlfriends/friends are more content and therefore more honest. Feminism is good for everyone, not just women, and this is the message that needs to be conveyed to the masses. Keep up the fight because no matter how far we have come, there is always road ahead to travel and to stop short would be nothing other than a travesty.

Peace,
Hippiegrrl

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Rochester NY or The Place To Be

“I’m a pixie, I’m a paper doll, I’m a cartoon” Ani Difranco

Music has always had an effect on me. It brings memories rushing to the surface, good and bad. When my iPod shuffles to an Ani D song that I have not heard in a while, most likely my thoughts will turn to Rochester, NY.

This past week, there was a flower show in the “flower city” and a few people that I follow on twitter were in attendance. In an attempt to make sure they enjoyed their visit, I suggested a few establishments to peruse while off from the show. Unfortunately, they were unable to visit these places, but I want to highlight them here, for future visitors to one of my favourite cities. Even though I retuned to Buffalo, NY, for work, I still miss Rochester and hope that the writer and I will be able to return some day and make our life work there.

In the meantime, we are only an hours drive away from some great restaurants, art galleries, film houses and cafes. Here is a sampling of some great places to see the next time you visit RaChaCha.

Those of you that know me probably figure that the first place I will talk about is Java’s on Gibbs. This is one of my favourite places to hang out while visiting, but the last time the writer and I were in town we found a place that I enjoyed even more, amazingly enough. That place was Boulder Coffee Company on Alexander Street. The atmosphere was very relaxing and the coffee was wonderful. I did not get that usual acidic reaction, like I do at Javas, where I have to quickly reach for my papaya tablets to fend of agita. I was able to drink the whole cup without incident and the sandwich was extra yum. I did not feel like I was in the way, as I usually do at Java’s, since the tables and chairs were set up in a good proximity to one another.

Let me stop for a moment to talk about this phenomenon of feeling “in the way”. This is something that women have to deal with, on a conscious or unconscious basis, daily. Men do not seem to have this issue, usually. This relates to the power dynamics that still persist in our society. Men are looked upon as being powerful, and this is normalized, by taking up as much space as they need and want. Women, for the most part, often strive to make themselves smaller. Either through the crossing of legs, the squeezing into girdles and spanx, or by not eating to become smaller mass-wise. These are ways in which women have had to live in order to not make a “spectacle” of the themselves. When a woman sits “like a man” with legs uncrossed she is either given dirty looks, in order to make her comply, or she is looked upon as “masculine” as if this is a bad thing. The norm, in American society, is for men to be in power and women to be subordinate. Even in these days of feminism and moving toward equality, these ideals still persist, under the surface. They rise up at times to push women back into their proverbial cubbyholes and, in essence, keep them in line with the norms. Two steps forward, one step back. This is the plight of feminism in the 21st century. I will continue this in my next post, on Ren Faires, so stay tuned. In the meantime, back to Rochester…

A place that the writer and I love to eat is on Park Avenue. Actually, there are two favourite places on Park. The first is Hogan’s Hideaway and the second, Magnolia’s. Hogan’s has the best Reubens and Crabcake sandwiches that we have had and the beer selection is sufficient. We enjoy hanging out in the bar area or sitting in the dining room as the atmosphere of both spaces is very relaxed.

Magnolias has the best paninis and pizzas in town and a great selection of craft beers to drink with lunch or to take home in six pack form. While living in Corn Hill, the writer and I made the effort to visit Magnolias many times. The service there is very homey and the food is fantastic. The seating is not the most comfortable, but the summer months bring one of the best patios in the city, well worth the trip.

If brunch is more your style, Jines is the place to be. Also on Park Avenue, this establishment has the BEST stuffed French toast you will find in the city. A few other diner locations, such as Gitsie’s, Jay’s, or Mark’s all serve awesome breakfasts, but for brunch I would definitely recommend Jine’s. Even if there is a wait to be seated, it is well worth it.

Leaving behind food and drink, let me tell you about a few entertainment venues that are not to be missed while visiting RaChaCha. If you are looking to see a great indie film, the Little Theatre on East Avenue, is the place to be. The Cinema, on South Clinton at South Goodman, offers low prices for second run movies and a great old theatre to view them in. This theatre was, and most likely still is, home to the R.I.T. Film studies program senior project screenings. The writer’s classmates had their senior screenings here and it was the perfect venue for these events.

The George Eastman House is a great tour to take while visiting and if you time it right, you can also partake in a screening of an old or indie film. Just wandering the house and gift shoppe are a great way to spend the afternoon. The second floor has a very interesting, although morbid, case that tells a bit of the George Eastman history that is not to be overlooked. Eccentric and fabulously wealthy, George Eastman was nothing if not ostentatious and this tour proves it.

As museums go, the Memorial Art Gallery has an excellent collection to view. Located on University Avenue, it is connected to the University of Rochester and houses several collections of fine and craft arts. For the kids, the Strong Museum of Play is a great place to spend an afternoon. Many interactive displays are present and will keep the kids and the adults busy.

If walking is what you enjoy, Rochester boasts several parks and recreational areas right in the city limits. A favourite, from my time living in the city, was Highland Park. Movies in the park are put on at the Highland Bowl in the summer months, as well as Shakespeare in the Park. The Lilac Festival is held here in mid-May each year and the lilacs themselves are a wonderful addition to any walk through the park. An afternoon in the park with a journal to write in, a good book to read, or an excellent cup of coffee can make any week more enjoyable.

For live theatre buffs, the best place in the city is the Geva Theatre. Celebrating the 40th season this year, the Geva has been putting on excellent regional theatre productions since 1972. If you are looking for a great performance, look no further than the Geva. For great live bands, the place to visit is the Bug Jar, on Monroe Avenue. This venue hosts dj nights as well and, if nothing else, it is worth a trip for a beer and a gander at the “bug fan”.

I hope that you enjoy your next visit to Rochester. Writing about it has made me want to pack up the car and get away. Maybe next weekend, see you there!

Peace and happy day tripping,
Chantale aka hippiegrrl

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Social Construction and Gender

Let me begin this post by saying that, yes, I have completed my second bachelors degree in Sociology.  As of May 2011, I have double degrees, Music (1997) and Sociology (2011), and will hopefully begin a PhD in Sociology and Gender Studies, beginning in 2012.  Along the path to obtaining this degree, I have become a Marxist, Feminist, Social Constructionist.  I am completely on board with what these three designations entail, politically and socially.  Due to this fact, rise up buffalo is going to become much more sociologically centered.  We will still attempt to keep the community updated on activism and volunteerism in the city, but also try to help you, the reader, better understand some key concepts in the struggle.

Sociology is an awesome base from which to create activist campaigns and also a great source for common sense.  I hope you will continue on this journey with us as we delve deeper into the sociological aspects of our lives and communities.  We will attempt to better understand the world around us and that is always a wonderful and challenging thing.  Please, come along on the ride, it may be bumpy, but it is certain to be entertaining and enlightening.

On to today’s topic – Social Construction and Gender –

Let me begin with a quote from one of my favourite feminists – Gloria Steinem

“In a patriarchy, a poor man’s house may be his castle, but a rich woman’s body is not her own.”

I realize that this quote pertains directly to equality issues, but I find that it also has a lot to do with our perceptions of gender and the way in which it is constructed in our society. As you may have guessed, a social construct is a concept that is created by a particular group. This group may be society as a whole (which we must always remember includes each of us as individuals and is not just some alien concept that one can call upon to lay blame in an argument or debate), a particular culture or traditional system or a social or cultural group that is created by individuals to fill a need of the community. All groups have standards for the way that each member should behave. If we begin by looking at these standards as socially constructed we can start to see how our behaviours and perceptions are constructs.

For example – in American society, we still hold fast to a patriarchal system. When children are born, they are usually named after the father, if he is known. Even if the mother is single, she will, oftentimes, be strongly pushed toward this naming convention. Since this “tradition” has been the norm for so many years, we continue to see it as a social standard. In digging a bit deeper we can see the social construction of maintaining this naming convention. Property is divided up based on a patriarchal code and, as such, children must reflect their fathers family in order to partake in the division. With the rates of single motherhood rising, this trend is changing, however there are still many traditionalists who feel it a threat to our society to make this change. Any social construct that is challenged is seen as an attack on society, but as stated earlier, society is you and me, not some outside source that we have to look to for reason and understanding. We make up our society and we can change it. We can go forward naming our children in any way we see fit and our society will not collapse, just as we will survive if baby girls are not dressed in pink or baby boys dressed in blue. Another example of social construction that is taken for granted and made to seem ultra important in the rearing of children. As if dressing a boy in pink will forever stunt his growth or painting a girls room blue will make her less of a woman.

The funny thing about this particular construct is that it has become so commonplace that even women who profess to be feminists have named their children after the father.  It is as if this naming convention is SO normalized that we do not recognize it as such.  This is extremely dangerous territory.  Normalizing constructs is what keeps us down.  Not just as women, but as a human race.  If we cannot rise above these constructs there will continue to be gender equality in our “free and open” society.  Free for whom exactly?  The powerful and elite?  The XY chromosome group?  The pale complexion set?  The historically powerful, that is who.  I say no more!  We need to start dispelling myths and reversing norms.  This is the one and only way to reach full equality of all genders!

Peace – Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

appropriate links:
Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey – the best site to better understand an extremely important read
Gloria Steinem Official Website – my hero and (hopefully!) yours!
Books by Judith Lorber – interested in the social construction of gender? start with this list and work your way forward!

questions?  comments?  like or dislike?  let us know in the comment section below…
please pass this post along to your friends and foes.  we love the attention from both sides!

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Equality Now!

Tomorrow will be the eighth anniversary of the writer and I “tying the knot”.   Luckily, because we are of the opposite sex, we were able to secure a legal marriage with very little effort.   If, in fact, we were of the same sex, we would be celebrating an eight year commitment with no legal rights between us and within our union.

This week, the State Senate of New York is voting to pass a bill that will legalize same-sex marriage and secure a higher level of equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals.   In opposition to this bill is a small group of bigoted but vocal individuals, led by a group called the national organization for marriage (nom).   This group purports to be pro-marriage when, in reality, they are a bigoted group who seek to push their values on the majority of Americans that believe in equal rights.

Legislating from the seat of morality is a very sticky situation.   America is a nation built on the ideals of equality, justice and separation of church and state.   Without these founding positions to ground us, we would be nothing but a nation of religious zealots, no better than those countries that govern their people based on religious fundamentalism.   This seems like a no-brainer really.   What people do in their bedrooms should not be governed by the public.   Laws are meant to protect people, not to restrict rights.

When it really comes down to it we should all have the freedom to do what we personally feel is right. If two people want to get married for love or money or rights, that is their decision. The government should not be in our bedrooms, telling us how to live our lives. The faithful say that they are trying to “protect the sanctity of marriage” by fighting against equality, however they are doing a disservice to the faith that they claim to have. Faith is personal. Faith is a guiding principle in an individual life. Faith is not something that can be legislated or imposed on others. Each of us walks through this world with our own minds and the ability to make decisions about our own lives. If one chooses to be married, that is a personal choice. It should, therefore, not be molded by those with power. It should not be regulated by those in high positions. Morality is something that we each deal with on a personal basis and that is how it should remain. Love is love is love.

Having said that, what can we do to counter the hate filled rhetoric of NOM and move forward with a more equal system for all?

Stand up and be counted
The Human Rights Campaign has been working diligently to get our elected officials to vote yes on the marriage equality bill.   With the “moral” attacks from NOM and other organizations, the efforts of HRC could be thwarted.   We need to stand up as a people and show NOM that the majority believe in equality and acceptance, not bigotry and hatred.   Call or email your senator with your support of this bill today!

Tell a Friend
Share the news that you are part of this fight with your family and friends. Power comes with mass outreach and the struggle cannot be won without an outpouring of support from all people.

Post your support
You know you love to “like” things on Facebook or Tweet about stuff that concerns you. Why not do that for this very worthy cause? Let all those people that follow you know that you will not stand for the inequality that has been the norm for so long.

Let’s go New York! Let’s make this happen in my lifetime. Equality for all is what we were promised in the beginning of this nation and we should make an attempt to see it through. It has taken us long enough, time is up, equality for all, NOW!

Peace,
Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

Please pass this column along to those you think would be interested, or, even, those who you think need a bit of educating on ideas of equality. Your support is important to the cause.