greenhatcat replied to your post: I hope my (future) landlord doesn’t google me when I submit my apartment application
greenhatcat replied to your post: I hope my (future) landlord doesn’t google me when I submit my apartment application
Actually, the first thing I get is Small Town Punk…she probably loves it.
Ahh I was looking the result after that - the facebook page (since I’m not sure a landlord would read an amazon book review for a character analysis) :-/. It’s like THAT SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD BE ME BUT IT’S NOT ME.
Also I’m glad you had the same feelings about that book that I did/do.
skiesskies replied to your post: I hope my (future) landlord doesn’t google me when I submit my apartment application
wow
I know, right? Especially because the name I use for Facebook, etc. isn’t technically my legal name so this person is the seemingly only match. -_-
Because as it turns out, there is another girl who comes up first on Google search with my same name. The only one I have seen throughout my years of adventures on the internet. Which wouldn’t be a problem except all her tweets and FB posts are like, women jokes, rape jokes, and references to Family Guy and Southpark (not even clever or funny references!). So she is like the opposite of me. I’ve decided we’re basically kindred spirit arch nemeses, Harry/Volde style.
Argh! Can’t choose classes at Wellesley next year. :(
Seminar:
ANTH 110 First-Year Seminar: The Anthropology of Food - Van Arsdale
EDUC 117 First-Year Seminar: Diversity in Education - Hong
ITAS 104 First-Year Seminar: The Cities of Italy: An Introduction to Italian Culture - Parussa
PHIL 108…
Educ 117: Diversity in Education. Hands down one of the best classes at Wellz
I wrote in an earlier post (http://airellia.tumblr.com/post/23931201010/on-women-sexual-assault-and-self-defense) that I personally try to de-emphasize the importance of self-defense when it comes to sexual assault because at this point in our culture it’s still used as an excuse to victim-blame. Again, I have nothing against people taking self-defense if they want to. I took martial arts for several years (Tang Soo Do, if anyone’s curious), almost had a black belt, and learned a lot of practical lessons about how to carry myself confidently, how to fight effectively against big guys, how to get out of holds. I’m out of practice but I still have the muscle memory. The thing is, in order to use these skills to defend yourself you have to know on some level that you’re in danger and you need to act. That worked for me when I’ve been attacked by strangers. But attacks against women usually aren’t perpetrated by strangers on the street. Statistically speaking, that’s more likely to happen to men (like my brother, who was mugged twice at gun point and tazed by the police). Women are usually attacked by people we know, often our partners. And how do you get past the emotional blockade of having to defend yourself against or actively attack someone you love? Martial arts didn’t teach me that.
*I’m speaking in terms of men vs women gender binaries because I’m not nonbinary so I can’t speak from lived experience and I don’t know if there’s research on nonbinary peoples’ experiences with violence.
(Source: thartist72, via myownjudgejuryandgavel)
Oh, the places you'll go (on the internet): On women, sexual assault, and self-defense -
Why I love Rachel: 1. This is brilliant but it’s also digestible to anyone who doesn’t have a background thinking about these things. 2. The casual “I’m quoted in this book.” Guys, do you all realize that, in addition to name dropping FormerBTS someday when he’s my potential child’s uncle and world renowned, I’ll also be name dropping Rach and she’ll be teaching potential child how to be a decent person by example? My mom gave me a drunken touching speech last night about how I have my own gifts, but my greatest strength is the way I surround myself with the right people. Rachel is the best example.I have a lot of ~feelings~ all of a sudden and if I don’t write them down they will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
So I’m about half-way through Jaclyn Friedman’s new(ish) book “What you really really want.” Now, I like her. I’m friends with her on Facebook, I’m quoted in this…
Brb, tearing up.
(PS speaking of your mom, I sent her the grad pictures with you in them since she told me her camera messed up and erased a bunch - hopefully she got them. Not sure if she wanted ones of the speaker/rest of the ceremony).
tttwistedfiction replied to your post: On women, sexual assault, and self-defense
Besides that, are you enjoying the book? I’ve wanted to read it for a while now and thought of giving it to my niece when I was through…
Yeah, absolutely! It’s set up like a workbook, which is cool, and she’s good at emphasizing that there’s a lot of different contexts in which we express our sexuality and there’s no real right way to navigate it. I like it.
I have a lot of ~feelings~ all of a sudden and if I don’t write them down they will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
So I’m about half-way through Jaclyn Friedman’s new(ish) book “What you really really want.” Now, I like her. I’m friends with her on Facebook, I’m quoted in this book, and, with the exception of the Blue Ivy Carter article, I think she generally makes good points. I was a little worried about this book because a “smart girl’s shame-free guide to sex and safety” is a pretty bold project for anyone to write – it sounds like something that could very easily devolve into her making universal claims and suggestions based on relatively privileged experiences. But I was pleasantly surprised. She had a focus group of women with a variety of different values and identities, she clearly did her research on the baggage that comes with things like sexuality and race (giving preference to lived experiences), she recognized when she didn’t know what she was talking about, and she encouraged people to ditch her statements and exercises if they didn’t apply. So I like it so far.
I think the only thing that is bothering me is one section of her piece on self-defense. She’s talking about how she took self defense classes and on the one hand they made her feel more powerful but on the other, she felt that knowing how to protect herself would invalidate her feelings about her experience with sexual assault. Which I understand. Then she says, “[t]he other objection some women have to self-defense is that it puts the responsibility on women to protect themselves, instead of obligating rapists not to rape women in the first place” (124). She notes that rape culture won’t change in a day and we have to be realistic. “Teaching women some tools we can use in case of emergency will help us deal with the world as it is while we’re working to make it better” (124).
It took me a while to figure out why this bothered me but I think I understand now – I am in that category of women who object to self-defense-as-prevention, but she totally mischaracterizes the argument. Here’s the thing – people like her spend their career thinking and writing about rape culture. Most people don’t. When I was the president of SAAFE, the main question people asked me was when/if we were putting on self-defense classes. Someone once bluntly asked what the point of a sexual assault awareness and peer support group on campus was if we didn’t teach self-defense. For many students, even at a progressive women’s college, learning self-defense was the only worthwhile response to a world rampant with the threat of sexual violence. Self-defense by itself doesn’t necessarily do anything to change rape culture (“make it better”), though. It’s an individual solution to a systemic problem. I don’t think anyone really objects to self-defense itself as a good tool to have in your arsenal (to use Friedman’s words). Hell, I took martial arts for many years and I think it has been helpful for me when I’ve been threatened by strangers. But sometimes we as activists have to de-emphasize the importance of self-defense in order to bring attention to the larger social problem of rape culture. Just as we still live in a world that’s very dangerous for women – as Friedman notes - we still live in a world where saying “women should learn self-defense” comes with the implicit understanding that we are at fault for the violence committed against us. Ideally, we would learn self-defense while combating rape culture, as she implies. But if I have to emphasize one or the other to people who have never considered that *rapists shouldn’t rape people,* I’ll choose rape culture.