Updates

Hi everyone, here are some updates!

Tshirts: These will be available in January so save your Christmas money!!  The quotations we chose with the help of the survey are:

“If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution.” Emma Goldman

“I’m a radical feminist, not the fun kind.” Andrea Dworkin

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Gloria Steinem

We’ll keep you posted when the shirts are available and where we’ll be distributing them!

Feminist Movie Night: We didn’t get around to it this semester but we definitely will in January!  Any suggestions for the movie?

Survey: I know you are all sick of hearing about this, but it’s going to remain open over the holidays.  So if you are really bored or are avoiding studying go HERE to do it!  It’s not even 10 questions.. seriously.   Win one of the shirts.  Your odds are so good.

That’s all for now.  Happy studying!  Have a super super break!!

Riot! Don’t Diet!

Outrageous Activism Project

Jordan, Rachael, and I wrote messages on post-it notes and we stuck them in washrooms across campus.  Our messages were all geared towards disrupting beauty ideals for women.  The goal of our activist project was to interrupt negative self-criticism. Body image is a gendered phenomenon that promotes a narrow and normative framework of feminine embodiment, gender identity, and sexuality.  Although discourses about body and beauty are experienced at an individual level, they are in fact part of the political project of controlling women’s bodies.  We to leave our messages in washrooms because the washroom is a site where we judge, critique, and transform our bodies.  The washroom has tremendous political potential as a site where we can reclaim and reconstitute feminine body and image ideals.

I chose the message “Riot! Don’t Diet!” and posted notes in SUB, ETLC, and surrounding buildings.  The message is a NYC Radical Cheerleaders chant.  Beauty and weight dissatisfaction has become normative in contemporary societies.   I think this cheer displaces the primacy of individual weight discontent and re-prioritizes collective struggle.

Our post-it strategy is political insofar as it challenges politicized and normative discontents, but it does so on an individual basis.  We identified normative discontents as political and structural issues, but addressed them at the level of the individual.  A more effective strategy might have combined this personal component with a further-reaching political component.  Late into my activist project, Nikki, Tracy and others introduced the idea of including the link for the WSUA blog on their magnets.  They posted explanations of their messages and invited the people who found their messages to engage in a discussion about the project through the comments section of the blog.  I thought this was a great way to improve the scope of the project and so I included the WSUA link on my last post-its.  Using the blog and its comments as a forum for discussion might also help me evaluate how women responded to my post-its.

Baumgardner and Richards tell us that activists use their “daily like as a conduit for change” (xx).  We used this principle to guide our project.  Body image and self-esteem are feminist issues.  We tried to introduce and reframe those issues within our campus community using readily available resources (sharpies and post-its).  It was a project that we could do between classes and on study breaks.  We fit a small piece of feminist activism into our daily lives, and learned how easy it is to incorporate action into our routines.

“Pro-Feminism” Magnets

Getting “pro-feminist” and positive feminist messages out into the community is of the utmost importance. Currently, anti-feminist discourse dominates public conception of what “feminism” is and what it stands for. Anti-feminist dogma is everywhere within society, and within our University, and it is an effective and strategic mechanism that feminist backlash has used in order to keep people from exploring what feminism truly is, from realizing the truth and power is possesses, and from identifying with the complex and insightful social critique it offers.

We need pro-feminist and feminist positive messages to encourage people to question what they are told about feminism and about the world, and to explore feminism for themselves, and in doing so, be enabled to find the life changing truth and power it holds.

These magnets encourage ALL people to reclaim the “F” word and everything it stands for, and my hope is that once people begin to embrace and reclaim feminism, and define it for themselves, that they will be enabled to challenge hegemonic understandings of feminism, and engage in critical thinking and a challenge of oppressive ideologies and paradigms.

These positive, “pro-feminism” magnets, as taken up by anyone who chooses make and share them, allow for a redefinition of what feminism is and what it stands for, according to each individual person. This magnet campaign expresses the idea that feminism is for ALL people, and is accessible and adaptable to anyone and everyone and their diverse interests.

I believe that these magnets are powerful and effective as they let people know that there is a strong community of feminists on campus that is open to all people, and that this community facilitates not only life change, but wide scale social change, while encouraging individuality and critical thinking.

Here are a few of the slogans on the magnets that I created and dispersed:

-  “Feminism: Embrace the “F” Word”

-  “Feminism is for everyone, Feminism is for you”

-  “Feminism: More than ‘just women’”

-  “Feminism: For all those who aren’t satisfied with ‘the way it is’”

- “Feminism…Dare to question”

-  “Reclaim the “F” word: Feminism is for everyone”

-  “Feminism= Anti-ignorance”

I encourage those of you who have found these magnets and enjoyed them to take up this project for yourself, and create something that addresses an issue that is meaningful for you, and share it with your community!

Nikki Bernier

MAGNETS!!!

To all of you who have ventured here because of a magnet you found on campus, we welcome you! If you are curious how these magnets came to be we have compiled a few words from our magnet makers. We encourage you to look around the Women’s Studies Undergraduate Association website for more information about the Women’s studies program on campus, see what is up to in the activist world on campus, and make connections with other like minded individuals. And don’t forget to join us at our next meeting. Feminism is for everyone, and everyone is welcome at the WSUA!

 

 

As an outrageous act I made magnets. Feminist magnets to be exact. I made almost 100 tiny little magnets that each said, “Feminism is for everyone” and had the Women’s Studies Undergraduate Association website address on the back. I distributed these to classrooms in the Tory Building on campus. I created these magnets in hope to make the feminist community more apparent on campus as it is all too easy to focus solely on the sexism, whether it be in our student newspaper, on the flyers for parties, or even out of the mouths of students and teachers. I decided to put the website for the Women’s Studies Undergraduate Association on the back of the magnets as a pre-emptive answer to the question, “what now?” Whether people are interested in finding some new friends, hooking up with others and their outrageous activism or are simply wondering about the women’s studies program, they can find their answers on the website.  My target was feminist friendly students and teachers. I hope that these people will notice the magnets out of the corner of their eye and investigate to find a friendly message and be reminded that there are others out there that share the same beliefs and values. I hope these magnets will find new homes and cause a few smiles.

–Tracy

 

 

Feminism is for Everyone…

I chose to focus on Feminism and aging. The specifics of this were inspired by personal interactions with residents of nursing homes and retirement residences. Another inspiration was the incredible social protest efforts of the Raging Grannies.

 

(For more information on the Raging Grannies and their chapters across Canada and the world, including Edmonton, see http://raginggrannies.org/)

 

Feminists have applied the critical though and analysis of the scholarly discipline to areas of Aging. “Self, Society, and the ‘New Gerontology’” is an innovative article in which Martha Holstein and Meredith Minkler use a feminist framework to interrogate scientific prescriptions for the aging. New scientific research argues “successful aging” is necessary and available as long as people eat well and exercise. As Holstein and Minkler point out this prescription only serves the privileged and justifies the erasure of necessary senior services.

 

(To read the Holstein and Minkler article see: http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=12017135&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site)

 

Not only is it essential to fight ageism, it is a necessity for feminism. We are now in the third wave of feminism, however the efforts of those before us live on. Not only in the legal and social reforms, but in the women that fought for them. Creating inter-generational conversations among feminists opens up the opportunity for change that is denied when we work in isolation.

 

The elderly are a capable population who has provided for society in their younger years and continue to throughout old age. Dismissing the capabilities, knowledge and beauty of seniors is discriminatory and unproductive. Feminism provides the theory and knowledge needed to confront issues of gender, race, class, ability, and age!

 

The inclusion of age is one of the many positive elements of Feminism that truly makes it a place for everyone! To illustrate this goal I distributed magnets throughout the University of Alberta. Among others spaces, I targeted the medical sciences building as many of the nurses and doctors there will be working hands on with seniors. The magnets had the following slogans:

Old and Grey Still Deserve a Say.

Feminism is for Everyone.

 

Up for Adventures Even with Dentures?

Feminism is for Everyone.

 

Successful Aging Sounds Amazing but What are the Implications?

Help Make the Elderly Visible the Marginalized are not Divisible.

Feminism is for Everyone.

 

–Lindsay Hoehne

 

 

Heart Feminism Magnets

My magnets had the intent of showing that feminism is for everyone, and there isn’t
limited expectations to what it means to be feminist.  For example…

“You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman” is a response to a negative backlash
against feminism.  A lot of anti-feminists will claim that feminists just hate men, or
that they want to destroy the patriarchy only to create their own matriarchy, etc.  This
quote/magnet states that this is not true, that feminists aren’t anti-man, but that they
can be pro-woman, and that this is really what feminism is about.  I think that
“pro-woman” is something a lot of people can claim to be, even if they don’t feel that
they fit under the title of feminist.

“I am pro-choice and pro-life” confronts the myth that if you are pro-choice you are
automatically anti-life.  The anti-choice side of the debate claimed the term “pro-life”
as a response to the pro-choice side, but by doing so it makes it appear as though
pro-choice means something bad.  I am pretty sure that the majority of pro-choicers are
indeed pro-life, whether that be in regard to the woman’s life, or anyone else’s life.
This little slogan challenges the labels that we assign the two opposing sides of the
abortion debate.

I added the “<3 feminism” at the bottom of these two magnets to remind the reader that
these things are ultimately related to feminism, and that feminism is indeed for
everyone.

 

– Jaime

 

 

The magnets I constructed state “I am a feminist, now what?” This phrase works with the
feminism is for everyone message by calling people to act as feminists. Unfortunately for
most of us (myself included) figuring out how to act on this principle is difficult so I
hope that these magnets help to facilitate discussions among the people who find them as
to what feminism means for them. Discussion is a great starting point and I hope this
blog can be part of that discussion.

–Meredith

 

http://www.womensstudies.ualberta.ca/

 

Please Make Comments!

Reminder!

TONIGHT!

 

Feminist Research Speakers’ Series 2009 – Polytechnique (2009)

 

Screening with an Introduction and Commentary by Donia Mounsef Associate Professor, Drama & Campus Saint-Jean

 

Admission: $10 Adults & $8 Students/Seniors – Student ID required

 

Presented in Cooperation with the Film Studies Program at the University of Alberta

 

Date: Friday November 27, 2009 7:00 pm

 

Location: Metro Cinema, Zeidler Hall in the Citadel Theatre, 9828 – 101A Ave

Voices for Choices Update

Meeting tomorrow (Nov 19) in Humanities L12 at 5:30.

Also upcoming: Educate Ourselves night on Nov 30.

Go!

WST 380 Outrageous Activisms

Hi!  Here is a space where we can coordinate our activist projects.  We can also use this space as the project progresses as a forum for discussion and feedback.  Please make comments!

 

Important!

Please do the WSUA survey if you have not already done so!

CLICK HERE!

Thanks!!

 

(From Married to the Sea)

PSSST OFF! POETRY JAM

This Wednesday, Nov 18 at Remedy (8631 – 109 St).  7pm.

To raise awareness about sexaul assault and violence against women.

More info here.

 

Women’s Centre Meeting

Tomorrow!

4 pm in the Lower Level Meeting Room in the SUB building (I think it’s next to the ECOS office).  

They will be planning some upcoming events.

www.uawcc.wordpress.com