How we view the other.

So lately I have become obsessed with Thought Catalog and have been reading old postings when I'm really bored. During one of those nights I came across these two gems; both written by the opposite cisgender and both only explore what it means to be male and act masculine and be female and act feminine but regardless of the hetero filled stereotype it is till interesting and deserves to be dissected.

"If I were a Boy" written by Kat George, starts out with the mockery of modern day masculinity. The double standards of fucking everything and anything, of being allowed to think with a "dick" and looking "good" without really trying too. But then we get to the end of her rant and we plunge deeper into modern day masculinity. 

If I were a boy I’d have trouble dealing with my emotions. Not because I didn’t have them, but because they felt awkward to me. Because people will have always told me to ‘be a man.’ I’d get confused when I wanted to cry and maybe I’d punch the wall instead.

Here masculinity is stripped down to its core problem. Emotions. Not just emotions but the controlling, identifying and dialogue around those emotions. It is wonderful that she pointed out the false hood of "be a man" how can that make any sense. It is insane to think that someone can go through life without acknoldegeing their emotions and learning to control them. Therefore she concludes her post by saying 

I would shoulder the burden of the mistakes of the men before me, and persist in my relationships even though everyone expected me to hurt them. I’d be tarred with the same dirty brush of those that came before me even though I wouldn’t deserve to be. I’d hope that if one day I had a son, he’d be a better man than me.

Then we see the same trope when we read "If I were a Girl". The beginning is filled with awful stereotypes but then we dive into the deeper meaning of  these sometimes true events. 

As a woman, I would just be so conditioned to feel bad about myself. Magazines would put me down, TV shows would sling insults at me, and my boss would pay me less money to do the same job as a man. 

And here the sad part might be that Ryan O'Connell uses this to describe why women stay in verbally abusive relationships. With the mindset that, "What’s the harm in another person putting me down? At least this one would kiss me hard on the mouth after he insulted me. I like to kiss." While I might not agree entirely with Ryan I do look at this as an interesting argument. And honestly that wasn't the point of me beginning this post so lets not dive into Ryan's argument but instead realize that both of these posts have one thing in common. They honestly critique society for harming the other gender. While most of my friends can say "duh", it is so critical that this type of honesty happened on Thought Catalog the blog for 20-30's hipster and young professionals. 

This type of dialog needs to occur in the hip blog community because sadly that is what my generation is reading. We are no longer reading scholarly journals or newspaper articles instead we are giving more credence towards individuals with witty writing. 

The perfect Glee episode.

This season of Glee has tried to make every episode a lesson from a Sociology of Diversity course. Each week New Directions shows us how to overcome being different with the help of pop songs and the best of friends you can find in Ohio.

This past episode began discussing what I hope to be the plot for next week, privilege. During “Born This Way”, Rachel takes Quinn with her to her plastic surgeon, with hopes to copy her petite nose. As they sit in the waiting area, they have a fun discussion on privilege, without really talking about it…

R: So, what’s it like? Looking like you look.

Q:  I pretty much have a warped sense of the world. Being a hot 17 year old, you can get away with or do what ever you want. So I pretty much assume that everyone is nice and accommodating. 

Thank you Quinn for being so honest! It is important to note that earlier in the episode we hear that Quinn is running for Prom Queen and is a “perfect” size 2.

30 Rock also explored the beauty club effect in Season 3 with the episode “The Bubble”.  Liz Lemon deals with Dr. Drew Baird, played by the lovely Jon Hamm, by trying to break that bubble and show him the real side of life. While 30 Rock, tackled the issue with hilarity and finesse. I expect the same from Glee.

I want Glee to tackle an episode that has those privileged folk discussing what being privileged means to them. How easy their lives are and how different it would be if they had issues like Kurt, Mercedes, Santana and others. It’s not that I hate the show and think they aren’t doing enough. It is exactly the opposite. I see how they are pissing off the Conservative Right and I feel like they can piss them off even more. I want them to create more social change, especially since the show has such a large young following. 

Checking out and objectification

Lately I have been noticing that myself and female feminist friends talk about hot boyz-a lot. Well we talk about how sexy they are we look at them as we drive by them running and turn around and say to each other how attractive their bodies are.

So what makes this different from when men do it to women?

Is the difference that we are feminist minded, liberal, activist and above all understand that no MEANS no?

My problem with this qualifier is that I have and still know some pretty messed up "feminists", whether in the media, travelers, or ex members of my community.

The second issue of this observation is that most of the people I know take offense when men look at other women. So how do I as a womyn identified feminist help male feminist understand the fine line of looking and objectifying? What/if any are the ABC's to hooking up/checking out in our leftist culture?

I want to look at the site Punks I'd Like To Fuck, which is definitely amazing, it allows the members to take ownership of their sexuality and submit it as they please. They even have this amazing message "There are a million websites dedicated to archiving images that objectify women- reduce them to living fuck-dolls- devalue them as humans- make it appear as though sex is an act of conquering a woman, penetrating her, owning her, essentially erasing her." The site is set up to show an alternative to those other porn sites that have been known to encourage patriarchy, yet this site is not at all appealing to everyone. This site like the title suggests is comprised of pictures of punks.


My number one concern with that: I hope there are people outside of the punk community who wouldn't want to rape me!


I know the site has received flack for having mostly white faces, and they say it is difficult to address the issue if they do not have submissions, and the issue of time to go through submissions. Well hey, who knew that some POC would not feel beautiful in the punk community and therefore might not submit a photo, also if there is such a rigorous acceptance issue then maybe we should address the types of faces that are being posted. If the people running the site are in fact choosing from hundreds of submissions, then why does it seem that most of the people are of one size and race? (since I went on that little rant maybe I should state again that I am not calling anyone a racist or sizest but just pointing out the actions I see through the site).


Well that is all for tonight. Until the next blog, which will probably be about having fun in activism. :)

Book Review: Go Ask Alice

Ok so this was done as an assingment for my girls studies class, and I hate to sound lazy but I am. So I copied and pasted it here.



"Never had anything ever been so beautiful” (33, Go Ask Alice) states the main character when describing her first experience with drugs. Go Ask Alice follows an anonymous girl through her teenage years as she keeps two diaries, it should be noted that this book is based on an actual life along with two journals, however it is important to note that it is considered a work of fiction. The number, gender and age of the editors is not mentioned anywhere in the opening to the book. This poses a difficult position for me the reader. Since I am assuming that these editors used their position of power to make the story more relatable to young girls, however if they were from a different generation or even if they were very close to the girl this might change the story. This is also why I question the actual class of the main character, whom I will call Alice. During the book Alice discusses how her father is a professor at a University, the way their house, family and school is described does make it feel as though the family is upper middle class, if not upper class. The reason I question this and the editors intentions is because it is apparent that contemporary America falls in love with stories about young white, middle class girls that have fallen off the wagon. Either way Alice is presented as an upper middle class white hetero girl who has all of the potential of succeeding in the world.




When Alice’s world opens to us she feels neglected by her parents, deals with sibling rivalry, has body image issues and wants a cute guy to like her. Basically an average teen during the ‘70s, I give this time frame because of the key terms that are used i.e. bread/crumbs mean money, grass means weed, at one point refers to her parents as “the establishment”. These things are important to the overall tone of the book. Since this was during the ‘70s a time where social upheaval was happening, I wonder if that makes her drug escapades more believable. It seems very believable that it is easier to get drugs, pills than alcohol. Alice tells us that her friends found it easier to steal a lot of money from their parents to buy drugs than stealing liquor which they seem to measure to the ounce. This once again brings up the issue of class within Alice’s story. If Alice was from a single parent household on food stamps stealing money from your parent/guardian is not as easy. Her privileged background seems to escape her a lot.



There are very few moments in the book where Alice seems to “get it”. By that I mean not just realize that her actions are not healthy but realize issues of homophobia, classism, racism, and sexism. There were many times when I wanted to scream at her, shake some sense into her and tell her that she has the world ahead of her. If she did not do drugs she would have the easiest life ever. It was not until page 87 that I realized what this book was really supposed to teach me. Alice states “Adolescents have a very rocky insecure time. Grown-ups treat them like children and yet expect them to act like adults. They give them orders like little animals, then expect them to react like mature, and always rational, self-assured persons of legal stature.” Here Alice makes it clear that not only is she caught in this strange limbo but so is everyone else. This limbo does not exist for just upper class white girls but for every teenager. After reading the above sentences I realized that I had forgotten that very same limbo feeling, it all came rushing back. The fact that you began to deal with or became aware of issues like drug addiction, sexual abuse, sexual freedom, and monetary issues, and have little to no training on these issues. Most of our school systems and families tell kids to say no to drugs, to practice abstinence; we rarely let them know how to handle such issues. In fact many times throughout the book Alice wishes she had a better connection with her mother so that they could talk about problems she is having. Alice does at one point develop a good trusting relationship with her parents however this may come at a moment too late. Alice taught me that girl’s studies is more about learning about young women, it is about understanding how to reach young women caught in that limbo between adulthood and childhood.





Anonymous. Go Ask Alice. Simon & Schuster, 1972.