Here are some of my favorite clips (including her Exotic, Erotic piece):

This is possibly my favorite poem of Hammad’s, on 9/11. Beautiful & moving:

Another piece on the fallout of 9/11 (with an all too brief introduction by the ever-adorable Mos Def):

I’d love to post about how the world has become full of rainbows and unicorns and smiling mushrooms (hey, it’s my fantasy okay?) since Obama has taken office. However, I regret to report that not much has changed. This of course, is not President Obama’s fault at all – in reality I see that the people around me are still caught up in “everydayness.” Americans are still completely complacent and apathetic, at least among the folks I’ve encountered lately. Take for example the following conversation I had with a friend of mine:

Friend: “I know you are a feminist, but I am not going to lie. I’m anti-feminist myself.”
Me: “Why is that? Don’t you want women to have equal rights?”
Friend: “That’s not what feminism is about. Feminism is the opposite of misogyny…it’s a bunch of women who hate men and want women to have more rights than men.”
Me: “Uh, no actually most feminists want everyone to have equal rights and privilege…it’s about raising everyone up rather than bringing anyone down.”
Friend: “Whatever, as long as I can live my life without being bothered, I don’t care.”

I didn’t pursue this conversation because I had an essay due the next morning. Though I wish I had the time to say this to her face, I feel like it would be a pointless gesture. So, dear reader, I will share my thoughts with you instead.

I hope it is obvious that her definition of feminism is completely off-base. Sure, there might be some women who hate men, just as there are tons of men who dislike women and treat them poorly. I feel it is a fair assessment to say that these man-hating women are in the minority.

As for her comment about not wanting to be “bothered”…What the hell? You’re white, you’re rich, you live in a McMansion on the coast of California and your dad pays your 50K college tuition by check. You don’t work a job and you are unconcerned by grades or your future. What exactly do you have to be bothered by? It’s the people like me who fight for your right to an abortion, who fight to save the environment and reduce the excess of consumerism – while you put cans and plastic into the trash and shop at American Apparel. I don’t mean this to be a personal attack – in fact, many of the students I go to college with fit this description. Apathy is rampant among many college students these days – their biggest worry is where to score their next eighth of marijuana. Where are the sentiments that fueled the student protests in the 1960’s?

In the end, it is conversations like these that inspire me to blog. I want to engage with people who are open-minded, spread the word about issues I find important and attempt to make some small change in the world through my writing. I’ve already learned so much from blogging and reading other blogs – I feel like I can articulate and defend my beliefs much more so now that I have written and discussed them with other bloggers and readers.

I blog to combat my own detachment from social and political issues. It’s hard to think about upsetting issues like global warming and sexism all day, every day. It is too easy to ignore these problems and focus on fashion, or school, or hobbies. This blog keeps me aware and keeps me engaged with current events. The biggest obstacle I see to changing the world for the better is collective apathy.

So, I leave you with this quote from Mumia Abu-Jamal:

“If you ain’t angry, you ain’t paying attention.”

So, that said, why and how am I a feminist? What is the connection between feminism and my lifestyle?

The light-hearted answer that I give is that it’s impossible to like sex as much as I do, be a girl, and not be a feminist. As a female who likes to have lots of fun, frequently, with a variety of partners (safely!), I need to be outspoken and confident about the fact that I am doing exactly what I want. If I do not make it overwhelmingly clear that I am happy with my choices, the assumption is that I should be ashamed of them. I am a feminist because the world expects me to be a virgin, or at least monogamous, and I cannot tolerate either of those options.

I think one of the main reasons people are so dismayed by my sex life is that Americans seldom engage with female sexual pleasure. In high school sex ed we learn all about scary sex. We’re told abstinence is safe, sex can lead to STDs, condoms are not always safe, sex can lead to pregnancy, and birth control is not always safe. We learn about not having heteronormative sex because male orgasms make kids. Since female orgasms are not necessary for procreation, and sex ed is about preventative rather than pleasurable sexuality, female sexuality is erased. I believe the acknowledgment of male pleasure is closely tied to the fact that all of my male friends have had orgasms, and the erasure of female pleasure contributes to many of my female friends’ complete lack of awareness of their sexuality. I will continue to be a feminist at least until all my friends start climaxing.

Another major obstruction to healthy sexuality is associating someone’s self-worth with the number of sexual partners they have had. For men, worth is generally viewed as increasing with every additional partner, and for females the opposite is true. This is especially clear in our societies treatment of virginity, something for which men are ridiculed and females are rewarded (up to $3.8 million apparently). I remember that right after I started having sex, I told my mom that I was thinking about having sex in order to gauge what her reaction would be. She urged me to wait longer, saying “if you start having sex now, you’ll probably sleep with other people before you get married, and when you finally do find the right person you’ll feel bad about that and wish you hadn’t done it.” This year I emailed my mom and suggested a “performative model” for understanding sex. In this model, I explained, virgins would be analogous to amateur musicians with lofty dreams but little skill, practice would make perfect, and new partners would be seen as an exciting avenue for growth. I am a feminist because I have claimed my number, rather than let it own me.

These are some of the things I mention when I talk to people about feminism. Lots of people, male and female, have never questioned their understanding of gender and sexuality before and they find it really interesting. Many will even add additional reasons to the why I’m a feminist list, whether or not they have had experience with feminism before our conversation. bell hooks was very right when she suggested that most people do not identify as feminists simply because they are unaware of what it means.

Despite these positive responses, I only rarely tell people the serious reason I’m a feminist. For a long time I never talked about being date raped because, like many girls, I didn’t realize what happened to me was rape. There were no strangers, no weapons, and no date rape drugs. There was only a very long argument, which began when I said that I wasn’t in the mood for sex. My boyfriend yelled at me until I started to wonder if I was being as mean as he said I was for refusing to do “just one little thing for him”. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong, but I knew it had to be really bad since he was so angry. Eventually I stopped saying no because that seemed to be what he wanted. Over a year later I read an article about acquaintance rape and finally realized I had been justified after all in not wanting to have sex. Today, I am a feminist because I think that if I had been then I might have been more aware of my rights and because I think if he had been then he might have respected my choice more.

Feminism remains essential in today’s world, because women and others continue to be oppressed by the structure and assumptions of our society. It is my hope that by encouraging everyone to work towards a feminist cause that they feel passionate about we will be able to create a movement strong enough to make a dramatic positive impact. If everyone were to become a little bit of a feminist, I think it would start to dismantle the constructions of aggressive males and acquiescing females, making our world a safer and more egalitarian place.

I personally want to help enable women to say both yes and no to sex, because I think consent is an essential component of achieving control over our bodies, which in turn is necessary to becoming both free and equal. My style of feminism has only barely started to engage with issues of race and class, because as a privileged white middle class woman I only recently became aware these issues really existed. Similarly, my knowledge about and contributions to the feminist movement have been very blog-centric, because this is an easy avenue to me. My efforts to expand beyond the internet have led to discussions with my friends, family, and coworkers but still not very far into other communities. That’s why I need you to become and remain a feminist. Please, address my flaws. Talk about the things I don’t realize matter and talk to the people I haven’t met.

Tell them why and how you are a feminist.

I think I can trace my feminism back to my mother and father, both staunch conservatives while I was growing up. My father was in the military and my mother was very open to being dominated; she would do what ever he wanted, almost without question. Even at eight years old, something about that didn’t seem right. I felt bad for my mom, like she was getting a raw deal. I don’t want to give off the impression that my father was abusive or that he demanded that sort of treatment, but it just seemed to be how it was. At one point, my dad went overseas for a year and my mom took a nose-dive right to the couch, barely moving from her comfort zone. Without my father around she didn’t know what to do; it was during that year that I came to the conclusion, without a doubt, that things shouldn’t be that way. No one person, man or woman, should be so dependent on another person that they cannot live their life without them. Now, I know that what happened to my mother was not simply a function of her devotion to my father, but also as a part of a series of mental conditions she later became diagnosed with, but the impression was still there. Some things never leave you.

My family wasn’t the only formative element in my development, throughout the years, I became friends with many different women. I don’t mean that I made female friends in an effort to have sex with them, although I am ashamed to admit that was something I did in my younger years. But no one is perfect. As I formed these friendships I began to notice the kind of things that other men my age were doing and saying about the women I knew and didn’t know. Women to most of them were nothing more than objects of desire, things to be had and used until they were done with them. Had they taken the time to get to know the girls that they were talking about, they could have realized how much more they had to offer than “ass, titties, and blow jobs.” I began to hear stories from more of my friends than I ever thought possible. These were about guys who would force themselves into a position in which my friends felt that they had to sleep with them. It was rape through emotional force as far as I saw, and it made me sick. I can’t tell you how many girls I knew that would go out on dates with young soldiers–fresh out of basic, full of testosterone, and a sense of entitlement–who would come back and cry to me about being raped. They were all too scared to say anything, because on post (like everywhere) it was always assumed that she had been willing to have sex or she wouldn’t have been in the guys barracks. If she was lucky, the guy would be charged with statutory rape and maybe get kicked out of the Army. At least half of the women I have dated throughout the years have confided in me that their fathers, uncles, brothers, or neighbors had molested them. One in particular had been molested at (roughly) six years old; she still has nightmares to this day about those terrible events. I am thankful everyday that the woman I love more than I have ever loved has never had to deal with that. I hope to someday leave a world where no one else will. Some things never leave you.

In high school I discovered radical politics. At some point most people toy with ideas like socialism and anarchism, or their polar opposites (although I’ve never known anyone to seriously espouse the virtues of fascism.) I read about populist movements, workers rights, and class warfare. I read Noam Chomsky, Rigoberta Menchu, Karl Marx, and Emma Goldman. I came to the conclusion early on that equality and egalitarianism meant everyone and not only a certain type of people. I have marched in LGBT rallies, seen inflammatory political speeches given by some of the most intelligent people I have ever met, and I have sat through class after class designed to teach me the importance of history (all of which were led by women who I could never imagine being superior to simply because they had a vagina). My studies of history have shown me how far we’ve come and how much more work we as a society need to do. Women are still underrepresented in our history books. They were rich and vibrant characters, not just fashion accessories.

I am not the best candidate for becoming a feminist, but here I am. I grew up in a Southern, conservative, military family and spent much of my time in southern conservative, military towns. I am American, white, and male, which makes me part of the most privileged group of people to ever walk this earth, but here I am. I have learned lessons that most men will never learn, because some things will never leave you.

I’m a pretty big fan of sex myself and am quite aware the effect depression has on one’s sexual libido. However, does government funding really need to be allocated to the PORN INDUSTRY!? Last I heard, porn was a multi-billion dollar industry. Come on, Larry & Joe, I know you’re probably trying to be cute. Maybe you’re even attempting to make a point about the fact that “billion dollar bailout” was the “weapons of mass destruction” of 2008. Or, most likely, you’re just really fucking greedy. Either way, I hope that Congress ignores this ridiculous petition.

Let’s take a minute to review why exactly Hustler and Girls Gone Wild are the last companies the government should be funding:

Would it be the exploitation of under-aged and intoxicated girls on Joe Francis’ videos? Would it be the fact that Hustler, just like Playboy, is one of those magazines that feminists like me are always harping about? You know, because they feature photo-shopped skinny women and inundate men with the idea that real women have double-D’s and lie around all day masturbating for men’s pleasure, not their own. Maybe it’s because Joe Francis himself should be in jail for rape, among many other crimes (check out this article Harlequin wrote a few months ago, and this expose on Francis in the Los Angeles Times for more information).

The thought of the government shelling out taxpayer’s dollars to these companies enrages me. Luckily, I doubt Congress will give this petition much thought; they do have far more important things to discuss – the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Barack Obama’s new administration, and so on. I’m pretty sure our Senators and House Representatives don’t really care if our men (and yes, the majority of consumers of Girls Gone Wild and Hustler are men, surprise, surprise) have their porno mags and $9.99 videos of drunk girls taking off their clothes.

Read the full article here. If your blood isn’t boiling yet, just read this: “Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.” What’s next? Hollywood asking for a bailout because all those damn teenagers are downloading their movies illegally? Microsoft asking for some loans because they are being slaughtered by Apple’s Macbook?

What are your thoughts?

Firstly, if asked “feminist or not a feminist?” my answer would be “feminist,” without a doubt, but I have never been one to vocally oppose the pressures women receive in our society. “Someone else will do it,” I always thought, and in actuality they did, although much fewer than what is ideal. It wasn’t until last spring when I took a course called “Comparative Perspectives on the Body” that I began to question and open dialogue with the people around me about so-called “societal norms” when it came to women. In the second month of class, we were on the topic of menstruation and the ways societies around the world have approached, ignored, commented on this natural female process. As we read about the influences of society on a woman when she is first starting to understand her body and its processes, I realized that I myself was a victim to American and Japanese society.

I started proud at age 12, (I was a real woman now!) but as the cramps worsened, the pads gave me rashes and my mom told me I must always be discrete about my period, I learned to hate that time of the month and can even recall spending a lot of time peeling the wrapper off of my pads in order to keep quiet, so that my dad didn’t know that I had my period.

Many of our readings for class confronted similar experiences, but still more shocking were the ways in which our society, specifically science, subconsciously brainwashed us into this shame. That’s right, science! I was skeptical too, but the evidence was in front of me. I don’t have the exact text that I read for the class, but Merriam-Webster says menstruation is:

“a discharging of blood, secretions, and tissue debris from the uterus that recurs in nonpregnant breeding-age primate females at approximately monthly intervals and that is considered to represent a readjustment of the uterus to the nonpregnant state following proliferative changes accompanying the preceding ovulation.”

Does that sound pretty normal to you? Perhaps it does, but look closely at the word choice: “discharging” and “debris”? If you’re still skeptical, I’m not surprised, but it’s when you look at descriptions for other similar bodily that “discharges debris” that you start to realize that even the most unbiased of sources are telling women to be ashamed of their period. The periodic process that our stomach lining undergoes for instance, I recall a quoted textbook mentioning that it was “shedding away old cells in preparation for renewal,” and “cleansing our bodies.” Pretty different huh?

All of that to tell you that period=bad has been ingrained in us by society in the most unexpected ways. Phew, didn’t mean it to be so long-winded. Anyways, realizing this was important to me, even if it didn’t lessen my cramps or take the hassle out of buying pads and tampons every month or two. At least the empowering readings in class about menstruation made me proud to have my period. I could now confidently think, “Yeah I have my period, but it’s a part of my womanhood and I’m damn proud of it.” Eventually, I started voicing these opinions, and when my male friends would cringe at the word “menstruation” I would tape tampons to their doors as “gifts.” Whether that was mature or not, I was no longer embarrassed to let it be known that I had my period, and that was a pretty big leap forward looking at my past.

All right, so now comes the amazing part. Blogs. There were so many blogs I read during that time of tampon presents and empowerment that were the exact catalysts I needed to keep up this dialogue about menstruation, women and our society. It was on an uneventful afternoon when I stumbled upon a blog entry about cloth pads, menstrual cups and other alternative menstrual products. “WHAT?” I gawked in shock. Reusing the same fabric over and over again? Putting a silicone cup in your vagina? I curled up in appall with the words on the screen. I dismissed this entry only 10 minutes later due to all lack of maturity. But a few weeks later, I saw another blogger talking about the “fabulous” menstrual cup she was using. Now I was curious. I scoured the internet for more information on alternative menstrual products, and what do you know, there were entire forums devoted to these things!

Could it be? Oh my goodness! It’s that big? In my vagina? Using my fingers? It collects the blood? Do I have to look at the blood? YES?! Noooo…

It goes on, but you know, after being exposed to something for so long, you start to build immunity. And after you build that immunity, you start to warm up to that idea. That’s exactly what happened to me when two months later I purchased my first menstrual cup. I had heard that the learning curve for these cups were Much Steeper than learning to put tampons in, so naturally I was nervous. The first few times I put it in, I could hardly bear the pain. I finally surrendered and realized that I must be doing something wrong, which I was. I watched a tutorial on youtube (Thank You Youtube!!!) and tried it again and voila, it didn’t hurt!

I remember going around campus that day telling all of my friends that I had a menstrual cup in and wasn’t that so cool? Most of them were just as appalled as I was when I first read about it. A few months later, now, I’ve become a sort of unofficial endorser of these small silicone cups. I even facilitated a workshop on alternative menstrual products at my school in October, and have been telling other people about it who have never heard about it, or if they have, believe in the myths.

“How can you bear to see all of that blood and stick your fingers up there?” they ask me, but it’s almost weird how comfortable I am with it now. I mean, did you know that menstrual blood is good for plants? Before you cast me off as a crazy lady who feeds her plants blood (Little Shop of Horrors anyone?), hear me out, because our periods are a natural part of our bodies. So are other excretions, which in some places of the world are still being used as fertilizer. That’s not my point though. My point is that I feel completely comfortable with my period now, and I feel more in touch (literally) with my body and therefore my womanhood because I know the curves and the bumps that define my vagina.

Other reasons to try alternative menstrual products? The National Women’s Health Network, estimate that in the United States alone, over 12 billion pads and 7 million tampons are used once and disposed of every year. You might also be able to guess that they take a very long time to break down and also release toxic chemicals into the earth. Not only are they harmful for the earth, but also they’re expensive, can be bad for your body, and are a hassle to carry around/be fully stocked.

I reached another milestone a couple of weeks ago when my mom called me to ask me if I could buy her a menstrual cup and teach her how to use it during Thanksgiving break. Then, when my dad came to pick me up I boasted about the workshop I held. He looked painfully uncomfortable but I persisted, and he said, “That’s very good M.” It’s at least a start.

If you’re interested in alternative menstrual products, here’s a list of helpful sites I made for the workshop.

I am far from being as eloquent or articulate with my writing as my cousin or Dollyann, but this is my story (at least part of it), and I hope it opened some of your eyes.