femme-nest

According to a UGA press release issued Tuesday, the Institute for Women's Studies will be moving to Gilbert Hall, which also houses Romance Languages. What an exciting victory for Women's Studies students and WSSO-ers!

Today, my partner and I are celebrating three wonderful years together. Our relationship has been one of the most incredible parts of my life, and I'm so thrilled to be sharing myself with such an amazingly kind, warm, sensitive, brilliant, and caring person. He's also a progressive feminist-environmentalist, which definitely sweetens the pot!

We celebrated last night by having dinner out and cuddling for the rest of the evening. Today we're just doing laundry and grocery shopping, but that will be fun too. Low key, yes, but perfectly fitting for our relationship.

It may have become clear based on the side links that I'm a Women's Studies student at the University of Georgia; if not, I'm a Women's Studies student at the University of Georgia. So much for anonymity! Feminist scholarship is one of my passions, but as much as I love the academic theorizing that happens when I immerse myself in feminist literature or write an exciting paper on philosophy or epistemology, nothing in the world compares to the feeling I get when I participate in feminist activism. Feminists are some of the most incredible people with whom to rally, protest, and march, and I seriously love love LOVE coming together with like-minded individuals to fight for progressive change and social justice.

In this vein, I'm a co-facilitator of the Women's Studies Student Organization on campus, and we recently organized a rally to address the seriously appalling state of the Women's Studies building at UGA. You can read some of the nitty-gritty details elsewhere, but suffice it to say that the building is literally falling apart. Our rally was a huge success, and a lot of students, faculty, and staff came out to wield signs and chant in front of the building. The event fostered a great sense of community and purpose among Women's Studies students, and taking part in such direct action was really exciting on our conservative campus.

Fortunately and unfortunately, this event boasted the highest participation we've had at an event or meeting all year. While it was great to have so many students rally for such an important cause, I wish these students would be as enthusiastically involved in other aspects of this campaign and our other efforts (such as working to get a Women's Center on campus and organizing for Choice USA) as well. After the rally, the issue disappeared from everyone's radar for about a week; when you're trying to make administration types listen to you and act on your behalf, a week long silence is essentially activist suicide. The school newspaper finally covered the issue today, so that will hopefully get people talking again, but I can't believe we just let it disappear like this.

I think taking feminist action on a largely conservative campus can be a really empowering, subversive, and ultimately radical experience, and I'm sorely disappointed that we've only been able to keep an active membership of about seven students at our WSSO meetings. However, while I'm disheartened right now, I think it's absolutely essential that I work my ass off to get as many students as possible involved in our organization. How else can we ensure a strong feminist presence and voice on campus?

It's here. The inevitable "feminist on the election" post. My thoughts aren't quite focused on Sarah Palin, though. That's another post for another day. I'd really like to articulate, as much as possible, my impressions of this election more generally. First of all, I will be voting for Barack Obama on November 4th. It feels odd for me to express that so bluntly, especially since I've had some serious reservations about that decision. To me, Barack Obama is not the best candidate--like his republican rival, he receives support and contributions from corporate entities that are about as feminist and liberal as Sarah Palin. Yeah. I don't want my candidate to be mired in corporate interests, taking money from capitalist backers who see themselves as Monopoly's "Rich Uncle Pennybags" when they look in the mirror. Barack Obama has also essentially rescinded his support of or started backing away from several key issues for me--namely, a more socialist healthcare model and queer rights.

This, however, does not mean that I was ever even considering voting for John McCain. I'm so-far-left-leaning-that-i'm-falling-off-my-chair liberal, probably best described as a socialist feminist in my political views, that to vote for John McCain would be akin to lighting my hair on fire. I just could not even consider it. No, my ideal candidate would be someone like Cynthia McKinney, who is constantly situated as the radical, threatening, crazy, "Angry Black Woman" in all caps. She's certainly one intersection where sexism and racism collide. Frontlining the green party ticket, McKinney has been sorely overlooked in this election as a strong leader who would bring about the changes I want to see in this nation. Running on the first all woman of color ticket with Rosa Clemente, McKinney and the green party are being dismissed this election year. She is, in my view, the most feminist candidate and actually addresses things like "health care, education, wealth development, and ending enduring disparities, corporate greed, and the war machine." She also hits reproductive rights head on and acknowledges and challenges forced sterilization, a topic of great interest to me. I'm also impressed with her ideas on domestic violence and working class issues. So basically, I'm thrilled with her platform and her views.

Unfortunately, she's going nowhere this election. So I turn to Barack Obama, who I see as a viable alternative who will address at least some of the issues that matter to me and my family. That brings me to my next point, and something that definitely solidified my choice of Barack Obama for this election. I will not do anything that may help John McCain and Sarah Palin get elected. Living in a decidedly red state, I cannot in good conscience cast a vote for anyone other than Barack Obama, especially given the vitriolic, violent, and downright disgusting race-baiting the McCain camp is employing of late. Hearing these ignorant McCain supporters shout such overt racist epithets and hateful threats literally makes me sick; it also illustrates that racism in this nation is alive and thriving, and that John McCain and Sarah Palin will fuel that racist fire as much as they need to before November 4th. God. I am ashamed to belong to a nation that produces these kinds of individuals and nurses such a racist milieu. White people, poor white people like me, have come to associate "Black" with "Angry," then with "Arab," "Arab" with "Muslim," "Muslim" with "BAD" and "Terrorist." But you don't need me to tell you that. It's obvious to everyone but those who are mired in it, shouting that racism doesn't exist, that race is just a "card" to be played, while employing racist tactics against Barack Obama. I am, for lack of a better word, sick.

So what does all this amount to? Not much, really. Just a hope that, come November, I can be happy in my decision to vote for Barack Obama, not my perfect candidate but a pretty damn good one nonetheless. More broadly, however, I hope that this election will illuminate the seedy racist underbelly of our society, show it to the world, and make each of us who engage in racism, passively or actively, confront our misconceptions and privileges. Here's hoping.

My spring semester has been over for about a month; I've been recovering at home. So many people assume that gender studies is a soft discipline, hardly "academic," but three WMST courses and a Feminist Philosophy class kept me on my toes this semester, to say the least. I'm thrilled that my bio/politics of women's reproduction professor agreed to do a directed study with me in the fall, but I have a feeling that her reading list is going to be pretty challenging. A lot of feminist science studies texts, hopefully a bit of queer theory or postmodern thought, but we'll see. Right now I'm just trying to take it easy and do a bit of the reading I couldn't get to during the semester or that I had to speed through for a class. I've re-read a bit of socialist and global feminist theory from Tong's amazing reader, and I hope to read some stuff on gender feminism soon. I'm also looking into some stats on hormone replacement therapy usage in my state for a paper I'd like to present in the fall. I'm making myself sound busy, but most of this reading and thinking and researching takes place in the wee hours of the morning before I fall asleep each night. I'm actually pretty lazy during the day.

My big project this summer has been taking a statistics class at my local community college. I spent two wonderful years here before transferring to my current university, and although most of the credits from my AA in English applied to the Women's Studies degree I'm seeking now, I still need a few prerequisites. Hence, STAT 2000. The atmosphere here is definitely different, and most people would probably say they prefer a prestigious institution to a hometown community college, but I like it. I love how so many different people come here and illustrate that a college education isn't just for young, wealthy white people. I love how my college offers something different for a rural region full of factory workers yet does nothing to shame working class women and men who cannot or choose not to attend college. Very little academic elitism, no huge gap between campus service workers and students (who are usually one in the same), just accessible education that empowers latino and latina students, working class older women, and men who have worked in carpet mills all their lives. Of course it has its flaws, as every institution does, but my rosy romanticizing blinds me to them now. I'm sure I'll rediscover them in due time.

So that's my summer, more or less.

I have a Feminist Philosophy paper due in approximately 65 hours, so of course my desire to write about something else entirely is raging.

Recently, I saw Roger Calero, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) 2008 Presidential Candidate, speak at my University. Man, was it exciting to hear someone openly and unashamedly talk about abolishing capitalism and patriarchy. I had chills (well, the room was cold, but still)! Only several people attended his lecture, but the discussion afterward was really insightful and engaging. Feministbot that I am, I pointed out that throughout history, many radical women have sought to eradicate the capitalist system in order to move toward a socialist state. When I asked about any feminist activity within the SWP, however, he insisted that a separate group of feminists was not necessary within their group and that to create a specific women's space would be "paternalistic."

At first, I was a little ticked off that he assumed the feminist perspective to be irrelevant to his party; it's not as if the exploitation of women can't occur under socialism! And as far as I'm concerned, there aren't nearly enough feminist spaces in politics as it is. However, his group is actively working to end the subjugation of women while rallying support for a powerful labor party in the United States. Feminist ideals like reproductive rights, equal pay, subsidized child care, and socialized medicine aren't relegated to the margins of their philosophy, but are rooted at the very center of it. To me, that's incredibly exciting and empowering. Women, working on the frontlines to achieve their goals, are making their voices heard within this party, and the issues important to them are important to everyone involved.

Now, I'm not implying that one shouldn't identify as feminist or evaluate Calero's politics through a feminist framework. Those things are absolutely necessary to ensure that women aren't marginalized under any political or economic system, capitalist, socialist, or whatever. However, I do think it's fucking awesome that "women's issues" are not, to Calero at least, special interest problems to be tackled by someone else. In some ways, socialist feminists have transcended the "room of our own" and are involved in an entire political party that sees our concerns as valid and worth pursuing in the effort to radically change society.

I plan to work with the Campus Progressives to bring Alyson Kennedy, SWP Vice Presidential Candidate, to speak soon. Exciting!

Hola!

I'm a twenty-something college woman in the Southeast U.S. with an itch to express myself while killing time between papers and classes. Femme-nest will be a space for me to explore my ever-evolving feminist sensibility, growing socialist leanings, and struggling vegetarian identity; here, I plan to voice my daily observations as well as my views on eco-issues, workers rights, reproductive liberty, and politics through a decidedly feminist lens. Prepare for infrequent ramblings, random insights, and anything else I find myself wanting to articulate to total strangers.

Huzzah!