I got married once and I didn’t change my name. Wanna hear the how and why and what I think about this sexist tradition? Check it out on Feminspire! Hit me up in the comments section over there and let’s talk about it.
Posted by Sara on March 16, 2013
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/i-love-being-a-luckey-why-i-will-never-change-my-name/
If you identify as a woman, you’ve likely been subtly or overtly conditioned to always be polite, to smile, to take up as small an amount of space as possible, to not impose. And with that, you’ve probably had your boundaries crossed or not respected by a drunk dude at a bar, or a sober dude at a bar looking for drunk women to impose himself upon. It has happened to my friends and it has happened to me, and I can’t fucking stand it. When these situations arise, it can be a challenge to overcome a lifetime of training that teaches us to not offend, especially in a culture that often treats women as objects or public property. I am 31-years-old and I did not start actively putting my needs, wants and boundaries first until I was 30. That’s a lot of time spent trying to wriggle out of uncomfortable situations with excuses, or worse, being stuck in a situation that I felt like I could not extricate myself from. But the thing is, we don’t have to be polite, and it is totally and completely okay for us to state our boundaries and expectations and to demand our space.
Posted by Sara on March 8, 2013
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/i-dont-owe-you-a-smile-or-my-time/
Hey there! I have a ton of topics lined up to write about and I will be getting to those beginning this weekend and over the course of the next week. There’s a lot that’s been going on around the world and in my brain and I want to talk about it with all of you. Also of note and something I want to discuss here is that I am going to start doing a weekly column over at Feminspire! I will be doing editorial, beauty, and news. If you’re familiar with the way I write, you know that I approach current events through a sociopolitical, feminist lens and that intersectionality is a primary focus for me in my writing and in my life. I’m looking forward to this new adventure and hope that you will join me on it and meet me in the comments section over at Feminspire to carry on the conversation. I will keep you posted as this new venture progresses and let you know when my first pieces are up. I can’t wait to see you there!
Posted by Sara on March 1, 2013
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/im-going-to-start-writing-for-feminspire-and-i-want-you-to-join-the-conversation/
I think I’m going to start compiling an entry of different ways women are being fucked over as visible in the news. Not a single day goes by that I don’t read something and wonder where this hatred of women comes from. Sometimes men are the perpetrators and sometimes women are the ones displaying the misogyny. This time, it’s a woman.
Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R) introduced House Bill 206 which aims to make it so that women who have been raped and then obtain an abortion could be charged with a felony for tampering with evidence. The bill would go into effect in July of this year. The bill defines tampering with evidence as ‘destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.’
In this scenario, a woman who has been raped and wants an abortion would now be able to be tried for tampering with evidence in an attempt to prevent prosecution of a crime. We are living in a rape culture wherein a woman who reports her rape is already facing ridicule, potential physical harm, ostracization, and further trauma. The backlash from law enforcement, community and family can be immense. Of rapes reported in America, only 25% lead to an arrest. .Think about that. That’s a terrifyingly low number. Less than 3% of rapes reported are false reports. In a culture where sexual violence against women is common and often unchecked, where our right to reproductive control is constantly in jeopardy, what does this mean?
It means that once again there is another attempt to chip away at Roe v. Wade. Once again, a crime against a woman is not as important as humbling a woman and controlling her body. Once again, rather than taking time to prosecute the very real crime of rape, an attempt is being made to instead prosecute women who refuse to be human incubators. The shit of it all is that Cathrynn Brown is making the ugly claim that she is doing this to help women. She is insisting that this bill would be a measure to crack down on rapists and not a way to punish and demean women. ‘“New Mexico needs to strengthen its laws to deter sex offenders,” said Brown. “By adding this law in New Mexico, we can help to protect women across our state.” In her mind, women who have been traumatized by rape will benefit from the trauma of being forced to carry a baby they don’t want and to then give birth to their rapists child. If you want to protect women, you don’t cause them harm and trauma. You offer them unconditional support in the wake of their sexual assault or rape. You don’t re-victimize them to prove a point.
Reporting a rape can be a trying and difficult situation that can sometimes put the victim under more duress and scrutiny than the rapist. A bill like this can only make it harder for women to report their rapes as doing so could mean they cannot obtain an abortion if they want to without being charged with a crime. Bills like this take away the constitutional personhood of the mother in favor of the fetus, all under the guise of protecting women. This cannot happen.
Aborted fetuses contain dna matter. The biological evidence is in that tissue. If a raped woman wants an abortion and dna is needed, get it from the aborted tissue. And also consider that not every woman that reports her rape wants to press charges. Some women report their rape so that they can get a restraining order. Other women report their rape so that they can help the police demonstrate a pattern of assault against the assailant. Not every woman who reports her rape wants to press charges and in this scenario, even reporting it means you cannot have an abortion or you could be charged with a crime.
What do you think?
Posted by Sara on January 24, 2013
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/rape-abortion-and-house-bill-206/
I want to talk about beauty products and not be a dick about it. I really don’t think there’s a way I can move from talking about the Newtown Massacre, to my brain injury, to racism, feminism and intersectionality and move on to lipstick without feeling like a callous bag of dicks. So I started a beauty blog where I can talk about that stuff separately and often and not worry about the topics clashing and colliding. Here’s a link! I hope that if you enjoy beauty products being discussed in a conversational tone that you will stop on by and chat about them for a bit. If you like the super-saccahrine tone of a lot of beauty blogs, this might not be the best fit for you. But come lurk any way!
If you’re into it (and you totally should be because I am awesome, so truuuust meeeee!) hop on over and read about why Maybelline Vivids make you look like a drunken hobo clown, or how to be so dope n’ clean with tan towels.
Huzzah!
Posted by Sara on January 3, 2013
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/i-want-to-talk-about-beauty-products-and-not-be-a-dick-about-it/
In January of 2012, I was hit by a semi while driving into work. The resulting brain injury caused a great amount of memory loss in additon to a loss of cognitive abilities and mental acuity. The piece is published over on xojane.com, and you can read about it by clicking here.
Posted by Sara on January 3, 2013
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/i-got-hit-by-a-semit-and-suffered-a-tbi-heres-a-glimpse-of-what-that-is-like/
In my previous post about Newtown, I noted that some people were pointing to an absence or rejection of god as a reason for this horrible thing happening. I said I would not give it credence, and I mean that. I will not even link to examples of it here. You can do a quick google search and find many examples. Here I will detail why I think that attitude has no place in any dialogue and an explanation of why I think people need to start really pushing back against that attitude and those bigoted behaviors.
Let’s begin with an absence of proof. There is no proof of any god actually existing. Widespread belief =/= proof. We can not compile data, employ the empirical method, or gather statistics because there is no measurable or real and observable data. I fail to see how pointing a finger at something that can not be measured, observed, or changed in quantifiable ways is helpful or productive. Beyond that, since the dominant religion in America is Christianity and since the people speaking most loudly about this are Christians, what does that mean?
It means they are bigoted assholes. That’s what it means.
The idea being put forth here is that it is the rejection of the Christian God that has brought this upon us. Why do we tolerate that nonsense? Atheists, Jews, Muslims, everybody that isn’t Christian…are you ok with this attitude? They aren’t talking about your God, they are only talking about theirs. They do not think you all believe in the same god and they do believe that your god is the wrong one. Atheist or humanist? Forget about it. To them, you are instigators of this phenomenon. The types of statements being made by some Christians that an absence of god is at the forefront of this occurring insinuates that:
1. Absence of Christian God results in mass shootings.
2. Presence of other faiths, atheism and humanism are responsible for shootings
3. Their god kills children in schools to illustrate that he belongs in schools.
This is so stupid, bigoted and offensive. More people need to start getting offended by these statements on the basis of their bigotry and prejudice and to push back against it than to even criticize it for the lack of sense that it makes. Yes, it’s illogical. Also, it’s really bigoted agaisnt non-christians and non-believers. There needs to be push back and opposition to the statements, not just on the basis of these statments being illogical and unproveable, but on the very discriminatory bigoted, and prejudicial nature of them. They scapegoat all other belief systems as ‘other’ and cast them in a deviant light. I am appalled that this shit gets said and the general outcry seems to be one of ‘NUH UH! GOD IS LOVING!’ and not more of ‘Your bigoted bullshit will not stand’. This Christian privilege should not go unchecked.
It won’t stand. Speak up, push back, let it be known. This shit is idotic and we will not put up with it.
And if your god is so weak and pitiful that he can’t stop massacres in schools unless we pray to him in schools…he’s not really much of a god, is he? If his way of showing displeasure at abortion (yes, that’s been said) is to allow somebody or inspire somebody to shoot up a school, your god might be an asshole.
Posted by Sara on December 20, 2012
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/absence-of-god-as-a-reason-is-bigoted-and-offensive/
What happened in Newtown is horrific and overwhelmingly sad. I’m assuming that if you heard about it, read about it, were close or distant from it that your life was altered or affected in some way, even if that way was only to feel sorrow for a few moments. Immediately following the shooting twitter, facebook and news sources started in with the opinions on what was the cause and what is and is not ok to talk about and when. You know. The usual tangling up the discourse and telling people how they are allowed to feel or not feel or how they are allowed or not allowed to react to horrific things in their world. We do not have to buy into this. It is possible and perfectly fine for anybody and everybody to try and figure out the cause of horrible things when they occur. It is also ok to feel whatever you are feeling and want to talk about it. I saw a lot of silencing, like in this image
This was the first post about it in my Facebook newsfeed. I disagree with it.
where people would declare that now was not the time to talk about mental illness, gun control, racism, or whatever other thing makes them uncomfortable. Now is the time. It is always the time. How many mass shootings have we had this year? Are we not averaging out a new one every couple of months? When would be a better time to talk about it? A week before the next one, a week after? Let’s not put this off any longer.
Now is the right time. It’s always the right time. We cannot hope to decrease the amount of violence in our culture without engaging in an open, honest, and ongoing discourse that allows us to wade through this and find answers. It needs to be ongoing. It must be ongoing. We also do not need to assume that there is one root cause behind mass shootings. It is possible and likely that there are multiple conditions that lead to these horrors and that we will not find one lone, isolated and magical cause. It’s a cultural illness, a thing that once was an aberration but that is now becoming a norm. So we should talk about it now and often and we should separate out the issues so that we can look at how they intersect and what can be done and what we personally can change to make a small difference that could eventually be a big difference.
Here is a compilation of some tweets that discuss various topics considered to be the cause or partial cause of this phenomenon of violence.
gun control, mental illness, god, masculinity…nobody is wrong except for the god people.
The tangled conversational tropes has some pointing to a lack of gun control as the cause, while others are pointing toward an absence or rejection of god, untreated and unfettered mental illness, or an american concept of masculinity that is rigid, limiting and harmful.
The only one I consider to be ‘wrong’ is the god one. I don’t think it warrants any discussion here and I will discuss why in a separate post. So moving on to actual points of discussion that make sense:
Mental Illness: Mental illness was brought up immediately. People generally seemed to be more comfortable and willing to talk about and point a finger toward mental illness than to tdiscuss gun control. I found this odd primarily because it was not known for certain whether or not Adam Lanza had a mental illness, but it was known with absolute certainty that he had a gun. The thing is, and I think this gets widely overlooked, people can go into a classroom full of children, murder them all, and not be mentally ill. So before we attribute crimes to any mental illness we should first know whether or not the perpetrator of a crime has one. In our culture, mental illnesses are widely stigmatized and resources for help are scarce and sometimes unattainable. So here’s how we can break this down:
1 Mental Illness is widely stigmatized in American culture.
2. Access to care and resources for the mentally ill and caretakers of the mentally ill are not always available and, when they are, are not always affordable.
3. People can commit violent and horrific acts without being mentally ill.
Gun Control: People started talking about gun control right off the bat and an attempt to silence those voices was made by many. Why people seemed to be so much more comfortable pointing a finger at mental illness than to widespread availability and ownership of guns is beyond me. Nobody knew if Adam Lanza had a mental illness. We all knew he had a gun. We should talk about it. Here are some ways we can break this down:
1. Gun control does not mean gun elimination
2. We can have a fact-based conversation about guns per capita and rates of gun violence because these statistics exist. Speculation doesn’t even really need to be made about numbers. We can look and see.
3. The 2nd amendment gets brought up a lot. It’s time for us to look at it in historical context, evaluate whether or not it is still applicable and go from there. And really, a bunch of citizens with guns is not a well-armed militia. Further, Jefferson saying that citizens should be able to protect themselves with weaponry against their military is neat and all, but please tell me how your semi-automatic and automatic weapons will stand up to larger, military grade weapons and troops? They won’t. Let’s let that ideology go. I would throw that in with the god aspect because it is so irrelevant and makes no sense, but people are really hanging onto that idea, so it forces itself into the conversation.
Masculinity- A lot of good points have been raised around this topic, and I think they are worth noting. This is a discussion we must have. Our ideas of gender roles and masculinity are enforced by a patriarchy that most of us uphold in some way. Feminism is the belief that no matter where you fall on the gender spectrum, you should be treated equally, right? Right. And feminists have been saying for ages that the patriarchy hurts men, too. And it does. By assuming and enforcing the idea that men must act a certain way, we limit the average of their ability to exhibit an emotional range and to process anger, fear, or intimidation. Here’s some ways we can break this down:
1. Male privilege. These shootings are being acted out by men and not women. Why?
2. What does it mean to be masculine in our culture?
3. What can we do differently?
And race. It’s mostly white dudes doing this. Let’s not pretend it isn’t. You can name 1 or 2 POC who have pulled a mass shooting, but come on. When you heard that this had happened, did you think or assume it was anybody other than a white man? I didn’t. When we talk about this, white privilege and male privilege both need to be discussed.
The thing is, it is ok to have all of these conversations and to discuss all of these topics. I think that intersectionality matters and that all of these things tie in together and that none of these (except the god idea) are entirely wrong. They might not all apply in this specific situation, but they all deserve discussion, introspection, and action. I still don’t know if Adam Lanza had a mental illness, which is why I am not saying they all definitely apply here. Do any of you know?
Small ways we can make change in the world around us is in the way we use language when interacting with others. Our language usage can increase or decrease the stigma around mental illness. Our language usage and how we interact with others linguistically can change perceptions of masculinity and femininity one small utterance at a time. And the language of the constitution made sense in a different era, but may need to be revisited now, and that’s ok. It is completely ok for us to look at this one issue with all these ongoing conversations where everybody is trying to pinpoint one specific cause and to say ‘No. There is more than one facet to this. There is more than one contributing factor, so let’s talk about it’.
What do you think? What’s missing? What do you want to say about any of these topics?
Posted by Sara on December 20, 2012
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/dismantling-the-discourse-newtown/
I’m going to start a series called Dismantling The Discourse. This is going to be a series that focuses on current events that are complex and intertwined. The goal will be to look at an ongoing issue with an aim to dismantle the issues and ongoing conversations and separate them out. My objective in doing this is to try and take things that are occurring around us and that require our attention and thought and to then dismantle it so that we can clearly and effectively evaluate the issue.
Most of these posts will pertain to current events in America because that is where I live. I know a lot of you who read this blog live in other countries. If there is an issue happening in your country and it has a tangled conversation and you want to dismantle the discourse on it here, let me know and I will write about it. Since my understanding may be minimal, I might need help from you getting the conversation going. If you want to guest post about something in your country, also feel free to let me know. You can e-mail me at saraistheworst@gmail.com
My plan is to have a fairly standard format that exists for each topic/post. In the title or headline you will see Dismantling The Discourse: Topic Here. Then there will be an introductory paragraph where I talk a little bit about what’s going on, introduce the idea and sort of map out the parameters. From there, I will start listing topics of conversation pertaining to the topic but that are being intertwined and tangled up in the media so that we can have clear lines of discussion and thought. When topics are listed, I will put in links and images of common conversations about the topic and also verbiage describing each one. Normally when I blog I write something and then you comment back about what I have written. What I would like to see happen here is commenters taking the discussion further by adding new ideas and topics that I missed. When that happens, I will go back up the body of the post, mark an ETA with the date, time, user handle from the comments section, and introduce the topic. If it is a lesser issue or an issue that is part of a bigger issue, I may keep it down in the comments section and have the conversation about it take place there. I would like us, as a group, to examine the language being used within the news media and our social media to describe current events and for us to examine how that is shaping perception or clouding the issue. The aim is to separate issues within issues so that clear and effective communication can be had, which I hope will lead to a broader and more inclusive discourse.
The first one will be about Newtown and is coming in a bit.
Posted by Sara on December 20, 2012
http://saraistheworst.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/dismantling-the-discourse-introduction/
