Category Archives: equal rights

My Feminism, and Perhaps Yours

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Nowadays, it seems that declaring oneself to be a feminist is a form of coming out of the closet. Celebrities, such as Beyonce or Katy Perry are occasionally questioned to whether they fall into the feminist list.

Upon admitting said feminism, it seems necessary to clarify what type, telling the world “I’m not a bra-burner, I don’t hate men, I still shave my pits, please forgive me!” Forget the stereotypes and pay attention to the powerful women who make change happen- and sometimes end up making millions.

Beyonce questioned “Why do you have to choose what type of woman you are? Why do you have to label yourself anything?” Well, no, you do not have to label yourself. Going back to the stereotypes we pretend to ignore, you do not have to be a women to be a feminist. Today’s modern form of feminism tends to cite the idea of equal rights. If you believe in equal rights regardless of gender, race, socioeconomic status, and the like- then you are a feminist. I don’t care if you have a penis.

Having legal equal rights does not mean that people must continuously defy gender norms and choose according to what will be perceived as feministic. We are also not living in a fake Ayn Rand society where complete equality is forced upon us. The importance is that we have the equal rights to choose how we live our lives.

Once, I was asked by a guy I liked if I was a feminist. It seemed almost accusatory. I was afraid to answer, wondering if he would still be attracted to me. Another time, I was told that I am not a feminist due to how they perceived my actions. This is my feminism, not yours. Join the fight or shut up.



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Save The Date: How To Be Nice About Getting Married (And How To Be A Decent Potential Guest)

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I will start at the beginning.

I mentioned a while back that a couple of my friends had gotten engaged. I was excited. They are not my first friends to get engaged, but I am closer with them and I am the reason for which they met. Which is neat. Also, they have the most adorable cats ever, and one of them is super friendly and loves attention more than some dogs (if you’re in the bathroom or behind another closed door, he may just reach one of his front legs under the door, like a ravenous zombie, to gain your attention).

Right, so, anyway, they got engaged last autumn. They are getting married about three months from now, and they sent out the Save The Date cards and put up a website for their wedding about a week ago. I got mine, my mother (to my horror) got hers, and I was actually playing a game online with my superbestfriend when I heard his boyfriend say that they had received theirs.

Despite my occasionally paralyzing social anxiety (not the same thing as being shy or introverted, though I am introverted), I am all kinds of excited for their wedding. Or, more accurately, for their reception, as their wedding will be private and in a city too gaudy for me to name (but I love them anyway).

So, that’s the background. The story comes from the content of their website. Alongside their honeymoon plans and the location of the reception and their backstory, they also included this:

Shocking, I know.

First of all, this is beautiful. My favorite thing about it is that it includes the serial comma, which is non-optional. But I also love the rest of it. Like the future bride and groom, I live in one of the counties of North Carolina that voted against Amendment One (though we live in different counties). Being inclusive is expected, but using your wedding as a platform to promote marriage equality is a great move.

I do not know all of the details (or any of the details, really—it’s none of my business), but I know that there has been a little bit of fallout from a couple of relatives. Specifically because these relatives feel that by being vocally inclusive and supportive, my friends are excluding those who are opposed to marriage equality (among other things).

I mean, I could launch into a tirade about how I vehemently disagree with people who oppose marriage equality or people who are offended by non-religious wedding ceremonies or people who are uncomfortable around non-religious people or members of minority religions. And so on.

But this is really about, um, not being a dick. Usually people RSVP when they receive the actual wedding invitations, but RSVPing in advance is fine (I have already informed my friends that I am exercising with their wedding in mind, joking that I will need to fit into a wedding dress). Even if you are saying that you cannot attend.

I feel like hostility in most situations is uncalled for. Hostility with respect to a loved one’s wedding is wildly inappropriate. An “it’s them or me” attitude about attending a wedding is appropriate if another person on the guest list is, say, a rapist (though really if your friends are knowingly inviting a rapist to their wedding, politely declining is the way to go).

Don’t be a dick. Opposite-sex couples who hold off on getting married because same-sex couples do not yet possess equal rights are freaking awesome. Opposite-sex couples who get married but are vocal in their support of marriage equality are freaking awesome.

It’s easy for me to say that if you’re threatened by that, that you probably don’t belong at the wedding (or, you know, this century or planet). But really, don’t be a dick. Go to the wedding (or, in this case, wedding reception). You can have your beliefs (even the awful ones) and still be a decent, functional person who can go places where not everyone feels the same way that you do.

 

PS: I almost used a modified: “you can have your cake and eat it, too,” line in that last sentence. I decided against it, but also realized that there may very well be wedding cake at this reception. You guys, I am such a foodopotamus and wedding cake is wonderful. Though, as the many-times-divorced Lt. Provenza on The Closer said, he liked the taste of wedding cake, but his wedding cake: “always tasted like prison food.” But I’m not saying that about this lovely couple, though. I adore them to pieces.



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Male Killers More Overt, But No Crueler Than Females

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Scales with Men and Women

The recent movie theater massacre in Aurora shocked the country.  On some level, it did to movie-going what 9/11 did to flying—essentially, took away the innocence of what had hitherto been a common, everyday occurrence.

And, predictably, in the face of world-rocking disasters set into place by humans, the situation has been parsed on many levels.  Who was this James Holmes?  Why did he go with “The Joker”?  What could happen to cause a doctoral student to run amok?  What does this mean to the gun-control pissing contest?  Did Holmes’ psychiatrist have an obligation to alert authorities as to his profoundly violent tendencies?

I found myself most intrigued by a piece from Erika Christakis, an administrator at Harvard University, positing that mass murder has a tendency to be … well, a male-dominated club.  While Christakis admits that it’s not like women never kill (and there’s the odd female serial killer that’s floated through history), it’s an inarguable fact that the most shocking acts of violence, including but not limited to mass murder, have been “overwhelmingly perpetrated by men”.

In fact, Christakis goes so far as to say throw out there that “our silence about the huge gender disparity of such violence may be costing lives.”

Hmm …

From Time:

Imagine for a moment if a deadly disease disproportionately affected men. Not a disease like prostate cancer that can only affect men, but a condition prevalent in the general population that was vastly more likely to strike men. Violence is such a condition: men are nine to 10 times more likely to commit homicide and more likely to be its victims. The numbers are sobering when we look at young men. In the U.S., for example, young white males (between ages 14 and 24) represent only 6% of the population, yet commit almost 17% of the murders. For young black males, the numbers are even more alarming (1.2% of the population accounting for 27% of all homicides). Together, these two groups of young men make up just 7% of the population and 45% of the homicides. And, overall, 90% of all violent offenders are male, as are nearly 80% of the victims.

A lot of my teacher friends and colleagues and I have a theory on fighting that goes on in schools—basically, if girls get into a fight, it’s forever.  Oh, they may smile and “make up”, but both sides (and their legions of friends) will never forget the situation.  It gets dragged up repeatedly, often into adulthood.  Boys get pissed at each other, beat the shit out of each other, and have basically forgotten the whole thing within a month and often become friends.

As this has always been my attitude, I found those statistics troubling, to say …

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Colorado Kills Civil Unions Bill

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photo of colorado civil union protests
Colorado had a bill that would have legalized civil unions, thus giving rights to same sex marriage, but they killed it before it even reached the floor of the House.

It seems that Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty assigned the bill to the State and Veterans/Military Affairs Committee. This committee is dominated by conservative members and, according to Democrat House Minority Leader Mark Ferrandio, who happens to be sponsoring the bill, this committee has been called McNulty’s “kill committee.”

McNulty said the reason it was sent to this committee was to “… dispense with divisive issues as quickly as possible so we can get back to the business of creating jobs.” So, the rights of his people ranked that low on his list of things to do that day? Really? Because wow.

Despite the intensive focus on job creation, the state of Colorado is doing pretty well in the “creating jobs” area—their unemployment rate continues to go down. There’s progress being made. In light of that development, maybe McNulty could just continue with this strategy and add the whole “equal rights thing” to his calendar. You know, sometime. Maybe no one told him that it was part of his job to do more than one thing at a time. Furthermore how does giving people rights take away jobs? Or put a halt to creating jobs? It doesn’t make sense to me which is probably why I’m not in politics … I just don’t understand it.

Bottom line is that McNulty is Conservative and runs his state as such. It didn’t surprise me that he acted this way and tried to distract us from what he was actually doing in deflecting the backlash. What did surprise me, however, was GOP Rep. Don Coram. Coram has a homosexual son and he voted AGAINST the bill, saying, “I’m concerned that the gay community is being used as a political pawn.” So, by Corma’s logic, he’s denying the gay community their rights for their own well-being? He’s being cruel to be kind? What the heck is going on in Colorado?



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