Talking to young girls about gender

When I was home for Thanksgiving I recorded a talk I gave a few weeks ago to submit for a job application. Given that it is about gender representation in media and young girls as storytellers, I wanted to get one take of me actually giving the speech to a young girl. So, one evening I sat down with my eight-year-old neighbor, Malin. She has two older brothers who she fights endlessly with, loves sports (hockey is her favorite at the moment), and is exceptionally good at math. When I arrived at her house I explained to her what I was trying to do. I let her help me set up the camera, showed her how to change the white balance and let her play with the focus. When we finally sat down I told her briefly about the talk, explaining some concepts and why it was important. Then, I proceeded to give the talk just as I would to an older audience. There is a whole section of the talk about girls seeking out leadership opportunities and I explain that of all the kids who want to be president when they grow up, only 19% of them are girls. I then casually mention that there has never been a girl president. Malin stops me. "Wait, wait, wait," she says, "YOU ARE SAYING THAT THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A GIRL PRESIDENT IN THE WHOLE 100 MILLION YEAR HISTORY OF ALL OF AMERICA?!?!?!?!"

I didn't really know what to say. Nobody had ever stopped me in the middle of my talk before. I tried to explain, "Well, America hasn't been around that long... It's only been a few hundred years... I mean colonial America... Because, yeah, America itself has been around for a long time... And, yeah, no girls presidents. Ever."

The next question I was equally unprepared for: "Why?" she probed.

I responded with "That's just the way it is. But it is going to change soon."

For some reason I didn't feel comfortable explaining to her gender roles and expectations. It became clear to me that she did not see any of that yet in the world. I asked her, "Do you want to be president?"

"Of course!" she responded.

"Good," I told her.

This is why I love young girls (in the totally non-creepy way). Nobody is born into the world with a pre-conceived notion of who or how they are supposed to be. If anything, young girls are in a unique position to critique what society is telling them about who they are supposed to be. I felt guilty even telling Malin all of this because, really, I should have just been encouraging her to do and be anything she wanted instead of telling her about this legacy she had to change in order to achieve her dreams. I finished the talk and had a conversation with her about what she can do to become president one day. I asked her about all the ways she's a leader. I told her to keep developing those skills so that she CAN be president one day. Young girls now are going to grow up to be the next leaders. For some reason, I feel such and obligation to the girls in my life to teach them about the history of women who have fought for them and about how they are so important in this world. But, after this conversation with Malin I felt like I had diminished a part of her--by telling her about this history I had all of the sudden planted this idea in her head that she couldn't do it because nobody had done it before.

Having this conversation with her was a good experience for me. Next time I have the opportunity to have a conversation like this with a young girl, I think it will be important for me to not assume they feel or think a certain way and instead just listen.

Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person

Hey All! I just came across this article called Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person and it covers a lot of interesting topics about the intersectionality of race/gender/sexuality etc. I think these are important things to remember and reflect on, especially in light of all the controversy surrounding Ferguson right now. Also, the author mentions that the work that made him realize his privilege was Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" !!!!

Ferguson and Feminism

As we all face our outrage after the Grand Jury's failure to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, I invite you all to look at the killing of black youth through a different lens than we perhaps typically do. This article and many others strive to show that this is an issue of reproductive rights, a so called "women's issue". As we have discussions of intersectional feminism, it is important to consider the many perspectives and experiences of different feminist issues. As terrifying as the implications of the Grand Jury's decision yesterday are to me, I will never be able to understand that fear as a black mother, terrified to lose her child to racist, unprovoked, violent attacks. We all deserve to make reproductive choices about having or not having children, but that needs to come with certainty that those children will not be feared and attacked for the color of their skin.

The New York Times article about cooking dads

The New York Times posted a short article about an increasing number of dads who spend a decent amount of time in their kitchen.

Some interesting facts and statements of the article include,

# A study reported that 42% of men and 68% of women spent time cooking on any given day. Although a large gap still exists, it has been shrinking.

# However, a male interviewee also said that people are still surprised to know that he is the primary cook of his family.  

Good for Lego!

Lego Wins Everything


So I'm avoiding writing at least three essays right now and I think I've found the end of the internet. In the process, I found this! I read it out loud to a friend and they asked what year it had happened. The answer? 1974. So hey...good for Lego for promoting gender equality for the last forty years!

"Marry someone who will take care of the kids"

An interesting article from Slate that was posted the other day:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/11/18/harvard_business_school_study_it_s_not_kids_but_husbands_that_hold_women.html

In in, women across generations grapple with their role in the professional world and how that fits in with their family/husband's career. The trends of women who are more career-focused is definitely a move away from the suburban housewife problem we saw in Collins' book, and men are increasingly feeling less like their career should take precedence and have more of a role in child-care and housework.

However, there's still a problem with women who are "mommy-tracked" in their jobs by their bosses. In terms of the ERA, could it help these women who seek to have their own career as well as a family at home?

Social Experiment on Domestic Abuse

Article 4 of Redstockings Manifesto, which states that women cannot oppress men, reminded me of a social experiment that I watched a while ago. It was an experiment to find out how differently people would react to a man abusing a woman and a woman abusing a man. At the end of the video, it says something along the lines of "violence goes both ways" and I thought that was particularly eye-opening, as I've only considered it as a one-way thing until now.

Feminism only works when we consider both genders by the same standards, and I think assuming that men wouldn't be oppressed by women ironically reinforces our conditioned thoughts that women are weaker and therefore inferior beings.