@feministkatz

Not counting this post, I have written 10,217 words for this class in the past two weeks. I counted. (Well actually, my computer counted, but I compiled everything into a single Word doc to make that happen.)

I love writing. I have loved writing since I was a little girl. I used to want to be an author and write books that change people’s lives.

Sometimes I still do.

But over the years, writing has become increasingly hard for me. Writing a paper for class is like pulling teeth. Slow, and painful, because a lot of the time I have no idea what I am doing or how to get the argument I want to make onto paper or the words I want in the precise order I want them.

I have this problem where I’m a perfectionist writer and I can’t write crap sentences and come back to fix them later; I have to write perfect sentences and then never revise anything because the words I wrote the first time were so pristine.

This translates to blogs for me. I got my first blog when I was 12 years old and ever since I have had to write “perfect” blog entries. It takes me a long time to do a feelings dump because I want my writing to be good, and so while I’m paused trying to think of how to write a particular sentence, my mind races ahead to write the next and the next and then whatever good wording I had get lost, as I try to trudge back to the point I’m at without losing the stuff I just thought about.

That’s why keeping up with this journal was hard. I wanted everything I wrote to be perfect. I have so many drafts of entries I started but never finished because I couldn’t find the words to say. Finding words to say is hard. This is especially true when I have a million questions and almost no answers – for a while, I thought that whenever I wrote a journal entry here, I had to answer the questions I asked.

It took me a while to realize that wasn’t the purpose of the journal. Finding answers is great, but asking questions and thinking and processing things is better. Reflection doesn’t require solutions. It just means thinking about the problems.

I think because of this I’ve written as many entries in the last month than I did in the rest of the semester. Realizing that was freeing, because it meant I could just write what I needed to write because I needed to write it, instead of worrying of coming up with conclusions or whatever. I didn’t need to have a “proper” conclusion. A lot of my entries do I think have conclusions, but old habits die hard.

To write the final paper, I just started writing a blog entry that translated my jumbled thoughts into words, picked out some pieces from the readings to reflect those jumbled thoughts, and then translated all of that into a thesis. By the end of the blog entry, I had written 2048 words… over the limit of the assignment itself. I obviously didn’t use everything I picked out, but that planning and processing resulted in one of the least painful paper I’ve written in quite a while. The next time I write a paper for class, I will definitely be using this strategy.

So, thank you, Dr. Kafer. For giving assignments that make me realize I don’t have to be a perfectionist, and for asking us questions that we don’t have to know the answers to, and for assigning us readings that sometimes, I really need time to process. I wish I had more time to take another formal class with you to learn more, but if there’s one thing that Southwestern taught me, it’s that I am a lifelong learner and I don’t need to be in a formal class to read tough things that challenge my ideas and assumptions about the world.

On Monday I got a call from my recruiter; I got the job at ThoughtWorks! After I hung up the phone, I cried, and called my mom. I’d been trying to distance myself from my feelings about it so much in case I didn’t get it, so I think I forgot how much I really, really wanted it. Yesterday I officially received my offer letter, and it was insane. I was expecting a competitive salary, and this was a lot higher than what I’d been expecting. 

So of course, working on final assignments and studying for exams has been increasingly hard for me, because I have that security of a job after graduation and I con’t stop thinking about it. Of course, that means I have to graduate first. 

So I decided to combine my thoughts and my work (haha, get it?!) into this blog entry. I’ve been reading company reviews on glassdoor during study breaks all day, and trying to keep myself grounded in knowing that anywhere I work is not going to be all daisies and sunshine. I try not to buy too much into the super negative or super positive reviews, and instead collect different accounts of employee’s experiences and look at those holistically. But, here is a blurb from one of my favorites:

“Thoughtworks prides itself on not being a mere technology company but instead a company with a social mission. The truth, however, is that the day-to-day work you’ll likely be involved in is quite far removed from any social mission. Clients tend to be big enterprises with often uninteresting challenges, and the money made from these clients is what funds the social endeavors. But your role is more often than not, especially in the US, to be a source of revenue primarily.” – this review

Going into the job search, I realized I wanted to and probably would have to work for a company in industry if I wanted to gain relevant experience and learn a lot; that really wasn’t possible at a nonprofit. So that meant I had to get all of the corporate world politics and bureaucracy that came along with a job in industry, which I accepted, and just hoped for the best. TW has always been my best, because their third pillar supports social and economic justice. But still, only 5-10% of what TW does goes towards social endeavors, which is more than most, which is 0. It really helps to remember that in the work that I’m doing, part of it does go towards those social endeavors. As a worker in a capitalist society, I am supposed to make this company money, that is my primary functionality. But at least some of what I’m doing is good. (Not to mention that there is a lot of good I can do with my time and money when I’m not working, which I talked about in a blog entry last week.) 

“For me, the Social Justice pillar isn’t just about doing work for good causes, although we have been doing an increasing amount of paid and pro-bono work for such outfits. It’s also about looking at our core work and asking how it benefits society.” — Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks

That last part of Fowler’s quote, looking at our core work and asking how it benefits society, is also a huge part of it for me. I’ve been thinking about that part a lot while writing my final paper about the refusal to know when it comes to injustice. In the corporate world, there’s absolutely a refusal to know – it exists when people refuse to examine their company’s practices and customers and clients and the money that all of those things are tied to. But I love the fact that the chief scientist of my future employer wants us to ask how the work we do every day benefits society, because that is what the power and the promise of technology is all about for me.

Staying willful and determined to fight injustice is hard. It’s a constant process, it requires constant vigilance and attention to what you’re really doing, who you’re really serving. 

“We have to become willful, perhaps, to keep going the way we are going, if the way you are going is perceived to be ‘the wrong way.’ We all know the experience of ‘going the wrong way’ in a crowd. Everyone seems to be going the opposite was than the way you are going. No one person has to push or shove for you to feel the collective momentum of the crowd as a pushing and shoving. For you to keep going you have to push harder than any of those individuals who are going the right way… We can note how the social can be experienced as a force: you can feel a force most directly when you attempt to resist it. It is the experience of ‘coming up against’ that is named by willfulness, which is why a willful politics needs to be a collective politics… When willfulness becomes a style of politics, it means not only being willing not to go with the flow, but also being willing to cause its obstruction.” – Sara Ahmed, Feminist Killjoys

I am a Red Queen, and I am constantly running. I am running to fight impostor syndrome, I am running to create technology that is good for society, I am running to fight oppression and injustice faced by myself and faced by others. I am running to make willfulness a part of my own personal politics. And it’s hard, because the running is constant, and I get tired and lazy and sometimes I like to pretend I don’t know things because it’s easier to deal with that way. But that’s not how I want to live my life anymore. I want to be willing to cause obstruction and be disruptive, because that is what a feminist is. “Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman.” – Bad Feminist

”prompt: “Several of our authors lament the ‘refusal to know’ or a willful indifference to injustice. Discuss the effects of this willful ignorance or indifference, using specific examples from three of our authors. Offer suggestions – the author’s and/or your own – for how to combat this indifference.”

la·ment • ləˈment/ noun:

1. a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.

so basically: what are the effects of an individuals’ refusal to know, refusal to tune into injustice, or their willingness to continue injustice? to not fight against that injustice for equality for all? and, how do we combat this indifference or apathy? talk about the problem, and then talk about the solutions.

my response: people don’t care about problems that are not their own. that is largely a societal problem, and specifically a problem when it comes to creating activists. since problems don’t pertain to them, they think that it’s not a problem. this is especially true for issues of gender and racial inequality, as well as all other forms of inequalities, which are largely intersectional in nature. we often see individuals claiming there is no problem at all, because they never encounter prejudiced actions or words directed at them, since they are of the majority gender and race and class and ability and sexuality and religion (think: the christian middle class straight abled white man). or worse, some might think that problems are over… slavery was abolished; women got the vote; the 14th amendment was passed, the 19th amendment was passed; women entered the workforce; the civil rights movement came, it happened, it conquered; feminism came in waves of one, two, three, and it conquered to… but did it? progress has been made. and this progress has been so important. but. there is still plenty of work to be done. we have attacked some of the bigger issues, we have achieved some milestones, and those are very important. those should not be discounted. but there is so much left to do; we can’t quit while we are ahead (if we can even call it “ahead”). and i think some people write that off, some people think we have made it, this is it. but this can’t be it. there are so many societal assumptions that have just continued for far too long, and it’s not okay. 

an interlude: whoa whoa whoa, stick to the stuff you know. it is better by far to keep things as they are, don’t mess with the flow no no. stick to the status quo. (thank you, high school musical)

so what are we going to do about it?: the first step is education. we need those who are indifferent to injustice to listen to the voices of the oppressed. that means fighting harder to make the voices of the oppressed heard. that means making people listen. that means constantly shouting to have those voices heard over the rest of the noise in the world. that means the people within the movement realizing when their experiences matter and when they do not, meaning when should they speak up and when should they let others speak. that means making sure everyone realizes that this movement is not homogeneous – everyone comes to the table with different experiences. and it’s important to listen, to understand, to let everyone have their say. and then, come to terms with that. and then, try to educate those around you. that means speaking up when someone says something ignorant or problematic or oppressive or racist or homophobic or sexist or ableist or otherwise awful. it means honking your horn. it means educating yourself first and then trying to educate others, even though you have no obligation to do so. “i choose my choice” – but also, collective social action is important, and should be included in your choice. it means acting as an ally but also asking, how can i best act as an ally? how can i support you? it means self care. it means not jumping to conclusions or making assumptions. it means being intentional with our words. it means questioning assumptions that have been held for hundreds of years, and challenging them, and exposing why those assumptions are problematic, and fixing them, and convincing others to fix them as well.

so what am i going to do about it?: i just wrote 600 words that was infinitely easier for me than writing a paper. i need to turn these thoughts and feelings into a thesis, and then into a paper. with some evidence that i’m going to start poking around for: 

Feminist Killjoys by Sara Ahmed

• “That you have described what was said by another as a problem means you have created a problem. You become the problem you create.”
  
• “An experience of alienation can shatter a world.”
  
• “To be willing to cause unhappiness can also be how we immerse ourselves in collective struggle, as we work with and through others who share our points of alienation.”
  
• “Feminists do kill joy in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that happiness can be found in certain places.” – what are those certain places? places of ignorance, of long-held assumptions?
  
• “Marilyn Frye argues that oppression involves the requirement that you show signs of being happy with the situation in which you find yourself.” – this is an effect of the majority’s willful indifference to justice, and also a cause; the majority sees the smiles and thinks that the oppressed is happy, and there are no problems; the oppressed see that no one cares, and so they continue to put on those smiles, because they don’t want to feel alienated
  
• “…becoming a feminist might mean becoming aware of just how much there is to be unhappy about. Feminist consciousness could be understood as consciousness of unhappiness, a consciousness made possible by the refusal to turn away. My point here would be that feminists are read as being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence, and power are read as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists are unhappy about.”
  
• “The angry black woman can be described as a killjoy; she may even kill feminist joy, for example, by pointing our forms of racism within feminist politics.”
  
• “To create awkwardness is to be read as being awkward. Maintaining public comfort requires that certain bodies ‘go along with it.’ To refuse to go along with it, to refuse the place in which you are places, is to be seen as causing trouble, as making others uncomfortable.”
  
• “We have to become willful, perhaps, to keep going the way we are going, if the way you are going is perceived to be ‘the wrong way.’ We all know the experience of ‘going the wrong way’ in a crowd. Everyone seems to be going the opposite was than the way you are going. No one person has to push or shove for you to feel the collective momentum of the crowd as a pushing and shoving. For you to keep going you have to push harder than any of those individuals who are going the right way.”
  
• “…we can note how the social can be experienced as a force: you can feel a force most directly when you attempt to resist it. It is the experience of ‘coming up against’ that is named by willfulness, which is why a willful politics needs to be a collective politics.” – willful indifference comes from the fact that no one can feel the force of the underlying assumptions and power structures of the patriarchy 
  
• “When willfulness becomes a style of politics, it means not only being willing not to go with the flow, but also being willing to cause its obstruction.”
  
• “When you use the very language of racism you are heard as ‘going on about it,’ as ‘not letting it go.’ It is as if talking about racism is what keeps it going.”
  
• “Racism is framed as a memory that if it were kept alive would just leave us exhausted. The task of citizenship becomes one of conversion: if racism is preserved only in our memory and consciousness, then racism would ‘go away’ if only we too would declare it gone The narrative implicit here is not that we ‘invent racism,’ but that we preserve its power to govern social life by not getting over it. The moral task is thus ‘to get over it,’ as if when you are over it, it is gone.”
  

Oral History of Amber Hollibaugh

looking for: the process of how CR groups affected the way that feminist theory was created. it’s in there somewhere. pages 102-105 are pretty important; highlighted a few other passages in the PDF. come back to this.

Bad Feminist: Take One & Take Two by Roxane Gay

• “The most significant problem with essential feminism is how it doesn’t allow for the complexities of human experience or individuality” (305).
  
• “I am generally called a feminist when I have to nerve to suggest that the misogyny so deeply embedded in our culture is a real problem requiring relentless vigilance” (305).
  
• “I am as committed tofighting fiercely for equality as I am committed to disrupting the notion that there is an essential feminism” (317).
  
• “Being a feminist, however, even a bad one, has also taught me that the need for feminism and advocacy also applies to seemingly less serious issues like a Top 40 song or a comedian’s puerile humor. The existence of these lesser artifacts of our popular culture is made possible by the far graver issues we are facing. The ground has long been softened” (317).
  
• “Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman” (318).
  

Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism by Becky Thompson

• “This feminism is white led, marginalizes the activism and world views of women of color, focuses mainly on the United States, and treats sexism as the ultimate oppression. Hegemonic feminism deemphasizes or ignores a class and race analysis, generally sees equality with men as the goal of feminism, and has an individual rights-based, rather than justice-based vision for social change” (337).
  
• “From Combahee member Barbara Smith came a definition of feminism so expansive that it remains a model today. Smith writes that “feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement” (340). – and in terms of anyone’s refusal to know, indifference to injustice, that is just self-aggrandizement, ‘everything is fine, we are doing fine’
• “Don’t expect women of color to be your educators, to do all the bridge work. White women need to be the bridge – a lot of the time. Do not lump African American, Latina, Asian American, and Native American women into one category. History, culture, imperialism, language, class, region, and sexuality make the concept of a monolithic ‘women of color’ indefensible. Listen to women of color’s anger. It is informed by centuries of struggle, erasure, and experience. White women, look to your own history for signs of heresy and rebellion. So not take on the histories of Black, Latina, or American Indian women as your own. they are not and never were yours” (347). – this is an effect of the refusal to know: the oppressed feel the need to be educators, like it is their responsibility. it is not. that is a problem. but also, part of the solution is education. where is that line?
  
• “…many political issues need to be personally committed to – whether you have been victimized by those issues or not. In other words, you don’t have to be part of a subordinated group to know an injustice is wrong and to stand against it” (347). – also part of a solution

two main answers to prompt: the biggest effect of the refusal to know is dangerous assumptions get propagated instead of debunking myths about privilege, patriarchy, and feminism. this is true both within and outside of he feminist movement. fixing it is more difficult, because we need to educate those refusing to know; but that responsibility doesn’t lie with the oppressed. to fix it, we tell stories, ask people to listen, and sometimes make it personal. analogies are a really good way to do that 

thesis: The result of this refusal to know, this willful indifference to injustice, is that dangerous assumptions about both society and feminism continue to be propagated, and nothing changes. The solution to this problem is vigilance in making the voices of the oppressed be heard.

and now… let’s organize and condense this into a paper!

The victims of San Bernadino have been released. I heard a few stories watching the Today show yesterday morning before my interview, and today I heard a few more. A woman’s life was saved by her coworker who shielded her from the gunfire and took the bullets instead. “I got you,” he said.

Then they released the photo of the woman who participated in the shooting, the wife of the man who we’ve been talking about all week. I don’t want to learn either of their names.

But. “The face of terror” they called her. The face of terror. Then they called her a “black widow” because they think she “radicalized” her husband. Which annoys me, because I have claimed Black Widow (the Marvel superhero) for myself. It doesn’t get to be a bad thing.

They’ve been interviewing their family members all morning. I can’t imagine what these family members are going through, they have to be so angry and upset and hurt and confused. They had nieces and nephews – his sister just said she can’t cry, she has to keep it together for her kids. What would you do if you uncle killed 14 people? How would you feel if you were a child grappling with that? And what about their daughter? She is 6 months old and one day she will learn what her parents did and she will have to carry that for the rest of her life.

“We all have the capacity to do hurtful things, but we differ from one another in terms of scale – how much we can hurt others, how far we will go to make a statement about our beliefs, how remorseful we might feel in the aftermath of committing a terrible act… I wonder if he was scared before he took so many lives, before he created such unprecedented destruction” (Bad Feminist 296).

The news hasn’t hesitated to call this an act of terror, a terrorist attack. Nothing is confirmed yet. They just said it because the shooters are Muslim. What about the 354 other acts of terror committed in 2015 alone? All of those mass shootings have been acts of terror, most were just committed by white men, so no one bats an eye: “he suffers from mental illness, he was an outsider, he used to be such a good boy. I can’t believe he would do something like this.”

I can’t believe anyone could do anything like this. I also can’t believe the double standard that the media propagates.

Time to go kick ass in an interview.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Chicago, after my first day of final interviews for ThoughtWorks, a software consultancy that I’ve wanted to land a job with for the past 2 years, they just don’t take summer interns. I’m in the final round of interviews for their Associate Consultant program, and I’m doing well. I think I have a real shot. I’ve been wanting this job for ages and I’m finally here, at the cusp. And now I’m having mixed feelings.

Tomorrow I have a technical and a behavioral interview,will be done by 1, and get to spend 7 hours sightseeing and exploring Chicago. I’m going to go ice skating in Millennium Park.I find out on Tuesday if I got the job.

Today, after a technical interview and a group challenge, they split the candidates into two different rooms for discussions. We started with a definition of the word “meritocracy” and how the world operates around it, and then we were put into pairs and told to think of an organization or institution or system that is a meritocracy to present about after a planning period. All of the pairs picked the U.S. education system, discussing the ways that the education system is supposed to be this great equalizer but really is a mess because it just becomes a gatekeeper for careers and opportunities in this society.

Then we watched a video of a semi-famous author’s keynote address to Princeton graduates in 2012. He told the story of how he ended up where he was, acknowledging that a lot of it was just pure luck, not because he solely worked hard to get where he was. He then told about a study that’d happened recently where three people were put into a group and one of them was arbitrarily dubbed “the leader”. They participated in some in-depth activities, and then halfway through one of the researchers brought in a plate of 4 cookies. So each of the three group members had a cookie and then there was one left over… and in almost every case, the “leader” took the extra cookie, without even discussing it. The leader just felt entitled to it. The speaker extended this to the real world – because that’s really how the world works. He said that sometimes, you don’t need the extra cookie. Even if you think you deserve it because you worked hard, just pretend. Don’t always take the extra cookie. You have been lucky, and you owe a debt to the unlucky now.

Then we had a discussion about the video, and I felt right at home. Very Liberal Arts. Someone brought up his interesting diction: chalking up success to luck, using the cookie analogy, and telling people to pretend they don’t deserve that extra cookie. It was effective, because he was talking to a room of very privileged, rich, white college students (graduates) and an auditorium full of their privileged parents. Which means that they were hopefully getting the intent of the message more than they might if they were just being talked at about their privilege, because people hear the word “privilege,” think they are being attacked, and shut down. 

Another of the candidates asked us: “but, is it okay to take the cookie?” and I think that is something I’ve been struggling with all semester. My time at Southwestern has tuned me into the Georgetown community, the greater community, an the nonprofit world. Before seriously beginning my job search, I told myself and everyone who asked that I wanted a nonprofit that could benefit from my technical skills, because I wanted to work to better the community somewhere I could make a difference. 

And that wasn’t so realistic. Those jobs are hard to find, those jobs won’t pay well, those jobs hardly hire entry level software developers. I don’t have enough experience to be the sole supporter of a nonprofit’s IT needs. Maybe one day I will, but not right now.

Jobs in tech pay well. Like, really well. Every time I tell someone the salaries of the job offers I’ve received, I have to wait for them to pick their mouth off the floor. And I’m not going to lie, that feels good. It feels good to know that by the end of finals week, I will also have accepted a job offer and be set for after graduation. It feels good to know that I will be financially secure. It feels good to be starting at such a high salary, where the only way I can go is up.

But I’m taking the extra cookie. And I’ve been struggling with that all semester, without using that cookie analogy. For a long time, I didn’t know how to feel about it. I’m still a little conflicted. “Like most people, I’m full of contradictions” (Bad Feminist 318). But earlier this week, I was at a restaurant with two of my best friends (who are both going into the nonprofit sector after graduation) and they told me that it’s okay to make a lot of money, because for every corporate dollar that I make, that’s one less corporate dollar that someone else will make, and they know that I will put the money I make to good use. I appreciated that they knew I was so conflicted about it that they brought it up themselves. And they knew me well enough to know that I will donate my time and money to my community, even though it’s not a part of my career. 

But still, what is my responsibility? I am so privileged. I am lucky. Everyone sitting in that interview room was very privileged. It was a little ironic to me because I feel like accepting a job like this might be like taking the cookie, although ThoughWorks does have a commitment to social and economic justice. But where is my responsibility?

In Gey’s critique of Lean In, she acknowledges how privileged Sheryl Sandberg is and how she is directing her argument to women who are exactly like her… I haven’t read Lean In yet. I own it, and I have paid attention to the many critiques and reviews on the book, but I haven’t found the time and I’m afraid about what I’ll find and how I feel. When I do read it I want to be sure I have enough time to do it slowly so I can unpack it as I go. But. One of Sandberg’s nods to her own privilege really stuck with me: “I am fully aware that most women are not focused on changing social norms for the next generation but simply trying to get through each day” (quoted in Bad Feminist, 312).

While I was reading, I wrote in the margins: is it then the responsibility of the privileged? How then do we accurately/intersectionally advocate for those less privileged? That is a problem.

All of these ideas are branching off of each other and coming to a head in my head right now, and I don’t really know what to do with them right now. What I do know is I have to be at the office at 8:30am tomorrow, it’s 11:11pm, and I really want this job. So I’m going to sleep on it and go kick some ass in these interviews, and hopefully land my dream job.

Yesterday there was a mass shooting in Southern California. At a public health department holiday party. 14 killed, 17 injured. The first article that came up when I googled it was from CNN. I had to scroll to the very bottom of it to hear about the actual event and the nameless victims. The entire article was about catching the suspects. Which is important, but. Where is the compassion?

When I heard about the shooting yesterday, I hardly batted an eye. Another one, I thought. This is nothing new. I logged onto facebook; no one was even talking about it. It’s become normal. We’ve become desensitized. None of this is okay.

“The tools of the modern age afford us many privileges, but they also cost us the privilege of time and space and distance to properly think through the tragedy, to take a deep breath, the feel, to care. Tragedy. Call. Heart. Response. Tragedy. Call. Mind. Response.” ~ Roxanne Gey, Bad Feminist, 298

When 9/11 happened. my mom picked me up from school early and told me I didn’t get to go to Girl Scouts that evening. I was sad. She explained what happened, I was more sad. I didn’t understand it all but I knew it was bad. We watched the TV together. She kept me home from school the next day, and every September 11th after that while I was still in elementary school, and together we wrote letters to New York firefighters to thank them for their service and send them well wishes. As a child, that was the space she knew I needed. She gave me that space to process, to respond. 

I don’t have that anymore. We don’t have that anymore. The world is so busy that nothing can stop. In the wake of tragedy after tragedy, nothing is changing.

When Sandy Hook happened, it was in the midst of winter finals my freshman year. I was already more stressed than I’d ever been before, and emotions were high in the freshmen dorms. I remember sitting in the Mabee lobby with Marianne, stressed about school, and then hearing about another tragedy. I don’t even remember what was going on that week, but I know a lot of horrible things were happening in the world. And this was before Sandy Hook. Before Sandy Hook happened, I thought the world as we knew it was over. I thought nothing would be the same, I thought what was happening was in a sense apocalyptic. After my finals were over, I drove me and my best friend from high school home to Ft Worth. We heard about Sandy Hook on the radio, in the car. And life as we knew it was over. 

The changes weren’t drastic. I mourned the tragedies of that week with my mom when I got home for the holidays, and then, things went back to normal. Subtly, though, they were different. Tragedy after tragedy. Elementary school. Movie theatre. Ferguson. Baltimore. Charleston. Syria. Beruit. Paris. Planned Parenthood. Public health facility, southern California. 

As humans, we do not “only have the capacity to mourn one tragedy at a time, as if we measure the depth and reach of a tragedy before deciding how to respond, as is compassion and kindness are finite resources we must use sparingly. We cannot put these… tragedies on a chart and connect them with a straight line. We cannot understand these tragedies neatly” (300).

But can we even understand them at all?

I don’t. I don’t so I sweep my feelings and my processing under the rug and continue to live my life, and I think so many others of us do that too, and I think it’s just so easy to say no, I’m not going to deal with this today, and continue to live our lives and take our finals and post pictures on facebook wearing crazy christmas sweaters. 

Something’s got to give, and I don’t know how to deal with it anymore.

I’m trying to finish the poetry from Borderlands/La Frontera. It’s really good. It makes me want to learn Spanish. Sometimes I read the Spanish poems, trying to pronounce the words in my head. Sometimes I skip them, because no matter how well I pronounce any single word, I’m not going to understand it.

On Thanksgiving day, I was reading some of the poems while my dad was watching football and my mom was getting ready. In the midst of a refugee crisis, in the midst of Republican candidates saying horrible, disgusting things about Syrian refugees, in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut (the latter of which were ignored).

The rhetoric around shutting our borders off to refugees was insane. Some people (a lot of my family members included) were complaining: “we can’t even feed our own children, there are so many in the U.S. who are homeless, how can we expected to feed other people’s children?” Like that is going to help anything, like they actually care about helping the people of our nation get on their feet.

The other one was, “if we let these people into our nation, they will take over; they are trying to take over, Muslims are trying to take over our country.” Right. My favorite thing was a meme I saw that said something along the lines of, “the only time this country has been taken over by immigrants is a holiday we are celebrating this Thursday.” 

So I’m reading this poetry on Thanksgiving day, and then I come across one written from the perspective of an immigrant, of a pilgrim, who took over land. It was so ironic. The most poignant parts:

“We Call Them Greasers” by Gloria Anzaldua, pg. 156

Weren’t interested in bettering themselves,
why they didn’t even own the land but shared it.
Wasn’t hard to drive them off,
cowards, they were, no backbone.
I showed ‘em a piece of paper with some writing
tole 'em they owed taxes
had to pay right away or be gone by manana
…
Oh, there were a few troublemakers
who claimed we were the intruders.
Some even had land grants
and appealed to the courts.
It was a laughing stock
them not even knowing English
Still some refused to budge,
even after we burned them out.

I bolded words that I feel like apply to the speaker of the poem.

The entitlement that comes with privilege baffles me. It’s so nasty. 

It was hard for me to enjoy Thanksgiving that day. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it was hard. So I drank a lot of wine, tried not to argue with my aunt about politics (”Obama is the antichrist” … “if Trump is the Republican nominee I’ll vote for him any day over Hillary”), and fell asleep on the couch.

“For, rather than leave the sciences, women’s studies offered me the tools to stay in science. Feminist work allowed me to understand the processes that causes me to doubt my own abilities and dreams, and helped me develop a framework to recapture my earlier fascination with thinking and doing science” (Subramaniam x). 

Impostor syndrome is the belief that your abilities aren’t real, that your achievements are a fluke, that one day, people will find out that you’re really not good at the thing they think you are good at. 

As a female computer scientist, I encounter impostor syndrome all the time. It comes up in my classes, is comes up in my social life, it especially comes up in my job interviews. It came up when I attended the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) for Women in Computing – a place that is intended to demolish impostor syndrome and other gendered hindrances to women in computer science. 

That, I think, is the saddest part for me. I’ve attended GHC twice: once a a sophomore, and once as a senior. During my sophomore year, I was entirely overwhelmed, having just started the CS major and having no major relevant experience yet, and the entire conference was discouraging to me. I remember sitting in my hotel room with my roommate, another SU student, and trying to learn Python because we felt so behind. This past conference wasn’t as bad, and that was because I knew what to expect, and I had a lot of friends that were going, and I was a lot better at making friends, and I was job hunting for the most part so I didn’t go to technical talks that made me feel inadequate, instead I stayed where I felt comfortable and empowered and that was the career fair where I handed out over 30 resumes. But. It was haunting me, that voice in the back of my head that told me I wasn’t good enough, that told me when I make it to the final interview rounds with some of these companies (I was doing initial interviews with a few companies onsite), I would be found out, they would learn that I couldn’t actually code. An impostor. Which isn’t true at all, but it was my greatest fear. 

And I’m not sure if these feelings come from the conference itself or just my own inner insecurities. I think it’s a mix of both. The conference is supposed to be so empowering, and I think it really is, but it’s also so competitive, even if it’s not supposed to be. On the career fair floor, I am competing with similarly-aged college women for jobs and cool swag. In the talks, I am implicitly competing with others’ research and accomplishments in their field, as well as the other audience members around me to give the best answers, ask the best questions, or bring up quality discussion points. I feel like I’m competing. Is it me? Is it them? Or is it the nature of a patriarchal, scientific community that thrives on cut-throat competition? 

I love how Subramaniam came to women’s studies, and what she found when she got there: 

“I knocked on the doors of women’s studies looking for an alternative to the sciences. What I found was a rich set of theories that helped me understand my own alienation within the culture of science and reenergized me as a scientist” (Subramaniam ix).

The one thing that is true about both of my experiences at GHC is that I have always left wanting to be a better scientist. Both conferences reenergized me as a computer scientist. Which is no small feat. I think it took me leaving the conference and reflecting to realize how much I wanted to accomplish the things some of these incredible women have accomplished and are now celebrating at the conference. 

“Like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, I have felt that I have to keep running to stay in the same place: perpetually ‘catching up’” (Subramaniam xii).

So have I. I’ve to work harder to feel like I can *actually* compete with the boys in my classes… when in actuality most of them just don’t have a strong work ethic, and it shows in their grades and the complaints they share with me after class. I’ve just been running myself over, working extra hard because that’s what the portrayal of computer science in society tells me to do sometimes. Feminist studies reminds me that that’s a wider society problem, not a computer science problem, and remembering that helps me transcend those stereotypes and expectations that I sometimes reflect in myself.

some reflections on Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua

“Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them… The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of, and commitment to, the value system than men” (Anzaldua 38-39).

And so is true with language. Language is gendered, it is male. From the different ways in which the different genders speak to the masculine/feminine nouns, adjectives, and adverbs in Spanish. French, and other Latin languages. When there is a mixed-gendered group of people, it defaults to masculine parts of speech. You would think that there could be a gender-neutral plural version of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. But there is not; it’s always specified as masculine. 

I learned French twice: once as a teenager, in high school, and once as a feminist, in college. The first time, I was only frustrated at how difficult the language was to me. The second time, I was very frustrated with how gendered the language is. I remember learning about careers in French III or IV, learning two sets of words for each career: the masculine, and the feminine. But when it came to careers like doctor, accountant, and CEO, there was only a masculine version to learn. I was outraged. My professor indicated that our book was out of date and that the official society of people who regulate the French language was working on creating feminine versions of the words… but there was also a lot of backlash from French people regarding that. Seriously?

Language is a male discourse. The ways in which female voices are stifled by language are the same ways that ethnic voices are stifled by “nationalism” and the English language in America. It is structural violence. White men are trying to take away everyone’s voices. The same way that they have always been.

Amber Hollibaugh’s oral history is incredible. The way she tells her stories has blown me away. I’m transported into her history as I read, and I love it. I’m constantly amazed by the way that she’s able to not necessarily distance herself from some of the horrors in her past, but learn from them and recognize that all of her experiences contributed to the person she is and the impact she’s made in the movements that are most important to her. When speaking about her parents, she did not hold them in contempt of ill-will, despite the sexual abuse she experienced from her father at an early age, the the refusal to believe her accusation from her mother. Hollibaugh speaks with a profound sort of detached empathy, acknowledging some of the issues or past experiences that her parents faced that led them to their betrayals of their daughter. 

“I never believed in the rhetoric in the left, especially of like, say, hating your parents or hating your family… I stayed in dialogue with my family about my own radical politics and I never believed that working people were stupid and that kinf of stuff, because I – it was like believing I was stupid and frankly, I’ve often thought I was but that’s not what I believed about my own culture. And that made a different, I think, in the way that I struggled with by being a revolutionary.” ~ Hollibaugh, pg. 92 

It was hard for me at first to find the politics in Hollibaugh’s life, since she mostly just told stories that captivated me. At one point, however, Hollibaugh and Anderson (the interviewer) discuss the topics they’ve addressed and the topics they’d like to touch on before the interview ended, and it clicked for me: Hollibaugh’s politics were always wrapped up in her experiences.

“I mean, you’re right, we didn’t do politics in a very direct way… but I think exactly because of what you’re trying to look for, those tend to be hidden underneath stories to kind of politicize…” ~ Hollibaugh to Anderson, pg. 85

Once again, we have that reoccurring theme that the personal is political. From that moment in the oral history, I began to pick up on the personal is political theme everywhere; it’s scribbled in the margins of many of my pages. 

And I think what I was waiting for was Hollibaugh to describe the moment where she was able to step out of her own experiences and recognize the way that her experiences made her able to see the bigger picture and tie that into her politics, because it was clear that she had struggled with forgiving her family and others in her past, but at the time of this taping in 2003, she had this profound sort of detached empathy I mentioned earlier. On one of the last pages of the history, I got that moment:

“…everything that I’ve done in my entire life equips me to be brilliant at this and therefore, what had begun to feel as though it weren’t useful – why had I become a feminist? why had I become a radical? why had I become a sex blah-blah-blah – suddenly had life again and meaning and necessity. And I wasn’t like, defensive. I didn’t have to be defensive… So, that gave me an incredible transition out of what was a narrowing women’s movement into a world that was huge and necessary and fundamental and radical.” ~ Amber Hollibaugh, pg. 154

And I think that’s a really beautiful thing.

The other day I was talking with a person who identifies as male. We were discussed food, and then the topic of spicy foods came up. I don’t really like them, and I told him that. His response? Something to the effect of: 

“Yeah, I’m a real vagina when it comes to spicy things, I can’t handle them blah blah blah…”

And I stopped for a minute. Did he just say what I think he said? We were texting, so I asked, “…a vagina?” hoping that a typo made autocorrect do something wonky. I waited. He told me “yes, a vagina, like a wimp.” He didn’t like spicy foods and that made him a vagina.

There were so many things I wanted to say and I don’t really remember what I did say. All I know is he said something like, oh I didn’t mean it like that (which he did), I hope I didn’t offend you (which he did). And I haven’t spoken to him since. I was hoping the silence on my part might make him realize he said something extremely offensive. But I guess not. 

When I was angry and ignoring him though, I had a moment where I paused to think about using anatomy as insults. I am have never had any problem with “dick” used as an insult… On occasion, I’ve been known to use it myself. (Not my proudest fact but sometimes I let my anger get the best of me.) Although it makes me cringe, “pussy” has never made me as upset as hearing “vagina” as an insult did. I thought about it. What justified me to use “dick” but be angry about “vagina”? 

The key difference is “dick” and “pussy” are vulgar words. They are slang/vulgar terms for “penis” and “vagina” and slang/vulgar terms are usually used when someone is angry or just wants to feel like an adult. They are problematic in their own way; so are a lot of vulgar words for a lot of different people. I’ve become desensitized to their use. But when someone, a male, no less, calls themselves a vagina instead of using the word wimp? Really?

I have never heard anyone call another person a “penis” when they are being wimpy, or when they are being rude, if we want to equate “penis” as an insult to “dick” as an insult. “Penis” doesn’t get used as an insult. But “vagnia” does… vaginas are wimpy, vaginas are weak…right? HELL NO. Vaginas push babies out of them, vaginas bleed once a month, vaginas can literally take a pounding. Vaginas are one of the strongest body parts there are. If anything, penises are weak, because you touch them once the wrong way and it leaves a man debilitated for 20 minutes. But I’m never going to call anyone a “penis” (except in the title of this post, which I am leaving at it is for comedic effect).

Stop using the anatomical name for my genitals as an insult. It’s not cute, it’s not funny. It’s effectively calling an entire class of humans weak and wimpy. I mean, what else is new, right? Jokey insults just perpetuate the stereotypes and the oppression and the next time someone uses the word “vagina” in place of the word “wimp” they might just find out how wimpy I really am. (Ok I’m not going to fight them, I’m not a fan of violence, but I would probably yell at them a lot and try to convey all the words I have typed here into my yell-lesson.)

“So for a long time I – there’s a period where I could say I was spiritually dormant, where I didn’t really go to church, I’d left the church pretty much, the sermons made me upset, you know, just everything that they said seemed to be very anti-feminine. And so just social activism was what, you know, really became my banner, you know, that I held.“ ~ Maria Elena Martinez, oral history, 2012

I really connect with this quote; I think at this time in my life, this is where I am spiritually. I’ve been to (Christian) churches that are super progressive and liberal, and I’ve been to (Christian) churches that are oppressive and patriarchal. I know I have a lot of really great options to attend church that fit within the former category, but I honestly don’t want to pursue that right now, because then I would feel obligated to believe all the things that I’ve learned in Sunday school since I was 7. I think Southwestern has made me a social activist, and I think I am still in the process of becoming one. I’d rather hold on to my activism banner than pick the religion banner back up at this moment.

I really appreciate Martinez’s spiritual journey though, especially how she was spiritually dormant and then realized she needed to figure it out, and so she did, and that process in itself took a few years until she found what worked for her. I think that’s really all religion boils down to: finding what works for you that helps you make sense of the world around you. I believe all religions have their own merit, have their own way to enlightenment/heaven/afterlife/etc. They help make the world a better place (mostly) since the believers have a certain set of behaviors that are “acceptable” for the religion, and most of those behaviors and beliefs are working towards the good of humanity. I don’t understand how people can say, “there is only ONE correct religion and it’s mine,” because it really only matters if your religion is correct for you.

And I really appreciate that even though Martinez grew up in a Catholic family, she was able to set those beliefs aside since they no longer worked for her, and picked up Shamanism because that is what did. I feel like so much of the U.S. is indoctrinated with Christianity from the very beginning, because even though we have separation of church in state in our political system, that’s not necessarily how a lot of Christians (cough, republicans) act. Christianity is very Western & normative, and I’m ready for this country to get away from that, because it’s not the end all be all religion, and people don’t have to feel like it is anymore. I’m so intrigued by Eastern religions and I think there should be more opportunities for individuals to explore those options. I have a feeling Maria Martinez might agree with me:

“Well, what – that journey, you know, is a journey – I think all of us have probably a need to express that spiritual side of ourselves. And so I think for me Shamanism was just a very – a good fit for me.”

“You know, if you want to be inclusive, you have to be inclusive from the very beginning. You cannot make all the decisions exclusively and then figure that we’re going to say, ok, and then jump on the bandwagon. And I think that’s been going on for generations and generations in the women’s movement: where do women of color fit in? We know our issues. We know there’s a place for us.” ~ interview with Charon Asetoyer 

This quote really stuck with me when I was reading Asetoyer’s oral history. I realized it’s because I had always thought that multiracial feminisms: Black feminism, Latina feminism, Native American feminism, Asian feminism, etc. had arisen out of a need to confront intersectional problems head on, and address the ways in which “white feminism” falls short. I thought that those kinds of feminism arose out of the frustration with the ways “mainstream” feminism addressed problems and so people of color with those frustrations started their own concurrent movements to combat the privileged, white feminism.

I didn’t realize how wrong I was until quite recently.

Becky Thompson addressed this in “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism,” one of the readings we did last week. Thompson addresses three ways that women of color were working for social change that “Second Wave” ideology fails to recognize: working with white-dominated feminist groups, working in mixed-gender organizations to form women’s subgroups, and forming their own multiracial feminist organizations. Thompson continues: 

“This three-pronged approach contrasts sharply with the common notion that women of color feminists emerged in reaction to (and therefore later than) white feminism” (Thompson 338).

That sentence blew me away, because I had no idea that I assumed multiracial feminist organizations were reactionary until Thompson threw it in my face and made me realize that no, wait a minute, this underlying assumption that I have is not true at all. As a white woman, I’m doing my best to recognize the ways in which white feminism falls short, and make sure my understanding of feminism goes beyond that. In order for that to happen, I need to constantly reevaluate my silent assumptions and make sure readings like this change my perception. Which, it did. Women of color know they fit in, they know there’s a place for them. And they have been making that place for themselves to combat intersectional issues long before the term “white feminism” was even coined.

My first-year seminar was called Doing Good and Doing it Well: the Ethics and Practice of Philanthropy. (The full title is quite a mouthful.) We learned about philanthropy and civic engagement, and ended up giving a grant away where we as a class decided the recipient – we solicited applications from community organizations, filtered through them, conducted three site visits, and decided on a final recipient. It was an incredible seminar, and it really sparked my passion for civic and community engagement that marks so much of the things I do today.

The summer before freshman year, we all had FYS reading assignments (a topic of much complaint among my fellow first-years: they told us that going to college meant no more summer reading ever!) (at least it was the only summer reading assignment I’ve had to do in my time at Southwestern). The book we read was Jane Addams’ Twenty Years at Hull House, which documented her time leading and living in a commune in the slums of Chicago. Addams founded this commune around the beginning of the Progressive Era, as she wanted to create a communal space for women specifically, in an attempt to create a community in the surrounding, extremely poverty-stricken neighborhood that was full of immigrant residents. These middle class white women moved in to Hull House and created educational and enriching programs for the surrounding neighbors, both children and adults. What they started and completed there was pretty incredible. Jane Addams is today known as the “mother of social work.”

And until last Saturday, I had completely forgotten about it.

Okay, well that’s not entirely true. I knew that Jane Addams is significant to me, I knew that she was important to the field of social work, and that Hull House was a very important part of the community. But if you’d asked me what Hull House did, I would have called it a homeless shelter. 

Actually, last Saturday I did call Hull House a homeless shelter. I was in Chicago this past weekend to attend a music festival with a friend, and I was looking up free things to do around the city. I found out that there was a Hull House museum on the campus of University of Illinois at Chicago, and I freaked out because I didn’t realize there was a museum. I excitedly told my friend, told her the little I remembered about Jane Addams, as well as the (false) fact that Hull House was a homeless shelter. Like I said, I remembered that she was significant to me, hence my excitement, I just didn’t remember all the details.

So we went to the Hull House museum last Sunday. The museum consists of two of the original buildings of the 13-building commune. There were so many awesome things that happened there, so many programs and initiatives led by incredible women that impacted their community. It was a space that combated a lot of intersectional issues, and from the exhibits at the museum it looked like the women living and working there really acknowledged the aspects of intersectionality related to the poverty of their immigrant neighborhood. There’s so much more I want to learn about this period in time, these people, this community.

outside the Jane Addams Hull House Museum

Jane Addams’ bedroom

((some reflections))

“To be involved in political activism is thus to be involved in a struggle against happiness.”

1) it’s almost like another one of those false dichotomies – you are either happy, or you are involved in a political struggle. there is no in-between. people say, “cheer up, it’s not a big deal, it’s just a joke” … but it’s not. “be happier, it’s so easy” … but it’s not. how can one who has been oppressed for so long be happy and joyful and simply ignore the oppression? well, maybe they can. ignorance is bliss, after all. but the point of the struggle is to bring happiness to more people – to the people on the fringes, those who thought happiness was forever unattainable. and, it’s not to say that those who are involved in political activism do not experience moments of happiness – happiness is just not their natural state. but then again, is happiness anyone’s natural state?

“You cannot always close the gap between how you do feel and how you should feel.”

2) someone makes a sexist joke. it is lighthearted, it is casual, it is supposed to be laughed at. it comes from someone you are just starting to get to know. it comes from someone that you consider one of your closest friends. it comes from a mentor, someone who has some of the most respect that you’ve ever given another person. or, it comes from a boy you have a crush on, it comes from someone you’re dating, it comes from a boy who is dating your best friend. laugh, their joke urges you. they tell you to laugh with their piercing eyes, the others around you laugh, why aren’t you laughing? you have two choices: laugh along, keep the peace; or, point it out, and get labelled the “angry feminist.” ridiculed, again, for your beliefs: “it’s so funny to make you mad.” stay on the outside. i give a nervous laugh.

“All privilege is ignorant at the core.”

3) yes, most people are ignorant about their own privilege. most think that they are who they are because of hard work and and effort. most politicians’ parents “pulled myself up by my bootstraps” to get where they are today. that kind of privilege is ignorant. 

but some people are aware of their privilege. some acknowledge it. they “check their privilege at the door.” but how can they do that, since your privilege is an inherent part of who you are and how the world treats you? some people are aware of their privilege but… then what?

poem from feministkat.tumblr.com

Hi there, and welcome to my blog! My name is Kathryn, and I am a senior at Southwestern University studying computer science, mathematics, and unofficially majoring in all things civic engagement. I’m currently taking an introduction to Feminist Studies course, and this is my blog to process and reflect upon things I learn in readings, class discussions, and things I experience every day out in the world!

I’ve kept a blog for a class before, last fall in my Gender and Art class. It was called Kat Learns Art, and it was a very fun thing to do. I really enjoyed the space that I had to process things we discussed in class as well as things I experienced and noticed in mass media, culture, etc. that related to class topics. If you want to check it out, click here!

I decided to keep the “Kat doing a thing” theme with the title of this blog. As I already consider myself a feminist, I didn’t want it to be kat learns feminism, only because I believe I already have a good basic knowledge and understanding about feminism (katlearnsalotmoreaboutfeminism just didn’t have that nice ring to it). So, I decided I wanted it to be Feminist Kat, but unfortunately, that blog already exists. I decided to pluralize my name in my favorite way to pluraliZe things, and added a z – thus feministkatz.tumblr.com was born. The feministkat blog is emplty, no posts that I can see, but that person has a poem at the top of their page that I really connected with; if I didn’t know better, I would have thoughtI wrote it myself. (I’ll post a screenshot of the poem in another entry, since tumblr text editor isn’t super supportive.)

And reading that poem written by some other person named Kat (or, maybe they didn’t even write it at all) made me realize that I’m not the only one with the thoughts and feelings I have. I might be the only person with this unique combination of thoughts and feelings and experiences in the world, but there are certainly areas in which my ideas and writing overlap with others’, and that’s why I really like the pluralization in my URL & blog title. In no way do I think my ideas or thoughts are universal to all people, or all people named Kat, or all people who like to shorten their full name to “Kat” on the internet even though they don’t go by Kat in real life, but it makes me feel like I’m not alone. What I have to say is relatable (or it’s not). Either way, I’m adding my voice to this really awesome, huge, complex conversation about gender and race and class and privilege and feminism and society and the world and the people around us. And I think that’s pretty important and wonderful, that I can be a part of it.