Fortunately, I went to a very liberal high school that was fair on most of its rules, including the dress code. Most people broke the few rules we did have- the most strictly upheld one was the no hats policy more for respect of the flag than preventing distractions. However, others are not so lucky and attend schools that target (female) students that try to prevent distractions in a learning environment. These rules are inherently sexist and not only do they unintentionally sexualize young girls, they also reinforce the idea that boys are uncontrollable sex beasts that can’t focus in the presence of girls’ shoulders or legs.

Taken From: http://shubbabang.tumblr.com/post/58167155905/i-dedicate-this-comic-to-the-teacher-who-pulled-me

The big issue is that these girls are being sent home or taken out off class. Obviously this is detrimental to their education all because the school staff feels their choice in clothing is going to distract others. Granted, I have seen some outfits that I’m surprised people didn’t get sent home for, but when girls are wearing things like:

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/04/290270-school-sends-girl-home-calling-outfit-inappropriate-whats-wrong/

The problem is no longer with the outfits, it is with the staff.

In the first picture, Macy Edgerly was sent home for wearing leggings and a long, non-form fitting shirt. In the second picture, Harriet Dale‘s high school had just banned skirts to “save the blushes of male members of staff” which is disgusting enough. Then she was sent home because, although she was wearing the same exact outfit as other schoolmates, her legs were “larger” than others. So please excuse her while she goes home and switches her legs out for the smaller ones. And in the final picture, Stephanie Dunn was sent home on the first day of school for showing her collarbone. 

Students are starting to fight back as more and more students are exposed to injustices like the girls above fought through:

The biggest problem with these dress codes is that they promote a rape culture. This whole idea that certain body parts on girls need to be hidden away because boys can’t handle it teaches girls that they are responsible for boys’ inability to control themselves. It teaches boys that 1). they shouldn’t be able to control themselves around girls and 2). if they can’t, it is the girl’s responsibility to take care of it.

All I want to know is why those girls can’t wear those outfits, but I have seen with my own eyes boys wear these shirts to my high school:

To be completely honest, I don’t really know how to start this post. I don’t have plan, I don’t have a layout, I’m not sure what I’m going to say. I’ve been reading articles attempting to form an opinion on this topic, but the more information I get, the more confused I am.

Throughout high school, my friends and I would joke “Well, if I don’t get into college I could always be a stripper. They earn more money than I will ever see anyway!” And we would laugh and continue doing whatever stupid things we did at the time. I thought of sex work as a dirty thing that people did when they fell into a wrong path following drug abuse or something. Then when I realized I was a feminist (thank God), my opinion completely flip flopped into “Women have the right to sell their bodies if they want to! We are going to be objectified anyway- might as well profit from the disgusting world we live in rather than be a victim of it. Do whatever you want as long as you’re safe and happy!” And I believed that up until five minutes ago when I started doing more research on the topic. 

I’ve read articles written by sex workers, post sex-workers, and people completely on the outside and I can officially say: I am more confused then ever. I’m still figuring it out. I think this topic, unlike sex trafficking or equal pay, finds itself in a gray area rather than being defined as right or wrong. In an attempt to organize my thoughts, I created this nice little chart which majorly simplifies the pros and cons feminists see with stripping:

The Opposing Views Feminists Have on Stripping

To make things even more confusing, I’m going to throw in some distrubing facts about the sex worker industry:
(The following facts were taken from this blog post:
https://touchawomansheart.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/whats-wrong-with-stripping-a-feminist-perspective/)

• Women overwhelmingly get into stripping because they need money and don’t have many other options
• Because women in strip clubs usually aren’t paid a flat rate (and are often charged to “work” in a club), they can only make money from (male) customers. This (along with the poverty that pushes women into stripping in the first place) often creates an environment where they must be willing to do anything and everything to stay afloat.
• [An] assumption: “It’s just dancing, no touching and no sex!” Many times, that is simply not true. These days, if you want to make money, you have to allow touching at the very least.
• Because men who visit strip clubs feel entitled to the women’s bodies, abuse is rampant in strip clubs. In a survey conducted by Kelly Hopsopple of The Freedom and Justice Center for Prostitution Resources, one hundred percent of women in strip clubs reported physical abuse.
• Women in the sex industries, including stripping, often use a lot of drugs in order to numb themselves to the abuse and harassment

So where does this leave? It leaves me confused, upset, and feeling useless. All I know is that I will forever support women in their choices (as long as they don’t hurt anyone else and she has good intentions).

It’s Saturday morning around noon. You roll out of bed and make your way out of your dorm to the nearest place with food because you’re starving. Cup of noodles just won’t cut it this time. You walk down the hall, get in the elevator, travel in an awkward silence with a few other sleepy students for a ten seconds, and then make your way out the door. That’s when you see her- the girl piggybacking into your building still wearing her tight black dress from the night before and carrying her heels in her hands. A few people cut her glances and don’t say anything but you all know- The Walk of Shame.

From the movie Walk of Shame

Now why is it called the Walk of Shame? I’m going to ask you to do some outside work right now: click this link and scroll through some of the pictures and you will notice one common theme: Funny Walk of Shame Gallery

Did you notice that all of the pictures except one are of women? Ignoring the fact that it is extremely weird and creepy that this gallery exists in the first place (which is why I made it an outside link and didn’t directly post the pictures on my blog), I want to discuss why this is harmful. First of all, by calling it the “Walk of Shame”, we are implying that women should be ashamed of themselves for having sex. Even looking at the girls in the pictures, most of them look uncomfortable or hurried where the one guy seems to be okay with it. This reinforces the double standard that women should be ashamed of their sex life while men should flaunt it.

Amber Rose, who is a rapper and model, used to date Kayne West. When asked about her, Kayne said “I had to take 30 showers before I got with [my new wife] Kim“. Understandably upset about being so publicly slut shammed, Amber Rose decided to take a stand and make a video called “Walk of No Shame”:

In a hilarious and cute walk home, Amber gets out the message that it okay for women to feel comfortable in their sexualities and bodies. There are other notable point such as we shouldn’t shame women for having sex, many (not all) adults have sex so there is no point in being children when we see in this situation, and having sex is fun so why sensor it? In America is seems as though we watch someone get shot on T.V. without blinking an eye but the second anything remotely close to sex comes on we get offended (How am I supposed to explain that to my daughter/son?).

I wish I knew if these weird double standards exist for women in different parts of the world. If anyone happens to know how the “Walk of Shame” is viewed in other cultures (especially those more open to sex) please comment and let me know! 🙂

Yes, in my country.

As Americans, we seem to have the tendency to have the attitude “oh, that doesn’t happen here” in relevance to anything we find horrible. The sad reality is that yes. It probably does happen here.

Just so we are on the same page, sex trafficking is a form of slavery. It involves the use of “violence, threats, lies, debt bondage, and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will”. Although is does sound severely outdated and too cruel to happen in ol’ great ‘Murica, since 2007, there have been 14,588 reported cases of sex trafficking in the U.S., which I find personally terrifying.

CNN posted an article on March 9, 2015, describing the lives of two victims: First there is a girl named Melissa who was sold by a family member at the age of 12 . She was chained to a bed, beaten, raped, and set on fire once by her captors. Between 5 and 30 men forced themselves on her each day. This took place in Texas.

In Minnesota, a 12 year old girl was kidnapped and raped by a 34 year old who then sold her to 2 more men who sax naked pictures her captor posted of her on Craigslist.

The amazing thing is that women with similar experiences are rarely seen as victims and instead are labeled as “future prostitutes”. To make matters worse, the rapists are more often than not forced to pay a fine. And that’s it. No jail time. That’s it.

Thankfully, there are currently two bills that are were recently created in order to try to stop this modern-day slave trade. First, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act support victims by taking fines from the convicted traffickers and putting them towards services that help restore the victim’s lives. The second bill is called the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act which helps to make sure that minors aren’t “prosecuted as defendants, but instead treated as victims”. We are taking steps, but will they be enough to keep women safe?

Click here to learn how you can help stop human trafficking.

(Most of this information in this post was obtained from this CNN Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/opinions/cornyn-klobuchar-trafficking-law/)

Hey everyone! Welcome to the new 3-4 people that are going to be reading my blog posts. I’m Dani, that girl that is always talking about feminism, gay rights, music, and dogs. I gave that speech on meninism if that triggers your memory. Just to give you some background, in the past I’ve talked about: feminism, the dangers of white feminism, my favorite feminists of 2015, #shoutyourabortion, and women who think they don’t need feminism.

Today, I think I’m going to be talking about something I can’t believe actually happened. You might want to actually want to watch the video to understand just how angry I am. In case you can’t because you don’t have headphones and we are in the computer lab, I will describe it for you and link to the video in gif form. This video is about two full grown TELEVISED men making fun of young women at a baseball game.

At this Arizona Dinamonbacks game, where this group of Arizona State University Alpha Chi Omega Sorority Girls was enjoying the forth inning,  the broadcasters urged fans (on the screen, I’m assuming) to take pictures of themselves and submit them to a competition. So what did these girls do? They took some pictures!

That’s when announcers Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly come into play. Right after they made the announcement to send pictures to the competition, the camera panned over the audience and these two 50 and 60 year-olds started making fun of the young women.

There are approximately 4 million things that are wrong with this scenario, but I will stick to just a few for time purposes (I plan to go into detail about some of these topics in the future, just as a heads up). First, they were literally instructed to take pictures. Even if they weren’t….so what? I would like you to take a guess as to why the camera picked these girls in particular. I think it is because they are blonde, young, wearing women’s sports apparel, and beautiful. I mean, look at them!

Society loves making fun of women for things they love (pumpkin spice lattes, Uggs, and selfies to name a few) and this holds true in this scenario. Had this been a group of men taking pictures, the commentary would have been very different or possibly non-existent. There might not be any crying allowed in baseball, but apparently, there sure is a lot of sexism. 

At one point, these men say something like “how about if we send Baxter out there and he collects all of the phones? You’re not getting them back until the end of the game!” First of all, why are they treating these fully grown adult women as if they are teenagers texting during class? I would like to point out that the own announcers aren’t paying attention to the game- they are too busy watching the women having a good time. The camera cuts back to the players for maybe a total of 5 seconds during this 2 minute clip.

To make it even better, when the girls were offered free tickets to another game, they turned them down. Instead, they asked the Diamondbacks to donate tickets to families at  A New Leaf, which is a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.

What have we learned today? Men like to look at young women. Young women like to look at themselves. Men don’t like it when young women look at themselves. But they don’t dislike it enough to stop looking at them when they’re looking at themselves.

Dear men who are doing stuff like this: please leave women alone and let us enjoy life for once.

I think its pretty commonly known that almost all feminists are pro-choice. Being pro-life would mean supporting women not having the right to control their own bodies, which just isn’t something a feminist in 2015 really agrees with.

Today I want to talk about a new hashtag that has appeared on twitter, #shoutyourabortion. Here are a few examples of what people are posting:

Many people, specifically women, are using this hashtag in support of the group, Planned Parenthood, which is a group that specializes in sexual health, as well as supporting the rights of women to have control of their bodies.

Like I do in all of my posts, I want to make sure that you know my stance on this topic: I am pro-choice. I will never hide that or be ashamed to admit it. But I also want to make sure you know that no one is ever “pro-abortion”. No one wakes up thinking, “Wow, I can’t wait to get pregnant so I can get an abortion!” That’s literally never how it works. People have abortions because they need to. To reduce any misunderstandings, here are some reasons I’ve found that people have gotten abortions:

1. Birth control failure
   • Although the pill is 99% effective and condoms are 98% effective IF used correctly, things happen. Sometimes someone might forget to take a pill or a condom breaks. Things like that happen. 
2. Financial concerns
   • This is the number one reported reason why women have gotten abortions. Many times unintended pregnancies between couples that are not financially capable of supporting a child. For example, if I were to have a child right now I would have no possible way to pay for everything the baby would need. Unless my parents decided to be very generous, I would need to drop out of school to work and pay for the child. It would be even worse if my boyfriend left me with the baby, which is what happens in 90% of intended pregnancy relationships after 6 years. This baby would grow up in absolute poverty because I wouldn’t be able to pay for a house in a “good area” so they wouldn’t get a good education, health insurance, life insurance…the dominos continue to fall.
3. Inability to support or care for the child
   • Whether it is because of finances or not, some people don’t have the ability to take care of a child.
4. To end a dangerous pregnancy
   • If a pregnancy could possibly kill the mother, she may get an abortion. I don’t know what else to say.
5. Prevent giving birth to a child with health conditions
6. Pregnancy resulting from rape
   • Enough said.
7. To end an unwanted pregnancy
   • It could be that simple. Her body, her choice.

You may ask why these women can’t just give the child up for adoption- they can, but it is all about what they are more comfortable with. Some women don’t want to go through the 9 months. Some don’t want to give birth. Some can’t bear the thought of giving up their child and leaving their future to chance. Whatever a woman decides to do, it is her decision and her right. It is her body. It is her health. It is her risk. It is her choice.

I have a little bit of a lighter topic today compared to what I’ve been talking about in the past few posts; I’m going to be looking at my top three favorite feminists of 2015 and some of the great things they have done to support women and raise awareness.

Number One Fav:
Malala Yousafzai

What an absolutely amazing woman. For those of you that don’t know too much about Malala, let me give you some background: She was born in Pakistan in 1997. In 2008, when she was 11, she gave a speech after the Taliban began attacking girls’ schools and in 2008 she began to write for the BBC about “living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education” (Biography.com Editors). She continued to speak out about the rights of women to an education and eventually was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011 as well as being awarded the Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Pretty impressive huh?

Just wait, it gets even more insane. When she was 14, the Taliban started sending her death threats. Then when she was 15 and on her way home from school in a bus, a man boarded the bus, demanded to know which girl Malala was, and shot her in the left side of the head. The crazy thing is that she survived.

Since being shot, she has fully recovered, written an autobiography titled, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, and in 2014 was the youngest person to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. For her 18^th birthday, she opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon which is covered by the Malala Fund.
Literally amazing.

Number 2:
Nicki Minaj

I could talk about her forever. Her career started out with her as an avatar, just a mask she used to perform. But over time she has transformed into something much more real- a business woman fighting for her place in an industry run mostly by men. Here are just a few of my favorite quotes by her:

Many people say that they don’t like her because they think that she is too loud and obnoxious, but let me just tell you how real she is.  She has come so far in her life- Her father was a drug addict set fire to the familys house to try to kill the mother. She has worked hard for everything she has now and constantly supports and praises other women who do the same. She isnt afraid to say what she is thinking as we have seen in her recent fights with Taylor Swift online and Miley Cyrus at the VMA’s and I respect her so much for that. She encourages her women fans to work hard so they don’t have to depend on anyone (targeted towards not needing a man). Not to mention that she has been teaming up with Beyonce to get the message of feminism across. Which leads me to….

Fav #3
Beyonce

The main thing I want to talk about with Beyonce is her performance at the 2014 VMAs.

What an incredibly iconic and important moment for feminists all over the world. Most people do not unfortunately understand what feminism is- they assume that is more along the lines of misandry than fighting for equality. So to have someone as famous as Beyonce get up at the VMA and proclaim herself as a feminist is game changing. She got the message into 12.4 million America’s homes that night. No one has been able to have that much power to project a message about feminism to so many people at the same time. I haven’t listened to most of her new album, but from what I understand the song Flawless samples a feminist talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beyonce quotes from her: “Feminist: the person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes” as well as other parts of Adichie’s talk.
These women are slowly working to change the world and I could not be happier that they have have proclaimed themselves as feminists. My expectations for them are very high and I hope that they continue to do great things for movement in the future.

Disclaimer: As an 18 year old white woman, it must be noted that the following post is simply what I have noticed and observed about the following topic. I can not speak for woman color on this issue. 

With it being a solid 12 days after the 2015 VMA’s were posted, I think it is fair to say that most people have seen, or at least heard of, the incident. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here ya go:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/miley-cyrus-vmas-2015-outfits-818792

Ah, Miley Cyrus. I remember thinking the Wrecking Ball music video was as bad as it was going to get, but she somehow managed to outdo herself. Now, first let me say that I hardly pay attention to what happens with celebrities- it’s not just something I really care for. But this, well this is not just something that can not be ignored. For those of you saying, “What? I don’t see what’s wrong. Sure, the outfit is ugly but what’s so bad about it?” Well, I’m glad you asked. Take a closer look at her hair style- that’s right. She’s trying to sport dreadlocks.

Now let’s take a jump to a different issue before we go any further with Ms. Cyrus. White feminism is somewhat of a newer term in our culture that really just means feminism that ignores the rights and needs of women of color. As a woman, I constantly need to be on my guard for potential attackers who think because I am a woman I will be an easy target. However, as a white woman I hardly ever need to think about problems my race will cause me. It is part of the unjust, unfair world that we live in that we are working to change- and the best place for me to start is addressing the problems with white feminism.

In this particular case, tumblr user “beowvlf” described the Miley situation perfectly:

White feminism is “Miley can dress however she wants, don’t slut shame her” Actual feminism is “Miley can dress however she wants but she crossed a line when she started using another culture as a means to rebel and utilized black women and little people as shocking accessories in her music videos and live performances”.

Make any more sense now?

As feminists, we need to remember that we are fighting for equality. We need to remember that we are trying to lift other women up. This simply can not be done while appropriating, rather than appreciating, women’s of color cultures. Using traditional clothing from other cultures as a costume or a fashion statement belittles those who are actually a part of that culture, women included. As feminists, we can not stand for this kind of disrespect.

(I got most of the following information from this very informative video)

Most of the issues that arise in feminism arise from simple ignorance.
People who are “white feminimst” are trying to level out the wage gap between men and women without realizing that women of color get paid even less than than white women do.
TBT to my last post with this awesome chart:

http://www.aauw.org/files/2014/09/Fig4.jpg

It’s popular to argue that women make 78 cents for every dollar a man makes. What we don’t realize is that not only is there a difference between what white men of color earn, but the huge  gap between what white men and women of color make. White feminism is ignoring this injustice.

White feminism is ignoring that a simple Google search of “beautiful women” results in almost exclusively white women. We create double standards on top of double standards (I shall call them quadruple standards) that impossible for especially women of color to live up to.

In the words of the video linked above to the Huffington Post, “being a white feminist doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means you have a lot to learn.”

In order to avoid being a white feminist, the best thing you can do is listen to women of color speak about their issues. Listen to their side of the story, because they do not face the same sexism that white women do. We need to listen to understand each other’s needs.

http://www.clydefitchreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/we-all-can-do-it.jpg