Am I a third wave feminist

After taking part in a women study class, I believe myself to be a women who stands up for what is right and wants to succeed in what is somewhat still a mans world. I want to not only help women of this country but to look outside our country and help women of all race, religion and color.

The third wave of feminist wants to stop the stereotype of gender and sexuality and make people realize that gender and femininity isn't a bad thing. The third wave started in the 1990s but I believe the biggest change has been in the past 10 years. More people are not afraid to come out and be gay, or dress like a women if they are a man. Our society today has come a long way and it almost to the point where it doesn't phase people anymore. I think of Lady Gaga, she is always wearing weird outfits and I believe she is testing the people to see how they react to her.She is bold and different.

Policy Issue: Reproduction Rights

Abortion is one of the biggest controversial subjects in this country. I am pro- choice and believe every women has the right to her own body. What gets me upset is when men and politics gets in the way of abortion. First of all men don't go through half the things women go through. Our bodies are always changing and if we don't want to have a child we should be the ones to decide not a man. They don't have to go through nine months of being fat, and caring for another human being.

Still today many people frown upon abortion but I don't understand how they can be so narrow minded. My friend had to have an abortion and I never understood it until someone close to me had to make that decision. She had to tell her mom to help pay for it and she knew she disappointed her mom. However she and her mom knew this is the best thing if she wanted to make a career and start fresh. She was a college girl with 2 more years left, and she knew she wanted to finish school and do things the right way.

I think my friend was brave to go through what she did and the fact she knew she had made a mistake in college changed her.Abortion is a great thing for women, and we are lucky to have a choice in our bodies.

Rape Awareness in college

College is a time to live away from your family and get to experience life without rules. Many of us party and drink and like to enjoy the night life in college. However many things are not brought to our attention as much as they should be. This being sexual assault and rape. As a freshmen we learn about drinking, and the buddy system but how much do you learn about what rape is and sexual assaults.

At my university and probably many others there are programs to make that aware but I feel as if I never heard when these pr grams were offered. I would like to make more college student aware of the situation that could happen and when to tell someone.

In my class lecture I learned that 1 in 3 women will experience sexual assault and 1 and 4 college women will experience sexual violence. And 13% of women in college have stalkers.

Many of these women do not report being raped or sexual assaulted because they don't know how to or are scared.

I was thinking to myself today if that were to ever happen to me I wouldn't know who to call or what to do. I would really like to be educated more on what is rape and how to go about taking steps if it ever happens.

I honestly believe that if we educate women freshmen year of college, they would be better off! I think it needs to be a mandatory 1 credit half a semester class.

Marriage is not the solution to women's poverty

I don't think that the Preamble to 1996 legislation which is to reduce poverty vs. increase marriage is the right idea. The idea is smart but not the solution. In today's society it is hard enough to make a good earning and own a home, and having a husband or wife to help with the payments helps. However women who are under the poverty line don't need to find a husband, they need to be helped. I think they need to be educated and get back their self confidence.

If we focus on marriage I think it's setting the women up for failure. After watching my Aunt raise 4 boys by herself and waiting for her x husband to give her money makes me want my own life, job, house, and income before I ever get involved with someone. My aunt worked for her husband so she would go into work when she had time but her full time job was being a house mom. When she found that her husband had cheated on her she knew she had to move out but the fact she didn't have any money made her situation even harder.

How do we know that marriage will last and when it comes divorce time for a women who was once under poverty she will once again have to find money and time to go to court and be back where she started.

We need to teach young adults to be on their own and that being on our own is fun and fine! Forcing marriage is only going to make things worse.

Household work

I learned that 27 hours of house work each week is on average of what women do, compared to the 16 hours men do at home. When learning about women working at home it really made me think of the difference between my mom and my dad. Men do more seasonal work, like in the spring and summer with mowing the lawn, or painting the house. Women on the other hand year round have to clean, cook, do laundry, and keep up with greeting cards and family functions.

My dad right now is outside pressure washing our back deck, my mom right now is painting her bedroom. We just moved into a new beach house so the work being done right now will only have to be done once in the next 10 years. However I look at my mom and noticed she is going out finding new things to decorate this house with as well as going back to Va. to make sure our other house is clean and to check on my brother. Her mind is always thinking and she is always multi-tasking, whereas right now I can tell you my dad is listening to music and cleaning the deck, once that job is done he is going to expect my mom to make him lunch and probably grab a beer around 5 o'clock. My dad doesn't realize my mom is inside the house painting.

I never thought about how much women actually do in home, until I heard the statistic of house hold labor between male and female. And it is very true in my household that that amount of hours my mom puts in to house work compared to my dad. If only women got paid for house work!

What is a womens job?

This week was a long week at work for me. I had to do promotional stuff on the field for four games this week. During my week of work something happen to three of our girl interns. We had told one of the guys we work with that on this game we needed him to sale raffle tickets because we had certain jobs that we needed to get done. Well it turns out to this young man selling tickets is a girls job. Which is perfect because in our lecture we talked about problem of identity.

The one girl that happen to take the heat of this conversation stood up for herself and asked him what exactly is a women's job? This young man had no answer all he said was I am not doing it. I found this to be very offensive.

It gets even better!!! Later on in the same game, our GM which is a male, was speaking to us and he said "you girls are making this a big deal when it is not." We all turned to him and said yes it is a big deal. Then, we walked way and he decided to gossip to one of the baseball players and I quote from my GM," I would rather have all guy interns, there would be know drama, but I guess its good to have girl interns to have something to look at." Little does our GM know that he told that to one of the players that we happen to be best friends with.

This is not the first time the girl interns at work have had to stand up for our women identity. I have blogged about a problem before. But it makes you question what American men really think of women in the work force and in the sports field.

Hetero vs. Homosexuality

I grew up saying, "thats gay" or calling my brother names like fag. I never realized that I could be offending someone until I got to high school. I never thought anyone could actually like someone of the same sex but when I started playing field hockey things changed. All of my hockey coaches were gay and had partners and yes at first I was shocked, and joked them. But going to college and being around more gays it doesn't phase me at all. It doesn't matter who they like, their still human and they have feelings like everyone else. Some of my best conversations I have had have been with my gay friends. And because I have gay friends and their open about it with me I was free to ask questions. They gave girl problems just like I may have guy problems. I think its a pretty cool thing that people are gay.

I also think being gay has something to do with the brain. I grew up and have met a lot of twins. Two of my hockey coaches were twins which one sister was straight and the other gay. I also played hockey with twins where one sister was gay and the other one was straight. I am curious to see if their is something in the brain that splits with twins that makes one gay. Or I could be totally wrong.

Disability

How does one define disability? Well I define disability as being different in a sense that certain things are more of challenge but not an excuse. I have had a disability from the time I was in first grade. I am dyslexic and have a slight reading comprehension problem. When I was younger I was always ashamed and would cry because I couldn't read as well or write as fast as my classmates. But it only made me work harder. I never really understood my disability till high school and into college. My parents taught me how to study at a early age and overcome a lot of my disability, which I think helped me out in the long run. Because I had to work harder for good grades and learned at an early age how to study, I actually had better grades then both my brother and my sister. I look at it like this, school was a challenge to me and with my competitive side I had to be the best at everything even school. Whereas my brother and my sister it came easy to them so they just breezed by but not really grasping study habits.

I disagree with people who abuse their privilege and use having a disability as an excuse to get by in school. We are lucky to have disability services that can provide accommodation for us but people who abuse it just make the rest of us look bad.

Another things about disability is I do not look at fatness as a disability. I have a mental disability and yes I do get help, but I also worked to fix it so it wouldn't be as bad. I had to work at spelling and writing, just as much as someone has to work at running track or playing a sport. If you are over weight you need to help yourself and not look at your weight as a disability. If you eat healthy and exercise and still overweight then yes maybe it does classify as a disability but I think that if people who are overweight start paying attention to their body they will notice they don't need as much help as they thought.

White Privilege

I grew up with many privileges and at the time that I grew up we didn't have segregation. However as we all know their was a time were race was a big issue. Think back to your schools days; my best friend Jade was black but it didn't phase any of us. I am lucky to have grown up with that type of privilege; to be able to hang out with who I wanted to hang out with. Did you ever think that back in the civil rights movement how whites felt about blacks. If you were friend or tried to help the civil rights movement you were also looked down upon from your own race. It hasn't always been easy for the white men.

Looking at today society and how diverse we are there are many things changing.My management class at JMU had a chapter about diversity in the work place. Do you know that the fastest growing race is Mexicans and the second is African Americans. And in about ten years the white male will be the minority. Does that mean white men have to fight back for their rights? What about minority scholarships? Can white men and women apply for things of that nature? We also learned in that class that in ten to twenty years the people that are going to have the hardest time finding jobs is educated white men. Our society is changing. Women and men of color are the new change. Just take the presidential election. President Obama is now in office and we also had more women running or in office.

I am just curious to see how the white race or man will be treated when or if in fact they do become the minority. I also think its sad and sick that our society still looks at color as a social standard. Yes President Obama is black and that is exciting for history but he could've been purple or yellow or blue as long as our president can do his job and keep our country safe I don't care what color or race he or she is!!

Theorizing Privilege

Today is July 4th, you could look at today as being a privilege if you are an American citizen. Because of the war against Britain we have had the freedom of religion and not be under the king!

I was out on the boat earlier today enjoying the water and good company and I realized that being with my family and having a boat and the time to enjoy this holiday is a privilege. Most people cant even afford to have a boat. But as I mentioned on one of the discussion board, a privilege doesn't have to involve money. Yes having the nicer things and being able to afford new clothes and cars are nice but being in a free country is always nice. We often forget about the little things in life which can be privileges but we don't seem to recognize them because we did'nt have to work for them.

Romance and Relationships

I was talking to my mom about this topic today and we think that the way you treat your partner really depends on how you grew up. And now that I am older and have had a few serious relationships their are certain things I look for in a man.

First, my ex boyfriend was a only child and his mom loved me. I was like the girl she never had, which was awesome because she bought me stuff and we always had a good time. However, looking back and seeing that I grew up with an older sister and younger brother I want someone who also had to share things, and live with people around his age. I would also prefer if a guy had a sister because I feel guys who have sister understand our emotions better. I say this because I watch my younger brother with his girlfriend. He almost is like to nice to her and I wonder if that is because my brother grew up watching my sister and I date guys and either get hurt or watch a guy get well.. played.

If you think about who you have dated and how they treated you look back and see what their family was like, did they have brothers and sisters, or did they do things alone? It really can be eye opening.