I had a handful of interesting dreams this morning. Involving various people that I know and used to know. One involved me being in a large room that had rows and rows of really old computers and quite possibly old school computers that never really existed. I somewhat confronted the old childhood "friend" in my dream since she is always in them periodically. I will have to describe that to you sometime soon since this is the second time I'm mentioning the fact that I want to discuss that more in depth.
For my women in other cultures class, we have to read articles about current events that are related to our studies of...women! They are extremely interesting and although some of the facts and news I may not be specifically aware of, the general themes and ideas behind them are ones that I have been becoming more and more aware as well as wanting to change those ideas. The most important thing that I have learned in this class thus far, is that men are not the only ones maintaining the stereotypes of women. Women are just as responsible too. We need to change it, now.
I will list and describe the articles/blogs that we have read so far:
This article talks about women's suffrage and was presented just recently for the 90th anniversary of suffrage for American women.
This article is about the recent mass rapes that have been going on in Congo.
This article describes the procedure held in China of public shaming for criminals, specifically prostitutes. The two main things here to notice, regardless of your feelings and thoughts towards prostitutes, there is always another side of the story and the women are always concentrated on rather than the men that are paying for these services. Why don't they get punished too? Women are always the ones that are targeted here, sometimes with the men completely ignored. You can't be a fucking prostitute alone, someone else has to be part of the equation. If you want to hear the other side, I suggest you read Tricking and Tripping [being the second class in which this was assigned reading, thus being very good information].
This blog post brings up the high rate of Cesarean sections that are being done in the US. It's particularly interesting because I was not necessarily aware of the things it mentions.
This article describes that women are actually being paid more than their male counterparts. But as you read, you realize that only in one aspect this is true, but the income gender gap still exists. If you have no idea what this gap is, well fucking get to the reading then! To put simply, a woman, of the very same position at a place, education, qualifications and so on as the man, gets paid less. In America, women generally make 77% of what the man of the same position makes. Also, educate yourself more on the glass ceiling.
This article refers to the increase in deaths amongst women in Mexico, particularly Juarez, in regards to drug trafficking.
This blog post discusses single-sex education. So schools and/or educational programs that separate the sexes. I'm particularly against the idea for far too many reasons than I'm in the mood to present, some of which the author does mention.
And finally this blog post talks about the sex ratio in the computer science career field and sums up conditioning gender roles that start in childhood [specifically toys] in a great way that I really wish people knew more about this. Years ago I had done a project to go to a department store and research children's toys and describe what I found. Ever since then I have been increasingly enraged by them. There is already enough emotion in this blog and more to come so I'm going to keep it short rather than describing every thought involved.
I will continue to post these on some sort of regular basis because I feel it is important for others to recognize these things that not only persists in our culture but others. And to sum up this gloomy part of this post, I will tell you about something I experienced today. As I was driving to campus, I drove by a sign that has been vandalized in such a way that made me incredibly uneasy. When the semester started I went back to taking a route for one of my classes to avoid traffic. It's been a somewhat long while since I've needed to drive this path but when I did first start driving on it, I saw a sign that made me smile. It said something along the lines of Tempe being the town of the gay/straight alliance. White background with blue print. But today, I drove by the sign and noticed that the word "gay" was covered in white spray paint. Someone went out of their way to bring white fucking spray paint to cover the word. Made me very uneasy, very. For those curious locals that read my blog, here's the location of this sign: as you head east on Rio Salado, it is just east of the Mill Ave intersection.
I found this image on a gay/straight alliance website:
Well I've noticed something on a ridiculous regular basis. Not that I watch television all that much anymore, but literally every commercial that features an adult [generally women] has a wedding band. They're all married! And almost all of them use their left hands to present the product [to show the ring!!]. It's fucking annoying. You're marriage status will not make me want the product more! But the sad thing is, it may matter to others. So next time you watch commercials, look at their hands. And if I'm talking about gender roles and commercials, I also hate that every food, cleaning, house, domestic, children, etc. products involve women. I hate how sex sells. And I hate manly man man man commercials. Okay, let's just say I hate commercials. Always have and always will.
Alright, now I got the rant out of the way...happy stuff. Well, the internship today involved some cataloging of some artifacts. So the tasks involved were writing descriptions of the objects, measuring their dimensions, wrapping them and packing them into boxes, and labeling the boxes. I got to wear cloth gloves while handling the artifacts...I don't know about you but I fucking love gloves. I love the professionality of them, the sophistication. I just love it! And just for your information, if I ever do use words that don't exist, I want you to know that I actually do that on purpose [I guess that was an explicit notification for those that don't know me personally].
In other good/fun info, I saw Going the Distance a second time. I really enjoy the film, it is so real and oddly representative of my life in some way. Speaking of which, I just added a song to my playlist from the film that I enjoyed, "Cold Flame" by Band of Skulls. I love the beats and the jazzy sound. I just have been having a craving for city views and moods. This song plays at a sadder point in the film while the screen shots involve city structures and city lights...ahhh. There's something about those that put me in another place...that I really enjoy.
.....they just take my breath away.
Well, I gotta go and study for a test tomorrow.
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