Posts Tagged ‘feminist’

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am I empowered, degraded, or both?

2.22.10 Marilla | 22 Comments »

500_Handcuffs

Two weeks ago, a friend told me that her boyfriend choked her while the two were having a fight. I was really upset for my friend, by this act of violence and violation, and also confused. This same friend has admitted to me that she enjoys being choked in bed. Her story prompted me to think harder about the way that an act like choking can oscillate between spaces of pain/pleasure, consent/force, play/violence, complicating these definitions and boundaries, while possibly challenging notions of feminism.

I’ve since recounted this story to others, listening to their opinions and reactions. Admittedly, I feel unequipped to negotiate and process this alone; my desire for closure is eclipsed by the value of showing people that my friend’s story is linked to larger issues of violence, abuse, pleasure, and ambivalence. This includes my own ambivalence; I consider myself a feminist while also enjoying what I define as rough sex. So am I empowered, degraded, or both? It’s damn hard to tell.

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“ASK ME” an internet Valentine

2.12.10 Nancy | No Comments »

500_Askme

Hello fellow travelers on the filmmaking/social media super highway!

Sending out some Valentine’s Day love, and I wanted to highlight something great that happened today, that took some Internet & twitter magic to come to fruition.

Since its launch, our team has been watching MTV’s “A Thin Line,” a campaign, dedicated to raising awareness of “Digital Abuse,” and helping teens untangle normal versus unhealthy relationship dynamics. They focus on how cell phones can amplify and exacerbate abusive behaviors. Some of my favorite slogans are: It’s a thin line between attentive/obsessive, curious/controlling, love/abuse. I was thinking that we over here at The Line Campaign, have a lot of  things in common such as: young people, sexuality, violence, web-based media, and activism.

I initiated a twitter back and forth about Beyonce’s “Video Phone” video (*ugh*) and then I asked our fab intern Ingrid to do some research and write a post about their campaign. It was a couple weeks before February, Teen Dating Violence Awareness month, so we took a look at Katie Couric’s piece on the topic, too. Ingrid spent a lot of time on both initiatives, picking apart what was authentic, realistic, what felt scripted, what related to her demographic, and what fell flat. She posted Corporation: FAIL! Teens, Sex & Violence. I tweeted to @a_thin_line that they were featured on the blog and -Internet magic!-  they responded. The takeaway here is your voice does matter.

MTV then invited us to a meeting at Viacom HQ to discuss their work and hear our feedback. Obviously, I let 18 year old Ingrid do the talking, her comments ranged from the show “16 & Pregnant” not showing struggles of lower income or homeless girls, “Jersey Shore” which entertains us with violence in every episode, and the PSA’s for “A Thin Line” not showing real kids going through the issues. I mediated, waxing the benefits of reaching a wide audience, raising awareness, and the reality of working within a Corporate Social Responsibility framework.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, me and the home team shot and edited a short video using candy and some of our favorite responses to “where is your line?” Our hope was that with the video would go viral on Valentine’s Day and drive more traffic to the site and generate interest in the film and campaign.  Ingrid followed up our meeting at MTV with an email and a link to our video “ASK ME” — and today they posted it!

What’s really exciting is that we developed The Line Campaign with support from The Fledgling Fund in June, and only went live in September 2009. The trailer for THE LINE has been on Vimeo for less than a year, and already has over 12,000 views. We are learning as we go, and the results have been really interesting.

Where will it lead next? A broadcast on MTV or streaming broadcast on MTV.com? We sure hope so!

Send us Your Line!

Calling Bullshit on “The New Math”

2.11.10 Carmen | 6 Comments »

I was snowed in, stuck in a blizzard here in Washington, DC, when I got “the news.”  The New York Times? Talking to me about hookup culture? I was excited, but notably crushed by the article, a hopeless observation of a new “problem with no name.”

The New York Times has given up on hookup culture. They declared that we, as women, were desperate and lonely. We were stuck with other women (the horror!) and we were stuck searching for partners who treated us right. We were being cheated on, and treated like dirt. And the reason for all of this, they say, is not the men we’re dating, the culture we’re living in, or the assumption that we want to get married in the first place.

The problem the The New York Times identified was college admissions numbers.

The article, relying on gender stereotypes, said that the longer colleges admitted so many women, the longer men would have the power to shape the dating landscapes on campuses. Why? Well, because women need these men. Women need their approval, need to love them, to marry them; therefore, women have to choose between being The New York Times prude orThe New York Times slut. When men are in the majority, they control the culture. When men aren’t, they still do. And the problem?

The New York Times really thinks the problem is admissions numbers.

I wrote a letter to solve this problem, and submitted it via email from my couch. My goal wasn’t to be angry or upset, or to go on and on about all the boys that never call and the hookups that become heartaches. My goal was just to let them know that I have suffered at the hands of hookup culture, too, and that I didn’t do it because I went to college to get married or find anyone else’s approval. I am fulfilled just as I am, and that is why this culture hasn’t taken away anything more from me than some of my pride.

My goal was to make them think about how little admissions numbers have to do with hookup culture and partners who don’t respect us.

To whom it may concern,

Last semester, I found myself grief-stricken by college hookup culture. No longer a myth and instead an institution of most contemporary collegiate lives, it has taken its strongest sexually empowered soldiers through the dirt. When I read “The New Math on Campus,” I was struck by your observation that women were being treated badly by hookup culture, and people of all genders were frustrated with it. But I was even more struck by what the article chose to highlight: that these women were lonely and seemingly desperate to be a part of this.

I would like for your staff to do a piece on a hookup culture that does not accept it, but challenges the root causes and assumptions. The problem with hookup culture isn’t marriage, or sex, but the belief that single women are being hurt by their success and not their colleagues. These women are going places! And your staff has no idea.

Hopefully yours,

Carmen Rios.

I am a sexual being + candy

1.27.10 Nancy | No Comments »

500_being

Having fun today making a video with Ingrid for Valentine’s Day. We hope to show it to MTV next week!

Labels are not always lies

1.21.10 Marilla | No Comments »

500_bodyisgiftToday, I sat in on a two hour long seminar called Women and Leadership. The professor began by asking how many students in the room could call themselves feminists. As I shot my hand up, I noticed that barely half my peers had done the same. They blinked, not seeming to understand the question.

The professor was intrigued. “For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, why didn’t you?” One student answered that the term was antiquated. Another stated that she didn’t want to be accused of being a bra-burner. As more and more reasons piled up, I saw that I was one of the few people in the room who was unafraid of declaring feminism to be a part of my identity.

This isn’t the only time that I’ve been upfront about who I am. I’ve declared other things too: I’m an Asian American. I’m a writer. I’m a food maniac. I’m an obsessive compulsive. My liberal arts education taught me to do otherwise: avoid labels, don’t embrace them. My education tells me that that nothing is definite, everything is malleable. It tells me that being loud and proud is a performance, all show and no sincerity. As intellect becomes more important, conviction and the sense of self becomes less so.

College, I’ve discovered, often involves more talk than action. Brilliant minds sit in a circle and throw ideas at each other, always making sure to follow certain rules. Don’t accuse someone else of being an essentialist. Don’t say anything that doesn’t relate to the texts. And don’t ever, ever get overly personal. Sometimes I hate these rules. I can’t stand the emotional stagnation after I’ve done all that mental work. It’s because of these things that so many people are afraid to step forward and believe in something; they’re thinking and rethinking to the point of paralysis. Some people take an entire lifetime to get comfortable with a term like “feminist”, or refuse to even give it a chance. They don’t know what they’re missing.

As a new blogger for The Line Campaign, I can only hope to use my daily experiences to initiate both emotional and intellectual discussion, about gender, sexuality, the body, and all the gaps in between that complicate our movements through social spaces. My therapist once drew a Venn Diagram, with emotion as one circle and intellect as the other. She pointed at the overlapping space and said, “That’s wisdom.” The first piece of wisdom I’ll share with you is: Labels are not always lies. Don’t run away from conviction, belief, or chances to find yourself. Find your boundaries and stick to them.

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