Activism Log III

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
28 February 2010

Activism
This was a slow week. I continued promoting the project over Facebook and in face-to-face discussion with friends, but I couldn’t collect any signatures without a petition sheet, which I should receive copies of once tabling starts. I also did a bit of outside research to better understand the statistics and circumstances surrounding the transgendered community. My primary resource has been Deborah Rudacille’s The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights, which I had actually bought this past summer, several months after my cousin came out. I thought I had finished it, but I had stopped reading about two-thirds of the way through. I’ve started reading it again, and I would highly recommend it. It does, from what I can tell, I nice job of discussing key issues in the transgender community and activist efforts, and it has been extremely helpful for me in understanding more about the issue that is central to our project.

Reflection
Class discussion and readings this week focused on violence against women, which is also a major threat facing the transgender community. Violence threatens the entire LGBT community, but the transgendered population is often at higher risk because of the high level of hostility general society presents towards trans. lifestyles. Transwomen in particular are especially at risk for gender-based violence, a phenomenon which stems from the fact that “[c]urrently, negative stereotypes about women of color, poor white women, prostituted women, lesbians, and transgender women all perpetuate the idea, in the wider society, that these women are not worthy of respect” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 263). Hopefully, our project will help foster an environment on the UCF campus that will reduce the threat of violence against the transgender community.

Reciprocity
I was glad of the opportunity to familiarize myself with information about key trans. issues, which will undoubtedly prove useful when tabling begins and I will need to discuss and explain the need for this project to collect signatures and raise support. I am excited for tabling to begin next week; it should be exciting, and it will give me a chance to feel like I am helping achieve something measurable and real.



Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Violence Against Women.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 257-272. Print.