Activism Log VII

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
4 April 2010

Activism
Family emergency stayed pretty severe this week, so again, no tabling for me. I’ve sent an email to Rebecca to see about alternative forms of involvement, but so far, I haven’t heard anything back yet. I was able to start a Facebook chat with a few friends about the project in hopes of gaining support for it, but that quickly turned more infuriating than productive, so not much luck there.

Reflection
The most interesting discussion and readings we had this week were on Womanism, which I personally find to be a fascinating branch of feminism. The article I particularly enjoyed was Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which discusses Walker’s attempts to rediscover and reclaim the history of black women, the generations of mothers and grandmothers who came before her and were forbidden by social convention from being understood or recognized as capable of great things. For the transgendered community, I feel this idea of rediscovering and reclaiming history is especially relevant. Because transgenderism is still largely rejected and feared by society, that community exists with little to no knowledge of its own history. There are some records of transvestitism, or of the earliest transsexuals to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, but for the most part, general society marks transgenderism and the achievements of transgendered or gender-variant people as taboo and unmentionable. Hopefully, as activist efforts force social tolerance and acceptance of the transgendered community, its ability to recover and acknowledge its own history will be restored and, much like Walker’s search, what is uncovered will help further develop a sense of strengthened identity in that community.

Reciprocity
This week was an extremely stressful one for several reasons. First, I am beyond frustrated with myself and the circumstances that have prevented me from tabling so far. I feel like I am letting down my project group and the entire initiative, and while Rebecca has told me she understands, I sincerely hope she can come up with something for me to do so I feel like more of a contributing member. I’ve still been collecting signatures on my own where I can, but it’s slow-going. And finally, the Facebook chat I tried to start turned into a complete disaster. Instead of talking to my friends about issues relating to the transgendered community and our project, I spent an hour in a heated, immensely aggravating discussion about more well-known “aspects” of feminism. I say “aspects” very loosely, because it was mostly a few friends throwing around negative stereotypes of feminists while one refused to hear anything other than his own belief that women belong in the kitchen and the bedroom, and nowhere else. Normally, I am all for discussions about feminism, especially when they’re informative discussions that help clear up common misconceptions surrounding the movement for people who are genuinely interested; the type of conversation I found myself in this week, though, was quite the opposite, and one I’ve been hearing/having all too frequently since really establishing myself as a feminist this semester. Overall, this week was just a stressful, disheartening experience, and I’m glad it’s over. The good news is that it looks like my family troubles are clearing up, at least for now, so I should definitely be on for tabling next week. I just want something that will get me back into loving this project whole-heartedly like I did during the first few weeks.



Works Referenced
Walker, Alice. "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens." In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. Ed. Alice Walker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. 231-43. Print.