Social Constraints: Emily’s Story

Sitting in the beautiful spring sun, a girl from my dorm and I were enjoying the welcomed breeze of fresh mountain air. We were on the subject of our perspective futures, brought up by the fact that our first year in college was drawing to a close and we were both considering switching majors. Emily (changed name) was upset by her parent’s disappointment in her decision to opt out of JMU’s prestigious nursing program for a major in social work. Trying to be a good friend, I listened and affirmed that her decision was good and could still prove a rewarding career. What occurred next would haunt me to this day as an spiritual awakening that would lay groundwork that turned me into a feminist.

She began explaining her thought process behind the decision, I expectantly listened, and when she ended her diatribe I turned towards her and asked if she could repeat her last statement.

The Millennium Trilogy: The Man Who’s Fight Lives On

“I was always interested in social change but never actually did anything about it.” ~ Ben Rattray

I’m returning for one last installment of the Millennium trilogy posts. Again without spoilers, I will explore author Stieg Larsson’s explosive series with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. In the final installment, we find Lisbeth Salander detained and falsely accused of several brutal murders. While she shamelessly admits to vigilante crimes she did commit, journalist and friend Mikael Blomkvisk uses his investigative ability to secure solid supporting evidence to her guiltlessness. In trying to prove her innocence, Blomkvist unknowingly unravels Lisbeth’s neglected past of being under the care of the Swedish government for her “mental impairment,” giving way to Larsson’s critique of global legislation protecting women, and activism towards change.

The Millennium Legacy: Dragon Tattoos and Social Taboos

The conception of this post was one part luck and seven parts desperation. Last week I experienced for the first time in my life, an extreme case of writer’s block. Having gone through seven drafts of ideas, each of poor enough quality or caliber to warrant dismissal, I was at my wits end. With hours to spare before my scheduled post was about to go live, I was about to write a cop-out “what would YOU, the reader of this blog, like to read” post when I was struck with an idea. While it was suggested early on to write an article reviewing a book, I had dismissed the notion because I limited my focus to outwardly feminist books like Manifesta, of which I have not touched. However, in my sullen desperation I remembered reading about domestic and sexual abuse of women and started to think about books that may be indirectly feminist. Immediately a whirl of storyline came flooding back to me in a memory of a personal favorite series known worldwide as the Millennium trilogy.

The trilogy, consisting of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, has become legend for challenging Swedish social practices and indirectly inciting a worldwide call for reform.  As I thought about it more and more, the pro-feminist lifestyle author Stieg Larsson lead, along with the message his books echoed made perfect sense to blog about and share. I realized early on though that to truly capture the narrative of these novels and accurately analyze them with a feminist perspective, I had to break it up into a series of three blog posts. Each post will be devoted to one of the Millennium novels and will focus on the events that occurred and how they mirrored Larsson’s own life. I hope to illuminate his social commentary and in the process explore the feminist implications of his final work. Let’s begin by exploring more of Larsson’s personal life before diving into his flagship novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Links Round-Up

This week at Shout Out!

Hannah Grace found a recent national poll  naming Hilary Clinton the most popular U.S. politician, with 61% of voters saying they would back her in 2016! Although the former Secretary of State claims she is not going back to politics, HannahGrace thinks she would make an exception to run for first woman President of the United States!

shieldkt is a huge fan of Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So her link round-up this week is from the blog Gender Focus. They have Friday Feminist Funny Film every friday and this week is from the BAMF Girls Club episode 7 and Buffy is trying to matchmake Hermione with Willow. So if you need some good laughs this week I would watch this video clip.

What do you know about Women’s Health?

This week I choose to talk about women’s healthcare. I felt inspired after reading some articles off of the well-known blog Our Bodies, Our Blogs which I did my link roundup with this past week. I also choose this topic because I feel like I don’t know much about women’s healthcare and being a woman I should probably know how our healthcare can effect my body and my life.

I read a post off of Huff Post Money that talked about how a survey in 2010 by Commonwealth Fund that women from the age of 19-43, 47% of them skip seeing the doctor or didn’t get medicine due to the high costs. I am still under my parents health insurance so i don’t ever really have to deal with not being able to go to the doctor when I really need, sometimes I just don’t go because I really just don’t like the doctor. There was also this complete study that was centered around two scientific telephone surveys conducted in 2010 that had data from surveys between 2001 2011, that American women have to pay $1 billion more then men every year on health insurance because women go to the doctor more then men do.

Call of Duty: Women in Combat

In the weeks following the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s decision to lift a near 20 year ban prohibiting women from serving in combat, a wide gap has formed between those for and against this this equal opportunity measure. While many arguments have been brought up and counter argued from both positions, I’d like to highlight some of the prominent ones that continue to reoccur in the discussion.

Links Round-Up

This week at ShoutOut!:

Kate liked this article  from Our Bodies Our Blog, which talks about the access to our Abortion Rights. It gives a little background on what is happening nationally and within certain states.

Kelly J. found this post about Mayor Bloomberg that really made her angry. It is so upsetting, she says, that the first thing that this man made a comment about was the woman’s body, and not her opinions or personality.

What’s in a name?  Read this article, found by LadyChaotica21, featuring a Florida man who got his license suspended and accused of fraud after he took his wife’s last name.  Is this a sign that society needs to progress in terms of surname etiquette?  Read here and decide for yourself!

Links Round-Up

It’s time for our final links round-up this semester here at ShoutOut! The writers and I have really enjoyed bringing you interesting and informative stories every week, and we hope we’ve expanded your regular internet reading to even more amazing feminist blogs.

Without further ado:

JGrand50 brings us a look at next year’s Supreme Court case on the legality of Defense of Marriage Acts. 

In a related link, an article about six reasons that gay marriage benefits everyone.

Ryan Gosling, who usually has words of feminist wisdom on this tumblr, got personal this week with a message Hannah Grace needed! She was also pleased to see Jezebel’s article on 5 Ways Men Are Fighting Sexism, including partiipating in a Twitter strike to protest hate rants online. Good work guys!

Links Round-Up

This week at ShoutOut!:

HannahGrace points out that history was made this week, as two same sex marriages were hosted at West Point, a prestigious military academy. The act that was made possible by two events last year, the lifting of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the legalization of gay marriage in New York. The marriages are an emblematic victory of the long battle homosexuals have fought to be accepted within the military.

With the holiday season upon us, you might have noticed the many gendered toys filling the aisles of you local stores – pink kitchen sets, “for boy’s only” science sets, the list goes on and on. One blogger shared her frustrations with this and other misogynistic aspects of Christmas , including an interesting feminist reading of holiday classic ”Baby It’s Cold Outside.”

Classifiedsarcastic  sent in this article, which details how the feminist movement is still plagued by stereotypes and some of the negative impacts that these still have.

And this one, which argues that feminism’s work is done, that women have in fact won and the so-called “war on women” is irrelevant. Is this true??

Visionsofourfuture sent in the following:

I remember when I was younger and I used to read Seventeen magazine, so I was shocked when I heard about their new online BMI Calculator — that specifically tells teenage girls that being underweight is healthy. By telling a 17-year-old that the BMI of a 15-year-old is healthy, Seventeen Magazine is perpetuating a terrifying image standard to their young readers who are still trying to come to grasp with their own bodies.

And, if you read Fox News’ oped piece on ‘The War on Men’, you were probably just as frustrated as me to hear how women only need to surrender to their “natural femininity” to allow men to “provide and protect” for us. But don’t worry! Suzanne Venker, the author of the piece, came out and explained what she really meant by arguing that she should have written about “husbands and wives” instead of “men and women” — apparently that makes all the difference in making sweeping, harmful generalizations about genders.

JGrand50 enjoyed an article detailing how the latest Toys R Us catalogue in Sweden depict swapped gender roles for the first time ever. The advertisement shows girls playing with “boy toy” Nerf guns and shows a boy playing with a pink dollhouse. Trivial? Or an interesting sign of societal progress?

In more somber news, the Ugandan government is yet again voting on a “kill the gays” bill– legislation that would punish homosexuality with life sentences or death. Various groups are petitioning to end this idea once and for all.

Eszenyme sent in this article, which summarizes why supermodel and former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is definitely NOT a feminist, namely, because this generation doesn’t need feminism any more….Thoughts?

And this article (comically) discusses the sexualization of young girls through Elizabeth Hurley’s swimsuit line. How young is too young for leopard? Thoughts?

(Sort of) Totally Awesome Women: Trust Me, This is Worth Reading

As any policy debater would be doing the wee hours of the morning before a tournament (insert lame, self-deprecating joke here), I recently found myself watching YouTube videos of Slavoj Zizek’s musings.  Zizkek’s comments from this Q & A segment, particularly on polyamory and psychopaths, were entertaining as hell, but I found myself getting distracted by the mushrooming debate taking place between Egyptian-American activist and blogger Mona Eltahawy and Australian journalist Greg Sheridan over the Arab Spring.  Given that previous debate topics had already sparked my interest in the so-called “Middle East”, particularly the Arab Spring, I was hooked.  Who is this Mona Eltahawy and what else does she have to say about the Arab Spring and feminism?