first post

I looked up the definition of “Social Activism” and got, “Social activism is an intentional action with the goal of bringing about social change. If you feel strongly about a cause and are working towards a change, you could be considered an activist. An activist is anyone who is fighting for change in society” (https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/amherst-careers-in/government-nonprofit/picareers/careers/social_activism). It’s quite impressive to be a contributor to social activism because it requires such a skill to deal with multiple types of personalities and attitudes of many diverse people. It’s also important to have really well practiced communication skills. You need to be able to make your points understandable and believable… like to give the people you are talking to a reason to believe you. Like I wrote about in my response to Tuesday’s presentation, I think it’s important to spread your knowledge of feminism if your goal is to inform and teach others in a positive manner. There was that question or statement that knowledge sharing isn’t real feminism. If you are spreading your knowledge to let people know about the things that are going on within the feminist community, that’s definitely quote on quote “playing the role” of a feminist.

With everyone being tied up in social media, it’s become a shame to constantly checking your phone and media when you’re in a social setting or interacting with others. Devoting your full attention to whoever you’re around is the standard in those social settings which is what makes it looked upon to check your phone or text when in those situations. Social media has become a popular way to get people to express themselves. Whether it it be via Facebook posts, Twitter updates, photos shared, or even 10 second videos. These are all extensions of your personality or for some “personality”. They can help portray your interests, your views, and help show people who you are or for some “are”. They offer a platform for you to be yourself, to be creative, to be who you want to be and most importantly, have an audience for all of this. Essentially, social media has changed the way we are able to communicate and behave, not only in groups but in an entire society as well. While content is monitored and can be removed, there are millions of users on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, even YouTube. Being said, not every single status, photo or comment can be watched or evaluated being completely controlled. This results in people getting away with a lot of things that would be “socially acceptable” in person. On a personal aspect, social media can be used for internet bullying and victimizing. It gives people the opportunity to upset and gossip 24/7.

After reading the articles and power points, a few solid points came to mind. It seems that nude protests differ from traditional protests because they do reconfigure the body politic by framing vulnerability as a basis for exchange and staging intimate zones of disruption and dis-identification. It also seems that a raised idea is that people who do not take part in the protest will look down on the protesters as “attention seekers” would be a label that is most likely to be given to them. A part that stood out to me most this week was the beginning of THE VIABILITY OF DIGITAL SPACES AS SITES FOR TRANSNATIONAL FEMINIST ACTION AND ENGAGEMENT: WHY WE NEED TO LOOK AT DIGITAL CIRCULATION. It said that in early March 2013 those images of Amina Tyler topless and holding a cigarette in one hand, and a book in the other, moved throughout social media sites at rapid speed. It also had shown that across her chest were phrases written out in different languages that read, “Fuck your morals” and “My body is mine, not somebody else’s honor.” I see that this could have fallen into the category of non protesters viewing this as “attention seeking” but in other views it was a spark of a so called revolution of social standards. It’s a well known belief that nudity is used as a tactic during a protest to attract media and public attention to a cause, but the reason behind it seems to be the bigger for this promotion of public nudity itself. It definitely strikes a controversial topic in media asking, does the government have issues with topless women and so forth.

This weeks reading had a part in it that really stood out to me. The part that read, “The Internet is different now. There was no Twitter back then—at least not the Twitter we know now. There were comments that we took to heart, but it rarely felt like being under assault. Of course, that’s because not as many people could express themselves as they can now. Social media has been an amazing tool for giving so many people a voice, and I would never want to go back to the days when only those who got jobs at Jezebel had the mic” (8th Paragraph). Twitter has become one of the biggest news providers in the world and it is ran by us and has extremely powerful effects. What makes Twitter so powerful the short length bursts of thought. It forces a tone in messages and edits the existence of what is actually happening. Their effectiveness depends on how the audience receives the message. Using this power you can make massive amounts of people believe in what you believe or make them your biggest enemy honestly just by your diction.

Twilight took over the world when first released in 2005. It’s success of its books, five movies, and countless fan fictions struck the attention of many. In the story, Bella Swan, an everyday high school teenager was swept off her feet for Edward Cullen the immortal Vampire. His desire for Bella’s blood is equal to his love for her. Meyer has created this romance that appeals to readers (aimed at mainly women) of all ages, but mostly appealed to younger readers. It presents romance in an unrealistic way that endorses domestic violence and discourages female independence. At a young age I saw how everyone reacted to Twilight. The girls in my classes went crazy. It seems that up until now, being older and more mature, everyone is starting to realize what was wrong with the stories and how the characters were portrayed. It exposes young readers to a patriarchal society in subtle and it attacks and shows unconscious desires for romance in adult women. Twilight shows readers that women can only be helpful if they are following a model of male success. In other words, women succeed when their men are chivalrous, dominate, and lovable despite all their signs of danger. Given the situation, Twilight implies that women should follow Bella’s model and act only as a confused but horny teenager.

For many young people, social media can become almost addictive. Social networking plays a vital role in broadening teen social connections and views. While yes, it’s helping them learn valuable technical skills but it severely impacts the developing brains because of how extremely vulnerable they are and how much online time is spent. The youth often has difficulty self-regulating their screen time, risks increase which means they are more exposed to the things being posted on media. A lot of our youth are inspired by our giant pool of celebrities, models, athletes, and so fourth. It’s clear that these highly recognized individuals have such a huge impact on our youth with the massive amounts of followers these people have on their pages. This was a thought from my third blog post I believe. After this weeks discussion, the more interest I had on it especially regarding to behaviors. Social media use has become so persuasive in the lives of teens with that having a presence on a social network site is almost synonymous with being online. Many log on daily to their social network pages and it becomes a place where much of the social activity of teen life is exposed in both good and bad ways. Social media platforms are an especially fertile ground for online harassment, but these behaviors occur in a wide range of online sites.

There seems to be many ways to define what embodiment has meant in feminism. In general, embodiment has created an idea that has the power to establish or give existence to a relationship of the live body to thought, to knowledge, and to ethics. I found this weeks readings really interesting and I’m really glad the conversation took off in our two classes this week. That really helped me get a really good idea of what it truly means. One of the biggest things I took from this week was the problematic idea involving feminism, racism, and embodiment. Racism has been an issue for years and is unfortunately still something we face in society today. It was said in the reading that Elizabeth Grosz has developed a model of embodiment as a “Möbius strip”. This is where it shows that outside of the body and inside of the body should be seen as one “continuous surface”. Being said, social habits cause many racist behaviors to occur without conscious awareness. Racism can be performed without careful consideration which can result in any individual opposing racist beliefs or consistently behave in racist ways which is the problematic issue. A quote that really stood out to me was “In the opinion of Radhika Mohanram “blackness and whiteness assume the status of the Cartesian body and the mind respectively. Black bodies are represented trapped in the web of nature while white bodies have freedom of movement.” (Fernandez 38) and there was something brought up in the reading called “politics of respectability” in which explained that white women claimed moral superiority to women of color. It said, “In the United States and various European countries, white women also have employed discourses of modernity and mobility to differentiate themselves from women of color” (Fernandez 38). While there are feminists who stand up for women’s rights there are racists as well. Some say they fight for women’s rights, but also privilege their race over others.

This set of articles was definitely interesting. Today’s media is really concerning for younger people who live by social media. One quote that stood out to me in “Beyond Representation: Embodied Expression and Social Me-dia” was when they wrote, “Currently, digital media remix culture is one where “real life” (RL) and “virtual life” (VL) structures have migrated more fully from the desktop to otherly-mediated life worlds, and they occupy all states in-between. The space one occupies, for example, in the twitterverse, the term in common usage to describe the network engaged by the micro-blogging application Twitter, exemplifies such ambiguity and malleability” (Holloway 2). For many young people, social media can become almost addictive. Social networking plays a vital role in broadening teen social connections and views. While yes, it’s helping them learn valuable technical skills but it severely impacts the developing brains because of how extremely vulnerable they are and how much online time is spent. The youth often has difficulty self-regulating their screen time, risks increase which means they are more exposed to the things being posted on media. A lot of our youth are inspired by our giant pool of celebrities, models, athletes, and so fourth. It’s clear that these highly recognized individuals have such a huge impact on our youth with the massive amounts of followers these people have on their pages. Many might not know but this can cause young teens multiple issues. Things that may happen are things like –Anxiety
-Depression

-Low self-esteem

-Sleep deprivation

-Envy/Jealousy Communication issues

-Lack of socialization skills for teenagers

-Sadness

-Loneliness

– Dependence

With all the attention that these celebrities get on media makes youth believe that they have to look, dress, and act just as they do in order to receive the same love. Things like having a smaller waist, having bigger breasts, having a sharper jawline, having outlined muscles, or even just being taller will quote on quote “make you more attractive”.

When I first started reading this reading there was immediately one quote that stood out to me. It was in the first few lines of the intro and read, “That artifacts are themselves shaped by gender relations, meanings and identities was demonstrated – from refrigerators to contraceptives, from houses, cars and cities to word processors and weapons” (Wajcman – Preface). I took a history class last semester and it talked a lot about gender equality. Reading this first quote immediately made me think of the things I read about how gender roles throughout history completely shaped our society and outlooks on life in terms of gender to this day. From what I’ve read, a gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role surrounding a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their biological or perceived sex. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity, although there are often exceptions and variations. The specifics regarding these gendered expectations may vary widely among cultures and time periods, while other characteristics may be common throughout a range of cultures and history. There is always an ongoing debate as to what extent gender roles and their variations are biologically determined, and to what extent they are socially constructed. With having such high standards, beliefs, and a constant need to live up to the standards and stereotypes a women was given during any time throughout history, made up for a very unfair living situation socially, economically, and politically for women. Social construction has always split these two genders into a list of stereotypes while both are pretty much capable of doing each other’s stereo-typically given roles in life. Patriarchal values also promote the binary oppositions of what a proper and unproper female must be. In terms of this ideology, females are supposed to be “clean” and “proper”. It is often frowned upon when females have multiple partners or are seen doing anything “wild” or “savage” due to these given stereotypes.