Sistermatic Response: Announcing a New Blog!

I love this blog, love writing about unschooling and radical education, and plan to continue writing here for the foreseeable future (hopefully with more frequency than I've been posting lately!).  But at some point, this blog has morphed from being a blog where I can write about anything, to a blog very specifically focused on education (and directly related things like respectful parenting).  That isn't a bad thing at all: I feel the focus and content of this blog is strong, and I like that.  But it has left me feeling a bit like I'm just sticking in my comfort zone in writing almost exclusively about unschooling, and has made me feel a bit restless.  I want to be writing about more different things, exploring in writing my views and experiences when it comes to other important subjects.  So I was absolutely thrilled when I asked my sister Emilie if she would be interested in co-authoring a new feminist blog with me, and she said yes!

That was a few weeks ago, and since then, we've come up with a name (let me give a shout-out to Ryan, follower of this blog, for suggesting the title!), set up a blog, and are working on that in preparation for a launch in early December.  If you'd like to stay up-tp-date on it's progress, read interesting linked articles, and know right away when the blog goes live, you can follow it's Facebook page:

 

(Don't worry if you don't have Facebook, you won't get all the updates, but I will post on this blog letting you know when Sistermatic Response is active!)

Just saying "it's a feminist blog" may not really tell you if it's something you'd be interested in or not (though it might), so here's a bit more info.  Our tagline is Two feminist sisters on sexuality, gender, pop-culture, and resistance, and part of the About page reads:

Sistermatic Response came about when two sisters, sisters who spent many hours swinging on swings and staying up into the wee hours of the morning, realized that all the things they regularly discuss--such as sexism and gender oppression; sexuality; gender identity; gender roles and expectations; racism, heterosexism, cissexism, classism, and how those all tie into each other and tie into sexism; the problematic (and positive) themes and tropes they regularly saw in their favourite (and least favourite) TV shows, novels, movies and comic books; and the dismantling of and resistance to the various and complex systems of oppression that make up this culture--could be written about, too, and shared with others.

And so this blog idea was born, as a place for us to publicly discuss, dissect, and rant about the world we live in and the things we experience on a daily basis.

All issues and movements and subjects overlap and interweave, and I'm sure there will be occasional cross-posting of posts on I'm Unschooled. Yes I Can Write. and Sistermatic Response, but largely, this blog is my education blog, and Sistermatic Response will be my (shared with my sister and best friend) social justice and political blog.

I hope at least some of you share at least some of my excitement about this project!  If you do, come join us on Facebook, and look for news on this blog about SR's launch in December.

Excerpts on Anarchy and Patriarchy

Spring seems to have come early this year...  Or at least it seemed to have before today!  My sister is part of two pipes and drums (aka Highland) bands (she plays highland snare drum), one of which does paying gigs.  And the weekends around St. Patrick's day are a BIG time of year for that band!!  Last Saturday, they played in one parade and at two bars, in freezing rain mixed with hail.  Then, for the rest of the week, it was GORGEOUS!!  Records were broken on several days: it was that warm and lovely!  Yet here we are, back at the weekend again, and yesterday when they played in Quebec City it was grey and gloomy, and today, when they played in a parade outside of Montreal, it SNOWED!  It's actually still snowing a bit here.  I'm not thrilled with the snow, but I can't really help but smile at it all.  I adore Spring in all it's unpredictability! ♥  But, with the weather the way it is at the moment, I've been spending time doing cozy inside things, like collage and other art, and reading (specifically looking for quotes that work with the collage pieces I'm working on).  And in my reading, both in books and online, I wanted to share a couple short book excerpts I really liked... 

"Think of anarchism as an individual orientation to yourself and others, as a personal approach to life. That's not impossible to imagine. Conceived in these terms, what would anarchism be? It would be a decision to think for yourself rather than following blindly. It would be a rejection of hierarchy, a refusal to accept the "god given" authority of any nation, law, or other force as being more significant than your own authority over yourself. It would be an instinctive distrust of those who claim to have some sort of rank or status above the others around them, and an unwillingness to claim such status over others for yourself. Most of all, it would be a refusal to place responsibility for yourself in the hands of others: it would be the demand that each of us not only be able to choose our own destiny, but also do so." - from Days Of War, Nights of Love: CrimethInc for Beginners

"Patriarchy divides life into higher & lower categories, labeled “spirit” versus “nature,” or “mind” versus “matter” – and typically in this alienated symbolism, the superior “spirit/mind” is male (and/or white), while the inferior “nature/matter” is female (and/or black). This false dualistic symbolism arises from an enforced order of male domination. With the aid of such phallic psychology, men can then go about the earth raping nature, exploiting resources and human labor, manipulating and “improving” her with technological-mechanical inventions and “progressive goals.” In patriarchy man separates from earth, emulating some aloof and disconnected Sky God of his own creation, and this intellectual separation makes him feel “free” to devastate the natural world without any sense that it belongs to a common ecosystem with himself. He exploits “it,” totally alienated from the fact of his own continuity with “it.” For the deluded profit of the few, and the existential pain of the many, patriarchy exists by destroying the original holism."  - from The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth  by Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor (via the blog leafnest)

Reading the words of others can be so refreshing, validating, challenging, and simply thought provoking...  A good occupation on a rather gloomy day!

Peace,
Idzie

In Honour of International Women's Day

In conversation recently, someone said to me they don't think that most men realize to what lengths women are expected to go to look "pretty".

I think that person is right.

I also think many women don't think much about all the things they're expected to do to look "pretty".  For the most part, those things are just accepted.  Normal.  Just what you do.

And it harms us.  Physically and emotionally. 

Physically, the average woman is exposed to a huge amount of chemicals on a daily basis: the facial cleansers, body creams, lip balms, makeup, deodorant, hairspray, perfume.  All of these (except for a very few "natural" brands that actually don't contain any harmful chemicals) are loaded with carcinogens and other harmful chemicals.  Yet if a woman, or even more so, a teenage girl, doesn't wear makeup she's often considered a freak.

For fear of being ostracized, for fear of weird looks, most women shave.  Most women wear a bra.  Most women wear makeup.  And most women would never even consider NOT doing any of these things!!  If they're freely chosen, none of these things are bad (with the exclusion of cosmetics and body care products containing harmful ingredients).  But as the ONLY option, the only way you'll be considered attractive (or so people think), I think it's absolutely horrible.

Why can't people see that breasts are not, actually, bra shaped, and that they move when you move?  Why can't people see that all humans have hair all over their bodies, not just the parts currently considered socially acceptable?  Why can't people see what a beautiful face looks like without a heavy coating of makeup?

I went through a stage, in my mid-teens, where I felt so different, so out of place, and I was desperate to fit in.  So, casting off my hippie upbringing, I bought bras, and shaved my legs, and even after a while started wearing makeup.  I got to the point where I'd usually put makeup on before leaving the house, and if I wasn't wearing any, I'd look in the mirror and think I looked ugly.

That's what kind of snapped me out of it, along with my new findings about just how dangerous many chemicals in cosmetics are.  I didn't want to get cancer.  And I knew that I should not think that the only true beauty was from synthetic gunk on my face.

That also coincided with a definite movement in my life towards finding myself.  Creating my own identity, being my own person.  This involved, and involves, a steady movement to a more "hippie"-ish, more organic, and less constrained by social mores, existence.

So I've become part of the bras and razors are optional club (want to join me? ;-)).   Really, why must I change my body, constrain myself in weird and uncomfortable undergarments, or endanger my health by absorbing harmful chemicals into my skin, to fit into some version of beauty I neither accept nor support?

I guess you could say I'm in the process of detoxing from the expectations of this culture.   In both this area of my life, and in many others.  It's a long process, and often a difficult one, to break away from the expectations of your entire culture.  But I think it's a very healthy, very *good* thing to be doing.

Peace,
Idzie

You want to know what makes me mad?

Like, really mad? Well, okay, a lot of things make me mad. But right now, what's making me really mad is all the anti-feminist, and anti-woman, stuff that is out there.

People, mostly men, say that women have equal rights. That all the gender inequality is in the past. Well, even by this culture's standards of so-called "equality", that's bullshit. Women still earn less on average then men, and men still fill the vast majority of positions of power. And beyond those very narrow views of what constitutes "equality" (money and power, as most people in this culture mean when they say that), from a basic human rights perspective women are not well treated. According to RAINN, in the United States of America one in 6 woman will be raped, and I've seen statistics that put the rate even higher, at one in 4 women. Is that what woman's rights look like? Or what about the advertising we see all around us, every day. Barely clothed supermodel beautiful women gyrating enticingly to men on beer commercials, while airbrushed models on billboards tout the benefits of wrinkle fighting facial cream. These things say that looks (with a very twisted, very narrow view of just what an attractive women is) are of utmost importance, and the only thing that matters is how others, especially men, see you. And the worst thing is, the barrage of advertising and pop-culture stuff attacking and objectifying women is well known. It's in the public eye and even discussed fairly frequently (as an interesting side note, you know Dove's big thing about using "real" models and promoting good body images? Well, Dove is owned by the same company that owns Axe, one of the worst companies for objectifying women. Yeah, like Dove's supposed concern for women is anything but a (sadly pretty successful) marketing scheme...). So knowing this, as pretty much everyone does, how can people continue to claim we live in a post sexist society?

Another thing that really, really bothers me are sexist jokes. And the worst thing is that I even have friends who make sexist jokes, and can't seem to grasp, whether I explain respectfully or let my anger show, that they're simply not funny, and are instead harmful, disrespectful, and hurtful.

And that's not even really getting into gender roles and what's expected behaviour from a member of the female sex.

This is just a scratching of the surface both for this subject as a whole and my own thoughts on it. There were so many thoughts rattling around in my head earlier, yet as I wrote, many of them just disappeared... I'm tired, which could have something to do with that. So for now, I'll stop here, leaving you with a few scattered and fragmented thoughts on something that I have so much to say about, and something that I firmly believe should be examined and talked about much more often...

When writing this, I thought of a Crimethinc. poster that I really like, and wanted to share.

You can be sure I'll be revisiting this topic at some point...

Peace,
Idzie