Posts tagged “feminism

Saying Yes to Seeing Things Differently

Posted on November 7, 2018

You know that feeling when you discover a new word and then you keep seeing and hearing it? A month or two ago I agreed to participate in a campaign for GenderAvenger. Sounds superheroic, doesn’t it? I’d learned about them from my friend Elan, from what I’d seen GenderAvenger identified missed opportunities for a balance of gender representation at things like conferences. What I discovered as I began using  GA Tally, an app to quickly log who is speaking or how long people are speaking is that things can be pretty lopsided. The early tallies came out better than I expected. The first event was a women’s luncheon and there was a woman of color on the panel. Yay, right? At first, yes, but…

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Vote Like Your Life Depends On It

Posted on October 28, 2018

The midterm elections are around the corner. Maybe you are sick of the ads, or you think your vote can’t possibly make a difference. I hope you will reconsider. I’ve looked back a lot since 2016. I made donations to candidates, I sent out tweets, and posted on Facebook. I wrote and spoke with friends. I didn’t knock on doors. I didn’t put a bumper sticker on my car. I didn’t attend meetings or rallies. I didn’t speak as plainly as I could have. I thought it was going to turn out fine. It did not turn out fine, and I am trying to change the way I participate to come out on the other side feeling like I gave it my all. Last…

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Your Disbelief Doesn’t Eliminate My Reality

Posted on September 23, 2018

Would you mind if we spent a little time here on context? I ask because just yesterday I bumped into someone and I watched it take a minute for her to place me. When it registered she smiled and blurted, “Amanda” triumphantly. We both laughed, there were no hurt feelings or judgment. “Context matters,” I said. It can be pretty easy to assume that everyone has the same perspective or familiarity with something—whether something is a person, an event, or an experience. Over the past several years there have been attempts to contextualize people’s perspectives on pain: Trigger warnings, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo. These hashtags and qualifiers are an effort to bring to the surface the pain or obstacles that people have and to honor them.…

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Dad2.0: A Conference for Dads & a Conversation About #MeToo

Posted on February 13, 2018

A little over a month ago I received a message from Doug French about speaking on a panel at the Dad2.0 Summit in New Orleans. I was at work and found myself slipping on my readers and leaning into the monitor to see the words in the small window. “…it’s about gender relations going forward, and how men in particular can contribute by listening, etc. You’ve written a lot about it, and Asha and I thought of you when we were discussing it. If this is even a possibility at this point, could we set a time for a call?” The timing could not have been more perfect or more challenging. I’ve been stuck; not knowing how to channel all that I’ve been feeling, but…

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Our Bodies Aren’t Coatracks for Your Guilt

Posted on October 14, 2017

“Be careful with that neck, it’s dangerous. Men can’t resist a neck like that.” I was 18 and his name was Jesús. I was an exchange student in Spain and had never met him before. He was ten years my senior.   Already I was so conditioned to believe that attention from men was a success—I am good enough —that I struggled to find balance between the programmed response and the way my hair stood on end on the back of my neck. I felt danger. It had only been about a year since a man had raped me in the front seat of his car. The whole time he spoke to me like I’d asked for it, like I was enjoying it. Powerful…

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