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Activism Log #4

Activism:

This week with NOW I had the pleasure of planning and creating NOW’s first “Feminist Coming Out Day” of the semester. Sunday, I went to Kelly T’s house and we tie-dyed about 11 shirts, tie-dyed the NOW table cloth, made posters, attached ribbons and fliers to hand out on Thursday, I made two stencils for the shirts – one saying “FEMINIST” and on the back the feminist symbol with a twist – and finally Sunday we cut out photos for the “This is what a Feminist looks like” poster board. Wednesday night I went back to Kelly T’s to paint the shirts and utilize the stencils, to complete the posters, to draw and paint the “NOW” logo on the table cloth, and compiled the last of the supplies for Feminist Coming Out Day. Thursday was Feminist Coming Out Day! I tabled from 10-130 telling people about feminism, feminist theories, the differences of feminists and feminism and asking them what issues mattered to them on campus, what they thing feminism is and why they might identify as a feminist.

Reflection:

One of my favorite quotes, said by Ms. Gloria Steinem herself: “In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist”. This quote rings true for me because in this “white, racist, homophobic, patriarchal paradigm” that dominates society, personal choices like whether to identify and act as a feminist translate into macro level experiences. Whether or not one chooses to fight for gender equality or reproductive rights or even call themselves a feminist affects how they live their lives, how they perceive others and where they shop. Thus where they shop determines where their money is being funneled into and what companies get more funding than others. For example, Chic-fil-A is a well-known Christian affiliated restaurant chain that has explicit homophobic leanings demonstrated by their charities and organizations that recieve their money. The people who identify as GLBT or allies or feminists (who would not want rights being taken away from anyone at the hands of a large privatized corporation) would have the inclination to reject Chic-fil-A as somewhere where they would buy products from and thus would reject to give the establishment any money from the community that it suppresses. Overall, in order to change things in this globalized world or to alter large scale legislations and international relations, it starts at a micro level – identifiers, intersectionality, where you shop, what music you choose to listen to, what shows you watch…etc. It all fits into the bigger picture and how you see that larger narrative.

Reciprocity:

The turnout for Feminist Coming Out Day was amazing. Our tabling was completely awesome and it really called attention towards NOW which helped us reach our goal of bringing more awareness to NOW on campus. Furthermore, we had a lot of people come out as feminists and spread the “this is what a feminist looks like word” to help with our second goal for the semester: combat negative or generalized stereotypes of feminists. Overall, this semester has been an amazing experience and Feminist Coming Out Day was the culmination of every I hoped to accomplish this semester.