*cartwheel*

That out of the way, I need to pause and give a shout-out to emptygirl, who is teh_awesomeness and just bought me a paid account.

I have no idea what inspired this, as I have been totally neglecting my friends list lately, including her, and so totally don't deserve this. (Hah, not that I'm suggesting that my time = paid time. It just occurred to me that this could come out sounding terribly wrong.) But she has my excited squeeing over more icons gratitude.

Thanks emptygirl!

Betty Friedan, intersectionality, school stuff

Okay, today in Editorial and Opinion Writing, we were supposed to read our columns on either

a) Betty Friedan's recent death, or
b) Stephen Harper's cabinet assignments

Now, I'm relatively interested in Canadian politics, but I'm not as caught up on the details as I would really like to be. So I decided the death of a feminist icon was a slightly easier choice.

So I wrote a small sketch of this last night...and then watched the Rick Mercer Report. (Best line of the night: "Go on to our website, where you can find archives of sections from old shows. For example, this one talk I gave in 2004 called, "Why The Liberals Will Rule Canada Forever." Beat. "...My bad.") Then I watched American Idol. Then I stayed up to 4 am reading pr0n and supposedly do a small bit of research. Yes, FOUR EH-EM. Fucking dumbass...because then I got up late this morning after 2 1/2 hours of sleep, missed my first class, FRANTICALLY wrote this column on the train, typed it up in a storm in a spare e-learning room...and was 15 minutes late to my second class.

Score.

So I missed a few people's columns - a bunch of the good writers, I think, which stinks. I'm sure Walter, my instructor, is a little peeved with me. I've missed a lot of his classes now, and he's getting about as stern as he gets over it. Eeep.

But my column was relatively well-received. Actually, I had a few people come up and tell me they liked it. I was happy it went over so well. I think it's kind of sloppy/messy, given that it was written on 2 1/2 hours sleep on the back of a brochure on the C-train. But I got pretty passionate about this one. (Actually, speaking of passion, I've noticed that my rhetorical style tends to build up into melodrama and get away from me. I need to work on reining that in.)

Partial credit for this one completely goes to people scattered around lj - notably shadowfae, I think - because I worked some of what I "overheard" over the past few days into this. I really didn't even notice that until I was reading this out today; that's what happens when you don't proofread your drafts. No intention of plagiarism was meant, but the ideas got in there. Of course, my instructor doesn't know that, but it's still not acceptable to my mind, and I want to work it out and clarify the transition from paragraph 6 to 7 with my own thoughts. (Well...technically, NONE of this is my own, original thoughts, and little in an opinion column gets cited. But I believe in the greater accountability of the media in coming years, you know?)

So here it is:

( You're a feminist - yes, you are! - but what kind? Thoughts about Betty Friedan )

So....this might (or might not) get published in the Weekly. Since the class liked it, and Walter said he'd try to swing getting these published. So I need to fix 'er up. Any suggestions, fact corrections, whatever, are welcome. This is a scribble, not a composition! Hell, I didn't even read over it again. I couldn't really make myself do it.


Eh. Anyway. Most of the class, actually, decided to write about Friedan. That surprised me for a second, but then I realized that MOST of the class probably had the same issue with the Harper topic that I did...not enough background. There was:

-Numerous columns praising Friedan for her contribution to feminism. Much waxing eloquent about the opportunities women have today.

[Okay, whatever. I'll grant that.]

-One accusatory column from a girl asking if feminism was a wasted effort, asking why women are apparently so interested in "fashion and beauty and dieting."

[*headdesk* I had a hard time sitting still through that one.]

-One from one of the few WOC in the class (journalism is so white, blah) that covered the criticisms of Friedan's politics that I had...interestingly, she said that she "doesn't care" for those who see Friedan as "myopic," because Friedan was writing only about her own sphere of life, and didn't have an opportunity to see "how the other side lives."

[And okay...getting outside your own POV isn't easy, and I wouldn't have liked Friedan trying to speak for poor women, or WOC. And yet! - she did! In a way...in totally ignoring anyone who wasn't white and middle-class and married or going to be married as being "women of America." And who had the better opportunity to learn about the other side - the woman who'd had an education and the training to conduct some sort of study, or the poor woman stuck just trying to survive?]

-One from a guy who went on about how women have long been held down by men's "dominant nature" and superior strength. Something about how abuse stems from fear of women's intelligence.

[Something I never completely bought. I don't know why, but it rings false to me...or at least greatly oversimplified. And he had a "first-principles" approach too...like men originally started subjugating women because of fear of women's intelligence. I don't know, I have no idea when "the patriarchy" - in any country - "started." Eh...]

-THE BEST FOR LAST! One girl - one of the "Plastics" as so dubbed by our class - read a column that praised Friedan's contributions in the vein of the others...but brilliantly referred to, "The beginning of feminism, in 1963, with the publication of The Feminine Mystique." Multiple times.

[I couldn't help it - I burst out with a *snerk* noise in the middle of her reading, but basically no one noticed. (Safe!) And a girl in my class named Jen - who is both well-informed and wickedly smart - later spent some time joking with me about Suffragettes and various feminists back through the centuries spinning in their graves. Guess this girl slept through 4th-5th grade history, when we TOTALLY learned about the women's right to vote being granted ALL ACROSS NORTH AMERICA in 1963.]

All in all, it was interesting. I kind of wish that more of the writing that we did was like that, instead of stuff that is supposed to "matter" to students, like....*picks up latest Weekly* The latest Open House. Finding a date for Valentine's day. How the various energy drinks stack up. And so on.... Blah.


Oh, and Group B's writing? Is SO not better than ours. Pfft.