Browsing Tag

feminism

Guest Posts

21st Century Woman: A 20-something’s Ascent into Feminist Ethics

April 2, 2018

By Maria Prudente

On the night of the presidential election, a breakup of mine coincided with Trump’s victory. I couldn’t help but notice the symmetry of two completely annoying things happening simultaneously: a win for a man known for objectifying women and a breakup initiated by a guy who had spent several months objectifying me. One event was meaningful to me so, sorry to the dude who promptly unfollowed me on Instagram but our breakup was small potatoes. I spent the rest of the year dedicating myself to things that were more important: my career, education, health. Men were left off that list. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

From The Quiet Corner

December 26, 2016

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

How many times when kids are young do parents essentially shake off their child’s upset? “You fell? You got up! You’re worried? You’re awesome!” We aim to bolster self-esteem; we keen toward reassurance.

The other day, my daughter asked why Trump won. We were walking to her gymnastics practice. “You know, our country really doesn’t agree about how to make things better,” I told her. “So, sometimes the great person wins and sometimes someone wins we don’t agree with. Everyone wants the world to be better,” I assured her.

“I was really looking forward to telling my kids that when I was eight turning nine in 2016, we elected our first girl President,” she said.

“I know, me too,” I replied. “I was looking forward to your kids hearing that. I do think we’re going to get a girl President.”

“Maybe I will be the first girl President!” Continue Reading…

Current Events, feminism, Guest Posts

The Good Girls Guide to Survival in Trumpland

December 20, 2016
survival

By Amy Reardon

“You are blocking everyone’s progress!” I screamed. It was 8am and the construction worker was backing his pickup truck onto the sidewalk, blocking my running path and making it impossible for cars to pass on the street next to us. Rush hour in Denver, the morning after Election Day, and he was everything that was wrong with the world. The air was thick and still with smog.

I had my next line ready and waiting for his response.

“The women of this country are pissed, and you had better get used to it!” I planned to say, but I didn’t get the chance because after my first salvo, he stepped out of the truck in jeans and work boots. He lifted up his hands.

“I’m really sorry, ma’am, I just have to unload the drywall,” he said, and I could see from his face he was not out to bury the women of this country after all.

The day before, on Election Day, I awoke absolutely 100% sure we would be electing our first female president. That morning I floated outside for my run and looked up at the blue sky and white puffy clouds. Today everything changes, I thought. Today begins a new conversation on the global stage, one in which the President of the United States calls out anyone in her path who dismisses, interrupts, overrules, condescends, mansplains*, excludes, objectifies, usurps, negates, demeans, shoots down, shuts down, steals from, shames women for their biology or otherwise bangs on with the same old tired tags, emotional and weak. The leader of the free world will systematically reject the devaluation of women and give birth to a new model of behavior that will slowly permeate our homes, schools and institutions, like water runs under a door and slowly floods a room.

I imagined dinner tables, office water coolers and Starbucks coffee shops across America, where it would become commonplace to quote our president’s candid responses to pompous windbags who publicly dismissed her ideas. This would open the door for all of us to do the same. As I ran along listening to Sia’s voice sing “Titanium” on repeat – I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose. Fire away, fire away – I jumped up and punched a fist into the air.

All day Election Day, I walked around in this magical new world. My back was straighter, my head higher, my shoulders open. I made eye contact and grinned at the people in the elevator. I felt empowered to take up space because I knew, KNEW, our new president would have our backs. When a tall, broad shouldered man in a suit and tie barreled down the sidewalk outside my office in my path and refused to move his line, I held mine. His shoulder slammed into me as he passed, and I smiled at my feet and thought, no dude, we share the sidewalk now.

See that’s precisely what I had wrong. I was waiting for our first female president to give me permission to take up my own space. Girlfriends, we are never going to be treated as equals while we expect someone else to do it for us. HRC has never waited for anyone to give her permission to do anything. Do you think the dictators and despots of the world wanted to meet with a female Secretary of State? No. But she got off her airplane in whatever crazy corner of the world she had business, walked her pantsuit into his golden palace or high-security bunker or mountainside retreat and took a seat at the table. Every day of her life.

We women did not invent this mindset, the idea that someone else was going to protect us and fight our battles: it’s called a patriarchal society. Now, this is the point in the conversation where I always lose my male friends. They immediately move into fight-or-flight mode, assuming I’m accusing them of something, and I am not. We built this society together, in farm houses and covered wagons and log cabins and bedrooms and boardrooms, for better or for worse, generation after generation after generation.

Anthropologists suggest the roots of the patriarchy began about 6,000 years ago, when humankind moved from the egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies into agriculture and domestication. In a patriarchy, the male steps in as head of the house, providing for and protecting the women and children. Is this beginning to sound familiar?

It took the defeat of my long-time hero to realize my mistake: when I wanted my president to fight for my station in life and then turn around and hand it to me, I was doing it again. The day we lost the election was the day I formally withdrew my participation in the patriarchy. Today I ask you to join me.

As such, I present the Good Girls Guide to Survival in Trumpland. Think this plan might not be for you? Read on, sisters.

Raise your hand if like me, you crave approval. Remember when kind old grandpa patted you on the head and said run along and be a good girl, and you beamed up at his wrinkled face and wanted to please him so bad you seriously asked yourself, how can I be a better girl?

How many times have I started to pitch an idea at work and been interrupted by a boss who thought he knew more so I deferred and left a great plan unexecuted because I didn’t have the nerve to push back and take the floor again? A million.

A million times I have handed over my voice and my authority to the men around me. It was so easy. I was busy. I had more important things to do, like the serious work of getting my family through the day. Having an opinion amidst the blowhards and one-uppers just didn’t feel like my job. They can have the floor, I thought, how arrogant. And in this silent negotiation, I handed over my leadership, my authority and my voice to the men around me.

Look at how boys are raised: they are pushed out on sports fields and jostled and told to be tough, argue and compete.  Girls are still, to a certain extent, raised to be nice, to get along, to smile, to be the helpers. The boys are told they will have to steer the ship, and they may be thrown into the cold water without a lifejacket so they better figure it out. Girls are offered the choice to opt out.

Ladies, I’m here to suggest we can do better. My favorite author Cheryl Strayed says you only have until you’re 30 years old to blame your parents for what is wrong with your lives, after that it’s on us. So if you’re 30 and you’re not like my friend KB who is president of a global company … if you’re not like my friend Tiffany who just survived a mortal illness to come back and be a mommy again and inspire her entire community with jokes and goodwill … if you don’t identify with the term nasty woman or you’re not sure you need to be a feminist … or if you just really want to be liked, then you might be like me, and sister, I suggest you read on.

Five years ago, I was reading the book, “The Next 100 Years” by George Friedman, and I encountered a sentence that moved me to stop writing about other people’s ideas and start writing about my own. He predicted that because women’s lives have changed so much over the last 200 years, the era in which we live is one in which “new institutions, moral systems and practices will begin their first tentative emergence.”

Previously, women had no choice but to spend 100 percent of their lives bearing and raising children, then they died. Then came the industrial revolution, food become plentiful, medical care saved lives and birth control allowed us to step off the baby treadmill. As a result today’s woman now spends only 10 percent of her life bearing and raising children. It is not an exaggeration to say that women’s lives have been transformed. Add to this the good work of the feminists, and we find ourselves in a Consolidation Generation. It’s our job to sort out the new role of women after two centuries of change.

Today I ask you, are we going to allow the patriarchy to define these new institutions, moral systems and practices, or are we going to define them ourselves? It’s time for us to stop being complicit in giving away our own voices, our own authority and our own place in the world.

Now let’s be smart about this. I’m not suggesting an outright revolt against the patriarchy, but what if we simply outgrew it?

Goodness knows the men we love are in consolidation too. They’re expected hold up their own end of our twisted social bargain while at the same time being emotionally intelligent, politically correct co-parents, and somewhere in between getting down on one knee to spring diamonds from their pockets. Our little boys are being medicated because they don’t act more like girls and warned if they’re not careful, they might just become a rapist.

I’m done being nice and keeping my mouth shut. It’s not working. So as American society tilts back toward its patriarchal roots, I present the Good Girls Guide, six simple steps for survival in our new status quo.

Step 1: Find fulfillment.

Whatever interests you, whatever you love, whatever you are good at: get better at it. Practice, read books, listen to podcasts. Find experts to follow who excite you and fill your mind with ideas that move you to closer to mastery. Know more about these ideas than anyone else in the room.

Step 2: Use your voice.

Win arguments on these topics, every time.  Fight to the end because when you assert your opinion, you claim your place on the leadership committee, and that is where we need to be. Have one or two or three or four topics in which you are the master – be they mergers & acquisitions or global warming or potty training or neighborhood building codes or software development kits. Speak up every time. The world needs your voice.

Step 3: Take up space.

DO NOT ASK PERMISSION. DO NOT ANNOUNCE YOUR INTENTION. DO NOT GET MAD. DO NOT EXPECT SOMEONE ELSE TO GIVE IT TO YOU. Just take your space: it was yours the whole time. It was never someone else’s to give. Does this scenario sound familiar? You sit down in an airplane seat and the guy next to you has his whole arm on the armrest, and even though you wanted some armrest, you put your hands in your lap, and you sit there and fume. Stop doing that immediately. Put your arm on the armrest. Hold it there, right against his arm. I’ve tried it, and I assure you, he will share. No talking, no blaming, no asking, no apologizing. JUST TAKE IT. You had it all along.

Step 4: Ask for what you need.

Boys are raised to go out and get what they need. They don’t feel bad and they don’t apologize. If there are five Popsicles and five people, and you are one of the five people, don’t wait until everyone has had one to see if they might want a second. Have a Popsicle. It’s more fun when we all enjoy Popsicles together. If we don’t show our families and co-workers how to treat us, then they get to decide what we deserve.

Step 5. Do not ask for permission.

It is not theirs to give you. If women are going to be treated equally we have to stop asking the world for permission. The power was yours all along. Eleanor Roosevelt is famous for saying, “No one can make you inferior without your consent.” Today, we stop giving our consent. In 1992, Gloria Steinem wrote a book in which she called upon women to take all the freedoms they had been given from the feminist movement and step into their own power. Girlfriends, this was 25 years ago. What are we waiting for?

Step 6: Elevate other women.

Sheryl Sandberg and Sallie Krawcheck and the ladies of the White House staff are right when they challenge us to make simple choices every day to support each other, like “amplifying,” the act of repeating other women’s ideas to recognize their contribution. Recently a friend told me a female executive officer at her company came to her to inquire about the leadership bios posted on their website. She wanted to know, shouldn’t the new male officer joining the firm be featured ahead of her? The answer to this question is no. We must also help each other claim our space.

If you’re still wondering whether the Good Girls Guide is for you, here’s a test. Has a father, boyfriend, husband or boss ever called you sweet? If your answer is yes, I suggest it’s time to have a look in the mirror. Sweet is dessert. Dessert is optional, full of empty calories. If people are calling you sweet, I ask you to consider whether you may have handed over your power.

I know what you’re going to say now. We’re tired. And what’s wrong with wanting to be liked? We have to do everything and walk the dog and clean up after the sick child and bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Do we really do have to collaborate and make equal contributions and take our rightful share of the armrest too?

And to this I say yes, we do. When the Good Girls of America stop choosing to be dessert, I do believe we will never, ever again have to watch the world’s champion for human rights concede an election. We will never have to sit by and sob while she assures our daughters that they are valuable, powerful and deserving. Our daughters will already know that. Good Girls of Trumpland, let’s get started.

*Credit: Rebecca Solnit, “Men Explain Things to Me”

ar-photo

 Amy Reardon is a writer in Denver, CO. She is at work on a novel about how women interact with each other via the Stanford University School of Continuing Studies Online Writing Certificate Program. Amy can be found on Facebook.

 

Join Ally and Jen Pastiloff for an intimate online course about what it means to be a woman at this time. Space is very limited. Course runs Jan 12-Feb 9, 2017. Click the picture to sign up or to get more info on the course and its perks!

Join Ally and Jen Pastiloff for an intimate online course about what it means to be a woman at this time. Space is very limited. Course runs Jan 12-Feb 9, 2017. Click the picture to sign up or to get more info on the course and its perks!

 

 

Join The Manifestation Retreat: Manifesting Under The Tuscan Sun. June 17-24 OR Sep 9-16. Email retreats@jenniferpastiloff.com or click the picture above.

Join The Manifestation Retreat: Manifesting Under The Tuscan Sun. June 17-24 OR Sep 9-16. Email retreats@jenniferpastiloff.com or click the picture above.

feminism, Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape

Grabbing Pussy, Flipping the Script.

October 11, 2016

By Tammy Delatorre

When I first saw your videotape, I might say I was disgusted like thousands of men and women were who watched it. But instead, I was obsessed. I listened to it over and over, practically memorizing the words. Why was I fixated?

You said you grabbed women by their pussies. At first, I wanted to understand the mechanics of it. It implies a woman has a handle down there, something around which you can get your fingers; as if the pussy were the first body part to reach for, rather than a woman’s hand to shake out of respect, or her arms to embrace in friendship. It implies, too, that no permission is needed—the reach from a man in power is justification enough. They will let you do it; they will allow you to do anything. That’s what you said.

I’m intimately familiar with the biology of a pussy because I have one, although I realize my pussy is not one you’d want to grab. After all, according to your rating system of women, I’m not an 8—far from it. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, healing, Sexual Assault/Rape

They Can’t Erase Our Voices.

October 10, 2016

By Domi J Shoemaker
I wish I could say that this thing I wrote after waking at 2:30am to take my pain meds and check my blood pressure after a hysterectomy that had only been performed so quickly because I benefit from the Affordable Care Act was an act of true inspiration. But it is more than that. It is also desperation. I have reached maximum capacity. I will tell you why.

After getting my surgery scheduled at the teaching hospital, I rolled across campus to an appointment that confirmed I would need a breast biopsy. The breast clinic did the biopsy two days later, and the .
day before my cancer surgery, a week ago today, and just before their gorgeous offices up on the hill closed for the day, someone giddy-sounding from the clinic called me and said,

“Domi, I am so happy to tell you the calcifications in your breast are benign.”

Now, with one week to go before my post-op appointment to find out the stage of cancer and whether they got all they needed to get, I listen to the presidential debate and hear that man say things like “Obamacare is a disaster. Just a disaster,” and I want to throw up.

This coming from a man who would surely try to shred me for the way I move through the world, the type of man I know all too well.

He is my old conservative “uncle” who put his hands and mouth wherever he wanted, on and IN my four-year-old body. He would zero in on the vacuum of need created in me those times when I saw my father rage at my mother and carry her down the hall by her throat.

He is my teacher when I was eleven, who carried me across the playground by my collar, with my feet kicking inches above the ground, desperate for purchase, just because I was cool-talking and called him Mr. Turkey like I was Vinnie Barbarino.

He is the man who, when I was twelve, called my mom for the hundred bucks we didn’t have to replace the passenger-side windshield of his split-windshield Dodge van aftermy feet had kicked it out, while his buddy tried to convince me not to climb back up the tree.

He is the man’s buddy who, with his hand on my thigh, tried to keep me in the van because I thought I had the power of a FLYING squirrel after he fed me PCP-laced Kool-Aid when I lied and said I was thirteen.

He is that man, when I really was thirteen, who rubbed up against me and said, “You have the most beautiful breasts I have ever seen,” when I was such a tomboy and had begged to wear cut off Levi’s and a T-shirt but got sidled with a swimsuit that pushed my breasts into the next area code.

He is the coach who, that following year, my first in high school, “hired” me to help coach the girls junior varsity basketball team. The coach who picked me up, when I was drunk, and he saw me walking alone at night. I convinced him to drop me off at a friend’s house with the promise of a kiss. He kissed me. With his tongue. I lost all interest in basketball.

He is the hundreds and hundreds of men who feel free to comment on my body whether in praise or in disgust and he is the woman who buys into that message that she deserves what she takes because she has given it for so long.

It isn’t a wonder that we all – at THE HANDS of men (and at the hands of women who follow their lead), who believe they have a right to use us at their will – have had to re-boot and readjust over and over just to be alive on this planet.

And here we all are. Speaking up! However we can.

I wish the piece posted below, which is only the 2nd thing I have written to its completion since starting all the health tests last January after an ambulance ride for what was a-fib likely due to anxiety, a symptom of my well-documented PTSD, PTSD at the hands of repeated early childhood (and beyond) trauma, were only MY story.

I feel fortunate to be alive and to have NOT killed anyone with this rage.

All that said, these words are meant to be a catalyst, not a masterpiece, because my words don’t need to be precious, they are meant to get shit done.

I wish this was just about me and my dearest friend, but it is the story of so many of us. To even pass this heinous man’s behavior off as “locker room talk” is to deny the fact that even locker room talk is designed to minimize the damage these putrid bags of bilious waste inflict upon those they treat as property.

#DedicateYourNoTrumpVote

INDELIBLE

By the time I was 6, I was at least 3 people.
I don’t know how it happened, to me instead of you.
How I split and split again and you, you had to swallow the rage.
While I grew big, then bigger, then bigger again,
You withdrew and went inside yourself.
I found safety is loudness, in bigness, and in bright!
You found solace in smallness and silence.
Our strength is born in sameness.
You at the hands of your father and me at the hands of uncle,
THE HANDS who grabbed us and groped us as though we were owned and grown to be consumed.
It is not just us, my love, it’s her, and her and him, and them,
THE HANDS, they they tried to erase us.
BUT WE ARE INDELIBLE.

#DedicateYourNoTrumpVote

And to honor the protector of those parts of me who helped me survive, I give you this-

p.s. “Listen, fucknuts, if you don’t want your rich white boys to pay for healthcare, stop creating the problem by taking whatever you want. That’s a goddamn coward’s way. Come talk to me about your excuses. See if you can earn it. I dare you.” ~Harley
And from the new me you see today-

p.p.s. Our bodies always move toward healing and homeostasis. As a species, this is how we have survived. This go-around with cancer and it’s friends, I have been using my body to create images and clips when I cannot find the words. All of the heart-shaped images are my own blood found on and in various pieces of clothing and furniture. That’s what endometrial cancer does. So I wanted to conquer my fear by calling the cancer out with images and representations of love.


#DedicateYourNoTrumpVote

Domi J Shoemaker is the founder the Burnt Tongue Quarterly reading series and they have been published in Pank Magazine, Unshod Quills, Nailed Magazine, Gobshite Quarterly, and in the Forest Avenue Press Anthology, The Night and The Rain and The River. You can hear Domi on KBOO radio’s Bread and Roses archives with Leigh Anne Kranz. Domi worries about being a name-dropping attention whore who did a scene with Fred Armisen in Portlandia. Just Google Pedicabs Are Douchebags, and it will come up. Domi’s grandest achievement aside from completing an MFA at Pacific University, is working with Lidia Yuknavitch since 2012, and is currently co-facilitating the seasonal face to face workshop series, Corporeal Writing with Lidia Yuknavitch.
Join Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff for their signature “Writing & The Body” Retreat in Portland March 17-19 by clicking photo.

Join Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff for their signature “Writing & The Body” Retreat in Portland March 17-19 by clicking photo.

 

Click photo to read People Magazine.

Click photo to read People Magazine.

Guest Posts, Surviving, Women

Revolutionary Women: Breaking The Ties That Bind Us

June 22, 2016
women

By Nancy Arroyo Ruffin

When I was about 11 or 12 I saw my cousin Maggie get her face punched in by her husband in front of an abandoned gas station. It was a warm summer night and the normally loud Brooklyn neighborhood was uncharacteristically quiet save for two crack heads getting high down the block and a passing car that was blasting Slick Rick’s “Hey Young World” from the speakers. My mother, sister, aunt, cousin and I were walking home from the annual feast of St. Carmel eating zeppoles and recounting the events of the night. I don’t recall Maggie’s husband being with us. I remember him appearing out of nowhere like the boogey man in a bad dream. One minute we were strolling down the block, and the next minute Chucho was dragging Maggie across the filthy pavement. When she tried to fight back he put one hand around her neck and squeezed. He punched her so hard Maggie lost her breath for a few seconds. Her mouth was open, but no sound came out. She didn’t scream or cry.  She just floated midair, voiceless.  I stood there waiting for my mother and aunt to do something, to say something, but all they said was, uno no se mete en cosas de matrimonio, one doesn’t get involved in the business of a man and his wife.

Although the elements of abuse are universal, a person’s cultural background influences how individuals deal with abuse. What we grow up witnessing as children and how we’re taught to respond in certain situations serves as the foundation for how we will respond to similar experiences when we get older. Our culture, religion, and economic background affect our beliefs, values, behaviors, and how we deal with problems. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape, Surviving, Young Voices

From One Survivor To Another

June 11, 2016
writing

By Courtney Cook.

When I think about being raped, I think of mosquitos. I think of the sound of a buzzing street lamp. I think of sweat, of sand, of silence. And I think of the women on the tennis court nearby, blissfully unaware of my presence a mere fifty feet away.

There are no bicyclists in my story; there is just me, a girl barely 15, and him, not much older. I am so grateful there are heroes in your story. You never deserved what happened to you, but you did deserve all the kindness in the world that those men gave to you in your most vulnerable moment. I wish they’d never had to extend such kindness, but if something so horrific had to happen, I am glad good men found you. I am so thankful for all of the good men.

 

Two weeks before I was raped, my future rapist was pulling me away from a party. It was Halloween; I was dressed as a sailor. I can’t remember what he was dressed up as, but I can tell you the way his arms felt wrapped around my wrists as he drug me away from the party. Continue Reading…

Birthday, Girl Power: You Are Enough, Guest Posts, Jen Pastiloff, Jen's Musings

Getting Older is Everything. Don’t Believe The Lies. A Message To Young Women on Jen Pastiloff’s Bday.

December 12, 2015

By Jen Pastiloff
For as much as I talk about telling the truth, I still get butterflies when sharing my age. My friend Michelle Filgate had an essay in Buzzfeed yesterday about how she used running to treat depression and then she got injured. She interviewed me and it said, Jen Pastiloff, 40 years old, and I sat up and had a moment where I thought how could they have gotten that wrong? I am so not 40 years old.

But I was. Yesterday.

Today, I am 41.

It mortifies my mother-in-law that I tell people how old I am. Especially here in LA, we are not “supposed to” do that.

Youth is a commodity! You’re not “supposed to” age!
I call bullshit.

Continue Reading…

feminism, Girl Power: You Are Enough, Guest Posts, Young Voices

A 16 Year Old Writes “The Day I Became A Woman.”

November 5, 2015

Note from Jen Pastiloff, founder of The Manifest-Station: This is a piece for my “Young Voices” series. It was written by  Anastasia Kranz who is sixteen years old.  I am in the process of organizing the next Girl Power workshop so please stay tuned to this site and my social media, especially @GirlPowerYouAreEnough on instagram.

I am looking for more young voices to publish so please submit if you have something to say. Please note, if you are under 18 you must have parental permission unless you are using a pseudonym. I am so excited to be working on the book Girl Power: You Are Enough, as well as the workshop for young women which has been a HUGE success so far. Please help me spread the word and sign up or sign your daughters/nieces/friends. I am also in the process of selecting ambassadors to represent #GirlPowerYouAreEnough. More information on this on my instagram at @jenpastiloff. Love, Jen

By Anastasia Kranz

The day I became a woman was not the expected landmark in my puberty, it was the day I realized I needed to be a feminist. There were many factors that culminated in this epiphanic moment, and all of them were issues that I would later find addressed by feminism.

Two years ago, at fourteen, I was obsessed with the prospect of a perfect body. Despite asthma and a lack of athletic skills, I forced myself to run every single day after school. On a warm day in June I put on my running sneakers and started my workout playlist. As I was running, I heard a harsh voice—I turned around and the biggest fear of my preteen life was realized. A middle-aged man had pulled his car up next me and was opening the passenger door. He yelled “Get in the car!” repeatedly at my trembling face. I froze, then ran in the opposite direction, only pausing at the traffic light where I met my friend–to whom I didn’t relay the story. Later, when I got home, I didn’t even tell my mother. At the time, I wanted my freedom—and I needed freedom because I wanted to burn calories. At the time, I did not understand that I had just experienced an attempted kidnapping.

The scariest part of the event was surprisingly not when a man attempted to abduct me. Instead, it was what I was told by the police, a few days later, after I told my parents what had happened. I met with a detective whom I believed would be helpful and supportive. Instead, the detective labeled me guilty: for not reporting the event earlier, but also for the running clothes I’d been wearing. In the gray box of a room, I sat with my knees hugged to my chest and listened to the detective tell me that I should not have been outside alone wearing “provocative” activewear. Then he said that if, per se, my little sister had been abducted in the time that I had waited to report the event, then her abduction would have been my fault. The shame and guilt I felt from the words of this man were the detrimental effects of victim blaming. I knew that what he said was wrong and problematic, but I did not learn what those phrases meant until later down my journey when I learned about feminism. Once that word was in my vocabulary it became my identity and I discovered that this would be part of me for the rest of my life.

Continue Reading…

courage, feminism, Guest Posts

My Voice On Feminism

September 27, 2015

By Elly Zhilyak

I’ve recently embarked on a journey to reclaim my femininity amidst a scary ascertation that I was beginning to retain the masculine qualities of my male coworkers.

What does that mean exactly? And what does it have to do with feminism?

Let me begin with a brief synopsis of my life.

Life began for me with huge bows in my hair, amidst dolls, and kitchenettes, and ballet. It progressed into climbing trees, dressing up barbies, and playing with really cool toy cars, that my father brought from overseas (the Bugatti was my personal favorite). By the age of 6, I was outrunning all the older boys in the neighborhood. Needless to say, they were impressed. I was girly, and I was very comfortable with it. I was also very comfortable with all the “non-girly” things I did.

Fast forward to the awkward pre-teen stage, when I became extraordinarily shy, then to high school when I decided to reclaim some of the bad assery that lived somewhere within, by kicking most of the shyness to the curb, hanging out with all the older kids, and donning knee high boots and long trench coats. I re-added ballet to the mix with a large serving of boys. I was a typical teenager, looking for acceptance, and mostly loving flaunting the feminine side of myself that came so naturally. Then came my twenties and all the boys and all the more of the dress up of self, since I was now more of an adult and could express myself however I pleased. I re-added the running to the mix, nixed the ballet and dancing, and added going to the club(s) with my girlfriends/boyfriend. Still “voiceless”.

Whilst chasing all the boys in my twenties, I was all girl, ready to be saved by some Prince Charming. Independent, but still conflicted most of the time. Having a somewhat naturally shy disposition, or at least up-bringing, I think it was easy for me to lose my voice.

The little girl that outran all the boys when she was 6, dress and all, was lost all tangled up in the dress. She was Cinderella at the ball with some asshole prince. Somehow she forgot how to run and climb. She must have left her Chucks at home.

Then came CrossFit that gave the girl back some strength and a lot more confidence, followed by belly dancing. Although a complete 180 of each other, the two created an appropriately perfect balance.

Soon after, came a job, which was not unlike any other, except for the fact that I was now surrounded by men – a loosely used term here. Ten of them, ten of whom I had to manage, whose respect I had to evoke, and whose schedules I controlled day in and day out. My “sweet” disposition and sometimes quick temper won the respect of most, immediately. Unnaturally and unknowingly, I started to change. I wore more pants, less make up, less jewelry. I eventually became just as perversely funny, and even more smart assy than before. Continue Reading…