Activism Blog Week 6

Alexandria Bergeron

Jeannina Perez

For week of 3/26/10

WST 3015

This week was again a slower week for me. I took my petition sheet to work with me and to my other class. Explaining my cause wasn't to bad, but I think for most of the people that signed, it was out of habit. The people I worked with didn't even want to know what they were signing for the most part. I was a little surprised by this because I was hoping that people would take more of an interest in the world that they are changing and affecting. I would want to know what I was signing. This week also lead to more conversations with my dad about my project and about or class discussions. We are talking about women and feminist ideas in regards to the military. My father is a 37 year veteran of the Navy, and we have found ourselves in a couple heated debates about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", laws. Of course he is all for it and I feel that no one should have to hide who they are. If they are willing to put there life on the line for their country then who cares what their sexual preference is. My dad and I have always been close but these arguments actually were so heated at one point, we actually found ourselves hanging up on each other.I think it is hard for my dad to see me grow up and develope my own opinions especially when they are different then his ideals, however he is becoming more receptive the more we talk through this project process. I think that this might help both my parents grow by the end of the project.

Work Cited:

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Women and the military, War, and Peace." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. 493-511. Print.

Activism Blog Week 5

Alexandria Bergeron

Jeannina Perez

For the week (3/19/10)

WST 3015

With it being the first week back from being on Spring Break, I can't say that I was exactly motivated to jump right into working on our service learning hours. We had planned to begin tabling this week, and I took the time off from work, but due to problems with getting a table, we were unable to start petitioning. This week in class I feel like we have covered a lot of topics in great detail to include the work of feminism in pursuit of equality to lengthy class discussions about taking the "path of least resistance"(Perez, 3/17/10) . As an individual in this group I see my self living up to both of these discussions. Being of the straight community, the path of least resistance is definately being an activist for the GLBT community. The responses from most when I discuss my service learning project is shock. Friends I have been close with for years even look at me a little cross. I think there is this idea that in order to fight for equality for certain communities, you have to be a member of that community. I have become more comfortable talking openly about my project and really standing up for my personal morals. This is a big step for me. I have always been a person concerned with what others thought so anything that would be "out of the norm", would not be something that I would advertise. I find my self growing and finding my voice in this world as far as defending and supporting what I believe in.

Perez, Jeanina. 3 March, 2010. Lecture "Path of Least Resistance"

Activism Blog Week 4

Alexandria Bergeron

Jeannina Perez

WST 3015

Activism Blog (from 3/26/10)

This week my activism was more on a personal level. Though my family is very supportive of me developing my own morals and ideas, they still have trouble understanding why i support or believe in the things that I do believe in. I have found myself in the middle of several conversation with them about my service learning project. Most of my conversations were with my mother, and since this past weekend i brought home a friend of mine, due to me having a girls weekend with all my best friends back in West Palm, and my friend just happened to be the first lesbian my mother ever met, my mother had trouble understanding why I am supporting a community I am not part of. Of course the fact that I am working on this service learning project, along with the fact that I brought my friend home, led to questions from my mother about my sexual identity. It reminded me of or reading of "I'm Not a Rapist". In that reading the men didn't want to be assumed to be rapist simply because they were men. I felt this week as though my mother saw me as having to be a lesbian, since in her eyes, there is no other reason why I would be working on this project. It was so stressful and I have never had to argue with my mother so much. After severl conversations i think I finally got her to understand that though I am of the straight community, I can still be supportive of equal rights for everyone, regardless of there race, culture, sexual identity, etc.

"I Am Not a Rapist!" Women's Lives Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk. Comp. Margo Okazawa-Rey. By John Stoltenger. New York: McGraw-Hill 2003. 285-290. Print

Secret Garden: Ecofeminism Blog

Alexandria Bergeron

Jeannina Perez

WST 3015

April 14,2010

The Secret Garden in Women:

Blooming Daily

The Secret Garden is a story of a girl who doesn't know the life within her or the power she has to bring it out in others. Her true connection with the world around her brings her to the realization of how to smile and how to live.

Through out the film we see the different gender roles play there stereotypical parts. The male surpresses nature, by Lord Craven locking the secret garden and keeping its gift of beauty from the world. It is as if he feels that by draining the life from the garden he can stop feeling any pain or hurt that life brings with it. Mary is the nurturer, the mother figure. Her we see the important role a women plays in nature and in the household. Prior to her arrival, the manor is nothing more then a lifeless shell, where people moved around performing daily task almost in an auto pilot fashion. With her presence, a women of the house, we see the emergence of a home again. We see a son learn to walk, and a father smile and experience fun again. We see love that seemed so distant, return as strong as ever. In our class discussion regarding the home, we talked about the limiting ideas of what home is (4/5/2010 Perez). This film captures the idea that a womans spirit creates the foundation of a home. Though I don't agree with this concept, I can see where as a society we have placed this burden of creating the home on women.

Mary also plays the role of Mother Nature in this film as well. She has the natural ability to know what the plants need to survive. that natural green thumb that can turn the dark and sad to a place of flowers and beauty. Though I know this film was not made with a political motive behind it, it is surprising to see how deep the natural roles of women with nature have been breed into us. Much like Elizabeth in Gaia Girls, Mary's natural knowledge of the land gives her the power to change the world around her. I looked at the Robin as Mary's little Gaia. Though he is far less out spoken, he is the catalyst that propels her out of her sour attitude and frees her with the power and allure of the natural world around her. Though their power is inspired by different mean, that power is still there and still powerful.

Personal Narrative Blog

Alexandria Bergeron

Jeannina Perez
WST 3015

April 5, 2010

"Liar, Liar... Pants on Fire"

The Baghdad Burning (September 24,2004) blog entitled "Liar, Liar",took on the daunting task of taking on the "myth" of security and enrichment. The idea that with the American's presence in Iraq, life was getting better; that "we" were helping improve the world that the Iraqi people lived in. Her rant focuses on the lies about electricity and the misconception that there is a clearly defined example of security in this war torn world.

Of course what we don't see, in the news broadcast on CNN, or hear in the speeches given by political officials, is the world that Riverbend paints for us in her blog. A country of the limitedly oppressed, people who have lives and families, and who have a innocence and desire to become something without assimilating to this western culture. The anger that Riverbend expresses towards Bush during his speeches was understandable. From what she saw in the world around her, he was making bold and untrue statements, claiming that more electricity was available and that war efforts to improve daily life and to create a sense of security, were successful. Life was not improving, Families slept on roof tops just to make the heat bearable at night, since half of the day if not more was spent with out electricity. And with this decrease in service came the rise in the bill by over 100%.

Riverbend also makes clear her feelings towards the supposed new sense of security. This idea being, that security is the state a which time human beings should feel protected from harm that by all accounts is avoidable (Kirk pg. 510). The newly appointed political officials rarely could be found in Iraq, and most days were filled with bombings, kidnappings, and death. Her sense of security had vanished, but stories of a perfect new country were being painted in news broadcast to American's.

It is no wonder that her anger is boiling over into these ranting blogs. All the happy fairy tales stories that are being past along overseas sounded great, and that world seemed a lot more obtainable prior to the war, but the world's "police man" (Takazato pg. 523) ,the United States, had to step in. Suzuyo Takazato mirrored this thought in her article "Report from Okinawa". Like Riverbend, Takazato recognized that many of the "truths" American's were told in times of war, were far from the whole truth. For Takazato, it was the innocent people who were murdered, and raped in Okinawa (Takazato pg. 523), that American's never heard about, which was much like Rivebends feelings of anger for the lack of information about the Iraqi's that were being killed by American air strikes. In the end her true anger in this blog, is the lack of knowledge being shared with the public back home, and do to this fact, Bush, the man she hates more then anything, was up for (and eventually won) re-election.

-Riverbend. "Liar, Liar." Web log post. Blogspot. 24 Sept. 2004. Web. 4 Apr. 2010..

-Kirk, Gwyn and Okazawa-Rey, Margo. "Women and the Military, War, and Peace". Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

-Takazato, Suzuyo. "Report From Okinawa". Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.