Month: December 2014

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“No you can’t be gay, you just haven’t found the right guy yet.”

My sister is a proud lesbian. As proud as they come. She’s the Teddy Roosevelt of gays, waving a rainbow flag as a bald eagle glides around her…and I love her for it. We talk about it frequently like it’s nothing (because it shouldn’t be a big deal), so when we encounter someone who actually doesn’t love her for it, it’s always a huge shock.

My sister threw a holiday party last week and we met someone new. Once we mentioned in the conversation that she was gay, you would have thought we said she was previously Harrison Ford:

“What? That’s a joke right? You’re not actually gay?”

Once she said she was he responded:

“Oh no. No no no. You’re not gay. No. you can’t be gay, you just haven’t found the right guy yet.”

How do you respond to something like that? Who gets to be the judge of whether or not my sister is gay? She went through another time when a guy really liked her, and when she continuously reiterated she was gay his response was, “It’s just a phase! You’ll grow out of it!” I’m sorry, it’s not a cyst on the side of her arm, it’s who she is.

I know our country is making a lot progress towards legalizing gay marriage throughout the United States, but I am constantly reminded that the country needs far more than that for the LGBT community to be fully accepted. There was just a news report last week of a young boy killing himself after being bullied for being on a cheerleading squad. Where do we even start to not only gain support from the country, but also show the opposition that literally nothing is wrong with being a LGBT.

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Masculinity, Disability, and Aging

In one of our readings (Coming to Terms by Gerschick) we focused on the intersection of masculinity and disability and this started me thinking how this reading can be applied to men I know in my own life. In the reading Gerschick outlined that most men approach their own disabilities in three ways one of which is called reformation. In this approach the hegemonic masculinity is still the main focus, but it is reformed  so the man’s abilities can fit the masculine ideal. Continue reading →

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Disability in the media

A few class periods we talked about disability in the media and one person mentioned the show Switched at Birth. That show is actually one of my favorite television series. Although I am a cinematic arts major, I never really have time to keep up with shows or stay updated with the latest reality shows. Most of what I watch is game shows and Netflix binges. When I found Switched at Birth I was pleasantly surprised in the way the creators incorporated disabilities into the show with not only the main characters but with the supporting characters as well. Continue reading →

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Embodiment through time

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My 26th birthday was a week and a half ago. It was quiet and I spent most of my time with my mother. I know, I had quite the raging party with my mom. We cleaned the house and laughed at the memories of us throughout the years. Yep, real party animal over here! We started to look at my baby pictures and I became fixated on this one picture, my very first baby picture hours after my birth at George Washington Hospital in D.C. Continue reading →

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Hitting Women: Thoughts about complaints about Feminism online

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About a month ago, a video of a black woman being slapped by a man on a NYC subway went viral. In the video, the woman and her friends were taunting and bullying a man because he was wearing an 8ball jacket. She was making fun of him right in his face and she hit him with her high-heeled shoe. Shortly after, the man slapped her. Lets just say she was not expecting him to hit her at all. After he hit her, a brawl ensued with another man on the train. It sparked the debate of whether or not it was wrong for a man to hit a woman. Many people firmly believe that men should never hit women. However, many people argued that the girl on the subway deserved to get slapped because she was bullying the man for no reason and hitting him first. Now after watching the video myself the day it was posted and again this week, I’ve noticed many comments from people on YouTube about the hypocrisy of feminism. I found people’s comments about this issue really interesting because I found myself seeing these kinds of comments every time I looked at the comments section of the video.

Here are just a few examples of the comments on the video that I am talking about:

“Feminism is just another excuse/reason for women to act like sluts.”

“Its not just black woman but woman in general. They go around spamming the word feminism and think they are queens. We are all the same, so if you think that if you’re a female and cannot get hit then you are mistaken. If you think you we have to hold a door because your female, you are mistaken. We do it out of respect, courtesy, and proper manners.”

I personally do not believe that this video has anything to do with feminism but I find it interesting that men on the Internet believe there is a connection between the two. Is feminism hypocritical? Is it something that is even remotely related to the topic/issue of men hitting women? I don’t particularly think so. When I first saw the video, I thought to myself that she did deserve to get slapped because she was talking trash to a man who wasn’t doing anything to her and he was minding his own business. She kept coming up to him and hitting him. I think once she hit him first, he had every right to hit her back. While I do not condone violence in any way, I personally feel that if a person hits me, whether it is a man or woman, I have the right to hit that person back. I also think that this girl kept taunting him and hitting because she didn’t think he would retaliate against her. I just think that this woman learned a lesson. Many have argued that it is a lesson that all women today should learn of. The lesson is if you are a woman and you hit a man, or bully him do not expect that he will not hit you back. But is this a lesson that all women in today’s society should learn? We do not live in chivalrous society. I think what it all comes down to is respect and that all men and women should respect each other.

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Long Way to Happy

Long way to Happy

I know this is the title to one of my favorite sings from Pink!’s album “I’m Not Dead”  but it poses the question; just how long really? Until happiness?

I have been on antidepressants and anxiety medication for the past six years, after off and on therapy for 3 years before. Now I am not trying to write a sob story here. I am a strong and independent women. I am outgoing and have a bubbly personality, which is what confuses people I think- about these illnesses. Depression does not mean you are always in a bad mood

As the years have gone on, I began to wonder how long I will have to be on prescription medication. How long until my brain and body is able to sustain control on its own? How long until happy?

This is my disability, for I can adamantly see a difference in my mood from when I skip or miss a dosage. The difference is a very uncomfortable feeling that just reminds me that I am strong enough to cope without them…Yet!

Are these medications helping me or disabling me more?

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Something to think about.

At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea what to expect to learn in this class. It took me a little while to get used to thinking about the body in different ways, but I can say that I’m glad I did. From the information I have learned in this class, I’ve been able to look at issues in the world with a different lense, and I think that is so imortant.

Because I’ve learned so much about all of these topics, I’ve actually gotten in some interesting conversations with my mom. Continue reading →

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Physical Evidence of Existence

I’ve never liked having my photograph taken. After experiencing  several years of bullying that involved ugly candid photos of me being publicly laughed at, I started hiding from cameras. From the ages of about 11 to 18, there are very few photos of me. I appear in the occasional family holiday or homecoming dance photo, but if I were to cease to exist, there would be very little evidence of my life. All of the photos are carefully posed; I’m dressed to impress. They say nothing about who I am or what I am doing. Continue reading →

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Feeling My Body

Lying on the cold ground outside of Penn Station on Thursday night, surrounded by activists chanting “We Can’t Breathe” as I chanted those very same words myself, I felt my body. I couldn’t say how many times it has happened other than to say that it rarely does, and if you asked me to describe the feeling now, I couldn’t for the life of me. I call it a feeling and not an experience because that’s what it is: a feeling. Everything else seems like an experience in comparison. The magic in feeling my body is that I am not in control of it. It just happens to me. It feels as though there’s a shift in my being in which I go from experiencing my body through my consciousness to actually feeling my body, being my body. Continue reading →