What three months of “change” looks like

Trigger warning. 

Three months ago I wrote a post about a project that a friend and I have started to end the discrimination against women. To summarize our project again, we are putting a nickel in a jar every time someone in an advertisement, television show, news broadcast, etc undermines, discriminates against, or otherwise alienates women. Specific things that we are looking for are victim blaming (this is especially prevalent in anything related to NBC btw), rape jokes, gender binary bias, and racial discrimination. We are then writing to whoever has done the discrimination telling them that their acts are not okay and that we will be writing them again to tell them just how much money we have raised. We are hoping that it will make them think twice before doing it again. We will be donating that money to the city of joy (a part of the campaign of vday)

So far I have raised $33.25. My friend has raised $42.30. Together we have written over 1,500 letters. When we decided to post about this on various feminist websites we also didn’t expect it to go any further. But it did. Progressive financial websites have picked it up. We have been mocked on something awful and 4chan. (which considering the university that we go to contains many fans of both sites is kind of ironic since our own peers and their rape jokes are the reason that we started this in the first place). People started asking where they could send donations. The support has been overwhelming. But my real reason for writing this today is to point out that in three months time we have raised more than $75. Out of nickels. That speaks to a major problem with the sexism, racism, and victim blaming that goes on around us. And truthfully I’m really upset about the whole thing. This campaign is notabout the money for the two of us (I’m a registered communist and my friend is a die hard socialist) we are using the money as the only language to try and get through to these people. Sometimes it has worked. We have received letters back from over 200 of the places we have written to. Some were sent back to mock and condescend, but sometimes we actually get an apology. One blog actually took down their post that was chocked full of racism and victim blaming. It’s the things like those that make what we are doing worthwhile. And at the end of it we are helping to keep women in a war-torn country safe and secure. So fellow feministers, if you started keeping a jar how much have you raised?