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By RoseRose • 15 years ago

The Difference Between Knowing You Have Privelege and Understanding You Have Privelege

I am a white female college student.  I have privelege.  I know I have privelege.  But, until a couple of days ago I didn’t understand that I have white privelege.  I intellectually knew many of the aspects of privelege, but until I heard an African-American woman talk about her daughter’s infant/toddler classroom and how her daughter, as less than half African-American with very light skin was treated differently than another little boy in that class who has darker skin, by adults who should know better, and probably do, and don’t even realize they are doing so.  Until I heard out loud, in person, how much it was hurting her, I didn’t get it in my heart, rather than just in my brain.  It was the first time I had a truly serious political discussion with an African-American person who identified as such. The areas I have lived in have a demographic that doesn’t even make that surprising.

I have white privelege.  I understand that better than before.  I especially understand better what that entails.  I was practically in tears as that woman in my class talked, at the injustice of our society, at the pain that little girl and little boy are already being set up for.  I was nearly in tears for the young 4th grade girl at the childcare where I work, the second grade twins, in a way I have never been before, because I didn’t realize, truly, what they will ...
By RoseRose • 15 years ago

Witches and Feminism

I just finished reading an excerpt for my Teen and Children’s Lit class at college.  The excerpt is from The Witch in History by Diane Purkiss.  I doubt this will be the first article/excerpt I blog about from this class.  This excerpt looks at the cultural representation of the witch, and what it meant to New England societies during the witch hunts in the first part, and in the second there is a conclusion about the overall portrayal of witches in culture.

For the first part, I would like to look at a question the excerpt made me think of.  It proposes two ways that witches are culturally signified during the sixteenth up until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.  The first ...

I just finished reading an excerpt for my Teen and Children’s Lit class at college.  The excerpt is from The Witch in History by Diane Purkiss.  I doubt this will be the first article/excerpt I blog about ...
By RoseRose • 15 years ago

Cognative Dissonance

I see myself as able to be assertive, as willing to tell how I feel.

Then I realize I’m wrong.

Until I read this site, I didn’t realize it was because of how I was socialized (though I suspect my fiance did… he’s probably a better feminist in some ways than I am).  So… putting up two things about me, both involving guys.  One with a positive outcome, one where the only positive outcome is that I no longer talk to the guy involved.

First the positive outcome:

Important, yet somewhat… oversharing background:  I am very tight vaginally.  Sometimes (not often), intercourse is painful because the stretching is just not what it wants to do (I have my yearly women’s, the speculum causes the ...

I see myself as able to be assertive, as willing to tell how I feel.

Then I realize I’m wrong.

Until I read this site, I didn’t realize it was because of how I was socialized (though I suspect ...