Activism Blog #2

1)      To begin service learning for this week, Amanda and I met with Abigail at the Wellness Center to label and distribute boxes for the drive that we organized for Harbor House, the local domestic violence women’s shelter. After the decorating was complete, we placed one box in the Wellness Center and the other box in the Women’s Studies office in Colbourn Hall. I enjoyed the creative and relaxing aspect of decorating the boxes, but I wish that we had begun the drive earlier in the semester for a more successful drive with more donations. On Friday night and Saturday evening, I was a volunteer for Active Minds, who hosted their national convention at the University of Central Florida this year. During my Friday shift, I assisted in checking people in and assuring that they arrived at the correct destinations for their presentations. On Saturday, I mainly aided the coordinator at the merchandise counter, lending a hand to help people find the correct size and color for their purchase and also handling transactions. I actually liked volunteering at the conference a significant amount more than I expected to.  I wish that I had gotten the chance to actually participate in the conference and sit in on some of the presentations instead of working behind the scenes, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Active Minds employees and the other volunteers who I had the chance to meet in the process, most (actually upon reflection, all) women who each had interesting backdrops to how they ended up at the conference.

2)      Working with Mentors in Violence Prevention, we predominately focus on male violence toward women in heterosexual intimate relationships. This directly correlates with the concept of ecofeminism, defined as “the connection between the dominations of women and the domination of nature,” based upon “masculinist social institutions and the destruction of the physical environment” ( Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 539). The patriarchal society in which we live in and contribute to bases its authority through the supremacy of men in our social, political, and economic systems. Just as women are sexualized in our society, which systematically contributes to heterosexual domestic partner violence, “in western thought, nature is often feminized and sexualized through imagery such as ‘virgin forest,’ ‘the rape of the earth,’ and ‘penetrating’ the wilderness” (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 539). From a dualistic standpoint, the male-connoted terms such as “ culture, mind…[and] civilized… are valued over nature, body, female, [and] primitive, which are thought of as ‘other’ and inferior”(Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 539).  Furthermore, by working with Active Minds last weekend and watching ‘The Story of Stuff’ in lecture, I saw the relationship between the toxicity of the products that we as humans, but primarily we as women, put on our bodies and mental illness. Many of the ingredients that are not regulated by the government, which is dominated by men, or companies who produce cosmetics and personal care products, who are predominately men, have been proven to cause neurotoxicity, which may conceivably contribute to female mental illness.

3)      Our unit on ecofeminism really fascinated me, as I define myself as a life-long environmental activist and feminist. I had never even fathomed that the two were related though, and upon analysis, I’m fascinated and shocked all at once. It makes more sense to me why I find acts of oppressing women and pillaging the environment both so disturbing when I view them both as byproducts of male domination within our society. Consequentially, because this unavoidable connection within our social system, advocating for one injustice also indirectly serves as avocation for the other. By working with Mentors in Violence Prevention, I am playing a small part in the insistence of respect for all of humankind, regardless of gender, and the environment in which we live.  

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Rey. "Women and the Environment ." Women's lives: multicultural perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 539. Print.

Service Learning Log #1

1)      This week in service learning, our group met with Abigail Malick, our community partner coordinator, on Tuesday morning and discussed service learning opportunities for the remainder of the semester. We definitively set on organizing a drive for Harbor House, the local Domestic Violence Shelter. This meeting was definitely beneficial, because up to this point in the semester, it has seemed as though our service learning has been somewhat up in the air. MVP is a relatively new and small organization on campus, with Abigail harboring most of if not all of the organization’s responsibilities on her own. This being said, our organization of what we planned for our service learning this semester has had to be revised due to time restraints for our original proposal of hosting “Amy’s Story”, a documentary illustrating a real story of a woman who lost her life due to domestic violence, giving a face and a name to the issue. Next week I believe that we should start to designate drop sites for the goods that we will be collecting, advertise for the drive, and start collecting the items that people donate. Next week when we actually being to accumulate donations, I’ll feel much more secure in the progress of our service learning.

2)      Harbor House Seeks to eliminate domestic violence by providing safety, shelter, counseling, and education while advocating for justice within Central Florida. Often victims of domestic violence, and especially sexual assault, are also victims of the phenomenon of “victim blaming.” A large part of violence toward women is blamed on women embracing their sexuality and the media’s exploitation of women’s bodies and glorification of violent acts. “There is a heavy emphasis on sexuality in advertising, news reporting, and popular culture sometimes characterized as ‘pornification’ of media culture” (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey, 149).  This misrepresentation of female sexuality not only is detrimental to the self esteem of adolescent girls but also misinforms young men concerning the amount of respect that women should be treated with, romanticizing impossible beauty standards and increasing compliance with violent acts toward women.

3)      What I am getting, and what I expect to continue gaining through working with Mentors in Violence Prevention throughout the rest of the semester is a widened perspective. Learning that “domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined” (domesticviolencestatistics.org) and that “every 9 seconds in the US a woman is assaulted or beaten” (domesticviolencestatistics.org) was startling and frankly they were incredibly disturbing statistics to hear. Post disturbance( if one could actually get past that), I felt angry that women were be preyed upon in such a manner, being utilized as human punching bags and thrown around like rag dolls, until one day things get a little out of hand and someone’s sister, mother, daughter, or friend ends up six feet under the ground. From a feminist activist’s standpoint, I feel the need to protect the women in the world from being subjected to this violence, and to encourage others to view women as human beings that should be loved and respected instead of objectified.

"Domestic Violence Statistics | Domestic Violence Statistics." Domestic Violence Statistics | 2010 and 2009 Abuse Stats. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2012. <http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/>.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Rey. "Women's Sexuality." Women's lives: multicultural perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 149-160. Print.