A Personal Look into Women's Experiences Crossing the U.S.-Mexico Border

This week's Tuesday Brown Bag, entitled "Women's Stories From and Beyond the U.S.-Mexican Frontera", consisted of a panel of two students (Jessica Aquino '14 and Manuel Heredia-Santoyo '14) and our administrative assistant, Kimmie Garner.  The nearly 100 students, staff, and faculty attendants crowded into the Center were lucky enough to hear personal stories of Kimmie’s experiences working at a birth center in El Paso, Texas, and of Jess’ and Manuel’s moms crossing the border within the last 25 years. 

Kimmie started the discussion by telling of her experience at a midwifery school, training to be a doula, in El Paso, a city in Texas right along the Mexican border.  She talked about how many Mexican women crossed the border to attend the birth center for prenatal appointments, birth, and postnatal appointments.  This center gave the women a chance to have a safe, calming birthing area for less money than the expensive hospitals in Mexico.  She spoke a lot about how she felt privileged at this center as she could speak both English and Spanish and clearly had the positive privilege of being a white, American young woman.  This was hard for her because she was there to ultimately learn and help the Mexican mothers. 

Kimmie’s story sparked an informal interview of both Jessica and Manuel, both of whose mothers crossed the border into California in order to give their children the opportunity of growing up and being educated in the U.S.  Both Jess and Manuel are first generation college students and discussed how their mothers gave a great sacrifice to raise them in the U.S. to give them a better life.  After they told their stories, students and faculty asked many questions of the two panelists about how they deal with having two cultural identities and how they try to stay emotionally close to their mothers.

The Brown Bag was a very personal one and I am very appreciative, as I’m sure is most of the audience, of the panelist’s honesty and willingness to share their thoughts and feelings.  I learned a lot, and I thank all three panelists for their stories.  

-Breanna Pendleton '12

Tomorrow's brown bag is about: Transnational Women's Issues

Join us in the Center for Women's Studies, tomorrow, Tuesday, February 21 at 11:30am for our next Brown Bag: "Women's Stories From and Beyond the U.S. - Mexico Frontera!! Our three panelists are Jessica Aquino '14, Manuel Heredia-Santoyo '14, and Kimmie Garner, our WMST program assistant!  They will discuss Latina women's experiences crossing the United States - Mexico border.  This brown bag is co-sponsored with ALST and as always will have delicious, free lunch.  All our welcome for our panel and discussion time!!

-Breanna Pendleton

Domestic Violence > Any Other Crime Ever?

The 54th annual Grammy Awards were held 2 weeks ago and, per usual, the evening's wardrobes, awards and performances were front page news for several says after the event. This news coverage was helpful to me since I didn't get a chance to catch them while they were airing live. There was one story I read that struck a chord with me: Chris Brown threw a tantrum on twitter. He won a Grammy for Best R&B Album for F.A.M.E and was, understandably, excited. Many critics of Chris Brown were livid and responded with reference to his infamous domestic violence case with Rihanna from 3 years ago. Chris Brown (the way any professional adult would) took to twitter to voice his opinions. His tweets, before they were deleted, said the following: 


"strange how we pick and choose who to hate!Let me ask u this.Our society is full of rappers(which I listen to)who have sold drugs (poisoning)

But yet we glorify and imitate everything they do. Then right before the worlds eyes a man shows how he can make a Big mistake 

andLearnt from it, but still has to deal with day to day hatred! You guys who to hate!!! But guess what???

HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY. Now! That’s the ultimate F**K OFF."

While obviously not the smartest of moves to make, he did raise a good point for discussion. We know that Chris Brown physically assaulted Rihanna. He faced his trial and was sentenced at the judge's discretion. There are many other celebrities who have been arrested and charged with crimes in the past who continued to have successful careers. Lil' Wayne and T.I. were both sentenced to prison and saw their careers continue to prosper. One could even argue that their careers did better while they were in jail. Why is it that we can forgive some things and not others? Why is it that no one ever talks about the time Lil' Wayne spent in jail when he wins an award? Why is T.I.'s criminal record never a cause for outrage when he makes an appearance? Why is it always "Chris Brown, the singer who was arrested for assaulting Rihanna in 2008," and never just Chris Brown? Is it secretly because Chris Brown's crime is gendered and drug charges are not?

For the record, there is nothing about Chris Brown's actions 3 years ago that I agree with or condone in any way. My feelings, however, have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Rihanna is a woman and Chris Brown is a man. I don't think that men should abuse women, but I also don't think that women should abuse men either. Violence is violence and it is unacceptable. Period. While I may see things this way, there are many other people who see physical violence against women in a different light. These people see women as inherently weaker than men and as people who need to be protected in a different way, like in the way we protect children from abusive parents. Women are not children. Women are adults who are capable of being assaulted are also capable of assaulting others. We cannot pick and choose which crimes for which we're going to forgive people for especially if our views of these crimes are inherently sexist. Men who are assaulted need to be treated with the same care and respect as women who are assaulted and women who assault others need to be punished in the same way as men who assault others. 

Bottom line: If you're going to hate Chris Brown, hate him because he's proven himself to be impulsive and violent towards another PERSON. Don't hate him because he hit a girl.

-Renyelle

Reclaiming Words Brown Bag - A Great Discussion

Our most recent Brown Bag, entitled “Reclaiming Words”, consisted of two panel leaders and three students who had previously taken some sort of writing and rhetoric class.  The panelists and leaders (who happen to be the two co-directors of this year’s production of The Vagina Monologues) spoke in the beginning about reclaiming words and how difficult it is to actually come up with a word to label something so deep, such as sexuality.  This led to the discussion of the recent “Slut Walk” that happened in Toronto, where women tried to reclaim and change the power structure behind the word slut.  Although this is an interesting idea, one of the panelists brought up the fact that reclaiming a word marginalizes certain communities that still feel the disrespect that a certain word, such as slut, brings when said.  Questions were brought up here, such as who holds the power behind a word?  Who is marginalized?  Are actual institutions changed after a word has been reclaimed, or is this change on an individual level?

All of these questions opened up the panelists’ discussion to the entire group, about 90 people, and we all thought about how reclaiming a word works.  As one of the assigned panelists, who could not be there had said, reclaiming a word means someone is saying “you cannot shame me with this word anymore”.  Reclaiming a word lets people choose the words they want to describe them and some of the meaning/power behind these words.  This idea of choosing what some words meant led to another question from one of the panelists: words are for communication.  If we start changing the words’ meanings, how will we continue to communicate?  Who can use the reclaimed word and how will people know what it means?

Even if we take a word to be reclaimed and therefore, no longer offensive, we do not have the magic to alter our words’ meanings.  If we say something that offends someone, no matter how we try to explain ourselves, the offense has still occurred.  Why not just eliminate a hurtful word or choose a new one?  Either way you look at it, the changing of words that mean certain things take time.  The entire English-speaking community cannot hear of a word’s new meaning overnight.  Like everything, reclaiming takes time.  But this does not mean that reclaiming words, or at least discussing the reclamation of a word is a waste of time.  We may not have answered all our questions, but the Brown Bag led to a great discussion, and I have continued to think about what this all means since yesterday afternoon.  Maybe, with enough discourse, we can find a solution.

-Breanna Pendleton '12   

BB Introduction: Reclaiming Words

This Valentine's Day at 11:30am, the Center for WMST will be hosting a discussion on the meaning and impact of word reclamation. Panelists and former writing and rhetoric students Cal Crawford '12, Casey Hampsey '13, Kerry McGrath '12, and Macy Warren '14 will discuss what we mean by "reclaiming" words, why it's important to do so, and who it benefits, moderated by Christina Liu '13 and Dena Robinson '12. Words are one of our most essential tools of communication. But depending on how we use them, they can be either tools of liberation of weapons of marginalization.

This topic is of particular pertinence especially because the Vagina Monologues - performed and directed by Colgate students - will be taking place this Thursday and Friday @ 7pm in the Palace Theater. Come support us and celebrate vaginas!

- Christina Liu