Upcoming Events!

Hello All,

  I hope that you are enjoying this amazing weather! I envy you all as I am typing this.  The general theme for tomorrow is Feminist Parenting. The Brown Bag, which is taking place tomorrow at 11:30 in the Center, is entitled “Feminist Parenting Perspectives”.  Faculty and staff members Padma Kaimal, Meika Loe, Elizabeth Marlowe, Mary Moran, and Letta Palmer will all discuss their personal feminist parenting approaches over the years. I am so excited! It should be a thought provoking Brown Bag.  As usual there is FREE lunch so be there or be square!

P.S. The Center also has two other events later that night!! The first event is a film screening, in the center, from 5-6:30.  The movie being screened is called “The Business of Being Born”, which documents different viewpoints of obstetricians, midwives, health care professionals, parents and activists, on the U.S’s maternity care system as well as the burgeoning nature/birth center/home birth movement.  There is also FREE popcorn! Don’t miss this fun and informative film!

The second event is a panel entitled “All about Birth!” which will take place right after the film screening.  We will be discussing pregnancy and birth in Central New York with local homebirth mothers, a midwife, an OB/GYN, and doulas!

                                                            Enjoy the sun,
                                                                  Natalie 

United Nations CSW Thoughts

Last week, I spent three days in New York City with three other students, our program assistant, and the Director of Women's Studies attending the United Nation's 56th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).  The six of us were able to attend sessions, both at the U.N. and parallel sessions occurring at the Church Center, across from the U.N.  I spent my days at the Church Center attending sessions run by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) from 8:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night, with a lunchtime and teatime debrief to keep all of our heads clear and straight.  The specific themes of the conference change each year and this particular CSW had a focus on “Rural Women, Empowerment, Poverty Reduction, and Rural Development”.  I attended sessions on topics ranging from domestic violence, rural women’s access to basic health, using rural women in post-conflict reconstruction, as well as ecology.  Each session taught me something new and I very much enjoyed watching the NGOs getting to mingle and share best practices.  Many connections, whether formal or informal, were formed between NGOs here and I feel this conference helped each NGO that attended in some way.

My favorite session was titled “Ethics, Rural Ecology, and Poverty” and consisted of a panel of three women: two from India, and one from Ghana.  Each speaker talked about how important it is for women and men around the world to realize that we are all a piece of the puzzle and that we need to include everyone at the table’s discussion.  Maame, the woman from Ghana, who now works in California, was an incredibly inspirational speaker, who started off the session by singing a song about coming together and welcoming all.  She then went on to discuss how women on the ground are actually the experts and that NGOs should focus on working with them and learning from them instead of trying to teach them foreign concepts that might not necessarily help.  Maame spoke most about “soul consciousness” and how we all must come together to sing the same song.  She also reminded us to remember that though some of the stories of rural women are grim and sad, we should all use the power of voice and laughter to bring everyone together.  We must think globally, but act locally, always with laughter on our side.

Though that was my favorite session, I learned from each session and I took away many lessons.  First off, this conference proved to me that there are NGOs and women all over the world working on different issues so it is important to work on what we are most compassionate about and trust that others will fill in the blanks.  I also learned that we must include men in all conversations; we cannot educate women separately and hope that everyone will all of a sudden understand.  Gender includes men and women, as well as everyone in between, and to be successful, everyone must be included in the conversation.

Overall, I had such a great time learning and getting to know the women I traveled with; I hope to be able to attend this conference again and again in the coming years.  

Our Program Assistant, Kimmie, with students: Gwynne, Molly, and Caroline at the United Nations

Molly, Gwynne, me, Caroline, and our Program Director, Meika outside the U.N.

-Breanna Pendleton '12

The Queer Bully: A New Stock Character?

Last night, instead of doing homework, my roommate and I pulled an all-nighter marathon catching up on Pretty Little Liars, which is one of our many guilty pleasure TV shows.  We only got through season one, and I was only there for the second half of the marathon, but the episodes I did see raised a very interesting question for me.  SPOILER ALERT.  One of the girls, Emily, came out at school as lesbian so she could date Maya, but Maya was sent off to a camp for naughty girls.  Meanwhile, her rival, Paige, starts bullying Emily when Emily breaks a record, and harrasses her for her homosexuality.  When Emily's friend reports Paige, Paige thinks it was Emily and tries to drown her.  Long story short, there's lots of bullying going on, but there's one scene where Emily's sitting in her car and Paige gets in and kisses her and tells her not to tell anyone.

...Where have I seen this before?  Oh yeah, they did it on Glee.  Twice.

Now don't get me wrong, I love both of these shows and I'm tickled pink that we finally have sensitive queer representations in the media, but I'm sensing a pattern.  Let's go back to Glee.  Audiences were shocked when Karofsky, one of the main bullies in the show who has been harassing everyone, but particularly Kurt for his homosexuality and gender expression, kisses Kurt in the heat of a fight.  The bully was harassing the out queer student because secretly he was in love with him.  Another character, Santana, has been nothing but rude to her fellow glee clubbers throughout the show, but it is slowly revealed that the motivation behind her bullying is that-- guess-- she's in love with her best friend Brittany.  Now two shows can be seen as a coincidence.  But two characters in the same show?  I smell a stereotype in the making.  The implication in Glee is that all bullies are just repressed homosexuals who are too scared to come out so they make everyone else as miserable as themselves.  And sure, that may be true for some bullies.  But the beauty of ensemble casts is the range of identities and experiences that can be presented.  When all the characters of the same standing have the same traits, however, a stereotype takes root.  Where are the straight bullies?  (Believe me I've met my share.)  The bullies we see that aren't Santana and Karofsky are not fully developed characters (with the exception of Sebastian, who started the show gay and therefore just supports my point, and Sue Sylvester, who occupies a different positionality).  Every time these characters are developed, it seems, the cause of their bullying is internalized homophobia.  This reaction formation resurfaces in PLL's Paige.

Is this a coincidence, or the start of a new stock character: the gay bully?  Only time will tell.  Furthermore, if it is a new stock character, is this still progress, or just tokenization?

Xavia Publius

Two Brown Bags this Week - TUESDAY'S INTRODUCTION

Join us this Tuesday in the Center for Women's Studies, for a Brown Bag given by a panel of four seniors here at Colgate: Caroline Anderson, Gwynne Gallagher, Molly Kunzman, and Breanna Pendleton.  The four spent the last four days in New York City attending the United Nation's 56th Commission on the Status of Women, attending NGO and U.N. sessions to learn about situations involving women living in rural areas around the world.  Come to listen to their experience and join a great discussion about the status of rural women around the globe.  As always, there will be free lunch and we welcome ALL!





-Breanna Pendleton '12

Thursday (3/1) Brown Bag Reflection

Today's Brown Bag was a part of SORT's Africana Women's Week and was on the hypersexualization of women of color. The brown bag was led by a panel of different women on campus, all from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Each of them had a short presentation of their specific racial/ethnic identities sexual role in the media. 


I appreciate that this this brown bag was purposely titled for all women of all colors because too often we see things as black and white when there are so many areas of grey (or in this case maybe brown?) in between. One of the women on the panel is Indian. She admitted to being very naive about the sexualized image of Indian women, even saying that she had no idea what Kama Sutra was or that it had anything to do with India.


There were some very good discussion points raised in both the presentation and in the comments afterwards. Several of the presenters mentioned that while there are many actresses in Hollywood of Hispanic descent, only a select few get to play Hispanic women. Many of them either look "too white" or "too black" to believable as Latinas in films. Cameron Diaz and Christina Milian are two actresses who respectively represent those two extremes. Catherine Zeta Jones, however, is often portrayed as a Hispanic character when she has no Hispanic origin.


The main issue, I think, is truly one of color. White women in the media are always allowed to be dynamic and multi-faceted sexually, while women of color are rarely portrayed as such. They are too often static and one dimensional.The conversation, inevitably, led back to a discussion of sexuality and control in our patriarchal society. We talked about women portrayed as sexual objects in music videos and if that really is degrading. On one hand, there are many artists who treat the women in their songs and their music videos as nothing more than an sex object. On the other hand, these women made choices to be in these videos. They took control over their sexuality in a way that I never could. I think there's a huge level of respect that these women deserve for being willing to put their reputations on the line in a society that never does seem to look too kindly on girls in music videos...


- Renyelle Jimenez