SoCS: ROYGBIV

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SATURDAY

I took a break last week for:

Everybody’s Got a Story, #1000Speak

But hey…I’m back!

***

It is raining here in my little part of Canada. It’s not the best weekend for children around here who just got released from school for the summer, to be able to enjoy their newly found freedom.

This weather, however, could lead to a rainbow. There is no sun currently, but the rain always ends and the sky clears.

I am unable to see a rainbow. The colours aren’t anywhere near bright enough for me to detect with my extremely limited eyesight.

I often wish this weren’t true.

I used to love to draw rainbows, as a kid, when I could still see to draw that is.

I loved making the wide, sweeping, curved lines across the page. I would start with red, then orange, yellow, and so on.

Mine were the sort of vivid bright colour I wish a real rainbow could be, but the fact that weather patterns, rain and sun can make colour possible in the sky, even if I can only imagine it and hear of its brilliance fro others…well, I love them just the same.

Of course the symbolic colours of a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), these are representative of LGBT and yesterday the White House became the Rainbow House.

For me, a rainbow simply signifies the differences between not just gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transexual, but also of every skin colour, nationality, religion, gender, and ability.

So much celebration going on in the US since the big announcement and also the sadly expected resistance.

None of us are as naive as to believe there would not be a few jerks still to be found. Just as last week’s racial hate crime proved racism still exists, so does this prove that there are still those stuck in (according to this ruling) a quickly vanishing past.

I have only three words about yesterday: ABOUT DAMN TIME!

Okay, so I have more than three words. That would have made this the shortest of the SoCS posts, but I decided to say a bit more than just that, thanks to the inspiration falling outside my window today.

Canada has had gay marriage as a legal right for a while now. We were sitting and waiting for our southern neighbours to catch up.

I love when gay marriage becomes legal in Springfield and Homer starts marrying gay and lesbian couples, but this episode aired years ago.

Some parts of the world this form of equal rights is even further away from coming to fruition. It’s sad how much ugliness there is directed to this issue.

I don’t know why. What are the haters so afraid of anyway?

As long as I am not being forced to do anything I don’t want to do, what do I care what anyone else wants to do in regards to whom they choose to marry?

I believe in equality for this matter and for so many others. I can relate because I understand the infringement of rights and the feeling that you are not equal.

I keep religion out of it. Who am I to judge?

I wonder what Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion would think about gay marriage?

The Wicked Witch of the West is every ugly person who is so full of hatred and prejudice, working to stall progress and the inevitable from happening.

“Some day I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me.”

I know, during the time of Dorothy and Oz, the idea of LGBT rights was so far over the rainbow, on the other side of reality, but we’re here now, I hope.

“Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue.”

We are here now though. Anyone fighting this progress or hell bent on resisting it is going to get left behind, in the dust.

The dull and dreary world of Kansas in the thirties, this has been replaced by the colourful world that we now live in (Oz), where all people are being given the rights and equality every one of us deserves.

I felt I had to mark the occasion. It couldn’t have come fast enough.

***

Last week I couldn’t think of enough things to write about for the prompt and this week I thought of way too many.

🙂

Linda’s weekly SoCS prompt is so unexpected and wonderful like that:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/06/26/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-2715/

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

She’s The Bomb

Say what you wanna say. And let the words fall out. Honestly, I wanna see you be brave.
– Brave, Sara Bareilles

With all this talk over the past few days of feminism, what with the speech heard around the world by Emma Watson at The United Nations, I thought today was a good time to share this.

There is a website I like to read, which posts interesting articles by young women with unique points-of-view.

I would call myself a feminist, but I too have had a hard time defining what that meant. Here is someone who knows a little something about it.

She is the creator of

TheFBomb.org.

She is a feminist, a blogger, and an author.

I contacted her a while back about doing an interview with me, to find out what feminism means to her and what she aims to do with the website.

Welcome Julie.

***

K: What is the FBomb.org?

J: The FBomb is a feminist blog written by and for young women and men who believe in equality. While I founded and edit the FBomb, the blog is really an open platform and community based on submissions and exists as a space for a younger generation to define what feminism means to us.

The blog is called (the FBomb) to poke fun at the way the term “feminist” is often vilified, in the hope that socially aware and passionate readers and contributors could reclaim this negative stereotype and show the world that feminism is really a beautiful, positive movement that, at the end of the day, is about the pursuit of equality.

K: How did you decide to start this site?

J: I first became interested in feminism in 8th grade when I started to research the movement and specific feminist issues for a required speech. With the guidance of some great teachers my freshman year of high school, I discovered the world of feminist blogging. I was so inspired and excited by bloggers who took feminist issues seriously while maintaining a sense of humour. the only issue I had with such blogs was that the teenage perspective on most issues – even issues that directly impacted us, like sex education, for example — was missing.

Additionally, I really wanted to create a community where young feminist-minded women and men could come together, share our ideas and offer each other support and advice. It was important to me that an adult or a corporation create this community, but that it was authentically peer-driven.

K: What are your hopes for this site, its future, and what it can do for women and men alike?

J: The FBomb just partnered with the Women’s Media Center, the non-profit organization founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan, which aims to make more women visible and powerful in the media. I think this partnership will help this goal by allowing young women and feminist-minded men to develop and use their voices and giving them a platform from which they can add diverse and vital perspectives to the blogosphere and media at large.

On a more personal level though, I think the FBomb has and continues to allow young feminists to find a community and develop a stronger sense of identity as well.

K: What does feminism mean in your eyes?

J: Feminism is, on the most basic level, the pursuit of equality. Feminism as a worldview is about recognizing that people face a variety of different kinds of oppression due to their personal standing in the world (based on socioeconomic factors like race, class, religion, ability, etc.) that intersect to create unique experiences, but that any type of oppression is unjust and must be critically analyzed and pushed back against.

K: What do you think are still some of the biggest battles or issues women face in our world today?

J: I think it’s difficult to isolate certain issues because every woman, based on her perspective and place in the world — faces a unique intersection of challenges and this is why the feminist movement looks, feels, and serves a different purpose for everybody depending on where they’re coming from and who they are.

However, sexual assault and gender-based violence generally is an incredibly pervasive issue that impacts women young and old. For example, as many as 1 out of every 4 college women will experience attempted or completed rape during their time at school. Issues related to body image (including eating disorders, unrealistic standards of beauty in the media, etc.) are also incredibly pervasive amongst young women and an issue many teen feminists focus on.

K: Do you have any idols or role models in particular for yourself or for feminism as a whole? Do you see any women who are making positive changes and providing examples for young women to look up to?

J: Like most feminists, I always have and always will admire Gloria Steinem. She’s such an incredible icon for this movement. She’s an incredibly intelligent and charismatic leader and it’s undeniable that she completely changed and continues to change the way our society views women.

Female politicians – like Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren – are also doing fantastic work to advocate for women. and there are also plenty of women doing incredible things around the world – Leymah Gbowee’s work with Liberian women is astonishing, Zainab Salbi’s work with women for Women International is vital, and there are so many more.

the bottom line is there are plenty of people doing incredible feminist work and making positive change in the world: they just don’t always get the widespread recognition and media attention they deserve.

K: What do you think are the misconceptions people have about all things feminism?

J: In my experience, I’ve found that the biggest reason young women shy away from identifying as feminist is because they don’t feel that they really understand what the movement is or what that word means. Plenty of people still associate feminism with negative stereotypes, but I think more than anything else misconceptions about the movement stem from a lack of education about and exposure to it.

I find that my generation is more willing to identify with and support feminist issues than any other generation in the past (and the statistics back me up on that – according to advocates for youth, 74% of millennials support gay marriage, 68% support access to abortion and 88% support to comprehensive sex education) but more often than not, unfortunately, they don’t realize that that’s what the feminist movement is all about.

K: What’s your best advice for a woman with a disability like myself, or women with other additional challenges in general?

J: My best advice for women facing any challenge is to speak up about it. I started the FBomb so that young adults could find a place to feel that their stories and perspectives are valuable and that speaking out about our individual challenges will help us feel less alone and hopefully work to demystify and eventually eradicate prejudice based on ignorance. I truly believe in that mission: every voice deserves to be heard and the most radical thing one can do is to use theirs to advocate for change.

***

Thank you so much Julie for answering my questions and for everything you do to speak up for women’s rights and equality for all.

To find out more about Julie you can check her out

HEre,

or at her website:

http://juliezeilinger.com

and you can read more on The FBomb, on

Facebook,

or On

Twitter.

and I will be submitting something to the FBomb to speak up, just like Julie suggested because I too feel like I am tired of remaining so shy and staying so quiet.

BRAVE

What are your thoughts on feminism and what it means to be called a feminist in our world today?