RAD Workshops

By: Grace Edra

A woman’s self defense classes are becoming more in demand with the increasing numbers of women getting attacked and also the rise of rapes attacks.  During our Women Studies 323 class, we had the opportunity to take RAD Workshop (The Rape Awareness Defense).  At first when I saw that the RAD workshop was a part of the class schedule, I thought that it was a random workshop to be taught in a Women Studies movement class and that my peers would have not taken the workshop seriously. But, as the instructors talked more about the program and how these classes saved plenty of women life’s in hazardous situation, the class including I took this workshop very seriously.  I work at a nightclub in downtown San Diego, and there are plenty of nights when I am petrified walking alone to my car after my shift, which can be more than 3 blocks away.  The RAD Workshop had given me plenty of tips and moves that I can use to save myself in a really bad situation.  This is such a practical workshop that I have planned for my female coworkers and I to take a women’s self-defense class. Some women may not have time or have the money to attend these classes, but they do have instructional videos on YouTube and eHow.com that teaches women the basic defense moves that they can learn for free. (http://www.ehow.com/video_4949014_womens-self-defense-neck-break.html)

Women are becoming the subject of attacks and abuse, both physically and verbally, and “Taking Back the Night” is an amazing event for women who are survivors of attacks and abuse, and they all come together to have a voice.  Survivors tell their story and how it affected their life’s, and to also help others survive an attack or on how to leave an abusive relationship.  In the Vagina Monologue, the monologue,” My Vagina Was My Village” is a story about a women who survived a rape camp in Bosnia, and she also tells her story and also how this event affected her life and her future.

Acid Attack on Women

by: Sojung Hargis

“All the girls we have seen how have disguised themselves as boys have done it to protect themselves…When they’re on the streets as girls, men cause problems.” This is a quote from Girls Find Safety Posing as Boys on Tehran’s Mean Streets. From reading this article, it reminded me of the “acid attack”. Many people are not familiar with acid violence on women. Acid violence happens in a lot of the countries, especially in Third World nations, as a trend in sexual predation. In Bangladesh, women are usually the targets in this violence that are led by men with a purpose to humiliate women by destroying their physical appearance, therefore destroying their sexuality, chances for another marriage, and et cetera. More detail on acid violence against women can be found in this video. Acid violence should be categorized as sexual offense just like how rape and child molestation are, but because most societies do not consider this as a priority due to the fact that most corrupted authorities are consisted of men, women just have to live in fear of getting acid attacked. And because most authority figures such as the police are men, the victims of the acid attack are in fear to even ask for help. Due to lack of polices and laws for this violence, even when the perpetrators are caught, they are given the choice of paying fine in exchange for their release which puts women in a situation where there is nothing they can do about the acid violence. This will only increase the trend of acid violence women, eventually becoming normalized in some cultures.

So to change this, many victims of acid violence from Bangladesh seek help and change through nongovernmental organizations, and this activism led to the Acid Survivors Foundation in the 90s, donated by Dhaka Medical College hospital, that brought a change and development for women’s rights. More acid victims have been given the opportunity to become survivors and to live new hopeful lives due to the support and help from many nongovernmental organizations from the world. But most importantly, WE need to pay more attention to this terrible violence so that proper policies and laws can be created for the victims, the survivors, and the future victims. Without our attention and support, the acid attack against women will continue on. 

NO MORE!

by: Marlene Marin

NO MORE!

No more for women walking in the dark being afraid that they will be assaulted or worse raped. No more to women being afraid of taking an elevator. No more to women always having to be watching their backs and their surroundings, no more to women being afraid that they can be assaulted at any hour, any time, any day, no more to violence against women! In 2005 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner that is 3 women a day for a year. “According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year.4 Less than 20 percent of battered women sought medical treatment following an injury” (NOW 2012). “According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006” (NOW 2012). That’s over 600 women a day! Women who are targeted the most are minorities, low income, young women. Women under the age of 24 suffer the most from rape. I was honestly happy that we had the opportunity to have a workshop about the Rape Awareness Defense course; I truly believe that this course can make the difference between life and death. If you know the proper skills to defend yourself and escape from an aggressor you are more likely to be a survivor. I have taken this course and I always encourage people to take this course, I will be taking my sister to take the course because I want her to know what to do if she ever were to be put in a situation like that. It is not only to protect you against unknown aggressors but it can also work to protect yourself from a boyfriend or a date. The RAD course I believe is a course that empowers women to stand up for their life and shows them exactly how to do it with easy to do techniques. Also having the chance to put everything you have learned into action. With this we say no to violence against women and rape!

http://www.now.org/

It's Time We Kick Ass.

by: Junemy Pantig


It's Time We Kick Ass. The Rape Awareness Defense Workshop during class was not only very informative, but very helpful to our lives. I am very glad that there are self defense workshops for women because we don’t deserve to be abused in any way by anyone. And because of these classes, many lives are saved and crimes become less accomplished. Whenever I go out with friends at clubs or bars, you will always come across a drunk and rude man who wants to approach you. I am a very petite person and it really irks me when they feel that they can take control of you because of you don’t look as “aggressive” due to your size. What they don’t know is that I have a voice and I’m not afraid to use it. Approach me once, I will politely ask you to stop and go away. Approach me again, I will definitely yell at you. No shame on that either. Cathy advised that we should be loud enough to scare off people who try to harass us. She’s right. Having a loud, strong voice definitely throws people off and makes them think twice. The story that I found very moving was in The Vagina Monologues. It was called “Say It.” These untold storied were about “comfort women.” They were women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII. They were either abducted or given a “promise” to have an opportunity to work, when in fact, they didn’t know they were working off their innocent bodies to men. Rape has existed for many years and it’s upsetting to know that it still occurs until this day. Every day women are attacked verbally and/or physically. It breaks my heart knowing that women who were victims of assault, live each day in trauma. These comfort women have built strength, heart, and courage to finally tell these stories and live each day of their lives knowing that it has become part of history in their lives. “What we want: Now soon... Before we’re gone... And our stories leave this world, leave our heads... Japanese government... Say it... Please... We are sorry, Comfort Women... Say it to me... We are sorry to me...” (pg. 165). A few movies & a song that relate well to violence against women:  The Joy Luck Club, Boys Don’t Cry, & Love is Blind by: Eve.

Third Wave Madres

by: Sheilah Dasher 


Third Wave Feminism, gave a voice to me. She gave a voice to women with skin like mine, eyes that burned like coals instead of midday sky’s, she gave a voice to the madres that bent over tomatoes groves the brown, red, and black women whose bridges no longer would be their backs the red light district women, and the mail order brides of every western man’s dreams, the women that love other women, or the one’s not born female. Third wave feminism announced “I am here, I exist!” I am not “The Feminine Mystic,” “The Problem Which Has No Name,” I am the wet nurse that fed First and Second Waves children while she was dreaming, I am the woman that cleaned her floors, the woman that was bought on that business trip by her husband I am the one that fought not to be sterilized while she wanted contraception. Third Wave proclaimed we are not all equal in the eyes of men I am the daughter of Third Wave Feminism. A decade ago, I bought the book Colonize This. The white queer grrl’s in the feminist movement that I had adopted had introduced me to the works of Lourde and Anzaluda. These white grrl’s that screamed like me out of the constraints of pretty girl gender performance, like me were also getting beat up by the racist skinhead white boys at punk rocks shows. My riot grrl sisters were the one’s that taught me their was a name for my mothers experiences. These gracious grrls over a decade ago reminded me of a past I had forgotten through whitewashed junior high and high school literature. Reading these works were like reading my life. My introduction to feminism was always inclusive not exclusive and had a growling guitar vocalist. Feminism to me wasn’t academic, or didn’t look white and middle class. Much like the reading by Adriana Lopez, In Praise of Difficult Chicas, she spoke of the strong mothers she had around her as her first feminist examples. “Education in American schools and universities, I recognized the legacy of white feminist like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. Though at times their styles were overheated, they were crusaders for equal rights, bra burning privileged white women who took on a firestorm,” but these women didn’t represent herstory. Feminism to me was my mother and my aunts that left the reservation to attend college. All having children of various racial backgrounds, teaching us our language and matrilineal histories. All independent yet interdependent on one another. I didn’t grow up playing barbie or bridesmaids because that wasn’t my culture. I grew up not having my gender hinder what choices I made because we were all taught to work hard equally men and women. My feminism was my grandmother that went to library classes to learn to read and write in English after raising ten children. I grew up realizing women always had the right to own their sexuality, to marry or divorce, wedlock or not. I grew up with a grandmother that said get an education and use birth control because she knew it would give me the access she did not have. In Colonize This When Cristina Tzintzun speaks of her mothers wishes for her daughters, saying “she could not have hoped for more feisty, self-assured daughters.” I see my own mother, not wanting me to be afraid to speak in front of foreigners and not be as naive as she was. Much like the Third Wave warriors of various backgrounds our stories are interwoven and political no matter how personal. 

Xicanista

by: Alejandra Ramos

Womyn of color feminism has been placed under third wave feminist movement; the push and struggle of womyn of color to have their voices heard and their experiences validated by the white feminist movement is a continuous one. From Colonize This! a lense of womyn of color feminism is presented from perpective in which the experiences of womyn are intertwined initmately with colonization. Rehman and Hernandez state, 'colonize means "to create a settlement". It sounds simple and peaceful. We rewrote the defenition. To colonize is to strip a people of their culture, language, land, family structure, who they are as a person and as a people."...We can't have someone else defining our lives or our feminism." Feminism as taught in the academia continues to be from a very white-middle class persepective and as a womon of color I want to identify as a feminist but the fact that stories of womyn like myself are like chocolate sprinkles on vanilla ice cream makes it hard, but it continues to prove that my presence is necessary in these circles. The urgency and importance of womyn of color voices within this movement to end sexisim in our community will not come if we don't also eliminate racism and other forms of oppression too. As womyn of color redifining feminism and making it our own is essential. Redefining my identiy withing the White/Black spectrum of feminism is an act of resitance itself. Claming the identity of Xicanista as coined by Ana Castillo, refereing to her identity within the chicana feminist movement as an act of decolonization she states, “A crucial distinction between labels we have been given by officials of the state and our own self-naming process is that only doing the latter serves us.  The very act of self-definition is a rejection of colonization.” Rewriting our herstories  a nuestra manera, "...is our task as Xicanistas, to not only reclaim our indigenismo-but also to reinsert the forsaken feminine into our consciousness.”(Castillo). Not only is our task to reclaim or indigenous roots, but with that the feminine power within us from our abuelas, to bring forth the otrocities of what colonialism has done to ours spirits, memories and experiences.

http://web.utah.edu/venceremos/Xicanisma.html 

No Feminism, Just Colors

by: Zhiqi Zhou

In "Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism," the author not only depicts feminism but also feminism of colors which sparks my brain in a multi-racial way. We have been talking about feminism all along in this class, and I am not going to address feminism any more. I want to point out my concerns of racism on mass media nowadays. In 2010, US demographics census reports: Whites are 63.7%, Blacks are 12.2%, Hispanic or Latino are 16.3% of the US population. Now, let us move the focus of our eyes to the mass media, TV, advertisements, movies, newspaper. Generally, this demographic statistics tells us, for every 6 white people you see on mass media, there should be an appearance of a black person, or for every 4 white people, you should see a Hispanic person. Is it how things are in real life? My answers is no. To intuitively support my point of view, I want to use a Corona commercial as example. In the commercial, there are four people drinking on the beach, and three of them are white and one is black. The commercial majorly focus on a white couple flirting with each other and drinking corona. Surprisingly, the black person in the commercial only makes a "hard-to-see" appearance. What did I think when I saw the commercial? I thought the commercial maker didn't want the commercial to be too racist so he or she put a black clown there to make it appear less offensive. However, all of this seems to be so overly done that audience like me would obviously notice the commercial maker's intention and the black "clown."

Corona Commercial Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfsE-VMqQk