Sexism

Like many, I started blogging in the aftermath of Teri Schaivo and then I stopped. I needed a new focus for my blog, so I decided to use it to talk about sexism in concrete terms. I just bumped into a professor of mine and we were talking about a bunch of young female celebrities and how things overall do not look like they are going very well in their lives. Without getting into the details about that, it is a very sad thing that women are becoming sexualized at younger and younger ages. We miss the anti-porn days of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin as MTV is starting to look like soft-port central.

I identify as a feminist, and although many on the right of this country would call me the anti-Christ, there are things I have in common with them although we come to these conclusions from very different paths. I don't think it's necessary to use sex to see everything from toothpaste to children's clothing (ok, did you hear about the toddler thongs?! No kidding!). It is not ok to sexualize young people, which brings up a related thought . . . how do we allow our young people to be resilient to the constant messages that say it is ok for them to be sexualized and to sexually objectify others? Young people are oppressed on a daily basis and this is not alright. If we create young people who simply say yes to everything we want as adults, they are not in a position to resist the other oppressions that come their way. I want my 11 month old son to be able to tell adults NO when they mistreat him, NO when we make recommendations that are odd. Perhaps then he can take a stand on his own behalf when he is sexualized at too young an age and take definitive stands not only against racism, but also against sexism. Perhaps he will then understand that it is not ok to mistreat people, even by visual representations, for any reason.
I think I will need to be more concrete about this in future entries, and I will try to do just that.
Stay tuned!