The Beginning of the Beginning pt.2

So, here I am! Katie has successfully built up suspense for my post so I hope I can deliver. In the spirit of Katie’s opening blog, I guess I will explain a little bit about myself so you know where the other half of Feminews is coming from.

As Katie previously mentioned, I graduated a semester early from SUNY New Paltz after majoring in Journalism and double minor(ing?) in Women’s Studies and Black Studies and I am currently one of the many floating in the dead sea of unemployment. Especially with the current economic climate and my lack of a sufficient plan, I often get the question, “Why would you ever think of leaving college EARLY?!” Well, before I even had college apps underway, I knew I wanted to Study Abroad. So, since my freshman year (when I was first introduced to the concept of Feminism), I worked to graduate early in hopes of balancing the costs of such an adventure. That, along with spending my senior year of high school under the rule of Advanced Placement courses, allowed me to head to Melbourne, Australia where I met Katie and we united under our feminist views, vulgar language and fear of insanely large spiders. All of those things led to this very post and the creation on Feminews.

The first time I knew I was having an intellectual discussion about women’s rights was in my freshman year, in a class called Women Images and Realities. It is a required course for those New Paltz students who venture into the feminist field and it is an eye-opener even for the students who are just in that class to fill a general education course. I don’t think I had ever consciously realized what women face or have been facing nationally and globally. And that was the thing, I had never consciously realized. I…had…never…consciously…realized.

I mean, don’t get me wrong…there was always a feminist brooding inside. I remember in my third grade class, we were reading Sarah Plain and Tall where the main character wore overalls and this boy, Alex, said girls don’t wear overalls. What kind of crap was that, I don’t know but what I do know is that the next day, I made sure most of the girls in the class sported overalls; a proud moment in my little life to say the least.

Even with such memories, I do not remember learning a damn thing about feminism nor about black studies. Maybe this proves I have terrible memory but I think it proves something different because I remember somewhere in my elementary school education I was told that Rosa Parks was an old-ass-woman who was just tired instead of the middle-age, fed-up, organizer she was. I know that my pre-college education had the occasional women and people of color who “contributed” (there is something about that word, “contributed”, it’s like adding to something that was already there instead of showing that those groups, as well as others, were creating it from the get-go. IE: Imhotep, that dude was crazy) but it was by no means a fair portrayal. And this is not an attack on the teachers, who work their asses off and HAVE to stick to a strict curriculum. It’s more of a comment to the makers of the curriculum, who leave out portions of history…but, anyway…

When I first discovered feminism as well as black studies, I couldn’t believe all of the information I never knew. Things about my own life as well as others started to fall into place. Some may call a bit of it…if not most of it…conspiracy while I just took it for honesty.

I am like most recent grads, trying to get some type of employment (preferably in something I’m interested in) without having to worry about rent. I am lucky enough to have parents who won’t kick my ass out. And I figure, with my premature leave from college, it buys me a bit more time to construct a better plan.

Like Katie said, I do write. I actually compete in spoken word competitions and perform poetry around the nation. I just got back from the college level national competition, College Unions Slam Poetry Invitational (CUPSI), in Philadelphia where I went with my teammates on the SUNY New Paltz Slam team and we ranked top ten in the nation. I also am a member of the Intangibles Collective, a group of artists (including spoken word poets, hip-hop artists, photographers, writers), who are coming together to perform and build the community with different, positive programs geared toward a number of age groups. It launches in a week and we will be traveling NY state in our upcoming tour, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire”. There are some other teams (The Meta-Four at the Soundbites Poetry Festival in NYC) as well as adult solo competitions, I am involved that have allowed me to explore feminism on a creative level. The people I work with as well, as the artists I am privileged to see, speak loudly about women’s issues…from everything from sexual violence, politics, body image. I hope, with Feminews, to bring you feminist art and spoken word from all over the country.

I agree with my co-author, we hope to bring you all the issues through our eyes. We want to discuss women’s rights intellectually and personally with conviction and a damn sense of humor. So what does the F-word stand for? Funny! Ok, ok, and feminism, I guess it stands for that too.