I'm Not Fat, I'm Latina by Christy Haubegger

   

     Where is the line that divides fat from skinny? Haubegger argues that in Latina(o) culture it is a bit different than the typical american doctor or magazine would have informed you. She is a good 25 pounds over weight in most American weight charts, and at the same time in the sweet spot for Latina women and dating Latino men. Haubegger the founder of Latina Magazine saw a different perspective for so called over weight women, she saw that in Mexico skinny was not the often the most attractive body type to men, and it was not so widely criticized. Her trip to Mexico helped her overcome the shame of having a little more meat on her bones. She came back to the states with more pride and serenity in the body was born with. That our society has been condescending to women based on their body weight is not something new, but fighting the system is a continuing struggle even with the progress we have made. Haubegger felt she fit right in with the Latino culture as a "25 pound over weight" women. It does not mean Hispanic culture is not condescending, and most women still do not feel they look acceptable as they are, without feeling defective. It is great that Haubegger feels great about her look, but we need to be kinder to each other so that it is easier for we all feel we are ok as we are and we can make healthy choices about our bodies and lifestyles from a place of peace.

La Conciencia De La Meztiza: Towards A New Consciousness

by Gloria Anzaldua

The world is an enormous mix of millions of backgrounds and experiences. Some of backgrounds persons in this nation experience are more closely linked than others, as the case with mestizos/mestizas, someone both Spanish and Amerindian descent. In an article about the her life experience and perspective Anzaldua as a meztiza and lesbian has had to face some very challenging adversity. Most of us are not well informed or have not paid a fair amount of attention to the conflicts of race and sexual orientation that arise around us. Anzaldua can not escape these struggles and being of mixed descent is right in the middle of them, literally. She has to make some sense out of the prejudice between Spanish and Amerindian cultures while being right in the middle receiving and giving to both sides. She goes on to explain how she has become a person who has to hear, see and feel all these conflicts within herself as she learns to identify with who she really is. She is her own peace-broker and consultant. She supports both sides, and takes action to to fair, understanding, loving and tough to both sides. She is working on reaching a enlightened and caring and honest conclusion to this mess. Even as a lesbian, a women, an American she sees her opportunities to work through clutter and filters of anger and confusion with a loving, strong, honest and compassionate resolve to offer her unique perspective and truth to the conversation of how to provide kindness and space for all and their backgrounds.

Compulsory Heterosexuality by Addriene Rich

    Compulsory Heterosexuality means obligatory straightness or heterosexuality as the only possible and normal sexual orientation of any woman. Adrienne Rich who is a lesbian author has been deeply hurt, when feminists writers leave the lesbian population out of their literature when they defend women from the abusive society we live in and have lived in. She rights "lesbian experience is perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorrent or simply rendered invisible" when she describes the way feminist authors dismiss lesbians as they work on defending women through their writing. She references the horrible facts about how men are also deciding powerful influences like "theology, law, science and economic non-viability within the sexual division of labor" and how this and other factors like "torture and witch hunting" have forced women to deny, confuse, reject and hide their sexual orientation lest they be persecuted, but also because their opinion has been discounted. Rich finds many holes in the works of the feminist writers she sites. often coming back to the idea that those writers don't realize just how big a role "Compulsory heterosexuality" or heterosexuality has had on women. Heterosexuality has been forced on society as the one true natural orientation of women, to the point were lesbians exist because of issues women have with other women, men or both like the "female Oedipus complex". I agree with Rich that we have a huge mess of bias and misinformed people engaged in a political storm to convince women of how they truly feel and should feel. We have a long way to go to recover and clarify all that is happening, but at least many of us do believe that lesbianism is just as natural as heterosexuality.

Generation M: Media as a Feminist Issue

It boggles my mind just how mixed up we are in our society. As the human race we have a long history of women's abuse. Women are the ones capable of the god like ability to give birth to life, not that men don't play a smaller role as well. Rather than guard our candidates for godesses we attempt to marginalized them. In our gender 200 class we have discussed many of ways the game of hierarchy is played in America. If you are white, male, straight, Christian, American, own property and/or physically and mentally fit your go higher up the food chain. Our politicians aka, the S.W.A.A.M.P people tend to join all of the above camps, and so they get to be on the winning team of rich law deciding priviledged religious wing nuts. Where are women on this chart? Often times far from the top. A big portion of our urban hip hop music is composed of verbal and spiritual vilence towards women. Men tend to be horn dogs during poverty and vulnerable to outside influence, the media takes full advantage of this. The media takes advantage of all vulnerable times in the mind and body of a child male or female to bombard them with explotative indoctrination. Girls instead of being celebrated and guided carefully and caringly are told to take their worth from superficial external things. Looks, smarts, connections, money, or even their mates. This mess strechts to all corners of our society. We need to reliaze the real winning team is the people that care. To young people, especially men, sexually objectified women are attrative, but they and women are much more then that, and we need to work to attract them to the team that is real and actually cares.

People like Us:

Watching the clips and playing the games on the site "People like us" was sometimes interesting and some time painful. The measures of class like the way one looks and dresses and/or what some one decides to buy or can afford to buy draw reactions from peers. I understand that it's common to see people at similar levels  of income buy things within a their budget. I am also ok with having some degree of assumption that what a person's house or dress looks like can be used to measure their economica/social or whatever status, but that is just an assumption, not a class. I am ok with an assumption, but believing something and forming an opinion about someone without empirical evidence is ignorant. I think we can all be ignorant at times, but like the site People Like US
I believe it is important to have some perspective on what we are doing, and make progress towards having more discernment. The Crabtree family is a powerful example of how a matriarchal family is put down by her community in a society were wealth is the determinant of how a mother is treated. It becomes a feminist issue when a mother is walking to work to provide for herself and her family gets called trailer trash by a passerby. It is an issue of wealth inequality when she struggles so hard earn a living wage in the most abundant country on earth but we have billionaires paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries and many corporations not paying taxes at all. Combine both issues together and we have a society that treats women harshly financial and emotionally. Are we so morally and spiritually bankrupt that we have become unresponsive to our need for healthy and happy working mothers? As a feminist I feel I need to do something about this issue, even if it is just caring till I can think of something more.