Tennis impersonation

I was reading that Caroline Wozniacki was being accused of racism when she impersonated her friend Serina Williams during a exhibition tennis match. The feminist group that reported this as racist stated that because she represented Serina in a hyper sexualized way, with a big ass and a huge chest, she was  making fun of the community of black women. This is completely absurd to me, first off Wozniacki and Williams are friends and Serina laughed at it when she saw it later that day. Just because Wozniacki is white an was making fun of Serina who was black does not make this a racist statement in any way. This is just someone trying to make a story out of nothing because they have nothing better to do with their time.

Police Officers

So today I was reading an article that was talking about a male police officer in New Hampshire. He was suing the state because they would not hire him full time due to a lack of being able to complete the physical test. The argument that he is making however is that he is only not completing the test because he is a male and the standards are higher for males. This struck me as odd that the physical requirements were different for male and female officers. As a person that is supposed to be protected by the police I want all of them to have to pass the same physical requirements. Also doesn't this just subject the female officers to being looked upon as inferior. Yeah they are police officers now but they are not held to the same standards as their male counterparts. To me if the main argument is for equality then everything should be equal the physical fitness test included.

Law

Last class I also found the conversation on the law very interesting. I came out on the side of Lydia, that being that the rape victims don't get ignored but if there is no evidence there is nothing the police can do. The case of Jerry Sandusky was brought up as a rebuttal to this argument, but in my eyes his case is a special circumstance because there was more than just one person saying that he raped them, also they had people that saw him in the act testifying against him. So his case was not that of a he said she said argument it was a he said and a whole bunch of people said argument. I also think that the way the law is set up now of innocent until proven guilty is the way to go, I don't want to think what it would be like if it were the other way around.

environment of fear

Last class the group that was researching rape was presenting. It was very interesting to me to hear how the girls in the class felt scared when they walked next to a guy at night. The reason it was interesting was because they said that the guy's need to stop acting weird. When asked how that was possible non of them had an answer. This was the most frightening part because as a male I don't try to act creepy but just from me being male I am subject to that definition because of the environment of fear that women have when walking at night. So I ask again what would be the best way not to be creepy because I am not trying to frighten anyone.

Beyond Tolerance

The beyond tolerance speaker this past thursday was Loretta Ross, her talk was on women's human rights and politics. During her talk she came to the topic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how he was not trying to lead a civil rights movement but a human rights movement. She then described what the Human rights, that are divided into eight categories, were that we are legally required to have by international law. This is where the talk got really interesting because no one knew that this was international law and no one knew what the human rights categories were. In my opinion we need to do a better job in teaching young people about what rights they are supposed to have not just from the constitution but also by international law.

Female Physical Recreation

In class today Celia asked me to say what the argument that I read was about, I want to expand on what I said in class. The article was about the overall health effects that physical recreation can have for a person. It mainly deals with the difference in what men and women are permitted to do for physical activity. The women cannot go outside of social norms and play sports because they are associated with masculinity. This hinders what women can do for physical recreation and this generally hurts the females because they are not given the release that sport gives. It also talks about how females are other-centered and always think of what they could be doing for other people instead of themselves. This also keeps most women from being able to enjoy physical recreation in their leisure time because they are always doing things for other people instead. 

Equality of Sexes

Today in class there was a point made about how we always think about how women can do whatever men can do but we do not think the other way around. I thought it was interesting that women are always looked at as being the care givers and that men cannot be. So the men cannot do something that the women can do. This is very interesting to me because the argument from feminist groups is that the sexes are equal, but there are very few discussions about how men can do the things that women do. To me if there was discussion on both topics a lot more would get done because the feminist groups would be able to show that the sexes are equal.