You are probably familiar with the TV Show, The Walking Dead, the #1 most watched drama and thriller show on TV. If you watched this show, you would know that their show has a habit of killing off all of our beloved characters. But “Killer Within”, the fourth episode of the third season, really stands out because this episode is one of the most gut-wrenching episodes of the whole show, leaving you on your couch with a bunch of empty boxes of tissues. “Killer Within was written by Sang Kyu Kim, a producer of The Walking Dead. It was directed by Guy Ferland, an American film and television director. “Killer Within” didn’t just have one death, but TWO deaths of our favorite characters that have been with us since the beginning. These were two of the most memorable characters that have died, and their deaths are even sadder. If you are not yet passed season three of this show, then stop reading now, because, of course, SPOILER ALERT (If you do decide to continue reading, don’t get mad at me if the show is spoiled for you).
Our episode starts off with Rick discussing with Daryl, Carol, Glenn, T-Dog and Maggie that they should keep the prison as their permanent shelter to continue surviving. But while exploring their brand new territory, they come across six prisoners stuck there from the beginning. T-Dog suggests to the group that they let the prisoners join, but Rick disagrees and says that they should keep their prison, his idea being supported by the others. Axel and Oscar refuse because the cell block is full of dead bodies and the yard outside, where they plan to bury them, is filled with walkers. So Rick sticks them in one of the cell blocks, planning to give them one week's worth of supplies and kick them out. Hershel Greene, father of Maggie and Beth Greene, starts to walk once again after having his leg amputated from being bit by a walker. He is assisted by his daughter Beth, Lori Grimes and Carl Grimes. But literally five seconds after being outside in the courtyard, the entire courtyard is filled with hungry walkers, looking for flesh. This results in the group separating. But while T-Dog is securing the prison yard inner gate, a walker comes up behind him and takes a bite out of his shoulder. He runs away, being supported by Carol into the tunnels of the prison. Meanwhile, Rick, Daryl and Glenn rush from outside of the prison’s fences, and Glenn is the one to discover that the gate’s lock broken. Rick starts to believe that Axel and Oscar are the ones who broke the fence. But they are off the hook as soon as the alarm to the prison goes off, making problems much worse and attracting many more walkers. Oscar tells Rick that the backup generators are making the alarms go off, so the group hunts down those generators to shut the alarms off. Now let’s jump back to T-Dog and Carol. Carol assists the injured T-Dog. But T-Dog refuses her help, knowing that he’s eventually going to die. After they are blocked in the corridor by walkers, the brave T-Dog sacrifices himself for Carol by charging at the walkers and pinning them to the wall. This makes matters worse for T-Dog, because he is just eaten alive by the walkers. He yells at Carol, “GO! I’M DEAD!”. Carol, horrified at what she is seeing, flees away from T-Dog to hide, which introduces our very first heartbreaking death of the episode. Now on the opposite side of the building, Lori goes into labor. Maggie and Carl rescue her and drag her to the boiler room. But when Lori attempts to push out her baby, she starts to bleed profusely. Lori eventually realizes she will not be surviving childbirth. After telling Maggie to give her a C-Section, Carl spends his last moments with his mother, because all three of them know that Lori is not going to survive the C-Section. Carl hands Maggie his knife, and Maggie performs the C-Section. from too much blood loss, Lori dies in the middle of it, concluding our second tragic death of the episode. Maggie pulls out the baby out of Lori’s stomach, and pats it’s back to help it breathe. Maggie then turns to Carl and informs him that he is the one who has to shoot his mother in the head to prevent her from turning. Then she goes to check and see if the corridor is clear. While Carl looks over his dead mother’s body, he remembers the talk that Rick gave to him about never being able to be prepared for someone to die, but he still had to be ready if someone did. After Maggie checks the corridors, we hear a gunshot off-screen, signalling that Carl has just shot Lori, and he walks away. Meanwhile, the cause of the alarms going off was actually just one of the six prisoners prisoners from earlier, Andrew. While Rick and Andrew fight, Daryl secures the door against lots of walkers, and Oscar picks up Rick’s revolver. Andrew then starts to try and persuade Oscar to kill Rick, but instead, he shoots Andrew. He hands Rick his revolver and turns the emergency generators. Rick, Daryl and Oscar reunite with Glenn and Axel in the corridors. On their way out of the corridors, they discover the dead body of T-Dog, being devoured by the walkers that killed him. After killing the walkers, they also discover Carol’s head wrap, and the five assume that Carol is dead as well. When Rick and the group exit the corridor, he runs up to Hershel and Beth, panicked, asking if Carl and Lori had made it. Rick starts to give orders to the group about where they should search, but before he can finish, Rick is interrupted by the sound of a baby’s cry. He looks over to see Carl and Maggie, who are crying. Rick is confused about the absence of Lori, but after Maggie stops him from going into the prison to search for her, he finally has to face the truth that she is dead. The most heartbreaking moment of this episode is when he collapses to the ground and sobs about his wife’s death. That is a brief overview of what happened in “Killer Within”. In this episode, we have lost T-Dog and Lori, who had been in the show since season 1! These deaths will always stand out, being tied as the two #1 saddest deaths in the show. We have lost so many others in the most current season, which is season 5. A lot of those characters were there since the beginning as well, but not one of those deaths will ever compare to the sadness of T-Dog’s and Lori’s. For a rating, I would give this episode a rating of 10/10 because it was one of the strongest episodes of The Walking Dead that has ever aired (this episode left me sobbing in my room!). When you start to become a fan of this show, you get very connected to the characters. I got very connected to T-Dog, and when he died, my heart was in agonizing pain. He was one of the bravest characters in the show, and he showed the most bravery he has ever shown when he sacrificed himself for Carol. I did not care for Lori very much. In fact, she was always one of my least favorite characters throughout the show. But she had the most dramatic, heartbreaking, and agonizing death of the whole show so far. And even the thought that her own son had to shoot her in the head so she wouldn’t turn is extremely heartbreaking.
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WARNING: THIS ARTICLE TALKS ABOUT SEXUAL CONTENT THAT IS RELEVANT TO THIS TOPIC
In 2014, Detroit started the “Detroit Rape Kit Project”: a project where rape kits are tested for DNA in order to arrest rapists that have prowled freely because the kits weren’t tested. This project was started when eleven thousand untested rape kits, some from the 1980s, were discovered in an abandoned Detroit police storage facility. According to Kim Craig, who wrote “100 Serial Rapists Identified after Rape Kits from Detroit Crime Labs Are Finally Tested” for the news program WXYZ’s Detroit website, fourteen prosecutions have resulted because of the testing of these abandoned rape kits. One of these cases includes DeShawn Starks, a perpetrator who raped four women. Craig states that in February of 2003 Starks pretended to be experiencing stomach pains and approached a woman, who was returning home. He then proceeded to pull out a gun out, robbed her, and took her to a secluded area, and he raped her. The woman went to the hospital, where she had a rape kit completed. Her rape kit then sat in a storage facility for ten years. He raped another woman in 2003, and he raped two other women in 2013. Starks could have been stopped before he was able to rape three other women if the DNA from the initial rape kit (on 2003) had been run through CODIS, a system that has the DNA profile of anybody that has an arrest record or for a job, such as a nurse. If crime labs had done this, they might have been able to identify Starks before he raped the other three woman. Using the results from rape kits is a simple way of stopping somebody from being assaulted, yet it doesn’t happen often enough. In today’s society, we have so much technology that can be used to solve crimes, such as rape, yet we have about 400,000 untested rape kits that are sitting in storage facilities. Instead of letting them sit, collecting dust, we should be testing them, allowing survivors to find some closure and preventing rapists from walking on the streets as a free men. After a person is sexually assaulted, she might have a rape kit done; however, this may not happen if the survivor does not want to go through with one. A rape kit is a four to six hour examination that is done to collect any and all evidence that might have been left behind by the rapist. This could potentially include the DNA from the rapist. If DNA is left behind, this can be a powerful tool that can be used to find the rapist since everybody has their own DNA profile, which means nobody has the same DNA sequence, unless you are an identical twin. Once the rape kit is taken, it is supposed to be sent to a crime lab to be tested in order to find out if any DNA had been left behind, but instead, it often is sent to a storage facility, where it can sit for decades. In the United States, rape kits often remain untested, which has resulted in an accumulation of 400,000 untested rape kits, causing a backlog. What can cause a backlog? A backlog, according to End the Backlog, a program that is a part of the Joyful Heart Foundation, can have several causes. One of which is how rape kits tend to be sent to storage facilities and forgotten about, and since only three states- Illinois, Texas, and Colorado- require rape kits to be counted, tracked, and tested, making it easier for rape kits to be forgotten about in the other forty-seven states that aren’t required to count, track, or test the kits. Another way is a lack of resources. Crime labs may be under funded, or police departments don’t have the technology to track the kits. If it’s just a matter of tracking the kits or more funding for crime labs, why doesn’t the government lend a hand since both programs are run by the government? End the Backlog states that a rape kit can cost from a thousand dollars to a thousand five hundred dollars. Some people may use the excuse that it’s too expensive, and the government is already tight on money. The only problem with that argument is that the government has spent thousands of dollars in some pretty outrageous ways. Accordinging to Michael Snyder, who wrote “60 Completely Outrageous Ways the U.S. Government Is Wasting Money” for infowars.com, in 2012, twenty-five thousand dollars of federal money was spent on a promotional tour for Alabama’s Watermelon Queen. If that money had gone toward testing rape kits, about twenty-five thousand rape kits could have been tested. Which seems more important, a tour for Alabama’s Watermelon Queen or giving about twenty-five thousand rape survivors closure? Another excuse that people may use in order to make the fact that our number of untested rape kits has gotten so out of hand is that some rape allegations turn out to be false. False rape accusations do exist, but they do not happen as often as some people think. Although this does occur, it does not mean that all allegations are false; only about two to eight percent of rape accusations are false. This number is still on the high side, but what kind of people would we be if we continued to let the rape kits sit in storage facilities? Especially, when testing these kits could mean a survivor is finally able to put this horrific event behind them. We know how much of an impact the kits can have on a case (the ability to put a rapist away), so why is this not a priority? According to End the Backlog, another reason might be the fact that some police departments don’t prioritize sexual assault. Another reason is whether or not the case is likely to move forward. Often, the survivor has been through so much trauma, and the police tend to misunderstand the actions of the survivor and interpret it to be the survivor not cooperating or not being credible. This can lead the survivor to hesitate to proceed with the case. Finally, if the police are already aware of who the rapist is, the police don’t need to test the DNA. The question we all need to really think about isn’t why we don’t perform the test, the question is, why did we let this get so out of hand? After Deshawn Starks was arrested, he was prosecuted and put away for forty-five to ninety years. Now that he has been arrested and put behind bars, the four women that he assaulted can look for closure that he is no longer a free man. According to Soraya Chemaly, who wrote “50 Actual Facts About Rape” for the Huffington Post, about fifty four percent of rapes aren’t reported. Obviously, this can be due to good reasons; the survivor might know that nothing is going to be done. That if they have a rape kit completed, it will probably end up in a storage facility. The survivor also might not feel comfortable, or feel ashamed. Nobody that has been raped should feel this way. They should not feel as if nothing is going to be done for them. Since Detroit has started their “Detroit Rape Kit Project”, they had tested one thousand six hundred rape kits out of their eleven thousand by March of 2014. Out of those one thousand six hundred rape kits, one hundred serial rapists were identified, and in New York, they’ve started testing their kits, and their arrest rates for rape have gone from forty percent to seventy percent. If by only testing one thousand six hundred kits a hundred serial rapists are discovered and placed behind bars, how many rapists could be identified by testing the other estimated four hundred thousand kits? In the past year alone, there have been two riots that have had the largest impact in the news. The first one was in Ferguson, Missouri. In Ferguson, the riots began after the fatal shooting of eighteen year old Michael Brown. The more recent one has been in Baltimore, Maryland. In Baltimore, the riots began after the death of Freddie Gray.
Both started as peaceful protests, but they both quickly became violent. In Ferguson, there were three waves of the protest. The first wave started on August 9, 2014, due to the death of Michael Brown, and ended on August 25, 2014. The second wave started November 24, 2014, after Daren Wilson, the officer that shot Michael Brown, was not indicted, meaning the grand jury decided to not formal accuse him for the death of Michael Brown. The third wave started on April 28, 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray and are still ongoing. So far, the Ferguson protests have resulted in sixteen injuries and two hundred eleven arrests of the public. In Baltimore, there has only been one wave of riots starting on April 18, 2015, which caused the Baltimore Orioles to close their game to the public on April 29. As of April 28, about twenty police officers had been injured, and around two hundred fifty people have been arrested. The Maryland Army National Guard troops and thousands of police officers have been deployed in an attempt to stop the burning of building and cars along with any injuries that may be caused. Baltimore also was put into a state of emergency once the protests became violent riots. If you ask me, this is not the right way to approach these issues. The protesters, rioters, whatever you want to call them, are attempting to fight fire with fire. This method has caused nothing except for injuries and arrests. If your point is to try and stop more injuries and deaths from occurring, why do something that can only lead to more injuries and deaths? Before reading this, I want you to think of what defines being an American. Hold onto that and we’ll come back to it later.
We all know from history class that the original settlers of America came over on the Mayflower in 1620, seeking religious freedom. From the moment those 102 settlers landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the American dream was born. This dream drove people to reach new heights and cross a boundary of 3,125 miles. The basis for America is rooted in these 102 Puritans pursuing religious freedom. But even now, 395 years and a Supreme Court ruling later, students are expected to stand--regardless of their personal beliefs--face the American Flag, place their hands on their hearts, and recite the words “under God.” These words within the Pledge of Allegiance discriminate against those who are not religious by establishing the connotation that to have patriotism, one must worship or believe in God. People are often confused as to why I don’t say the pledge, but the answer is simple. I don’t feel the need to stand every morning, face my country’s flag, and recite words that I don’t personally believe in. After hearing this, these same people tend to think that that means I’m not a true American or that I don’t love or appreciate my country, just because I don’t want to say these 31 words. But since when was it the American way to dictate someone else’s actions? Just because I choose to sit and stay silent does not mean I don’t respect America or the sacrifices countless people have made to get us to this point. If anything, I’m honoring these sacrifices by exercising the freedom that they have allowed me. But I understand if you think it’s perfectly okay to have a Florida teacher grab one of her students hands and place it over his heart telling him, “You are an american, and you are supposed to salute the flag...and if you don’t want to do that you should move out of the country.” I totally get that. So why should I be considered disrespectful for demonstrating the very freedom that America is founded upon? It is not my responsibility to make sure every single one of my actions does not offend anyone because in reality, any action that I could possibly take is going to offend someone somewhere. No matter the topic there will always be someone that is going to disagree, and I refuse to give up the freedom that I am legally entitled to at risk of offending that person. I attempt to respect my homeroom teachers opinion by not commenting and not actively promoting mine, yet if she is unable to reciprocate that acceptance and calls me downright disrespectful, then I have nothing left to say to her. The right to express my own opinion should not be a debate. I simply choose not to stand for words that I don’t believe should be a part of our nation’s Pledge because if these words are meant to embody everything that America stands for, why does it have to reference God? The first amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” meaning the government cannot enforce nor promote a religion. By having these two words in the Pledge, America is violating its own constitutional basis, yet no matter how many times a court case comes forward requesting that the words be removed, it is always struck down. On March 11, 2010, a challenge in California was turned down by the federal appeals court for the 9th Circuit, which held that “the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the Establishment Clause because Congress’ ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism.” On May 9, 2014, Massachusetts’ highest court rejected the American Humanist Association’s case finding that the pledge, including its reference to God, is a “fundamentally patriotic exercise, not a religious one.” Now let me ask you this. Since when did believing in God become a characteristic of being an American? At the beginning my of this, I had you think of what it means to be American. Was one of your thoughts “must believe in God”? A majority of people would say no. That is because fundamentally one does not have to believe in God to be an American. And this is where those courts, along with many others, have gone wrong and created the connotation that to have patriotism one must worship or believe in God. Now an argument people often make is that because God is not specific to one definitive religion, then the reference is fine to keep. But this is not the case. Just because it does not point fingers to one religion does not mean it isn’t still telling people what to believe. Mentioning God still promotes a certain set of beliefs, one: that God exists and two: that America and everything else is “under God's” domain. Sure, the word God doesn’t point fingers to a definite religion but it still promotes these beliefs, and the whole reason this section of the first amendment was created was to make sure no religious beliefs were enforced by the government. These words weren’t even an original part of the Pledge of Allegiance. In its primary form the Pledge read “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The author, Francis Bellamy, had hoped it would be used by citizens in any country. But in 1923, "the Flag of the United States of America" was added. A minor change to simply specify which country. Perfectly understandable. But then, in 1954, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God”. And do you know why these words were added? Not for their “timeless American value” as many courts claim, but to differentiate the United States from communist ideologies. When America added these words they made the assertion that god was on their side in the war against communism. The words were added because they were and still are a political benefit to gain favor with the American voters as many Americans have a strong faith. It reminded the population that America was better than those “Godless” communists. It was not added for any timeless american value and should not be considered as such by any court. America was founded on the freedom of religion. And there’s a reason why the writers of our constitution stood behind this freedom. They understood that no one should be forced into a belief. I should not be criticized or be considered un American for exercising the freedom that is the basis of America. Dear Senator Steve Martin,
You probably won’t believe this, but I woke up today with the strangest though that I was a person. I know; that’s pretty ridiculous considering that I am a woman. Then I read your facebook post that called women “hosts” because we can have babies. I’m glad you wrote that because now I can be completely confident that I am nothing more than an incubator. I exist, plain and simple, to have babies. And if those babies turn out to be girls, they exist just to have babies. But if those babies turn out to be boys, then they can be senators just like you (unless, of course, they are not white and straight.) How could I have forgotten the natural order? Women have children; men, power. It really isn’t that hard to remember. I guess the thing that got me confused before your comment helped clear me up is that I have so many things in common with real people. I have friends and a favorite song and a loud laugh and people who have impacted me and people I have impacted. I have a voice, and I have opinions. This morning when I woke up, I thought that those things made me more than my uterus, but I guess not. I am not going to argue with you that every woman deserves to have ownership of her body, but I do want to tell you this. There are young girls who read the news and go on facebook. These girls read that mothers are “hosts” and whatever your intentions were, I can tell you exactly how it feels to read that. It feels like there is a coal in your stomach. It feels like when you’ve stood up too fast and everything is a little dizzy. It feels like, Mr. Senator, you can see yourself disappearing. That is why I am writing to you right now, not because I think you will listen to a 15 year old girl, but because I need to reappear. I need to prove to myself that I am more than what my body can carry. I am not a host. I am not an incubator. I am a woman who can call something disgusting when she sees something disgusting. I only hope that all the other young girls who read that post can understand this. I only hope that you have not made objects of more than half your state. Sincerely, Oonagh Kligman Note: This article addresses sensitive subjects, including rape.
My Bar Mitzvah was not only a celebration or a scheme to make money, my Bar Mitzvah was about the transition from childhood to manhood. This transformation meant that no longer would my parents be responsible for the sins that I committed or the actions that I took. As large of a burden as this was, it was a necessary one on my way to adulthood. Today, however, far too many youths are stopping short of adulthood and wrongly concluding that their actions have no detrimental consequences. An absence of true responsibility has stagnated development in our youth and thus created a liberal orthodoxy in which even the most heinous of things goes; it is for this reason that rape culture has become so pervasive at our colleges. Until college students learn to grow up or at least reason that they’re responsible for their own actions, the status quo will remain the same. Click the Read More link to finish this article. Mariska Hargitay was born January 23, 1964 in Santa Monica, California. Her parents, father, Mickey Hargitay and mother, Jayne Mansfield, were both actors. Her mother tragically died in a car crash when Hargitay was three. Her father remarried, and they raise Hargitay and her brothers and gave them a normal life. Hargitay attended UCLA and majored in theater. Her first motion picture was Ghoulies(1984) where she played Donna. Her current role is on the popular TV series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit(1999) where she plays Detective Olivia Benson.
Mariska Hargitay is an inspirational woman to me because of her work in the Joyful Heart Foundation and No More, which as both foundations that have a mission to end abuse of all forms. The Joyful Heart Foundation is foundation that Hargitay started to “heal, educate and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, and to shed light into the darkness that surrounds these issues”(Joyful Heart Foundation Website: Vision and Mission). After Hargitay started working on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, she began research into her role and was shocked by the statistics: “One in three women report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. Every two minutes in the United States, somebody is sexually assaulted. More than five children die everyday in this country as a result of abuse or neglect, and up to 15 million children witness domestic violence in their homes every year”(Joyful Heart Foundation Website: Founder’s Corner) Before Hargitay started the foundation, she was receiving letters from viewers, and they would reveal that they were victims of physical or sexual abuse. Hargitay was so moved by the fact that the viewers had reached out to her, and she wanted to do something to help them: “…I felt a great responsibility to these brave women and men and wanted them to know that they had been heard and that they could have hope. I studied the subject, trained to become a crisis counselor and used my visibility as an actress to become an advocate. I knew I wanted to play a role in healing that pain, ending the isolation, and honoring the great courage survivors were showing by reaching out for help”(Joyful Heart Foundation Website: Founder’s Corner). As a result, she started the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 to help these victims. The foundation helps victims by providing a network of resources. They also have their own groundbreaking retreats that provide traditional counseling and therapy. At the top of the Joyful Heart Foundation website’s home page is a quote from Mariska Hargitay- “It’s simple physics: the greater the number of people willing to lift, the lighter the load that each individual must carry”. I believe that gym should not be avidly graded, but pass/fail. Gym teachers always say that you are graded for participation, but that is often never the case. Like when it comes to personal fitness testing. For example, one standard for a 14 year old boy is 54 sit ups in 60 seconds. If you don't pass the set psychical standards, then your grade is lowered. I find this insulting and unnecessary. It's already enough to feel embarrassed when you aren't considered "healthy," but it's feels worse when your "unhealthiness" affects your grade. This ties your body image in with grades, which I find unacceptable. No one should be graded because they don't meet certain (often absurd) health standards set by strangers. Another example is BMI. I myself have never passed a BMI test, but that doesn't mean I am unhealthy. It is completely unfair to use a universal standard for health when everyone's body is different and shouldn't be graded.
Sophia Bush was born on July 8, 1982 in Pasadena, California, which is about 2,702 miles away from Philadelphia. Her father, Charles Bush, is an advertising and celebrity photographer. Her mother, Maureen Bush, runs a photography studio. She attended the University of Southern California for three years, and she majored in Journalism and minored in Theatre. She did not graduate due to receiving the role as “Brooke Davis”, a preppy cheerleader and fashion designer, on the WB TV series One Tree Hill (2003). She is now currently working on the NBC series Chicago PD (2014) as “Erin Lindsey”, a detective in an intelligence department in Chicago.
Sophia Bush should be an inspiration to women everywhere. She believes that women are beautiful, and they do not need to starve themselves in order be skinny. On the show One Tree Hill (2003), her character also believed in this. She would refuse to use models that were insanely skinny, and she even made a shirt that said “Zero is not a size.” In the first episode of season five, she said “Anorexia is a disease. It is not a fashion statement.” Her passion for body image issues is not just an onscreen act. In 2010 the well-known clothing store Urban Outfitters designed a t-shirt that had the words “Eat Less” written on it. Bush, being a strong promoter of healthy body images for women worldwide, decided to boycott the entire fashion outlet. She spoke out to her fans by writing posts on her blog that were against Urban Outfitters. She wrote: “Ladies! This is OUTRAGEOUS. I hope none of you will stand for being told such a thing, in such a way. Being healthy, eating right, and staying active is one thing. Being told to starve yourselves by a fashion company? Not cool.” She also wrote a letter to Urban Outfitters and told the company exactly how she felt, which she posted on her blog and said: “To promote starvation? To promote anorexia, which leads to heart disease, bone density loss, and a slew of other health problems, not least of all psychological issues that NEVER go away? Shame on you. I will no longer be shopping at your store…” She wrote another letter that said: “You should issue a public apology, and make a hefty donation to a women’s organization that supports those stricken with eating disorders. I am sickened that anyone, on any board, in your gigantic company would have voted ‘yes’ on such a thing, let alone enough of you to manufacture an item with such a harmful message. It’s like handing a suicidal person a loaded gun. You should know better.” She was seen wearing a shirt that said “0 is not a size” in an attempt to show women that they do not have to starve themselves to be a size zero just because it is socially correct to be skinny. She wants women to be themselves, even if they aren’t a size zero. Anorexia and bulimia are serious diseases that should not be taken lightly, and they should not be used to make a profit. Recently, Time Magazine infamously proposed that the feminism be its banned word for 2014. Clearly, there’s been some miscommunication about what the word feminism actually means.
Let’s talk about it. “I’m for equality, not feminism.” A lot of people seem to take offense to the fact that feminism is called feminism: I cannot recite to you the number of times people have said this to me, as if these two causes cannot co-exist. Think about the phrasing of this argument: by saying that, you just removed the gender-issues from the problem; you just ignored the fact that women are discriminated against for their gender because hey, it didn’t explicitly include men as oppressed individuals. As it turns out, sexism tends to harm women more than men, and some issues are inherently problems for women. How many guys reading this have ever been catcalled while walking home from school? Probably few, if any. However, the fact that these justifications are even demanded raises another issue: do you only care about stopping oppression if you’re the most impacted victim? “Feminism perpetuates misandry.” Contrary to popular opinion, misandry (discrimination against men) and feminism don’t go hand in hand. Sexist stereotypes impact everyone, male or female, and a major part of feminism is fighting these preconceived notions of what each gender can and cannot do. For instance, it’s not fair a woman should get custody of a child simply because she’s assumed to be more attentive parent or that men are expected to remain unemotional and inexpressive. Some facets of feminism do focus specifically on helping men: for instance, the Rape is Rape campaign, created by the Feminist Majority Foundation, pressured the FBI into changing their definition of rape into one that could include male victims as well. Feminism is about equality, not preferential treatment based on gender, but this seems to be often misconstrued. Try focusing on the message instead of the label; just because you disagree with one misinterpreted strain of feminism doesn't mean you should dismiss the whole movement. “I don’t need feminism in my life.” Great, I’m glad you don’t think you’ve ever been impacted by sexist practices. Personally, I disagree that these types of things don’t affect you, but even if you don’t recognize it, consider the 21+ million women who undergo unsafe abortions every year because they don’t have access to better medical conditions. Think of the 14.2 million girls married before they’re 18 years old. Recall that only about 3% of rapists will ever serve a day in prison. These problems may not affect you in a day-to-day way, but that doesn't mean they don’t affect billions of others. The ability to ignore these issues is a privilege, and to ignore the many people who do suffer thanks to sexism is a gross neglect. “We've already achieved equality.” A 2008 study by professors at the University of California and the University of Kentucky found that 90% of teen girls had experienced sexist remarks. That’s not okay. Claiming sexism is thing of the past is like saying racism is over because the Civil Rights Movement is done. “The percentage of women holding statewide and state legislative offices is less than 25 percent,” reported The Nation, even after our most recent midterm elections. Ironically, a lot of the countries that we often consider to be developing have had women in head of state positions: India, Brazil, and Pakistan just to name a few. It’s time for the US to catch up. This lack of representation makes a difference: should women not have a say in their own reproductive health? Not have a say in policies that will affect them directly? As a society, we’ve come a huge way in removing overt sexism from our culture, but that doesn’t mean the work is done yet. “Whether we like it or not, biological differences can prevent true equality.” Yes, there are evolutionary differences between men and women. Good job figuring that one out. However, suggesting that women are biologically predisposed to be poor leaders is ridiculous, and I’m sure Angela Merkel would agree. If this convoluted logic is actually foolproof, men shouldn’t lead either: aren't they meant to be more aggressive? Not as invested in children? Too competitive? And hey, wasn't World War 2 started by men? Obviously, this thinking is illogical: gender does not determine one’s morality, one’s priorities, or one’s abilities. Women haven’t even had the right to vote for 100 years: it’s too soon to blame their absence in business and politics on genes rather than sexist tendencies. Besides, in other countries, women are far more represented in politics. Take Rwanda, where 57.7% of their legislative branches is female. Men can be great leaders. Women can be great leaders. And they should both be given a chance. “Feminists have to behave in a certain way.” This is actually a side I’ve seen often supported by people who call themselves feminists, and it makes me want to scream. I like dresses. That doesn’t mean I’m not a feminist because I indulge in typical femininity. My twin sister detests dresses. That doesn’t mean she’s not a feminist because she doesn't find joy in typical femininity. There is no mold one must fill; he/she must just believe in equal rights. Similarly, being a feminist means withholding judgements based on gender-stereotypes; one should embrace a woman with revealing clothes and a sexual history just the same as one would embrace one who remains abstinent and dresses modestly: both are just living their lives in a way that makes them happy, without harming anyone around them. Being a stay-at-home parent or being a CEO doesn’t determine one’s value as a person. Judging someone for his/her lifestyle does. Let’s go over the checklist.
If you said no, then the diagnosis is official. Your viewpoints are those of a feminist. |