this has got to stop

it's that time of year again when i pretend that i don't just talk about myself day in and day out. yup, blog action day. i had kinda sorta forgotten about blog action day this year, but the topic is inequality, and i was planning on writing something about this anyway, so, killing two birds with one stone or what have you.

the inequality i want to discuss is directly related to the patriarchy, violence against women, and rape culture, and can be addressed with a little thing called feminism. i am not going to go into a long rant about this (because i would go on forever and there is actually a specific story i want to discuss today), but i will say that if you claim to not be a feminist, you are one of three things: lying, misunderstanding the meaning of feminism (which is understandable in this world of media misinformation), or an asshole.

i don't know how many of you know anita sarkeesian, but i think i posted about her on my blog before and she's the creator of the video series tropes vs. women. anyway, she was supposed to speak yesterday morning at Utah State University's Center for Women and Gender. a few days before the event, though, several people at the university began getting threats. a utah state student claimed to have "a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs" and threatened to massacre sarkeesian and anyone who showed up for her talk. his threatening email states "feminism has ruined my life and i will have my revenge." it also said that the author "will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America." sarkeesian asked if weapons would be allowed at the talk, and she was told that, according to utah state law regarding the carrying of firearms, if the person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to bring it to the event.

so to recap, the authorities told sarkeesian, who has had multiple death threats because of her line of work (which in and of itself is ridiculous), that despite the fact that there was a credible threat to both her and countless other people (mainly women), a threat which specifically referenced a mass male-on-female attack from the past (the montreal massacre), they wouldn't take the necessary steps to protect these women because it would infringe on people's right to carry weapons. um... what?

we are living in a world where high school football players can videotape themselves raping a drugged classmate, but then she's the bad guy for "ruining their promising football careers." a world where a student kills a girl in his class because she said no when he asked her to prom (she was going with her steady boyfriend, but that shouldn't make a difference) and all the media can talk about is how great of a kid he was and how hard this must be on his parents. uh, the kid brought a knife to school because he knew she would say no, he felt entitled enough to end her life, and it's him and his parents we should be feeling sorry for? how does that make any sense? we are living in a world where the reaction to emma watson calling on men to support feminism was death threats and threats to leak nude photos. a world where women are paid less to do the same job and then fired if they ask for a raise because they are "too aggressive."

but go ahead and listen to the condescending people who tell you that feminism is no longer needed. there's no inequality around here.

(if you're interested, you can find my previous blog action day posts here, here, here, here, and here.)

*Elephant - Damien Rice

but it's your right

so, it's time for another blog action day. you can read previous blog action day posts of mine here, here, here, and here. this year, the topic is human rights.

according to the united nations, "Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible."

we had a discussion recently in my public policy class about human rights, using dworkin's taking rights seriously as a resource. we started out only discussing the right to liberty, which dworkin insisted was nonsense. his reasoning was that if something is a core right (or a basic right or a human right, whichever word you want to use) then it would be wrong for the government to curb that right. in order to to rule, enforce stability of the state, and protect a nation, the government is constantly curbing people's liberty. laws may be instituted for the good of the people, but they are still taking away some of your liberties. the consensus we reached in the end was that people use the term "human right" much too lightly. everything these days is a human rights issue, it seems. what we decided was that rights are not about what's given to you but what can't be taken away. and while i am well aware that there are human rights violations going on every minute of every day all over the world, i am equally aware that not everything touted as a human rights violation actually is.

for the real human rights violations, though, here are some ways that you can help:

• be knowledgeable about human rights 
• campaign for human rights in your community. 
• write your representative (in countries where this applies)
• keep aware by signing up for human rights email alerts
• donate to places like amnesty international and others

*It's All Right - Velvet Underground

together we can take it to the end of the line

the subject for blog action day this year is "the power of we," and though i'm sure that it was originally intended to celebrate the people who work together for disaster relief and charity drives and historical movements and the like, i'm deciding to celebrate a different group of people.

when i was little, i wanted to be a writer, and that dream has never really gone away. but there have been times when it was pushed to the back burner while i tended to more immediate needs. there have been times when it was shoved so far back in the closet of my mind that i could barely even remember that it existed, and i was certainly not working towards it in any way.

and then i few years ago i stumbled upon nanowrimo, and it opened me up to a huge group of people all over the world that were connected by one thing: a love for writing. some of the writers were published, but many were not. some had been writing for years and others had just recently decided that they liked it. some were young and some were old. some liked mystery, some young adult, and some fanfiction. it didn't matter really, what or where or how. one month a year, these people came together and by a mixture of encouragement, guilt, and moral support helped members of the community to complete a fifty thousand word novel in thirty days.

i credit nanowrimo for helping me realize, again, just how much writing means to me. but it would never have worked without the community of writers that come together every november to work towards a common goal. sure, we may not be curing cancer or feeding every starving child in africa, but we are still doing something pretty amazing. and at times i think that it may have just saved me.

*Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler

there's too much food on my plate

i woke up today, took a shower, and then made myself a grilled bagel (have i ever mentioned my love for grilled bagels on here? i lovelovelove them) with banana peppers for breakfast. my husband had a cheddar cheese omelet and toast with jam and butter. we just opened our fridge and everything was right there waiting for us to devour it. fresh and packaged and kept cool by electricity. when breakfast comes this easily to you, it's sometimes hard not to take it for granted.

but for a lot of the world, fridges filled with food is not something to sneeze at. for some people, it's about as unobtainable as unicorns and leprechauns. we all grew up with our parents telling us to finish our plates because there were starving children in africa. as we grow older, we are asked to do more for these children than just eat our vegetables. and with the entire world in a recession, it's not only the children in africa who are starving anymore. when you have a fridge full of food, it's the least you can do to try and help those who don't. just being more conscientious about the food crisis is a step in the right direction, though there are several places you could go to donate money. you could also look up your local food bank and donate stuff there. there are easier ways to help, too, like playing online games like free rice which donates twenty grains of rice for every correct vocabulary word you get.

while still debating about what to write for this year's blog action day, i came across this site which has ten facts about food that i found really cool. for example, did you know that the color of the twisty-tie thing on bread changes in accordance with which day the bread was baked? or how about that sodas are called soft drinks because soft drinks were those with no alcohol, as compared to "hard drinks?" you know how twinkies supposedly last forever? yeah, well, their shelf life is really only twenty five days. i'll let you all go read through the rest yourself, but there were some really cool things on there.

anyway, food. stop taking it for granted.

*Too Much Food - Jason Mraz

do it for the living and do it for the dead, do it for the monsters under your bed, do it for the teenagers and do it for your mom

i remember having a conversation with two friends last year about drinking water from the bathroom sink. one said she did it all the time, the other thought it was the grossest thing in the world. "i'm sure it's clean... enough, but ew. i don't drink tap water," was how she described it. while we are discussing the possible grossness of drinking tap water, 38,000 kids are dying every week because they can't get any clean water to drink, which, by the way, was declared a human right by the UN. a lot of people i know, including my friend, drink bottled water instead. (the US, Mexico, and China use more bottled water than anywhere else, with the US using an average of 200 bottles per person per year. 86% of these are never recycled. read this for more bottled water information. there's even a video to watch at the end of that page.)

now, i'm not telling you all to stop drinking bottled water and switch to tap (or buy yourself a brita filter) to save the world (except that i totally am). instead, i'm just going to open your eyes to a few ways you're spending water every day that you probably didn't know about (i know a lot of these came as a surprise to me):

[one] charging an iPhone uses up half a liter of water (power plants don't run on love). on an average day, a US power plant will use 500 billion liters of fresh water. (can't grasp how much that is? well, it's more than double what flows through the Nile.)

[two] look at you're outfit. it takes 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton for one pair of jeans, and 400 gallons of water to grow enough cotton for a plain cotton shirt.

[three] think about what you eat in a day - the normal stuff. that is all using way more water than you think. it takes 200 liters of water to produce one cup of milk, 140 liters for a cup of black coffee (53 gallons to make a to-go latte), 185 liters to make a bag of chips, 135 liters for an egg, and a whopping 2,400 liters for just one hamburger. (and no, i'm not talking about a big mac or a triple whopper with cheese.)

[four] it takes 39, 090 gallons of water to make a car. each tire requires 518 gallons of water to be made.

when you're using that much water without even realizing it, do you really want to waste extra water by not turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth or taking showers that span hours?

interesting fact: more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet. (that means water is getting contaminated with sewage.)

interesting fact number two: unsafe drinking water kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.

why the sudden interest in water? it's Blog Action Day and the water issue is this year's topic. it's a much bigger issue than you may think (you know, if you live under a rock or in a cloud of self-involvement or something). so make yourself useful and get off your computer that is using way to much water to be powered and go dig till you find a spring or well or something. or, you could just spread the word, try to use less water, and maybe donate to a water cause?

*Loose Lips - Kimya Dawson

make a change

i decided to take a break from talking about myself to get involved in something a bit (or a whole lot) bigger. today's blog post is part of 2009's Blog Action Day. for those of you who don't know what blog action day is, it's basically a bunch of bloggers from all over the world (it was over 7000 last time i checked) all posting about the same thing on the same day. this year's topic is climate change, and since i have tons of time to procrastinate, i figured i'd at least try and save the world or something while doing it. or at least spread the word so someone somewhere can save the world... i'll be in the background blogging about it.

just in case you've been living under a rock for the past few years and have never heard of climate change, here's wikipedia's definition: a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. It can be a change in the average weather or a change in the distribution of weather events around an average (for example, greater or fewer extreme weather events). got it??

we've all started to feel the effects of climate change. you know the feeling that mother nature is suddenly menopausal?? yeah, that's because of global warming. but weather on crack is not the only thing we can look forward to if we dont start to do something. if you like skiing, christmas trees, baseball (bats are made of ash tree which are disappearing), salmon, lobster, or coral... well, your luck sucks cause they're pretty much goners. so are wildflowers, guacamole, almonds, and french fries. if you like mosquitoes, poison ivy, bear attacks, and cannibal polar bears, though, you should go buy yourself a lottery ticket! we'll have loads of them once this global warming really starts to kick in. oceans are turning to acid and diseases thought to have been wiped out are making a comeback.

picture this: winter vacation spent scratching rashes and bug bites as you sit around a fake tree locked in a cabin because of the starving bears surrounded by fake snow... sounds great, right??

if you were crazy enough to answer no, then there's a bunch of stuff you can do to prevent it from happening. there's all the normal things like using those "green" fluorescent lights, takingshorter showers, and using recycled paper. turn your thermostat down two degrees in the winter and up two in the summer. plant a tree and turn off electronics when youre not using them (and no, screen savers dont count). but things like covering your pots while cooking, unplugging electronics when not in use, and using an old-fashioned lawn mower (the push without an engine kind) also help. oh, and harassing congressmen and other more important people than yourself until they do something is always a good idea.

use one of these carbon calculators to find out just how much of the destruction of the world is your fault and how much money you can pay to make up for it. do you really want the death of the koala bears on your hands? do you?

click here to read more effects of global warming that you can use to motivate you to get out your cape (made from all green recycled materials of course) and save the world.

go to www.blogactionday.org to read/learn more.

*Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson