Introducing M{y}na!

Friends, meet M{y}na! As promised, it's my Ireland focused collaborative feminist blog. I'm very excited for this, and can't wait for it to get off the ground. I'm really impressed with the WordPress platform, and I'll probably be using it for any future blogs (sorry blogger!). It's less basic, and is much better suited for collaborative projects. It might be a bit slow at the start, but I'm hoping to get at least two other regular contributors as well as lots of guest bloggers. So what are you waiting for? Get on over there if you're feminist-ly inclined :D

Right So...

Due to lots of different issues I've had to take quite a break from blogging, thus the absense of posting. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do about this space; I started to feel like it rambled a bit (Me ramble?? Never!) and lost some of its focus. But I'll probably keep it to talk about travels & reviews about Dublin. In terms of the more personal aspects of my life, well if we don't email or aren't friends on facebook you probably shouldn't know them!

However, I'm going to start up a new much more topical blog about feminist activism & revolution in Ireland, in collaboration with a few of my classmates; I'm really looking forward to it! I will definitely post the address to it here as soon as we've got everything sorted. Thanks for reading :)

Outrageous Acts

I've decided to do one outrageous act a day, as this website/project by the Ms. Foundation is calling for people to do.  

This video interview with Gloria Steinem in particular has inspired me.

Discovered the project through Feministing, who had these awesome acts (among others) to add to the ever growing list: 

1. Buzz cut your hair.

2. Give a huge tip to someone that makes you coffee.
3. Join a union.
4. Come out at work.
5. Learn everything you can about a foreign conflict.
6. Tell the person you're making out with exactly how you like it.
7. Tell an old woman how beautiful she is.
8. Stop buying magazines that make you feel like shit about your body. 
9. Write a letter telling that magazine why you're not buying it anymore.
10. Go see an independent film made by a woman.

And so far I've added a few of my own: grow my own herbs and vegetables, tell people why victim blaming Rihanna is horrific (and giving props to people who do the same thing - yeah Oprah and Tyra!), share Outrageous Acts with all of you, have a rogue compost pile and guerilla garden on campus, and see a documentary about Uganda's child soldiers like I did tonight. 

But I'm feeling a little more outraged about this last one than I thought I would.  Not about the subject matter, but about how it was presented.  This is an extraordinarily pressing cause, and we should be taking action on it, but frankly I was offended at how the documentary was made and talked about the presenter.   So in the spirit of outrageous acts I've decided to share my critique.  Three young, trendy and clearly well off white boys go to Uganda to "make a difference".  Throughout the film there is such a pervasive undercurrent of  privilege and basic imperialism that I felt sick.  The rhetoric is all about "what we did," and "how we helped".  Maybe these guys chose this angle to appeal to youthful, privileged and globally Northern audiences that would identify with them, but I'm pretty sure this is going too easy on them.  Clearly these boys haven't unpacked their own knapsack of privilege, because there is such a depressing and ever-present theme of the 'great white savior' going on here.  The Ugandan government and it's citizens are predominantly presented as either beastly monsters or grateful supplicants.   The only person breaking that mould in the film was Betty Bigombe, the chief negotiator between the Ugandan government and the reble forces of the LRA.  So go you, Ms. Bigombe!  And finally towards the end of the film, in the crowd shots of action being taken (which we are to assume is happening in the United States) the kids in the foreground and close-ups are all white and trendy.  (Side-note, speaking of trendy, when I saw that young dude #2 was wearing one of those fake kaffiyehs - his was purple and yellow - I almost left the lecture hall.  Seriously?? You're supposed to be an activist and yet you'll make a mockery of another struggle's symbols? grrr)  

So that's my true outrageous act for today.  Not being afraid to critique something even if it is a good cause.  I've done some quick research and here's a local, emancipatory organization that supports the people of Northern Uganda and former child soldiers if you're interested:   http://www.globalgiving.com/pr/700/proj699a.html 

but please feel free to find your own cause to support.  Let us never be silent in the name of the greater good!!

Transgender Day of Rememberance

I haven't been particularly political on this blog yet, but I wanted to let everyone know that today (Nov. 20th) is the International Transgender Day of Rememberance. Transgender people throughout the world have a horrifically high chance of experiencing violence and murder; in fact the Human Rights Campaign states that American Transgender people potentially have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. Even if that's an inflated number the conservative estimate is that transgendered people are murdered at 10 times the rate of everyone else. These are hate crimes. This shouldn't be happening. Period. So today is a day to remember the wrongfully dead among the transgender community. It's still early enough in the day for most of y'all to find an event in your city and attend in solidarity, in mourning, in rage, or in respect. And if you're in Ireland and want to know more check out the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland (TENI) here, or Si here. I'd particularly recommend TENI, as I've met the amazing Chairperson Cat McIlroy. Thanks for reading.


Remembering the (reported) victims of 2008

ps- I apologize for turning the comments moderation on, but ... I figured I needed to.