Posts Tagged ‘sexuality’
They're Doing It: Jaclyn Friedman Knows What You Really Really Want (Jenn Pozner Interview and Excerpts)
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I am thrilled to share with 9 Ways readers this post generously contributed by Jenn Pozner and posted originally on her WIMN Blog. In it, she interviews Jaclyn Friedman, author of an important new book, What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. The title gives you a great intro, so I won’t embellish except to say that Jenn did a great interview, embellished with her own media critique expertise, and you should read her book Reality Bites Back too!
What power tool is being used here? Oh so many–Define your own terms (about sex) for one and Create a Movement (these two are a powerhouse media justice movement), for sure. See what you think–and read all the way to the latter half of the post for an excerpt from Jaclyn’s book that will make you want to buy it right away.
Amy’s Story: How I Learned I Matter
Sit down. Pour yourself a cup of tea and know that you are going to need some time to read author Amy Ferris’s story slowly and carefully. It will sear you. It will uplift you. I encourage you to write your thoughts about it here too. Thank you, Amy for sharing it.
First, here’s the cover note Amy sent to me, inviting me to post it so all of you could read it too, then her essay in full:
gloria:
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i wrote this essay about a week, week and half ago, on the advice of my amazing therapist. i have been dealing with such deep shame, deep doubt… and she helped me pull this up and out. and on the page.
righting my life. or … writing my life. as the case may be.
Amy's Story: How I Learned I Matter
Sit down. Pour yourself a cup of tea and know that you are going to need some time to read author Amy Ferris’s story slowly and carefully. It will sear you. It will uplift you. I encourage you to write your thoughts about it here too. Thank you, Amy for sharing it.
First, here’s the cover note Amy sent to me, inviting me to post it so all of you could read it too, then her essay in full:
Read Moregloria:
i wrote this essay about a week, week and half ago, on the advice of my amazing therapist. i have been dealing with such deep shame, deep doubt… and she helped me pull this up and out. and on the page.
righting my life. or … writing my life. as the case may be.
i’ve sent it to 3 people for both a reaction and their advice where to place it/put it. three amazing writer friends – two who are survivors, and one who just came out. they were – without sounding too bloated – absolutely amazed by this essay. they were so taken aback by my truth, my story… this piece.
i wanted to send it to you, after seeing on your blog that you are asking for stories.
this is my story.
it’s very painful.
it’s very raw.
it’s very liberating.
i am so fucking proud to have been able to write it, say it, share it, give it, open up an heart or two. make a difference.
i hope it saves many, many lives.
and i hope, deeply, more than anything, that my story gives women courage to stand in their truth, to tell their story … and that they too realize that their lives matter oh so much.
Helen Zia: A Disobedient Daughter and Her Passion For Justice
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I am delighted to welcome a very powered young woman, Lee Taylor, as a regular guest poster. Lee is a writer and feminist activist who is a senior at SUNY Purchase College majoring in History and minoring in Women’s Studies. She is currently working on her senior thesis about Helen Rogers Reid, her great-grandmother, and former President of the New York Herald Tribune. After she graduates she plans on teaching high school. I’m especially thrilled that her first post here is a profile of my friend and Women’s Media Center board member sister, Helen Zia.
Helen Zia was born into a Chinese American family in New Jersey in 1952. Although the fifties was a time Lee Taylor and Helen Ziaof great conformity, the seeds of revolution were sown the day that Zia was born. Zia was brought into an immigrant family which observed traditional Confucian beliefs, including the Three Obediences: a daughter must obey her father, a wife must obey her husband, and a widow must obey her son; the trajectory of Zia’s life proves that she was truly a radical visionary and community organizer who broke seemingly insurmountable social and cultural barriers.
Helen Zia graduated from Princeton University in the first class that accepted women. She was also breaking racial boundaries as one of the few female, Asian American members of the prestigious university. Zia attended Princeton on a full scholarship, working her way through school and majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
She was highly conscious of and became an active participant in the political transformations taking place in her young adulthood. Zia and her generation witnessed the nascent feminist movement, and the full-fledged civil rights movement, as well as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Hers was the baby boom generation – huge numbers of young people who were dissatisfied by their government’s war in Vietnam and inequality at home – they were idealistic about the opportunities for peace and sisterhood.
Zia’s career experiences after Princeton, however, showed that the youth-led social justice movements had not reached all areas of society. After graduation, Zia enrolled in Tufts Medical School in Boston. She moved to Boston’s South End; a neighborhood then predominantly inhabited by low-income Chinese, Puerto Rican, and African Americans, far from the glamorous place it is today. Helen soon discovered that medicine, a conservative white and male institution at the time, was not a friendly place for an Asian American woman committed to progressive social change. After two years of medical school, Zia felt a sincere urge to get involved in grassroots efforts to change troubled communities – she quit medical school and became a construction worker in her South End community, which offered Zia a way to create change, educate herself on community needs, and pay the bills.
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