CC Feminist Majority

FemMaj Meeting Smith 10:00PM

Open Mic
go over changes that happened last week
get more sign ups
need a facebook event
PR will take care of it
talk about the legastics of the bake sale
invite faculty
still looking for a space
FT will provide coffee and hot chocolate, FemMaj will not to provide cups and others stuff

PSA
next meeting conflicts with GWSS dinner
Yalidy will be the FemMaj rep in the future

SOAR dinner
this Friday, it will be awesome, so buy a ticket.

Feminist Majority Meeting 11/6/07

Agenda:
Open Mic
Suicide Prevention Workshop
Announcements

Open Mic:
11/30/07 In Womyn's Center
Angelica is organizing the bake sale part. The baking will happen in Unity House.
Lauren will help organize performers, but if you or your friends want to perform, contact Claribel.

Suicide Prevention Workshop:
New person at the Health Center wants to do a workshop with us on Suicide Prevention with a focus on gender. We could do it as Desert and Dialogue.

Angelica also has a contact at Planned Parenthood who wants to do a workshop on how women relate to each other in feminist circles.

Announcements:
Tristan will do faciliation workshop next week.
Womyn's Center's Grand Opening is 11/19/07
PSA Meeting is Wed. at 5:30 in Queer Resource Center
Vagina Monologue Info. Session 11/11 9:30 Womyn's Center
GWSS Advisory Board Meet and Greet, entirely student run, real dinner and real food 11/28 5:30-7:00

Posted by Tristan

Feminist Majority
10:00 PM Smith

Angelica's letter writing campaign, next week on 31st, 1st, 2nd
We should sell tee shirts as well

Open Mic coming up, we should sell stickers at the door so that people are more likely to pay enterance fees.

11/8 Womyn's Center Opens

11/30 Open Mic. Should we try to combine with World AIDS day, which is the next day?

12/7 Feminist Scholar from Duke will speak on campus.

12/10 Human Rights Day

Clothes Line Project?
A project that uses shirts with statistics and sayings to raise awareness about domestic violence
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Action: Chalk the names of victims
decorate the trees with purple ribbons
have people wear purple shirts
chalk statistics
Meet Sunday at 4:00 to helpl do some of these things.

Feminst Majority General Body Meeting
October 2, 2007
Tuesday 10:00 PM
Smith Common Room

Agenda:
Love Your Body Week
Vote on Unity House Affiliation
Announcements

Love Your Body Week
Committees Met and began sorting out details for there specific projects. The committees again are:
Banner: Laura, Kristina, Claribel
Nutrition and Health Information: Lindsey
Information on Loving Your Body: Rachel and Ashley
Movie Night: Ashley and Angelica
Display: Rachel, Laura, Yalidy and Heather
Updates on Love Your Body Week:
Sex Toy and Masturbation Workshop:
Meagan, from Mykos, will be coming again, she's tentatively planned for Oct. 18th, a Thursday, at 8:00. We should begin looking into other subjects that she could talk about during her workshop, such as fun with partners, safe sex, etc.
Display:
Unfortunately, the Women's Center will not be fully operational by the time of Love Your Body Week. Tristan will look into possibly having the Display be in the LGBTQ center. People can begin sending pictures showing how they love their body by either sending them to Yalidy's mailbox or by emailing them to yamatos@conncoll.edu. Be sure to tell your friends!!!
Movie Night:
The Movie night is currently schedule for Tuesday, Oct. 16th. There will be pizza and a discussion afterwards, but the exact movie has not yet be finalized.
Vote on Unity House Affiliation
After much discussion about the benefits and responsibilities of becoming an official Unity House club at this percise point in time, we decided to delay the decision until December, when we would be electing new Co-Chairs who would have to bear much of the responsibility of being responsible to Unity House. If you have any questions about this decisions, please talk to either Yalidy, Claribel, Heather or Tristan.
Announcements:
Feminst Majority will be working in conjunction with Planned Parenthood on a petition and Letter campaign to pressure the Connecticut Senators to make birth control more affordable. We have already collected 200 petition signatures, but we can do more! For more information about this campaign, please talk to Angelica.
Facilitator Training:
The week after Love Your Body week, Monday Oct. 22, Tristan will do a 20-30 minute presentation about faciliation so we can learn how to run more effective meetings so that we can have time to discuss current events, feminist issues etc. in addition to our awesome plannings.
Notes by Tristan

Feminist Majority, Tuesday Sept. 25th
10:00PM Smith Common Room

Harvest Fest:
Diva Cups
We can't sell them because we can't get enough from the Health Center, but we can offer information about them and offer sign ups
Tee Shirts
We have them and they look awesome. We'll be selling them for $12
Harvest Fest Sign Ups
See email for details and how to sign up

Question about the Rights and Responsibilities of being an Unity Club and Whether We Want to be one
We had a discussion about the positives and negatives of becoming a Unity club, right now it looks like we would prefer not to be an official Unity Club, but still retaining strong contacts with other Unity Clubs. We will be voting on this next week, so come vote!

Facilitation
We want to continue our tradition of having open discussions on women, gender, sex, sexuality and feminism during our meetings after we have finished all our business. In order to make this an easier process, we'll look into having everybody go through some facilitation training, so that we can have productive discussions. If you want to get a head start on learning about facilitation, go here:

Love Your Body Week
Committees need to start meeting!!!! Here are the committees, please contact everyone in your committee:

Make a banner: says you're beautiful, incorporates bodies as letters
Laura, Kristina and Claribel will work on the banner

Nutrition and Health Information: Lindsey will work on this issue

Information on Loving Your Body: Rachel and Ashley will work on this issue

Movie Night: Ashley and Angelica

Collage: Rachel, Laura, Yalidy, Heather will work on this

Future Project?: Birth Control Availability
Birth Control prices have gone up because of a change in US tax laws that no longer exempts colleges from certain protections for selling Birth Control at affordable prices. At Connecticut College the price has jumped $10 this year from $15 to $25.
There is a national campaign to make Birth Control more affordable. Connecticut Senator Dodd is on a health committee that will make influential decisions about this, so he needs to be pressured. Planned Parenthood is launching a petition and letter writing campaign, which we should support and work on.

Announcements:

Self Defense Classes:
ConnColl will be offering Self-Defense Classes in November at a very low price. They will be three classes, Nov. 3rd, Nov. 10th, Nov. 17th Contact Angelica for more information.

Global Leadership Summit: Brown University, Providence Rhode Island
Saturday Oct. 20th, 07
www.feministcampus.org/leadership/brown

Southern Leadership Summit
Oct. 4-8th
Tulane University, New Orleans Louisiana.
www.feministcampus.org/leadership

Posted by Tristan

Notes from Feminist Majority Meeting, 9/18/07
Smith Common Room, 10 PM

Harvestfest
Fundraising Account: $83
Heather has found a place that still has an active deadline for shirts, deadline is tomorrow. We would need to sell 50 shirts to make our money back if we got 100 shirts. Shirts run on the larger sizes. Shirts will be red with white letter with "I [Heart] Feminism" on the front and the following definition on the back: "If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist."
Second Poster Ideas: We're still flexible as we have the poster from last year as the main item.

Love Your Body Week

Ideas:
Yoga Classes
Tee Shirts with "I love ________"
Stickers with "I Love _______"
Stuffing mailboxes
Planned Parenthood speakers, Angelica will look into this
Suicide Prevention Workshops
"Our Bodies, Our Selves" speakers, Laila will look into this
Movie Night
Nutrition and Health Issues
CONNtact ads for health stuff
Collage of body parts that people love, displayed in the Women's Center.

To Do:
Reserve Banner Space at Cro (done)
Make a banner: says you're beautiful, incorporates bodies as letters
Laura, Kristina and Claribel will work on the banner
Nutrition and Health Information: Lindsey will work on this issue
Information on Loving Your Body: Rachel and Ashley will work on this issue
Movie Night: Ashley and Angelica
Collage: Rachel, Laura, Yalidy, Heather will work on this

Announcements:
Oct. 15th, the start of Love Your Body week is the first day after Fall Break, so keep that mind when planning stuff

Thursday, Sept. 20th, 7:30, Morrisson, 2nd Floor, Dessert and Dialogue with Jen Manion on "How Feminism became a dirty word in the US"

Vagina Monologues are starting up. If you are interested, contact Meagan.

Friday, Sept. 21st. 7:00 Women's Center (Freeman 101), Packing and Sorting stuff, music and fun will be had.

Open Mic "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" in the fall, possibly Nov.?

Posted by Tristan

Feminist Majority General Body Meeting, Tuesday Sept. 11th
Smith Common Room 10:00 PM

Introductions

Recap of our history and guiding philosophy
Love Your Body Week
2005 Mural
2006 Mural
Sex Toy and Masturbation Workshop
Emphasis on dicussion after actions
Open Mic, this is what a feminst looks like
Tent of Consent on Valentine's Day
Femenstration Workshop and Party
Diva Cup at the Health Center
Gardasil Workshop

Plans for the future:
Harvest Fest, Seept 29th
Tee Shirts and Posters
Possibly also Diva Cups in coordination with the Health Center
Tee-Shirt Committee
Cristina
Rachel
Lilah
Find out:
about the CC alumn who is the tee shirt business
an ethical person to buy from
time frame
Posters:
Next week everybody should bring ideas

Every Women's Center
has been around for four years
new place will be in the Burdick Dance Hall, finished by Harvest Fest
it is also being redefined along the lines of the LGBT center
Thursday, 7:00 PM Burdick Common Room is a planning meeting
Two work study positions available for the center

Work study position also open for the Pink House, contact Patrica Pallas

SAC representative for FemMaj
Lindsey is elected. Hooray!

Posted by Tristan

Exec. Board Meeting Sept. 6th 2007
7:45 PM

Attendance:
Yalidy
Samantha
Claribel
Colleen
Lauren
Tristan

First meeting changed to 10 PM on Tuesday, as Spectrum and STAND meet at 9.

Womyn's Center will be moving to the dance studio in the burdick basement. This will be completed by Fall Weekend (Sept. 28th)

7:50

Planning for the semester:
Stuff that we traditionally do:
Love Your Body Week (National Day is scheduled for 10/17)
Sex Toy Workshop (instructor, Meagan Amandaloux?)
Wall in Cro
Femenstration
Workshops
Party
7:55

Harvest Fest
Tee-Shirts, should we get new ones?
where do we get them now?
Alumn runs a similar type of operation as Deco Tech
Posters, we should print the old one and also print a new one for people to buy
a place on the internet that have cool feminist images:
anarhca.org
8:00

Activities Fair, Wed. 12th, 2-5
2-3 Tristan
3-4 Clairebell
4-5 Yalidy
More people should be encouraged to sign up (this is a fun and easy thing for new members to do)


New Stuff that we could do:
Suicide Prevention Workshop with the new health care person (Boston Globe: Suicide up 75% among teenage girls from last year)
Unity House Leadership retreat
People should RSVP quickly
Do we want to continue to be part of Unity. There are certain responsibilities that we would have to maintain and also there's the thing of the Unity Directiors being above us now. The General Body will vote on this.

8:05

Some slight secretarial changes:
Two list serves: One for all important info, one for announcements for people who don't come to all the meetings. People can decide which list that they want to be on. We will send an email saying that unless you come to the first meeting we will assume that you will be on the announcements list serve; people who want to stay on the full email list serve of course can choose to do that.
Phone Numbers: We should try to make sure that we have each others phone numbers in case something important comes up.

Posted by Tristan

You know, just in case we were thinking of ordering our feminist slogan t-shirts from American Apparel again:




( Real American Apparel ads behind the cut. )

Please discuss!

At the end of tonight's meeting we talked a little about the Imus incident and about the response that scapegoated hip-hop as the cause of sexism, racism and misogyny but also opened up a forum for a lot of important dialogue on these intersecting issues.

Here's a few news stories you might find of interest:

Don Imus, White Denial and Racism in America - Tim Wise
http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/Imus.html

Oprah's "Town Hall Meeting" videos
http://nahright.com/news/2007/04/18/video-russell-company-on-oprah/#more-1564

An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey - Saul Williams
http://www.counterpunch.org/williams04192007.html

Recommendation to the Recording and Broadcasting  Industries: A Statement by Russell Simmons and Dr. Bejamin Chavis on behalf of hte Hip-Hop Summit Action Network
http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=8508&cha=7

New York City’s Power 105.1 Stops Playing Degrading Songs
http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=9349

Is Hip Hop Really the Blame for this Don Imus Thing? - Davey D
http://www.thuglifearmy.com/news/?id=3563

The art of diversion - Tara Henely
http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=9172

Why Do Hip-Hop Bloggers Hate Women? - Billy Sunday
http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=9484

Hear me out: Hip-Hop and Gender Criticism - dnA

http://www.racialicious.com/2007/05/01/hear-me-out-hip-hop-and-gender-criticism/#more-626

Hip-Hop's socially conscious side - Jeff Chang and Dave Zirin
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-zirin23apr23,0,3088270.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Here's what Bassey wrote a few weeks ago, and then a few of my thoughts.  I'll also post this email on livejournal (ccfemmaj.livejournal.com) so please go there to engage in dialogue via the comments section.

from bassey:

I think what it boils down to is less, "If you can, why can't I?" and more, "Why do you want to?" If it's okay for me to make certain statements about my sister or mother or brother, what is it about that is so pressing that members outside of my family feel it necessary to 'chime in'.
I have a huge problem with how the rap world depicts black women and how demeaning that is for black people and women but that does not now nor does that ever "excuse" people like Imus or Michael Richards or Mel Gibson. My issues with Ludacriss and R Kelly and the Ying Yan twins and all teh execs over at BET are seperate and should be dealt with on a larger level.

That being said, I do think that black people in general need to take collective responsibility for how young black girls are being viewed in this society. To the extent where an "Imus" can make that statement and not feel a thing about it until called out.
The outrage should be great because we disallow this from anybody not that we disallow it from certain groups.
But righ tnow, the issue is Imus, the rest will and should be dealt with in the appropriate historical context.

 

I think she hits on what I've been feeling but did not know how to articulate.  It is one thing to say 'the rappers are wrong', but it's another, totally illogical immature thing to argue, "Well they did it first..."  seriously immature, don't you think?  This conversation about hip-hop and misogyny is important to have but should not be entertained soley as a scapegoat for the Imus issue.  It is disturbing to realize that the underlying arguement seems to be "Well they are doing it so why can't I?"  like Bassey says, why do you want to?