Tupac Amaru Shakur & My Feminism

Many who think of feminism would not look to the late rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur as inspirational, I however do. Tupac was a rapper in the early 1990s up until his tragic death in 1996. Although many of his lyrics came across as violent or misogynistic he had a softer side to him, one which valued women. Rap culture has a negative image placed upon it, that it is as far from feminism as possible, but Tupac found ways to break from those negative images. 

One song in particular which comes across with a feminist anthem is his 1993 hit Keep Ya Head Up. This song talks about the struggles of both young men and women, but the message is clear: have respect for women. For an artist just breaking into the rap scene, trying to make a name for himself, a song such as this one shows his desire to uplift all. You can listen to the song here, but this is a few verses from the song: 

“And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up”

As you can see, lyrics such as these are usually unheard of in rap songs; it is more common to hear the exact opposite. I am not going to say that Tupac was the perfect rapper who always respected women, because that wasn’t always the case. However, Tupac found a way to speak to young men, to encourage them to treat females better.  This song has always been an inspirational song for me because it discusses a need to end violence against women in a way that I have yet to hear another rap star express it. 

He also found a way to connect to women and their struggles. An example of Tupac’s connection to women’s struggles is evident in his song Brenda’s Got a Baby (Click here to listen). This song comes off of his debut 1991 album and discusses a young female who is faced with a wide range of issues such as: family violence, rape, teen pregnancy, drugs, prostitution and more. What he is doing with this song is educating his community that no matter what hardships you are faced with, this should not limit you. Although Tupac himself may have never identified as a feminist, it is clear through his music that he does have feminist motivations. 

Apart from uplifting women, Tupac found ways to speak to his followers, to let them know that they can prosper in life. Another piece of Tupac’s work which I hold close is his poem The Rose That Grew From Concrete. This poem is a powerful piece of encouragement for all. It has a feminist anthem to it in the sense that it is advocating triumph over hardships.

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared."

I link Tupac to my feminism because his words are encouraging, they help me go on when I feel like giving up on causes I believe in. I also applaud him for aiming to change the world through a wide variety of his songs, unlike other artists of his time. I also link Tupac to my feminism because of his relationship with his mother. Tupac credits his mother as his source for his compassion to women, and to struggles in general. Afeni Shakur (his mother) was a Black Panther, so as he was growing up he watched and learned from her. I look up to my mother, and I learn everything from her as well. Although in the end the world tragically lost Tupac, we still have many generations listening to his words, and if that creates a change on some level, then that is amazing. 

"I like to think I am socially aware. I think there should be drug class, a sex education class. A real sex education class. A class about police brutality. There should be a class on apartheid. There should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not. There are classes on...gym. Physical education. Let's learn volleyball." --Tupac Shakur

This quote gets to me every time. All throughout high school I always thought to myself how pointless certain classes were, I learned many things not from school, but from personal experience and my connections to certain types of media. 


"So I thought, that's what I'm going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they'll stop it quick." --Tupac Shakur



Resources:
Tupac Resurrection, 2003 film. 

©2011, Zain Alglaieny

Girl vs. Woman

While working on an assignment this semester for my third wave feminism class I found myself immersed in this issue of girl vs. woman. Jennifer Baumgardener and Amy Richards published an article entitled "Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying About the Thong" and in this article they discuss the idea of femininity within feminism. The bulk of their argument is that feminism should accept femininity, which is acceptable there is nothing wrong with that. However, what is wrong is the fact that they are calling this a "girlie" feminism. 

I have always had a strong issue against calling grown women, over the age of twenty “girls” rather than calling them women. I believe that when you call a woman a girl, you are diminishing her worth, you are eliminating her power. If we look at music, from any genre, we have grown men lusting after grown women, but they choose to call them “girl” or “baby”, why is that? Would a grown woman lusting after a man resort to calling him “boy”? I don’t think so; if she did she would be diminishing his power as a man.  Also, when we want to describe a strong man we use terms such as “macho-man” not “macho-boy” because man is more powerful than boy. 

My personal stand on this topic is this: are all females to remain girls for the remainder of their lives, or do we not grow and become women? I see the use of “girl” as a form of violence, it diminishes a woman, and it infantilizes her and creates an image of woman as the weaker sex. I refuse to identify myself as girl, I am twenty-one year old woman, and I am no longer the girl from my childhood days. What is so wrong with identifying with the term woman? Absolutely nothing, the term woman to me emits power, and the term girlie feeds into men’s fantasies, why should we feed them what they want?

Resources:

Baumgardener, J. & Richards, A. (2004) “Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Thong” in All About the Girl: Culture, Power, and Identity, (Eds.) Anita Harris & Michelle Fine. Routledge, pp.59-67. 

©2011, Zain Alglaieny

Feminist Fact - Second Wave Activism

As a women’s studies major I have always been introduced to the works of Gloria Steinem, and her work is very interesting. Gloria Steinem is a feminist activist who focuses her activism in many areas of the social justice spectrum. She is also an author with many published works. One of my favorite pieces by her is an article from the October 1978 issue of Ms. Magazine: If Men Could Menstruate. This was a short piece about what the world would be like if males menstruated instead of females, it pokes fun at men and patriarchal ideals in society.

Gloria Steinem is one of the co-founders of Ms. Magazine, a prominent feminist magazine which had its beginnings in the early 1970s. I have yet to purchase a hard copy of this magazine, but I do frequently visit the Ms. Magazine blog website for my daily feminist news stories. As a previous blog post of mine mentions, I am not a fan of popular magazines, but Ms. Magazine is an exception to this. Ms. presents the type of magazine I wish all magazines were, a magazine which is dedicated to the empowerment of women and not the degradation of women.

When I look at prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem, I am often left wondering whether or not I fit as a feminist because I have not been as active as those types of feminists. I think this is a misconception I have regarding feminism, the misconception that you need to be an active activist to be a feminist. But as I re-evaluate my interpretations of feminism I begin to understand that you do not need to be like Gloria Steinem or others like her, in order to be a true feminist. What you need is a belief in the equality of women and the end of all oppressions. 

Resources: http://www.gloriasteinem.com/

©2011, Zain Alglaieny

Gender Performance

The feminist theory of gender performativity comes from the prominent feminist Judith Butler who discusses this issue in her 1990 book Gender Trouble. Butler theorizes on page 24 of her book that gender is performed because “gender proves to be performative –that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed.” For me what this means is that gender is fluidly performed based on attributions we have given to each gender (a gender norm).

The theory of gender performativity has always been something of interest to me, mainly because it is not a theory I had learned in high school, only in university. I think that in a way yes we do all perform our genders, but is this wrong if we are comfortable doing so? In my own life I have not come across anyone who was uncomfortable being either male or female or who was uncomfortable performing those genders…maybe I am just not meeting enough people. The media however does play an integral role when it comes to gender performance, this could be through television shows and commercials which prescribe certain roles for women and men. 

I recently came across this video of a young boy who looks to be no older than 10 years old. In the video he is provocatively dressed in female attire and provocatively dancing to a pop song. I was stunned after watching this video, the first thing I thought was “where are his parents and why are they condoning such behavior?” It is clear in the video that someone may be filming him because of the way the camera zooms. What is evident in this video is that this young boy is performing gender as a female character. I am not sure if this boy was doing this for entertainment, peer pressure, or just out of a desire to explore a feminine nature within himself. Take a look and leave me your comments with regards to what you thought about the video. 

Click Here For Video

Resources:
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. USA. pg.25

©2011, Zain Alglaieny

Feminist Fact – First Wave Warriors

How many Canadians have heard of the Persons Case? How many Canadians have heard of The Famous Five? I know the answer for me is I have heard of both, however I was not taught about either in my elementary or secondary school history classes. It was not until I began post-secondary education that I heard about either, so my goal here is to provide some basic information for my readers on who the Famous Five are and what the Persons Case is. 

The Famous Five was a group of five Canadian women from Alberta, Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney an Irene Parlby, who paved a political path for Canadian women. These women brought about the Persons Case, which lobbied for women to be considered persons under Canada’s constitution. Their efforts began in 1927 when the group of women petitioned the government asking if women were included under the term “persons” in Section 24 of the British North America Act; the answer was no. What this meant was women could not be appointed to the senate, and it was crucial that women be able to have a place in the senate in order to have equity. The women took further action by appealing to the Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council in 1929 (this was the highest court of appeals for Canada at the time). The Privy Council decided on October 18, 1929 that the word persons in Section 24 of the BNA would include both men and women.

Political victory came about for Canadian women in 1929 thanks to the efforts of the Famous Five. Without their effort who knows what the future of women in government would look like. I find it disheartening that I was only introduced to these women and this case in my post-secondary education; these women had a major influence on Canadian history and need more recognition in both elementary and secondary education. I guess it is true what they say: history is his-story, not her-story.  

These women have helped me to begin shaping my feminism in a few ways:

1.  I have the opportunity to live in a generation where I do not need to fight to be considered a person under the law, so to them I am thankful for providing this luxury to me.
   
2. I have the ability to fight for causes I believe in because they are an image of encouragement to me; if they can do it I can do it.
   
3. If feminism is about standing up for a cause and battling through until you get what not only you, but all women, truly deserve, then count me in as a feminist!

Resources: Library and Archives Canada 

©2011, Zain Alglaieny

Damaging Messages

All magazines have their flaws, but there is one magazine I feel that speaking as a woman is very flawed, this magazine is Cosmopolitan Magazine. Let me explain a few of the problems I have:

1. Any and all articles which discuss sex only discuss heterosexual sex, with an emphasis on pleasuring your man. Where are the articles for female (maybe even male) readers who do not engage in heterosexual sex? Where are the articles that discuss pleasuring the woman as opposed to the man?
   
   
2. There are many articles which feature sections such as how to score a man – again there is the suggestion by this magazine that only heterosexual women read this magazine.
   
   
3. The list can continue based on any given issue.
   
   

One of the biggest problems I have had with Cosmopolitan Magazine comes from the March 2011 Vol.250, No.3 issue. The article in question is entitled “101 Things About Men” and it features a poll entitled “Why Guys Deserve Sex…According to Them” on page 61. The poll came about after the trending topic #sheowesmesexif gained popularity on the social networking site Twitter.  Cosmopolitan Magazine does say they want to see a Twitter craze of “#hedeservesakickintheballsif” but then they continue to list responses from men as to why men feel entitled to sex. It is absolutely disgusting for a magazine to print reasons why men feel they are entitled to sex, because the reality is NOBODY is entitled to sex no matter what they think. An article such as this simply reinforces the rape myths that society loves to cling to when a woman is raped or assaulted.

I myself have never been raped or assaulted, but I have worked in a setting with women who have, and an article such as this one is truly damaging to a survivor of rape or assault. We need to have empowering articles for women in magazines, not articles which could damage a woman’s self worth. One thing I am thankful for is that I did not purchase this magazine, because had I done so I would not be able to stomach the fact that my monetary contributions would allow such a distasteful article to be published.

After reading this article I was reminded of my very first women’s studies class in my first semester of my first year: 53-100 Women in Canadian Society. In this course we were introduced to the feminist Jean Kilbourne whose work focuses on women in advertising, and then we had to prepare a group project which examined women in advertising. By the time the course ended, I found myself thinking “I will never ever purchase or read another magazine” and for the most part I have done a good job. I believe that this is my feminism shining through and shedding light on what to accept and what to reject. Back in high school I had a yearly subscription to Teen People, and looking back at those issues now all I can think is “why did I allow myself to read such garbage?!” 

Click for more information on Jean Kilbourne

©2011, Zain Alglaieny

Subliminal Message Anyone?

I was recently helping a friend with her assignment by looking up commercials on YouTube, and I stumbled upon this interesting M&M's Commercial. I won't give the hidden message away, watch the video and then leave a comment once you have found the message (if you are not the first to leave a comment, watch the video first before reading comments).

I know that this is not the first commercial ever to place subliminal messages in their advertisement of a product, but this one was just so out there (for me anyway) I just had to post right away and see what others think about it.