Cupcakes for Wage Equality

My Activism project is about educating people about the pay gap between various genders and races of the human population. I participated with the WILL group’s Pay Equity Day bake sale and help them out with it. The premise of this activism is simple; we would host a bake sale about the wage gap between Americans and sell baked goods to individuals based on what they self identify as. We also stated when we talked to individuals we did not have adequate data about non-binary individuals. Also, we noted that the data we had for this bake sale was outdated, but it was the most recent information we could find.

 

This is just an example of the data we used for the wage gap poster that we used for people to self-identify and to pay for the baked goods from. For example, the default $1.00 would be White men, which we would get from the average weekly earnings of men/ the default, which would = $986/$986 = $1.00. We did this for all of the values, and were able to make a chart from this.

 

 

Pussy Riot

Pussy Riot is a Russian activist punk band. They protest against Putin and want LGTBQ and women’s rights. Pussy Riot is best known for their performance in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, which a symbol of both government and religious corruption. The group performed the song “Holy Shit” and were arrested within a few seconds for hooliganism.

watch?v=grEBLskpDWQ

Activism With my Daughter – LGBTQIA Allies

I had the pleasure of doing my activist project with my teen daughter, Valhalla. As a queer family, we knew we wanted to do a project that would in some way help out the LGBTQ people in our community. Our plan became more focused when we were
approached by a mother who’s teen daughter had come out and was bullied so badly in her school that she attempted suicide.Talking to this mother inspired us to do a project directed at LGBTQ youth.

Students React To: Slut-Shaming!

For my activism project I decided to perform a social experiment on the students of UMBC. I chose to do the project on slut-shaming because for the past 2 years I have been curious about whether or not people understand how harmful that form of shaming can be especially on young women or if they do it unknowingly.

In order to complete this experiment I formulated 3 situations based on true stories and asked each student to give their HONEST opinion. However, I did not tell the students the circumstances of the situations (in which the girls committed suicide because they were slut-shamed at school).

STEM Inequity

Throughout this semester I worked with first graders at a low-income Baltimore elementary school with the aim of piquing interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education. The decision of focusing on STEM education was influenced mainly by my own experiences. I went to a low-income high school with a large minority population but with few resources. There weren’t a wide variety of advanced placement (AP) courses available to me due to the lack of student interest and qualified educators. In fact one teacher even admitted to not knowing what she was doing for our AP US History course!

Volunteering and New Ways of Doing Activism

Initially, I planned out an ambitious activist project, which consisted of collecting pads and tampons for homeless women, from the students of UMBC. Despite the initial rush I felt at coming up with an idea that I felt fit the definition of activism perfectly, my project soon crashed and burned because of inadequate preparation and awareness of exactly what I needed to do. This was a disappointing blow for me, but as the semester went on and I learned more about activism, both from GWST 200 and from the actions of others around me, especially with regard to the events in Baltimore, I realized that something else I was doing throughout this spring counted as activism. That is, it was something that was effecting positive change, even though it was not on a relatively large scale and did not immediately seem radical.

Sharing Gender Space

Have you ever been walking down a straight path only to realize that there is a person walking the same path as you in the opposite direction? Have you ever thought to yourself what do I do now, do I move to the side or do I keep walking?

We were inspired to create this project after reading an article about how men and women share space while walking. In the article, it stated that if a man and a woman are walking in opposite directions of each other but on the same path, the woman will generally move out of the path to let the man pass by. We decided to look into this phenomenon that most people don’t realize is actually happening in everyday life. For most people, it is not a conscious decision whether to keep walking or to move to the side. We wanted to make people aware of this apparently small decision that has roots in a much larger social structure.

(Please watch in HD!!!)

Sexism in the Customer Service Work Environment

Many people will always complain about their experience in the customer service work environment. Maybe that’s because they aren’t people orientated, or maybe that’s because they had to deal with a lot of rude and mean customers. One thing that I was interested in finding out was if sexism had a role in making people feel uncomfortable working in the customer service work place environment. 

The Tale of Three Sisters

Originally, I was at a loss of what I could possibly do for my activist project, but then I remembered my grandmother-in-law. Unfortunately, due to complications between my grandmother-in-law, her two sisters, and the Federal Government, I cannot mention their names nor the photographs of the interviews. They were very conservative about this documentary being on the Internet, or any social media sites – which was my original intent.

The Decriminalization of Prostitution: COYOTE

For my activists histories assignment, I researched prostitution and an organization called C.O.Y.O.T.E, which is a backronym for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. This organization was America’s first prostitutes’ rights organization founded in San Francisco in 1973 by Margo St. James, who was a former prostitute herself. Their ultimate goal was to decriminalize, not legalize, prostitution laws and end the social stigma associated with sex work, which is primarily due to male-imposed standards of ethics. The difference between decriminalization and legalization is that: decriminalization would allow prostitutes to work as if it were any other socially acceptable occupation, while legalization would make prostitutes register, get a license, submit themselves for health examinations, all while still being stigmatized now as “known prostitutes”.