Blog #7

I have a lot of ideas of what it is I want to research. In my first blog post I mentioned that I had a growing interest with racism, intersectional feminism, ableism and so on. Growing up I was fortunate enough not to be exposed to as much racism as an Asian-American as other fellow Asian-Americans that I've come across. Either that or I was so ignorant that what they were doing was racist that I wasn't even phazed by it. So as much as I want my main focus to be about racism, I think I want to go for a topic that I have way more personal experience with, which is sexism, and to go with that, intersectional feminism. What it is, how it works, and why we need it in order for feminism to work and adhere to the issues of ALL women: White women, women of color, trans* women, cisgender women, able-bodied and disabled women.

Intersectionality is a sociological theory that some self-proclaimed feminists do not always incorporate into their ideologies. The idea is that different categories that people identify with- sex, gender, ethnicity, wealth, class, etc.- interact with each other on multiple levels simultaneously. Forms of privilege and oppression are not always independent of one another- rather, they interlap and affect individuals in different ways.

I'm thinking that the intersectionality theory is going to be my main focus but I also want to go into the absence of this theory and how it affects people. I mentioned in my first blog that I don't associate myself as a feminist and it's because of this very absence that I do so but I haven't stopped concerning myself with women's issues. One particular incident that stands out as the main reason for this is from a SlutWalk protest in 2011 where a White SlutWalk participant held up a sign featuring the "n" word. I don't know what was worse, the fact that she paraded around with this sign thinking it was okay and no one said anything until one black woman- an organizer of the protest I believe- told her to take it down, or the overwhelming responses that were DEFENDING this woman's use of a hateful racial slur. I want my research paper to observe and reflect the varying attitudes and beliefs of feminism and intersectionality more than anything.

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My other option is to do a research paper on privilege. Male privilege, White privilege, thin privilege, able-bodied privilege, wealthy privilege, cisgender privilege, all of that.