Blog Contribution—two parts, total is 500 Words

Required Textbook: 
Shaw & Lee. Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings 6th edition.  
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Part One:
Students should post 2 short excerpts on our class blog throughout the semester using the short pieces at the end of each chapter. 
™Blog posts should be a minimum of 350 words and maximum of 400 words. 
™The posts should include the following:
™Author and title of reading
™Author’s background information
™What was the piece about? What chapter and key words are linked to the piece?
™Your opinion on the piece before reading and after reading
™Food for thought- question that engages classmates to respond.

Part two: Comments on blog entries should be at least 150 words to receive full credit.
Choose one student’s blog to make the comments,

Other student’s blog:
I am going to write about the novel or story, “Who Wants to Marry a Feminist”. This story was written by Lisa Miya-Jervis. The story was written in the early/mid 2000’s. Lisa Miya-Jervis was born in Boston, Massachusetts but she spent her childhood in Los Angeles, California. She is also the founding editor and publisher of a magazine called Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. In this magazine she writes about topics associated with the feminist movement. She also responds to current media about women. 
Her shorts story, “Who Wants to Marry a Feminist” is very interesting. She addresses many topics and stereotypes about feminists in this short story. Stereotypes she address include but are not limited to; feminist are lesbian and even the stereotype that feminist hate men. She also talks about marriage. She talks about how marriage has drastically changed from the past to the present. She also talks about her own marriage and how being married did not eclipse her own success. I think this is important because it tells women that they can be married to a man but still be successful on their own. 
Their are only a couple of keys words associated with this chapter. The basics are marriage, feminist and the feminist waves. 
There was one part of the article where a woman said the author had committed a betrayal to feminism because she got married. I disagree with this statement in many ways. I don’t think getting married is betraying feminism. Marriage is more than relying on a man or spouse. It represents a union between two people. This womans statement shows a lack of understanding and I think she must be educated on what it means to be a feminist. 
Before reading the article I thought it would be quite controversial. I thought it would have a bias against feminist from the title. However after reading, it was the opposite .The author is giving reasons why marrying a feminist isn’t such a bad idea for men. It also is letting feminist know that marrying will not defeat the purpose of being a feminist as long as you are successful in your own light. 
Something this article makes me think about is its intended audience. Who was this specific article written for. I think it is for those who are feminists and for those who are not. 

other student’s blog:
“Power Plays: Six Ways the Male Corporate Elite Keeps Women Out” by Martha Burk
Martha Burk is a political psychologist and women’s issues expert and national consultant on gender pay equity. She co-founded the Center for Advancement of Public Policy. She also is the Money Editor for Ms. Magazine and a columnist and blogger for Huffington Post. Currently, Dr. Burk runs the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations which investigates sex discrimination at companies associated with Augusta National. Burk is most known for a dispute with the Augusta National Gulf Club over its non admission to women and whether hosting the Masters Tournament there constituted sexism.
In this article Burk talks about how men, once they have gotten into business positions with immense power, often exclude women and people of color from joining the power elite. She outlines six ways in which this power dynamic is displayed. 1. “Power re-creates itself in its own image” (526). This means that those in the power positions typically like to hire those that closely resemble themselves, mainly white and male. 2. “Power elites enforce norms and systems that guarantee continued power” (526). 3. “Power creates a sense of entitlement” (526). 4. “Power creates invulnerability, leading to a flaunting of society’s standards” (527). 5. “Loyalty to power overshadows other loyalties, including gender and race” (527). 6. “Group loyalty combined with power can trump good judgment and override individual moral codes” (527). Chapter 9, “Women’s Work Inside and Outside the Home”, is linked to this piece because it discusses the ways in which women are excluded from certain positions in the work force. The key word most associated with this piece would be vertical segregation because Burk writes about the segregation of women in positions of power because of sexism and racism.
Before I had read this piece I knew that a majority of CEOs and Fortune 500 companies are run by a majority of men but I had not known all of the reasons for this exclusion of women. While I was reading, Burk’s discussion made so much sense to me. I really liked how all of her points flowed from one to the other. After reading the article, I can recognize now how corporate boards create a power elite made entirely of white males.
Food for thought: How do you think we can get more actual diversity in positions of power?
Comment
Blog Post 2
Posted by  Isabelle Townsend  at Thursday, July 19, 2018 11:33:09 PM
Betrayed by the Angel- Debra Anne Davis
I chose to read Betrayed by the Angel by Debra Anne Davis. Ms. Davis has authored many different essays, many of which are about similar topics to the one I chose to analyze. 
This essay has to do with gender violence, thus chapter ten in our textbook. Key words related to this piece are rape, violence. 
This piece discusses the life of a one specific woman and her traumatic rape. Interspersed through the text are excerpts from “Professions for Women” by Virginia Woolf. These excerpts discuss the fictional “angel” in each household, who is a good and pure woman, who is always polite and kind to men. This woman is very clearly meant to be the wife in each family. As our narrator begins the piece, she talks about how she used to be stabbed with a pencil by a boy in her class, but she was too afraid of the boy getting in trouble to report him to a teacher. She then jumps to the day she is raped, and discusses how she felt it would be rude to shut the door in the strange man’s face. This then leads to her rape. The angel is mentioned again at the end, the angel of course being the piece of her that society controls telling her that women must be kind to men, even if it means risking bodily harm.  
Before I read this piece, I believed that it would tie in to rape and sexual assault. This is because it is in chapter ten which discusses these issues. More specifically I believe that it will discuss that men who are viewed as angelic in society or by those that are close to them are still capable of committing heinous crimes against women such as sexual assault. 
After reading this piece I am, of course, aware of the fact that the angel isn’t a man that society loves, it is the form of woman that society wants  to love. Of course, this woman, the perfectly polite angel can and has gotten women hurt. This piece also helped me to realize I have my own angel. I frequently am polite to strange men who are behaving in an aggressive manner towards me, when in reality anyone behaving that way does not deserve politeness.
Do you have an angel?