i had a really nice time wednesday night tho, I went to a birthday thing for one of my feminist friends and it really reinvigorated and rebalanced me,
So anyway I've been thinking about this for a while and wanted to hash it out here before I wrote about it on my political blog.
So i started reading theology and decided that for this year I would only read theology by women because I've had theology by men forced on me my whole life and its much easier to access and is really the default position, because men are still seen as the default position
So i was thinking about that and I think I will expand that to all areas of my life, all my books that I read this year will be written by women, there is still to much of a divide in the number of women that get published compared to the number of men, especially in the things that I love to read (geeky lit crit theory, political analysis and poetry) and people do still assume that male writers are both more knowledgeable and more objective than women writers.
Also all the music I listen to and the gigs I go to will be by women performers, all the films I watch will be directed by women.
I wish i could take that further and have all the sources of news I access to be owned and controlled by women. But there are so few sources for this that if i want to know what is going on in the world then I need to keep an eye on mainstream news media
doing this is a a way of supporting women, the more people that listen to and read womens words the more space women will have to say their words. and also for myself it is a way of affirming my own worth as a women, that if other womens voices are worth listening to then so is mine,
I don't even know how easy I will find this,some of my favorite poetry is written by men, some of my favorite singer/songwriters are male, but if i just say that and leave it there there seems to be an assumption that women can't be as good as my favorite male poets or my favorite male singer/songwriters.
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nectarine_words- Jake
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In your explorations, you might really enjoy the work of Jan Richardson (http://www.janrichardson)
http://www.janrichardson.com/
Thanks.
I don't see why anyone would assume that. That's like being afraid to eat steak because then people will assume you never eat vegetables. I tend to just like whatever I like and I don't feel that the gender of the creator is all that relevant. If something is good, it's good and there's no reason to shun it simply because enjoying it would make me feel I'm betraying some ideology.
I think your motivations are very noble, but I think the flaw is that it you're making a statement for women that really only affects you personally. Perhaps a way to get more out of it might be to challenge one of the groups you're associated with to read more/view more female-produced works. Maybe organize a trip for a group of women to a concert or something like that.
Also I am not making a statement for women, I am not expecting other women to do this, but it is something i want to do for myself.
Many of my favorite authors are women, but you're right it is harder for women to be taken seriously across all artistic mediums and that's just plain wrong. Filmmaking is one of the worst areas by far. I don't pay too much attention to who directed a film most of the time, but I am aware that there just aren't that many famous women directors. The only one that immediately comes to my mind is Sofia Coppola - and she deserves it because she's very good. But does her fame come from her ability or who her father is?
You can find it on Amazon, and I think it offers some really good perspectives.