Event #2

Candid Confab – April 8, 2008 – Haymarket Theatre
The People’s Coalition put on this event so that anyone could say what they wanted to. The main topic of the night was sexism. They started out the event by showing two films. One of the videos was called The Bitch Manifesto. The other video was one that we have seen for class before about young children picking out the pretty dolls (or white dolls) and the ugly dolls (or black dolls). After the videos, the panelists started discussing and raising questions about sexism. They defined sexism as male dominance and a system of Eurocentric patriarchy. They also showed a couple of short clips of Common Disney films to show that we learn very early on that the males are supposed to be the head of the family and “rescue” females and there are certain things women are supposed to do and certain things that men are supposed to do. A good example was the clip of Mulan. In this movie the main character tries to act like a boy and is punished and frowned upon. The panel also talked about women being objects of sex to men or as men’s property. One of the examples of this is the woman usually takes the husband’s last name when they are married. They also talked about how woman aren’t allowed to do the same things as men for instance, girls may have earlier curfews as boys. Lastly, the panel talked about how we can change sexism. They suggested that it is up to the women to not do degrading things like, be in sex videos, and the men should support the change. Most of all, we need to be more conscious about what we say for instance, reciting demeaning song lyrics.
There were several connections with this event and the course. The first connection was that I had already seen the video about the young children picking out the pretty and ugly dolls to show that racism started at a very early age. The second connection was that we have already talked about sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in class and they were all mentioned in the discussion. Another connection was that they talked about what girls weren’t allowed to do and how we can change sexism. This reminded me of the video that we watched about sexism promoting violence against women. In the video, they explained why sexism was bad and how we can fix it. The last connection with this event and the course was racism. We have studied a lot about racism and the group talked about how black women are seen as less aggressive and are more identifiable. There was also a short clip about an actress saying that she is more discriminated against for being black than being a woman. The panel related this issue back to history when white women were never seen outside and black women were servants and often work outside and that was frowned upon.
Overall, I thought that this event was very interesting and easy to follow along. The only complaints that I have were that they panel was often hard to hear because of the speakers or they weren’t talking loud enough and it was not very interactive. There were a few questions open to the audience but there was simply not enough time for questions. Furthermore, I think that the discussion would have been a little better if there had been speakers that were a little more qualified to help out. Otherwise, the discussion was very intense and it made you want to change the view of women. I will definitely try to be more conscious about the songs that I listen to and the shows that I watch.