Fight Like a Girl, Second Edition
How to Be a Fearless Feminist
Megan Seely
- English
- ePUB (apto para móviles)
- Disponible en iOS y Android
Fight Like a Girl, Second Edition
How to Be a Fearless Feminist
Megan Seely
Información del libro
A blueprint for the next generation of feminist activists
Fight Like a Girl offers a vision of the past, present, and future of feminism. With an eye toward what it takes to create actual change and a deep understanding of women’s history and the key issues facing girls and young women today, Megan Seely offers a pragmatic introduction to feminism. Written in an upbeat and personal style, Fight Like a Girl offers an overview of feminism, including historical roots, myths and meanings, triumphs and shortcomings.
Sharing personal stories from her own experience as a young activist, as a mother, and as a teacher, Seely offers a practical guide to getting involved, taking action, and waging successful events and campaigns. The second edition addresses more themes and topics than before, including gender and sexuality, self-esteem, reproductive health, sexual violence, body image and acceptance, motherhood and family, and intersections of identities, such as race, gender, class, and sexualities.
Fight Like a Girl is an invaluable introduction to both feminism and activism, defining the core tenets of feminism, the key challenges both within and outside the feminist movement, and the steps we can take to create a more socially just world.
Preguntas frecuentes
Información
1
Fight Like a Girl
How to Fight Like a Girl
- • Talk to friends, family, students, and/or co-workers about political or social issues that concern you. Gather information to share with them from organizations, websites, books, or classes.
- • Make a phone call to an elected official, advertising sponsor, business, or school to let them know how you feel about their policies, practices, or products.
- • Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper in response to an article about women, gender, race, health care, politics, or any issue that interests you.
- • Set up a table to give out information in your community or on your campus. You may need to get permission from your campus or community business, or check into using a free-speech area. Make sure that you position yourself in front of the table to hand out materials and answer questions—don’t hide behind the table; be accessible. Let the table hold your materials, not you! One variation to a table is sidewalk chalking. When I was in college, we did a sidewalk chalking where we wrote meeting and event information on the sidewalk in front of the student union and main buildings—requires less people power and still gets your message out!
- • Host a consciousness raising group—bring together friends, family, or colleagues to discuss an important issue.
- • Organize a house party to educate and mobilize your friends to vote or to support a feminist candidate running for office. Invite people to come over to discuss an upcoming election—have each participant research a different issue and bring the information to the group. Make it a potluck, or meet over coffee.
- • Work on a voter registration campaign; register people in your community to vote in the next election.
- • Offer to watch the children of someone you know so that the person can go to the polls and vote.
- • Give testimony at your local city hall or before the state legislature or Congress.
- • Organize a human billboard action—gather some friends to line a main street in your town with signs that have a message, each sign carrying a portion of the message: for example, “Honk . . . if you . . . support . . . equity.”
- • Organize a candlelight vigil to raise awareness about an issue or to commemorate an important event/date. After a series of clinic bombings in northern California, I participated in a candlelight vigil that served a dual purpose—the vigil raised awareness about violence directed toward our reproductive health care providers and also provided some much-needed protection for a specific health center. We surrounded the building in shifts and camped out to protect the health center from attack that night.
- • Organize a speak out, like the Take Back the Night rallies where women have the opportunity to speak about their experiences with violence in a safe and supportive environment. This can be done with any issue.
- • Organize an informational picket—make signs, bring together a bunch of people, and walk back and forth in front of a business, courthouse, or legislature, sharing information with people passing by.
- • Utilize social media—Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and other effective sources—to share news stories, promote events, and comment on the political issues of the day. You can also create a social media campaign. For example, a student of mine created a campaign a few years ago where she posted a photo of herself holding up a sign that read “I’m a Feminist Because . . .” with her response. She created this from a classroom discussion about a generation or more of young folks who claim the benefits of feminism and yet reject the name, the “I’m not a feminist but . . .” folks. She created a Facebook page, invited others to join her, and soon gained the attention of Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority who worked with her to attach her campaign to their already long-standing “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” project.
- • Boycott—a boycott is the withholding of financial support (e.g., by refusing to buy a particular product) as a form of protest against the policies or practices of a business, institution, or organization. There are many legal guidelines for a boycott, so make sure to get legal advice before calling for one.
- • Plan a girlcott or a “boycott” related to a specifically woman-centered cause. Sometimes, a “girlcott” is defined as bringing resources into an organization, business, or institution to support their efforts—in other words, the opposite of a boycott.
- • Organize street theater. Dress up and act out your concerns in a public venue. During the 2000 elections, I was one of nine people who dressed up as the Supreme Court justices and then held a press conference about what we saw as a threat to the Court.
- • Organize a benefit—for example, a walk-a-thon, a concert, a comedy night, an art show.
- • Organize a rally—small, medium, or large. Have people come together in a central location to hear speakers and receive information about a given event.
- • Organize a march—small, medium, or large. Have people gather in one place, hear speakers, and then move in an organized fashion to another location. People carry signs with political messages and/or shout chants to raise awareness about an important issue. Notably, in April 2004, the feminist movement hosted the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C., to emphasize the critical issues that women are facing today. The march has been called the largest march in U.S. history, with approximately 1.15 million participants!1 In 2017, in cities across the country, people of all genders joined together to create a nationwide, even global, Women’s March, protesting the presidency of Donald Trump. In 2018, following the Parkland school shooting, high school students across the country organized individual marches in their cities and towns to collectively stand against gun violence in schools.
- Don’t try to do it all on your own. Involve others—delegate responsibility.
- Develop a realistic timeline and follow it.
- Check your W’s—who, what, where, when, why. Make sure to answer these questions whenever planning. Be clear on the details.
- Imagine all the things that could go wrong, and plan for contingencies in advance.
- Develop a media strategy from the beginning.
- Fundraise and recruit new people to help with future actions.