Campus Engagement

The event I attended was a screening of "The Help" with a bit of discussion afterwards. The movie itself was, as expected, funny and oddly intimate. Watching a movie about being let in on secrets makes you feel connected to personalities that don’t necessarily exist, and the discussion brought that forth. There was little talk about themes, motifs, or questions about the movie. A huge majority of the speaking that happened when microphones were extended to audience members was about colored maids that each individual person had known of or employed.

Some of them were there to sing all the praises they had about family members from previous generations that had served in those same places. There was a lot of pride coming from those talks, and it made me feel full to bursting with the joy that these women at least communicated to their children and grandchildren that they felt their jobs allowed them plenty of dignity because of what strong women they were to begin with and what steadfast work they always knew they did. However, I had to remind myself that this was them making the best of their terrible situation at times.

The one that really hit me, however, was the admission from a white student no older than me that there was a certain level of shame he felt in having grown up with a “Mammy”, as one woman dubbed them. He had little more to say than the fact that he felt particularly stricken by the idea that he and his family contributed to the same kind of struggles and unfairness.

It made me sit back and wonder to myself how I would feel about having been raised by a black woman and then being confronted with a movie like this. Obviously, plenty of maids—or “domestic technicians, as one woman insistently called them—have different experiences ranging from unusually good to horribly bad. And unless my parents had raised their voice against a maid and given me some sense of panic, I would probably never have questioned whether or not the maid was being treated fairly. I certainly wouldn’t know how about maybe how far she had to travel and at what inconvenience. I wouldn’t know what sort of wages she would have been making. And I think I would feel a certain level of shame for having assumed that she loved her job as much as I probably would have loved her there. Of course, the movie did touch on the complex tangle of feelings that the maids might have had if they felt emotionally connected to a child, so it wasn’t as if they all hated what they did. But watching a guy in his early twenties admit that he had to rethink his childhood a bit hits you.

It was a gently eye-opening experience that I'm glad I had the chance to sit in on.

Introductory Letter

Hello there! Welcome to my blog, specially made for WST 3015-002.

Let's begin with basics, shall we? My name is Lydia Haver, and I'm a senior at UCF majoring in Humanities (AKA Huge Manatees).

You could certainly say gender has been important in my life because it's played an obvious role in my understanding and creation of my identity, as it does for all of us. It's affected my relationships with my family and friends as well. I grew up in your very standard white, middle-class, Christian family who still held onto the values that said women should be in the home and certainly under the authority of her husband (and of course any woman left unmarried was to be pitied or suspected to be a lesbian, God forbid). I hated it mostly because it meant that so many doors felt closed to me, even as a child. There were loads of games I wanted to play, clothes I wanted to wear, or groups of people I wanted to be a part of but wasn't allowed because it "wasn't for girls". When I joined the soccer team and cut my hair short in the third grade, my dad used to make comments about how he missed how sweet or pretty I used to be (which is hilarious considering what a horror of a child I know I was even before then). But it was what I wanted to do, so the only retorts I was ever able to come up with when he said things like that were something along the lines of, "Well, now I'm tough instead of pretty." I considered it a fair trade, especially in third grade when boys were still gross anyway.

I can say that for about as long as I've known the word feminist—one that has shifted in my understanding over time—I’ve identified as one. I like getting the different reactions when I call myself a feminist. I was never particularly put off by the negative connotations, but maybe that was simply in the spirit of defiance. When I first heard of feminism it really was just a lot of stereotyping insults and bad press being flung around, but I think that’s partially what attracted me to it. I admired the idea that some women had the courage to not care if they were considered pretty or sweet, because they wanted something different for themselves. I’d seen the quiet, steadfast strength of my mother, but I’d never seen a woman with the kind of ambition, confidence, and importance that the picture of a feminist carried in my head.

To be honest, I'm surprised I've never taken a women's studies class before. I’ve been interested in how other women have approached the concept of equality between the sexes, but trying to find accurate and all-encompassing information on the subject in the Age of Information makes you feel a little bit carried out to sea sometimes. It can feel like an overwhelming endeavor, but I’m thrilled to have some direction and a group to go through it with.

And as requested, I have read, understood, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocol.