Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

I've been working on the paper I'll be presenting on Friday, February 29, for a long time. Now, I have to try and bring all the threads together to create a whole argument and direction. It's a challenge, but it's also fun.

Today's three posts are all inter-connected. Every now and then, synchronicity.

What can psychologists do to continue the fight for equality?

Psychologists can be really helpful in creating opportunities for people to increase their level of awareness of bias. Psychologists can become very instrumental as teachers, as resource guides, as researchers, as facilitators of this learning process. I read a poem recently, one line of which was this: "If what you know doesn't change you, then change what you know." It sounds so simple. You've got to change what you know. And right now, what we know, basically, is
informed by what we have done in the past.

-- Terrence Roberts, Ph.D.

Click for the complete article just published in the January 2008 issue of The Monitor. Terrence Roberts was one of the courageous Black teenagers who, on September 4, 1957, integrated Little Rock Central High.

Cultural Empowerment & Kaupapa Maori

Organizing this roundtable is a project I've been working on with Lisa Hall. I'm very happy to say that Professors Smith, Maaka, and Tomlins-Jahnke will be in Ithaca to give talks on Indigenous pedagogies and methodologies. It was Jill Hill who first introduced me to Linda Smith's work. Jill was going to be a guest speaker in my Qualitative Research Methods course and she thought it would be useful for the students and for me to read from Smith's book, Decolonizing Methodologies. Reading that book changed the way I think about research and a lot of other things, too. Come on down to Cornell and take part in the roundtable dialogue. Change what you know.

“Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond” radio show archive for Season One

This is great news! J. Kehaulani Kauanui's radio show, “Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond” is now archived and ready to be listened to on-line. You can also listen to the weekly show live on-line on Tuesdays. For more information on the radio show, click on the title of this post above.

J. Kehaulani Kauanui is a Native Hawaiian woman born and raised in California. She has been affiliated with the Hawaiian sovereignty movement since 1990. Kauanui is an associate professor of anthropology and American studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her first book, Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Indigeneity and Sovereignty, is forthcoming from Duke University Press, Fall 2008. She has co-edited special journal issues: "Migrating Feminisms" Women's Studies International Forum (1998);"Native Pacific Cultural Studies on the Edge," The Contemporary Pacific (2001); and "Women Writing Oceania: Weaving the Sails of the Waka," Pacific Studies (forthcoming, Fall 2008). Her essays appear in the following journals: Social Text, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, American Studies, Comparative American Studies, The Hawaiian Journal of History, Mississippi Review, Amerasia Journal,and American Indian Quarterly. She is currently co-editing a book with Andrea Lee Smith, Native Feminisms Without Apology (under review, University of Minnesota Press) and is currently embarking on two new book projects: a collection of essays on Native Hawaiian women, Decolonization, and the Hawaiian nationalist struggle, and a monograph, Hawaiian New England: The Grammar of American Colonialism.

Okay, New York State, It's 2008

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

A President Like My Father

By CAROLINE KENNEDY
Published: January 27, 2008
NYTimes

We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960. We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Barack Obama.
...
Take a look at Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Senator Obama. It's interesting and worth contemplating. Click on the title of this post above.

mi hermana: The Power of La Pluma

Natalia Muñoz, editor and founder of La Prensa, a bilingual newspaper, says providing an outlet for Latino points-of-view is a key aspect of her publication.






The Area’s First Bilingual Newspaper Stems from a Sense of Responsibility

By JACLYN C. STEVENSON
BusinessWest Online

Her eyes resting on the latest issue of La Prensa, the bilingual newspaper she launched in May of last year, Natalia Muñoz reflects on the career, and the moments, that brought her to this point.

Muñoz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and entered the journalism field in that country at 23, following in the footsteps of her grandfather and father. When she told her grandmother — her abuela — she’d landed her first job in a newsroom, the response was overwhelming.

“She clapped her hands, and laughed, and cried, and told me what a noble profession I had chosen,” Muñoz remembers.

Later in her career, Muñoz worked in Spain as a stringer for the Associated Press, writing in both Spanish and English, and covering the conflicts in the country surrounding the Basque separatist movement.

“I wasn’t on the warfront, but the first time I heard a bomb, it was like nothing I’d ever heard before,” she said. “It gives you the feeling that something horrible has just happened — that someone has died. That kind of experience influences you greatly.

“For me, it was also the moment I began to truly believe that this is not just a job, it is a responsibility. Out of that belief, La Prensa was born.”

Muñoz relocated to Western Mass. in 2004, and reported and wrote for The Republican for the next two years. In May of 2007, however, that feeling of responsibility to tell important stories culminated in the first issue of La Prensa, the region’s only newspaper written in both Spanish and English.
....
For the complete article click on the title of this post above.

Alanis Morissette - You Learn

I recommend biting off more then you can chew to anyone
I certainly do
I recommend sticking your foot in your mouth at any time
Feel free
Throw it down (the caution blocks you from the wind)
Hold it up (to the rays)
You wait and see when the smoke clears

Alanis Morissette - Thank U

the moment I let go of it was the moment
I got more than I could handle
the moment I jumped off of it
was the moment I touched down

So let us all begin

The time is overdue
For people like me and you
You know the way to truth
Is love and unity to all God's children
It should be a great event
And the whole day should be spent
In full remembrance
Of those who lived and died for the oneness of
all people
So let us all begin
We know that love can win
Let it out don't hold it in
Sing it loud as you can

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday

-- Stevie Wonder

The myth of color blindness: Cultural biases are embedded in us unawares

CYNTHIA TUCKER
MY OPINION
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/20/08

After a recent column describing Barack Obama as "a presidential candidate who happens to be black — not a black presidential candidate," I received countless responses from readers, a handful of them odd. That odd handful declared they take no notice of superficial traits such as skin color, and they took me to task for making any reference to Obama's race.

"I thought of [Obama] as a person. I did not see black or white or Hispanic or that he was a man — I saw a person! If people really, truly want racial equality — then the first step has to be to STOP looking at skin color," wrote one reader.

"When I look at a person, the last thing I think about is skin color or heritage," wrote another.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. While I am sympathetic to any desire to get past dated and useless habits of mind — especially the contentious politics of the color line — that's just nonsense. Not one of us, black, white or brown, is colorblind.

....

For the complete opinion piece by Cynthia Tucker, click on the title of this post above. For information on the science that Tucker includes in her piece, check out the post below.

Implicit Bias: No Such Thing As "Colorblind" When It Comes to Seeing Race

In their July 2006 article, "Implicit Bias: Scientific Foundations," published in the California Law Review, psychologist Anthony Greenwald and Professor of Law Linda Hamilton Krieger examine how unconscious perceptions can influence conscious behavior in relation to discriminatory behavior. This is an interesting article. They tackle the often heard, "I don't see color. I see a person" by examining how unconscious perceptions do make us see color whether or not we consciously want to admit it and that this lack of explicit knowledge nevertheless influences our behavior. Greenwald developed the test, Implicit Association Test which he uses to explore "implicit social cognition" and "unconscious cognition." Thinking about the current presidential contest which includes plenty of room for implicit bias based on sex, race, and age (to name just three social categories) it's interesting to read this work and consider how we are judging Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama implicity as well as explicitly and how that is expressed in our behavior; voting.

For a list of Professor Greenwald's publications, including a complete PDF download of the article discussed here, click on the title of this post above. That'll take you to his faculty webpage at the University of Washington. See what you think and explore what you might not like to think about.

"In order to melt me in the pot you have to burn me first, and I’m not having it."

Magdalena Gomez writes --
Diversity events by their very nature are insulting perpetuating the idea that somehow people of color are not an integral part of U.S. society, history, culture, literature, workforce and all facets of what makes a nation function. We are exoticized, made other, and brought out for the festivities required of legislated tolerance. With few exceptions, school curriculums continue to deny our full integration into the educational unfolding of our children’s identity and intellect within school culture and learning. Why not begin with the realization that Mexicans are not crossing OUR border - we moved it. How many times must I remind people that Puerto Ricans are not immigrants and that having an accent doesn’t make one hearing or mentally impaired. Please do not mangle our names beyond recognition or give us nicknames. All human beings deserve the respect of having their names pronounced correctly, or at the very least our rigorous best attempts.

Why do I go into school after school to learn that students are not aware that we as Latinos also have s/heroes and literary classics? How can they not be taught of the Arawak Nation and the highly developed, socially and culturally Taino and Carib societies that thrived 1,500 years prior to the invasion and genocide sanctioned by Spain? Why do I mention names like Julia De Burgos, Eugenio María de Hostos, Lola Rodriguez de Tío, Betances, Pedro Pietri, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Iris Morales, Sandra María Esteves, Judith Ortiz-Cofer, just to name a few, and draw blank stares from students and teachers alike? Not only is this inexcusable, it is imperialism, a form of intellectual tyranny, a systematic cultivation of the colonial mind and the forced assimilation of our children. Please do not confuse social integration with assimilation; one welcomes and embraces diversity, the other dilutes it. In order to melt me in the pot you have to burn me first, and I’m not having it. Tolerance comes from the Latin, tolerare, meaning to bear or endure. Is that really the best we can do? Diversity day? Think again. Please, think again.

To read Magdalena Gomez’s complete commentary go to La Prensa del Oeste de Massachusetts by clicking on the title of this post above.

Popular professor faces dismissal

The Middlebury Campus
click here for complete article.

Perhaps it's time to review how "provocative" professors are evaluated, mi gente?

The Future of Racial Justice

At the FACING RACE conference, Rinku Sen, Angela Glover Blackwell, Juan Gonzales and Winona La Duke chart a course for racial justice in the 21st century.

Never Been To Berlin

Way back, Oliva Espín asked me if I'd like to convene a symposium composed of international scholars on transgender identities within cultural contexts for the XXIX International Congress of Psychology. I said, "Yes! Thank you." The symposium with the title, "Decolonizing transgender psychology: Transgender identities and issues within cultural contexts" was accepted and now we're on our way to Berlin in July. Below is the description of our symposium and the wonderful participants from all over the world and right here at home:

Clive Aspin, University of Auckland, Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand
Oren Gozlan, Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Toronto, Canada
Lisa Kahaleole Hall, Wells College, Aurora, New York, USA
Offer Maurer, The Israeli Branch of Derby University UK, Tel Aviv, Israel
Vic Muñoz, Wells College, Aurora, New York, USA

Culture is central to understanding transgender people in ways that move beyond the dominant white Western views of what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Through research which focuses on the interactions between gender, sexuality, and culture within decolonizing movements (Maori, Native Hawaiian) and research that critiques the hegemony of Western views on gender we will address transgender identities and issues in ways that offer new understandings of LGBT people of color (psychoanalytical, culturally appropriate, as critique of the dominant). Research shows culturally grounded approaches are needed to support the self-determination of LGBT peoples across cultures.


For more information on the conference, click on the title of this post above.

Por fin, es oficial

January 3, 2008. Email from President Lisa Marsh Ryerson to the Wells College faculty:

President Lisa Marsh Ryerson and the Board of Trustees of Wells College announce the promotion of Victoria I. Muñoz to the position of Full Professor of Psychology effective January 1, 2008. Professor Muñoz is a 13-year veteran of the college and a respected scholar in the field of gender identity and sexuality within cultural contexts. Professor Muñoz has published extensively and has lectured both in the United States and abroad in her discipline.

Professor Muñoz first was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Wells College in 1994. In 1999 she was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. In 2003 Professor Muñoz was named the Patti McGill Peterson Professor of Social Sciences.







foto por mi prima, Maria Ruaño