The difference that Humbach makes between rights and right relationships can be teased out within the debate on food security/sovereignty. Food security, as an ideal, is the right for all people and communities to have enough culturally appropriate food. Food sovereignty builds upon this by accentuating the importance of process in food acquisition. It places importance on community food systems, non-exploitation, and health.
    The issues of food justice and food security have always been important to me. On the surface, they are merely about food: having enough, access and availability. And on the surface, these are simple problems to fix, right? To fix hunger, farmers should plant more. Grocery chains should build stores in neighborhoods that lack them. But relationships always prove to be more complicated than their surface implications.

I enrolled in this course after Kaye recommended that I take it following an internship I had last summer at National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) that was funding by Haverford’s Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. NAPW does a lot of different things, but basically provides legal support for women who have been incarcerated or had their children taken away because of a drug charge. While I didn’t get to do much reflecting on these issues specifically, this course did teach me a lot.

I entered the class a little unsure of exactly what to expect. It was my first Bryn Mawr class and my first course that was listed primarily under gender and sexuality studies (I had taken gen/sex classes in the past that related to political science and anthropology). On the first or second day, we were asked to do a “wagon wheel” and talk to various members of the class. One of the prompts was to say all the gender pronouns we knew. I began, “He, she…” The student standing across from me added, “Ze…” (What?) I responded with a smile, “It…” The student answered, “I don’t think a person would appreciate being called “It.” Okay. Got it. Can’t make jokes about gender here. Don’t want to offend anyone.

In Culture as a Disability, McDermott and Varenne) present the argument that the system in which the conventions of our culture is set up disallows each all individuals to be perceived as ‘able’. (McDermott and Varenne, 1995) Varenne then, in a later article entitled “Extra burdens in the search for new openings”, claims that our culture is “simultaneously enabling and disabling”. (Varenne, 2003)  Whatever act is taken to enable a certain group will invariably disable another.  To ‘disable’ is not limited to the literal definition and I will expand on this later. An extrapolation of this claim would indicate that there is no possibility for a collective Utopia; culture does not work as an interconnected whole. Rather, it is a system that separates, disables and causes injustice.

“Rights

And

Pride

Equal

Resistance

Ability

Power

Equality”

Source: Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape

Haverford College is a small liberal arts college that prides itself on its community, Quaker roots, and commitment to social justice. Upon matriculation in 2008, however, I was dismayed by what I perceived to be a lack of resources for survivors of sexual assault* on campus as well as the broader absence of conversation about these issues. In the winter of 2009, two other Haverford women and I started a student-run support group called Survivors of Assault and Rape (SOAR). Since then, a small group of committed Haverford students has embarked on a quest to instigate rape and sexual assault policy reform. Although we have faced frustrating bureaucratic barriers, what has at times been perceived as resistance and a lack of support on the part of the campus administration, Haverford has substantially altered its rape and sexual assault policies in the last three years. This paper is the continuation of a number of pieces that I have written about rape and sexual assault in colleges (see “Consent is Sexy at Haverford? Not Yet”). I hope that this paper may serve as a resource for other college students hoping to change the rape and sexual assault policies on their campuses.

Dear Anne & Kaye,           

            This class held quite a few firsts for me. It was the first class that I had that met only once a week and at night. The first class that was co-taught by two different professors (and from two different colleges). The first class in which the internet played a role larger than a resource for research. The first class I have taken in gender and sexuality studies. The first class in which we were asked to challenge everything – the way a class should work, how we performed and acted in class, the way a paper should be written, and most often, the gender binary.

I found a video on Yahoo news about the missing females in India, babies aborted, neglected, or murdered because they are females. There is a town in India that has the least gender diversity in the world. The video is about 6 minutes and really ties in with our discussion about abortion. They speak to one woman whose husband (who is a doctor, as she is) and inlaws tortured her when she refused to abort her twin girls, and her mother-in-law threw one of her twin daughters down the stairs when she was 4 months old. She says that everyone admits the growing gender gap is a problem, but no one wants to take on the responsibility of having girls who are a financial burden because of the illegal dowry system. 

Reflections on the Consent is Sexy Campaign: Moving Forward, Looking Back

“To grieve, and to make grief itself into a resource for politics, is not to be resigned to inaction, but it may be understood as the slow process by which we develop a point of identification with suffering itself.  The disorientation of grief—“Who have I become?” or indeed, “What is left of me?”  “What is it in the Other that I have lost?”—posits the “I” in the mode of unknowingness.” (30)

 –Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

The Consent is Sexy campaign I co-organized for my Final Web Event has definitely been an emotionally, physically, and academically exhausting venture.  The above quote speaks greatly to my feelings about the campaign. The project was a political endeavor inspired by my experience of violence, trauma, and grief.  However, it was also an exploration and coming to terms with the new person that came out of the survival of that trauma. For me, the campaign was just as much a form of mourning as it was inspired by mourning.  The emotional nature of this form of politics was inspiring and empowering at the same time that it was frustrating and problematic.  These experiences have made me wonder if restorative justice can truly be achieved for survivors when their community is willing to look forward, but not back. 

I wanted to separate my thoughts from the consent is sexy campaign from the actual pictures and materials I gathered while working on the campaign.  Below is a photo montage of the postering and chalk we put up around campus.

Postering Thursday, December 1st.  Let's get organized!

Alliances are best vuilt over tea and donuts!

The only people we targeted... the Deans (Chase).

...well, I guess we targeted the Interim President too (Founders).

Let's get chalkin', so people get talkin'...