#gws201002

Since arriving at The University of Kentucky, I’ve heard this song upwards of 200 times, most often in a frat party basement…and yet every single time I find myself dancing and enjoying it immensely. The catchy piano at the beginning of the song followed by that line everyone belts out: “Ain’t. No. Tellin. What. I’m. Doing.” It gets me every time, but after looking at the lyrics as a whole, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy it the same way from this point on.

“Hey lil' mama would you like to be my sunshine? Nigga touch my gang we gon' turn this shit to Columbine.”

           Sure, I’d like to be your sunshine. That sounds slightly endearing and somewhat flattering UNTIL Lil Yachty decides to rap about the tragic shootings of Columbine High School.

“50 shades of grey, beat that pussy like Hulk Hogan.”

           First of all, 50 Shades of Grey in general did a great job of making a female lead seem powerless and needy for the attention of a successful hyper-masculine male character.

*Note: if you’re into BDSM, more power to you but the movie in general is slightly demoralizing to women. The lyric is further perpetuating sexual violence. Hulk Hogan was a professional wrestler and the idea of “beating” a women’s vagina is beyond expressing ideas of sexual exploration.

 And it continues:

 “Put that dick up in her pussy bet she feel it in her toes.”

“In the middle of the party bitch get off me In the cut I'm rolling up my broccoli Ya I know your baby mama fond of me All she want to do is smoke that broccoli Whispered in my ear she trying to leave with me Said that I can get that pussy easily Said that I can hit that shit so greasily I'm a dirty dog I did it sleazily.”

 “I got companies and Pesos I got people on my payroll She don't do it 'less I say so.”

So, yesterday I had a long day of classes, then physics lab, then rock climbing with friends, and finally a physics review session. By the time all of that was done it was 9:00pm. I started to walk towards the bus stop, which is in the general direction of my apartment. I checked the bus app and saw that I had just missed the night bus by a few minutes. It would be at least half an hour before it would come back around, so I decided to risk it for the biscuit and walk home. It’s about 3/4 of a mile from campus, which doesn’t take too long to walk. 

I started to walk and thought of all the things about girls walking home alone at night. I was tired from a long day, but I wasn't worried about walking alone yet. I got over the bridge, fully out of campus, towards other closer housing. It was a nice night and I was wearing shorts. It felt great, but people could obviously tell i was a girl because of what i was wearing. I walked on, between Lucky’s Market and Big Cat Liqueur. I wasn’t nervous, until i saw a man sitting out front of the liqueur store. He continued sitting there, but we noticed each other. I’m sure he was questioning my decision to walk around at night. I kept walking and got to the sketchy pink houses where some woman was out yelling at someone, or maybe herself. As I approached I was worried that there was a confrontation happening, but she payed no attention to me as I passed. Now I was walking past the Shell station. It’s nice that it’s well lit, but often there’s homeless people asking for money next to the street. When I got to the intersection there were two guys. One was a college student and seemed non-threatening and the other was a grown man, maybe 30 or 40, who looked a little sketchy. I was a little on edge, so I went ahead and crossed the street there instead of waiting to do it closer to my apartment. This way I could keep an eye on them from a “safe” distance. I pulled out my keys, mostly because I’d have to unlock my apartment door soon, but also just in case.

The end of the semester is quickly approaching with one more day of class and a week of finals. In this past week of class, we have finished up the memoir written by Kevin Powell and pretty much every theme we have covered through the semester came to tie up the lose ends. Honestly, all of the themes such as reproductive rights, gender identification, feminism, masculinity, gentrification, etc. plays a large role in everyone’s lives whether or not they realize it. All of these controversies and fights happen day to day in local communities, a nation as a whole, and even the entire world. The Gallagher’s and the show Shameless show these issues that Kevin Powell and everyone else experience on a local level in the city of Chicago, Illinois. 

I really do not have much to say this week other than learning in depth about all of these social, economic, and health issues really impacted me. I guess some might even say that it lit a fire in me. These issues made me very angry with the way that society and the government deal with things such as gentrification and reproductive rights. I also had a sense of empathy for people going through a transition or not identifying with one specific gender. I can only imagine how they feel, maybe isolated and depressed in the highly gendered universe. All of this exposure made me want to get up and do something. The government needs to change. Social aspects need to change. The world needs changing to become more open and welcoming to everyone. The world also needs to change in relationship to our bodies and other regulations. When will others learn that you cannot control all choices made by people. We need a sense of independence and should have the opportunity to make decisions on our own, I mean after all, that is being an adult, correct? To have the responsibility of making choices, but the government takes that away from us in many different forms, whether it is with gun control, abortion rights, rights to contraceptive, etc.. 

For my vey last blog, I am going to focus on happiness. I feel as though my last couple posts have been a little dark.

In honor of finishing Powell’s novel this week, I’m going to focus on the very last few pages of his book. Overall, I really enjoyed his story. As we know, Powell has gone through many adversities in his life. What I loved about the last few pages though was that he focused on how his negatives made him who he is today. This can related to Shameless in many ways. We know that the Ghallager’s are far from perfect, but that’s okay. Sometimes, we need things in our lives to happen so that we can learn from them. For example, when Fiona almost killed her own brother, Liam, with cocaine, she learned from it. Though she had to deal with some really hard times with the situation, she learned. And that is really what matters. We begin to notice that Fiona stopped acting crazy with the drugs and grew up a little bit, which improved her overall happiness. Similar to Powell, he mentions at the end of the book how he is now completely alcohol free. This made me really happy for him when I read that. He would seek alcohol when his life was going downhill, but this did not make matters any better. Alcohol actually ruined him completely, so to hear that he finally got past his addiction made me proud of him.

I’m sure all of us can relate to Powell and Fiona, too. Though maybe our lives have or haven’t been as traumatic as some parts in their lives, I’m sure most of us can share and relate to similar stories. So I just want to remind everybody that yes, life gets very very hard, trust me. I’m sure you all already know that. But, we sometimes need negatives in life to help find ourselves. Powell mentioned how he's completely changed from what he was just a year or two ago. So has Fiona. We all need times that may not be so pleasant to us so that we can grow, mature, and learn from them. So next time you're in a really bad or sticky situation, remember that it’s TRULY only going to make you stronger once you get past it. You all can do this. Believe in yourselves. :) 

I am glad that a major news outlet is reporting on this because it means that the strategy of victim blaming may be becoming less accepted. One of the major problems with this story though is the fact that a lawyer cited that women were the weaker sex and therefore good at lying in his closing arguments and did manage to get his client out of being convicted for rape because of this. The idea that women lie or women are always trying to get men in trouble comes with this societal idea that if a woman has sex she is dirty and unwanted. This idea is usually perpetuated by men. Then men come back around and say that women have sex and then accuse them of rape because they do not want to be seen as impure. There have been false rape accusations in the world, but there have also been false accusations of theft or arson and people still take those claims seriously in a court of law. Women hardly ever lie about being raped so the assumption that they are good liars and lie about raped is founded on a handful of case studies and not the vast statistical majority.