Educated Ignorance
After reading this essay, I have to say I find it disturbing and frustrating that most of our sources of information are written, edited and controlled by men. After all the work and fighting that women have done, the physical and verbal abuse the feminist women have had to endure, and they still don’t have a voice that reaches the masses of people the way that men and anti-feminists do. Our family has always subscribed to “TIME” magazine. I always thought it was one of the better sources of information because it seems to be held in such high regard among national news sources. I never would have thought that their stories could be so skewed, or that they would choose to report only certain sides of stories.
When I think back to the history courses I took in high school, I realize now just how one sided it was. We learned about battles, generals, political leaders, but never about the women of the time. Sometimes there would be a section or two saying what the “duties” of women were at the time. It would make such a difference to hear about women who broke the mold of their time, ones who stepped out of the box. We learned nothing about the women’s movement. Apparently that holds true for more than just American schools. As I was responding to this essay and thinking out loud, a friend of my roommate’s from Canada, began interjecting her thoughts about this class. She was saying things like “Oh, so do you just talk about how you hate men?” and she even went so far as to say “So is it like all ugly girls in your class?” These are the stereotypes Women’s Studies and Feminism hold. There is such ignorance surrounding “feminism” and “women’s studies.” Since schools do not educate their students on these subjects, the only information that they have to go on are the misrepresentations, the stereotypes created by anti-feminists and the media.
As the daughter of a journalist, I know that not all news reporters or all men in news are against women’s opinions making the news or being of any importance. My family, including my journalist dad, has always encouraged me to speak up and get involved with political and social issues. I would like to believe that if my dad believes women matter and their issues matter, then there are other journalists out there with the same view. I hope that one day the majority of the people in the newsroom will think that way, maybe then history can begin to be written a little differently.