Ashlyn's valuable new perspectives

On Wednesday I attended a workshop being done by the Environmental Monitoring Group with my internship. The format of the workshop was quite similar to Human Rights Weekend, as learning took place through various structured activities and group work. One activity really stood out to me and greatly showed intersectionality. Every person attending was given a sticky note with a section of the environment written on it (insects, oceans, humans, etc.). The group was given a ball of yarn and the activity began. One person would throw the yarn to another person and say how their two sections of the environment were connected. Each person would hold onto a section of the yarn whenever it came to him or her. This continued for some time and at the end the facilitator cut one person’s strings. Every single person in the group was missing something and was affected. Throughout this activity I was thinking about how it could also be modified to show the intersectionality of human rights or interconnectedness of oppression!

           

Walking into the workshop, I recognized immediately that I was the only white person in the room. Being the only international/American citizen in the room was another way I was the minority. Throughout the day I had to represent America and it made me think about how minorities have to represent their culture every single day in America. I can’t imagine knowing that someone’s view of my culture is resting almost solely on my shoulders. A few weeks ago in class the group watched a video called “Blue Eyes” which really captured how quick people are to make assumptions about others. It never really dawned on me (as one of the majority) how fast I sometimes make assumptions on a culture after meeting someone, until it happened to me.

A male member of the workshop was wearing a t-shirt that said “hot girls and cold beer” with images of the two. The last couple of classes the group learned about female representation (especially in the media). Before those classes I probably would have looked at the shirt and only thought about how it is unprofessional for a workshop. Now I realize how harmful the shirt is. The image of the woman conveniently shows her boobs and bikini area, but not her head or legs. That’s not even a picture of a female; it’s a picture of body parts. A picture of that kind makes women seem like nothing more than body parts. The image also doesn’t include my two favorite parts of my own body, my legs for running and my head for thinking.