Despite the fact that this week was supposed to be my ‘relax before the final push’ week, it has been extremely strenuous on my brain. It has been hard to stomach the decision out of Ferguson, MI. Having learned much more about colonial history this semester than I had ever known previously, I find it particularly hard to call my self an American native at horribly embarrassing chapter of history.

Having struggling to find my niche in Vancouver over the last 3 years, I have become increasingly excited about moving back to the Bay Area – which will always be my home. Though it is events like these and the responses towards them which makes me feel very skeptical about wanting to move back to the United States. I want to live in a place where citizens views are represented by their government representatives and legislatures. In Berkeley, this may be the case, though across the United States it is a completely different story. What do we have to do to produce this change?

When talking to my mom the other night she told me that Chelsea Clinton recently gave a speech to an all women’s college and indicated that if Americans wanted to see change that they should run for political office and go through the necessary steps to produce such change. Since her mention of this, I have thought long and hard about how I can change what I want to have changed. Do I want to run for office? Do I want to participate in the bullshit bureaucracy that is ever-so-present in modern-day politics?

To me, many of the politicians in power today aren’t in power to produce this change. They have other incentives for holding this power, like furthering legislature that will increase their personal wealth and status among the worlds elite, as opposed to making our world a better place. Some of these politicians crooked actions are so obvious and blatant, yet they still hold power. In short, I could never see myself trying to put forth honest legislature while standing next to individuals like Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell. If there’s a future where we’re all standing on a stage together, it means that somewhere along the line I took a very wrong turn.

Post feminism is defined by Angela Mcrobbie as the “active process by which feminist gains of the 1970s and 80s come to be undermined.” In the world of modern advertising, there have always been commercials created portraying sexist or gendered stereotypes with the ultimate intention of selling their product to a certain demographic. This marketing practice was popular throughout the 50s & 60s, but while it did die down during the time of the feminist gains Mcrobbie is referring to, it has been ever so present in modern day media for the last 20 years.

Today, I most often observe post-feminist attitudes towards things like gender equality and racism when they’re shown to me via a satirical news outlet (The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, The Colbert Report, etc.). Most of the clips portray news anchors and commentators from programs like CNN and Fox News making redundant and incredibly ignorant claims on the very influential platforms which they present “news” on. Oftentimes, these claims are met with laughs and assurance as opposed to critique, presenting a very one-sided view of whatever is being discussed. I found a great video compiled of clips from 2012 here – and keep in mind that two years have passed. Since then, things have only become more absurd and repulsive.
Here’s another pretty disgusting example overall – the fact that this is breaking news and revolutionary for a woman to do something like this is pretty weird, but what proceeds is really the ignorance I’m talking about. What’s really awful is that guy just simply apologized for his comments the next day and still has his job…Things like this desensitize individuals into accepting things like this as funny forms of entertainment as opposed to revealing modes of exploitation.

I really enjoying the refresher on Foucault that the end of Chapter 6 gave me. His rejection of the ‘repressive hypothesis’ is an extremely interesting topic to me, and I think it certainly has a lot of place in the culture and society in which we inhabit today. Considering how sports-minded I am, I can’t help but think about Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis in terms of how it applies to todays sports world.

This past February, Michael Sam, an All-American co-SEC defensive player of the year who recently graduated from the University of Missouri, admitted to the world that he was gay. This quickly became a big deal for a few reasons. The NFL had yet to welcome it’s first openly gay athlete, and Sam, who was projected to be a relatively high-draft pick, voiced his desire to break down this barrier just a few days before his scheduled NFL tryout. After Michael Sam’s admission of his sexuality, much of the sports analysis that followed consisted mainly of discussing whether or not the decision to admit his sexuality would hurt his draft projection. To reiterate, the first gay player is about to join the NFL and one of the main points discussed is whether or not he will be drafted as high as he would have been without admitting his sexuality.

The way the media has covered Michael Sam since learning he was a homosexual football player provides us with a great example of how our ability to interpret and adequately speak on sexuality is radically insufficient – and it interestingly enough somewhat aligns with the people living at the time Foucault was writing.

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