Not a thing of the past.

This week I started to look into some organizations and projects that I could expand off of relating to my passions, and I came across a website called dayofthegirl.org. The website is about a UN started holiday about awareness of the issues women face, and the accomplishments of women. On the website they guides to holding an official "Day of the Girl" event. One of the options was a night of the arts, both musical, artistic, and written. This caught my eye because I am very passionate about music and wish to go into to the business side of music, so this idea would be combining two of my interests and passions.

In my event, I would have locals artists of all types perform, preferable songs or art with a message advocating for gender equality. Additionally at the event I would set up a series of booths with information on issues facing women today. To advertise the event I plan on creating a video, SoulPancake style, asking people basic questions about women in their life, and hopefully getting some really hardy answers. At the beginning I will ask them whether they think they are a feminist and then again at the end.

I think that the issues that I will be bringing up in the event, such as rape culture, the gender wage gap, domestic violence, human trafficking, use of derogatory language towards women and "The Trans Question", are really important because people think that the womens rights issues have been solved and that the movement is a thing in the past.  In reality, the injustices women face today, are institutionalized so people don't realize that they are being sexist or that they are taking away human rights. My goal is to help de-institutionalize sexism, and help people learn to pinpoint the problems. Feminism and the womens rights movement isn't a thing of the past, so why is it so stigmatized? 

Dissecting My Passions

In the past week we have discussed finding our passions and looking for things that we could focus on for projects. To take a deeper look we made heartbreak maps. A heartbreak map is an idea that came from Angela Maiers, in which you look at what breaks your heart about things you love. You can read more about it here->  ow.ly/PEeMc    
On a heartbreak map, you draw three layers, the things you love, the things that break your heart, and solutions. This is my heartbreak map.

                                        
As you can see, some of the things I love are Music, Human Rights movements, and the movement towards awareness of Mental Illness. I am very passionate about the human rights movement and would call myself a feminist. While I was going about making my heartbreak map, I was scared to put feminism as something I love and that got me thinking. The stigma around feminism is a prime example of the institutional sexism in today's society. If you ask many people what they think of feminism, they will describe a feminist as a men-hating pessimist, and while there are some feminist who are like that, the majority of the feminist population just want equality.  I think exploring into the stigma around feminists and the effect it has on society would be something I would be very interested in. I would like to give people the truth about gender equality and hopefully help to break the stigma.

Speaking of stigma's to break... another stigma that I would kill to break is the stigma around people with mental illness. Many times, people with mental illness are scared to get help because they think people will see them as crazy, and that is just ridiculous. About 25% of all people deal with mental illness themselves in their lifetime. I'm pretty sure that 25% of people aren't crazy. I would really like to get involved in spreading awareness of what mental illness actually is and to help break the stigma. So many people with mental illness go undiagnosed due to fear of judgement, and hundreds of thousands of people commit suicide each year. If people were more accepting of mental illness then lives would be saved.

The heartbreak map really helped me dissect things I am passionate about. I'm looking forward to digging deeper into these topics and really trying to make a difference in people's daily lives.