I'm allowed to be a feminist.

I just want to use a blog post to say that, no matter what other students (ahem) may say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with feminism.
Feminism is simply the idea that men and women should be equal.
Currently, there is a wage gap of 23.5%. This means that, for every dollar a man makes, a woman with the same job will make 77 cents.
Currently, women make up 18.3% of Congress, even though they make up approximately 50% of the U.S. population.
This should not be a problem. Men and women should be equal, and that is the entire premise of feminism. I am not talking about radical feminism or "feminazis." I'm not advocating a female takeover. I am not advocating "man-hating." I'll leave that to the radical feminists. I'm not one of them. I am simply advocating equality between these two halves of our country, and of our world--men and women.
Equality is something that has been a prominent issue since the Civil War era. If we give black and white males equal opportunities, but not the same opportunities for their female counterparts, have we really made any progress?
So please, when I post something or write something that you consider a "feminist" topic, just know that you don't need to assume it to be "some outrageous feminist paper." I promise you, if I ever get on the topic of feminism, it's strictly from an "equality" stance. I, too, recognize double standards, and believe we when I say I think they're just as ridiculous as the next person, no matter whether women "benefit" from it.
I just want to see a world where I can make as much as my male counterparts, and my opportunities are just as within my reach as they are for a man with my same level of education and my same work ethic.

Speaking of false accusations...

Take a look at this.

Just reading the first paragraph of that article honestly pisses me off. Believe me, I am quite the feminist, but I will never stand by a woman who falsely accuses somebody of rape. Conor Oberst, upon trying to file a lawsuit for a rape claim against him that was admitted by the "victim" to be false, was criticized--"arguing that it could intimidate real victims of rape and that it promoted the idea of men as victims of false accusations."

Excuse me, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. In South Carolina, the penalty for "aggravated coercion" is up to 20 years in prison. While someone who has been falsely accused of rape is spending up to 20 years among fellow inmates, the so-called "victim" roams free and is seen as a hero for speaking up.

Oberst was completely justified in filing a lawsuit, rather than submit to not only the media backlash, but also jail time. Why would anyone simply want to give in to going to prison for something that they have not done?

As far as this notion that "women never lie," I will gladly be the first to say that, as a woman, I lie on a daily basis. Everybody lies, men and women alike. So, to the fellow feminists out there, let's keep that painfully false idea out of our minds.

This article points out that, though the percentage of false reports of all rape reports is only, it's still 2 of every 100 rape reports. This video, which is noted in the article, reminds us that this statistic only applies to rape reports, and does not include rape accusations, such as Joanie Faircloth's written accusation of Oberst.

I recognize that rape is a serious issue, and that any accusations should be treated as such, but this does not mean that we should blindly believe any accusations that we may hear about, particularly those in the media. Many "victims" of celebrity rape may be likely to be simply looking for attention from the media, but as these claims must be taken seriously, a celebrity's reputation could be seriously damaged even though the claim may not be true.

This applies to your average Joes as well. Though false "victims" may not be looking for fame, there's always money involved in a lawsuit. And isn't money what we all want?

So, rapists are being put in prison for their crime (and as long as they truly are rapists, they certainly deserve it), but what about the false accusers? They are taking the money and time away from others to do a rape test, an investigation, a trial, all for what? To find out (maybe) that it's been a ruse the whole time? That simply cannot go unpunished.

It's like the boy who cried wolf. Everyone comes running when a woman yells "rape," but once she created an ordeal by lying, no one will be likely to believe her. And unfortunately, she may keep yelling it until this happens. Why waste the time and money for multiple false reports when she can simply "learn her lesson" the first time around through time in a cell? The cost of keeping her locked up for a period of time could potentially save the money and time that would go into the future trials with not only her, but also other people. Once people see that there is indeed a punishment for this wrongdoing, they will too be less likely to do the same crime. If there is no punishment, there is no legal incentive to do the right thing--tell the truth.

Why hasn't this been brought up yet...?

"More than 4% of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent." -Huffington Post, April 2014

In 2014 alone, 35 Americans were executed under the death penalty. According to this statistic in Huffington Post, approximately one or two (1.4 to be exact) of those people are statistically likely to be innocent.

Let's extend that to the beginning of the century. Between 2000 and 2014, 796 people have been executed in the United States as a result of capital punishment. Statistically, then, 31 or 32 (31.84, exactly) people have been falsely executed. This affects 32 people, 32 families, and most likely more than 32 friends.

Looking at the blog posts this week, there has been much talk about religion, economics, and international conflict. While these are all very important when taking a stance on capital punishment, we can't neglect to look at the fallacies that are bound to occur in the court process. It is not unheard of for the courts to falsely accuse someone of a crime. And it would honestly suck having to spend years in prison because of a crime that you didn't commit, but capital punishment is such a permanent court decision.

Though it can take decades to have a felon injected, it could potentially take longer for someone to figure out that this "felon" is innocent. Once they're injected, that's it. It's over.

I would like to say that we can solve this problem by attempting to improve the accuracy in court, but this is just too naive. Human error and subjectivity are too big in decision-making for them to be eliminated. Instead, we must take a look at the punishments and "solutions" we are utilizing.

I will stand on the side of those (potentially) 32 innocents. We cannot keep killing this percentage of innocent inmates.

Fox News: Fairly Unbalanced (4 Feb 2015)

Disclaimer: I am a liberal. This post will most likely contain bias.
The difference between me and Fox News? I don’t blatantly deny my bias.

Do you remember the “telephone game” from elementary school? The concept is simple: someone whispers some silly sentence to someone else, and by the time it gets back to where it started, it’s turned into even sillier nonsense that is no where near what the original thought was.

Now take this concept and expand it to a national (or even international) level. For example, the original story: Michelle Obama didn’t wear a headscarf in Saudi Arabia, since it is not required for foreigners to wear them; what gets thrown back at us: Michelle Obama is disrespectful of other cultures and hates Saudi Arabia.

This is how the media works–any form of media. They all have bias. The individual people who work for news corporations have their own views, and these views are often reflected in their work. Hence, news stories, especially those having to do with politics, will generally lean to a given side or way of thinking, and this varies with each media outlet. This is what happens when humans, who are prone to bias and error, run the media.

How does Fox News play into this? Simple–Fox News is a media outlet, so the corporation is not magically immune to this inevitable bias. In fact, many (including Seth Ackerman) have pegged Fox as one of the most biased media outlets, claiming that it leans strongly to the right. Quite frankly, this claim isn’t too far-fetched.

All I ask is that we stop giving Fox News some sense of purity. Nothing makes me more angry than seeing “Fair and Balanced” used to describe a news outlet, even if the slogan were used for a left-wing corporation, such as CNN or MSNBC.

So repeat after me: “Every news outlet has bias. Every news outlet, to some extent, leans to one side.” Ahh, thank you for helping to prevent my impending aneurysm.
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Comments from old blog:

Matthew: It’s definitely important to recognize the inevitable presence of bias in news outlets, or in any other communication of info by humans. Equally important, I would think, is avoiding the temptation to imply a false equivalence between various outlets in this regard, as many reasonable people do in an attempt to portray themselves as unbiased. All news is created imperfect, but no equally so.

You raise an interesting point, in that Fox News seems more committed than anyone else to telling their audience, quite explicitly, how fair and balanced and without spin their coverage is. Maybe this is part of their polarizing nature, and why Americans consistently consider them either the most or least trustworthy source of information. All I know is, I’ve never seen such declarations of “WE ARE NOT BEING BIASED” from so-called ‘serious’ broadcasters, like BBC, PBS, NPR, etc.

Why I drop $60k on a liberal arts education (or at least let the government do it….) (27 Jan 2015)

I feel like school is all I know.

During my senior year of high school, like many other students my age, I started submitting college applications. In retrospect, though, I didn’t stay up writing essays and bugging my parents for financial information because I wanted to go to college. I did it because I thought I had to. I had spent the last twelve years spending eight hours a day behind a desk. It was all I knew.

It had been no secret that I was “smart” (in academic terms). My father noticed this when I was young, and joked that I he wouldn’t be surprised if I went to Stanford when I was older. This was all I had heard about “college”–this “Stanford” place. So I took it seriously. My goal from that point was to get into Stanford. For what? I didn’t know. At that point, I still wanted to be a princess when I grew up, and I’m not sure that’s included in any university’s course catalog.

Ten years later, I received an e-mail from Stanford University informing me that I had not been accepted. I was at work at the time, and I asked my boss to let me sit in my car for a few minutes. I cried (I promise this won’t be a recurring theme in my blog). But honestly, I don’t know why. Sure, it would have been nice to be able to tell people I went to Stanford, but that was it. That was the appeal. I wanted the prestigious name. Sure, the academics are great, but I didn’t actually care. I had submitted many applications for reasons that had nothing to do with academics–maybe the campus was pretty, maybe they had an esteemed football team that I wanted to root for (go Ducks!). In fact, when applying to colleges, academics didn’t really matter to me at all. As long as I was at a university, it counted, right?

My biggest revelation came when I committed to attend Furman University. When I told my dad the news, he told me that he was proud of me and said that I would be the first one in the family to go to a four-year university. My jaw dropped. It was an option not to go to one?! This had never occurred to me. I had been so caught up in the social norm: when you get out of high school, you go to college. If you go to community college, it’s a cute effort. If you don’t go to college at all, you’re going to spend your time working at McDonald’s. And I sure as hell didn’t want to do that.

Essentially, I’m in school because society makes me feel like I should. I felt forced to decide what I want to do with my life early on. Fresh out of high school, I thought I had to have it all figured out. I declared my major during my first semester of college because I felt like I had to. I wanted to have a plan. I wanted to be able to answer questions at Thanksgiving–”How’s school?”, “What are you studying?”, “What do you plan on doing with that?” I just can’t bear to turn to my grandmother and utter the words “I don’t know,” when in reality, maybe I don’t know. Maybe my plan is wrong. Maybe it isn’t for me. And even though I can’t fully admit it yet, maybe it’s okay if I don’t know.

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Comments from old blog:

Dr. Herron: I still remember the pile of small envelopes form big name schools on the table waiting for me when we got home from a family vacation. Not a pleasant experience!

Of course, they are judging on much more than academics. And as you mention, focusing on academics with a purpose in mind is an essential part of making the experience worthwhile. I would just say, challenge yourself! Make yourself work hard and learn a lot. Any college education that does that will be extremely valuable.

Rah Rah for Reality (21 Jan 2015)

I've taken the bid day Snapchats. I've done the chants. I've painted the monogram letters. I've “thrown what I know.”  I've doodled the fleur-de-lis.

But I've also cried. I've ripped the blue letters away from my door. I've thought about ripping the streamers away from neighbors’ doors. How could they get exactly what I wanted? How could they be happy while I’m stuck here in the group of the “weirdos”, the “rejects”?

I’m now a sorority girl. More specifically, I’m a Kappa Kappa Gamma.

I went through the recruitment process telling myself I wouldn't let myself be a Kappa. I had heard the stereotype–these were “the girls no one else wanted.”

Note that I've put all of these stereotypes in quotation marks. Because let me tell you, they are complete and utter bullshit.

I started crying in my bid day room. I tried to hide it, but to no avail. An older sister pulled me out of the room, telling me that she felt the same way on her bid day. In fact, she handed her bid back and left. She told me I was braver than her, and that what this group of people saw in me was someone who could help build the organization. I will tell you, with complete honesty, that this may be the sweetest, most genuine person I have ever met.

I’ve since started giving the girls a chance. It took a day of crying, but I’m getting to know these girls. I went to high school with one of them. I was in the band with a few more. Two of these girls were my best friends since I arrived on campus. And I will tell you this much. These women are no more “weirdos” than anyone else. We’re all weird. And there is nothing wrong with that. If you’re not weird, you’re not for me.

So to the people that keep the stereotyping going around through rumors, to the girls who will go through recruitment next year just hoping that they won’t end up in this group so that they won’t have to have this reputation, just know this: a stupid outdated stereotype doesn't define you. It’s what you make of the situation you’re in. If you need to run away from your bid day, so be it. If you need time to cry, that’s fine. But I know that the sisterhood I have been offered is second only to the relationship I have with my biological sister. It has been 24 hours, and I already know that these are some of the best women I will ever surround myself with. That’s what truly matters–not the name that outside people give us.
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Comments from old blog:

Dr. Herron: Thanks for this very poignant post, Sydney. I have to admit that I am totally ignorant of the culture surrounding sororities and fraternities, and certainly of the reputations that they have. I’ve always personally felt affinity for the Groucho Marx joke–retold famously by Woody Allen in Annie Hall–that “I don’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” I’ve found that I tend to project this sense on to situations even when it is unwarranted. And it sounds like you have found the same–this group you initially felt unsure about turned out to be a wonderful group that you feel lucky, even privileged to be a part of

Tucker: Great thoughts. Just so you know, I’ve heard a lot of stereotypes about sororities at Furman, and the one that Kappa Kappa Gamma is where “the girls no one wants go to” is one I haven’t heard before. I’m saying this to let you know that not everyone has that opinion of your sorority. I agree with you in that what happens inside the sorority (aka the obvious strong sisterhood) is much more important than what anyone outside says about the group. I’m sure you’ll make the best out of it and end up having an amazing time there.

Kat: I have friends who were in the same position as you were. They were unhappy with the bids they received, but many of them did not handle it as well as you did. One of my friends cried for three days before taking a personal day off of classes and going home for two days. I am not at all what anyone would typically peg as a sorority girl; I love to watch sports, eat wings, and I get along incredibly well with guys and incredibly awkwardly with girls. Well, groups of girls larger than maybe 2-3. I like the way you phrase that an outdated stereotype shouldn’t define you. By damn if I’m a tomboy and I want more than 2 girls as friends then I’m going to do it. “I contain Multitudes” is a quote by whitman that I think helps drive home the point that everyone is comprised of many different qualities that make it very hard for us to fit into a rigid stereotype. Sororities are about finding a group of girls that makes Furman feel a little bit more like home, and if you get that in Kappa then you are a winner at the end of the day.