Ready or not! Here I come....

C'est Tanya qui écrit!

Jess, je ne peux pas dire que de mon côté non plus je me sois totalement acquittée de mes devoirs kickaction, alors je te pardonne. De toute façon, j’apprécie beaucoup la perspective de ton post ; il est effectivement particulièrement troublant que les adolescentes soient blâmées d’explorer leur corps et leur sexualité dès la seconde où cette exploration passe par les médias technologiques, c’est-à-dire dès qu’elle est visible.

Il est beaucoup plus rassurant de conserver l’idée selon laquelle l’exploration du corps et de la sexualité vécue par une adolescente est toujours un peu contrainte et jamais vraiment agréable ou désirée. Il est aussi beaucoup plus rassurant de se faire croire qu’être une fille, c’est être une jeune professionnelle qui vit entre ses histoires d’amours et celles de travail, qui assume son besoin de se sentir belle et pour qui l’amitié a valeur d’or.

Comme toi, c’est d’abord aux adultes que je me suis heurtée en cherchant les filles sur internet. Elles écrivent sur ce qui est nommé dans la blogosphère des «blogues de filles» ; elles racontent leurs vies, leurs intérêts, ce qui les anime et ce qu’elles détestent, que ce soient les nouvelles tendances, les phénomènes médiatiques ou le droit à l’éducation des filles : www.mamzellescarlett.com/

Parfois, en plus de raconter tout cela, elles le dessinent :
http://blog.chabd.com/ http://missgally.com/blog/index.php

Si j’apprécie les côtés à la fois humoristiques et critiques de ces blogues qui donnent une parole individuelle aux femmes dans l’espace public, voici bien ce qui me turlupine : ce ne sont pas des filles, mais des femmes. Elles sont adultes, indépendantes, travaillent … pourquoi sont-elles désignées comme filles? Pourquoi les considèrent-ont comme des adolescentes?

Mais surtout, que devient la parole des adolescentes parmi tout ça?

Si les femmes deviennent porteuses de la parole des filles, celles-là, on les écoute quand? Qu’est-ce qu’elles ont à dire? Où sont-elles dans le monde des nouveaux médias ? Et pourquoi, dès qu’elles y apparaissent, elles sont prises à tort, malmenées et critiquées ?

Thanks for the heads' up on those articles Jess G.

So apprently its all girls' fault again. Yep, you know us girls with our naivity and our good looks luring in predators everywhere. It must be our fault.

What I am referring to is the Globe and Mail article commenting on privacy and social networking Jess posted up. Highlights include:

"If you knew Ms. Porter, you'd probably be surprised at her lack of common sense "

"and no doubt her earthy good looks will have the boys stealing second glances in the library" (umm..i don't even see how this was supposed to be relavent, and its het-centric)

"She's articulate and quick-witted (if perhaps a tad innocent)."

Essentially the article is talking about how easily available personal informaiton is through social networking site like Facebook, etc. except with very judgemental language being used agaist the women cited in the article, and positioning most of the blame for the potential privacy problems on them as well. It all feels a little bit too "Eve shouldn't have bit from the apple" for me. 

The article continues "While our digital footprint expands, privacy erodes. More and more,
social networkers who are not obsessively careful face the prospect of
identity theft, inadvertently marring their own reputation or even
inviting the threat of physical harm" (my emphasis added). 

Last I understood, having my information on facebook isn't an open invitation for physical harm. Yes, its great to work on protecting ourself, and we can work to excercise our agency to control the flow of information about us (as much as we can...which, we can't always), but not doing this doesn't mean that somehow we've put the rubber stamp on violence against us.Geez!

Yes, often privacy protection is important, and its really helpful to be aware of information about us that is out there. But, in all this social networking experiment, driven by (yes...youth...yes, to an extent)...but also by  large Corporation like Fox who own myspace.com or Facebook worth up to $2B , who is investing in the agency of girls to protect our rights, and our privacy? The author talks about "common sense" like we are born with such knowledge, but of course we reconize that commen sense is an accumulation of experience, teachings and knowledge.

And is this really the dominant issue? Last time I remember a lot of the violence faced by girls and women comes from people we know and by the systems and institutionalized violence we face...less so from random strangers gathering information on facebook. Sounds like a bit of a moral panic to me. (again, not to say violence of this kind isn't real, but is it really the dominant issue this article makes it out to be?)

The article continues to speculate on why the teens are doing all this. Except, opps, they forgot to ask the teens themselves. I am also annoyed that the article looks at the role of celebrities, reality tv, and with one "expert" notes that ""Kids are now raised on this reality TV where the goal is to get attention at all costs, even if it means humiliating yourself," but, barely touches on the causes for this. If we are doing all this and we are humiliating ourselves, aren't we then to think about some of the reasons for this, like self-esteen, self-awareness. etc. (Ok. the article sort of touches on this..but is much more focused on sensationalizing the issue itself). Also, not to mention that maybe some of these things aren't that humilating for people, its just people's reaction to them which are stigmatizing. 

I think it would have been a lot more interesting to hear from the young women themselves about what they think of this, and why they think this is happening. I think it would give us a much better idea of where the "problems" really are situated and also to talk about the positives about social networking (like, I don't see mention of the fact that girls and young women are using this tool to organize ourselves, to connect with each other, to break isolation as well).

Arg!

Yes.  My points exactly!  But I just wanted to direct people to a different sites because writing/reading on the internet makes me woozy.

I asked some of the youth I work with to tell me about how they use the internet.  They say the number one reason: homework and bus schedules.  I guess that doesn't really spark the interest of mass media.  Their third interest are the quiz/posts people fill out on Facebook.  Perhaps my own 25 things about this topic is to come...

"Teens watch talking cats video"

Yeah, somehow that headline wouldn't bring in as much advertising revenue i don't think.

ok...warning...I am pretty much going off on a TOTAL (although inspired) tangent

typing in "teen girls" into the google news search is a bit addictive.

 Here are the headlines this hour:

 Teen girls may face charges in MySpace sex prank

Check out my hot bod: Wait, I can get that back, right?

...its interresting to see how many of the articles include the ingreditents of 

technology (scary!) +sexuality (woooah, even scarier) + girls (AHH!!) = super fears.

So when these three things come together, watch out. (wow, i am really sarcastic today, sorry about that) 

...is "sexting" the new"hypersexualized"? I must have seen this word come up in almost every article i checked out. 

ok..more articles to puruse (carefully and critically)

SEX AnD TECH esults from a Survey of eens and Young Adults

cosmogirl.com and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy teamed up to create this. I am really curious about the context of this study (?).

From another website I learned that this organization: 

"The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, founded
in 1996, seeks to improve the lives and future prospects of children
and families and, in particular, to help ensure that children are born
into stable, two-parent families who are committed to and ready for the
demanding task of raising the next generation. Our specific strategy is
to prevent teen pregnancy and unplanned pregnancy among single, young
adults. We support a combination of responsible values and behavior by
both men and women and responsible policies in both the public and
private sectors. The National Campaign is now expanding its focus to
reduce unplanned pregnancy among young adults." hmmmm....more info on them here too

I saw the data from this curvey cited in a lot of articles here here here and many other places...something  fishy going on here.

(ps. I read that Ricky Lake is on the advisory committee, i used to )

“That so many young people say technology is encouraging an even more
casual, hook-up culture is reason for concern, given the high rates of
teen and unplanned pregnancy in the United States,” said Marisa
Nightingale, Senior Advisor to the Entertainment Media Program at the
National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy." (from the above mentioned article)

ohhh..i see technology causes teen pregnancy. And this whole time I thought it was more complex then this, you know with the cuts to sexual education, and the intersections of self-esteem, self-worth etc. might have been contributing factors. I guess its actually all those text messages. 

THE TANGENT CONTINUES

ok. back to the challanges of technology, the Ad Council and Family Violence Prevention Fund Launch Innovative Campaign to Prevent Digital Dating Abuse Among Teen launched a shiny, and humerous way of talking about absive relationships mixed with technology.

all this technology stuff makes me a bit dizzy....your thoughts?

PG- I'm going to check out all your links.  Now you see how I got distracted and led on a bazillion non-linear narratives by google!

In a bit of an answer to Tanya, I found a salon article that confuses girls and women (for the primary reason of onomatopeia) bloggers and gets freaked out about us talking about our bodies the way we want.  There is also the sidesalad of shock blogging for more hits ...  The Great Girl Gross out !!!!

I remember an article about text messages that tell you your current or former partner has HIV or something like that.  I will try to dig it up to continue the thread.

Salut les filles,
que de plaisir j'ai à vous lire!

Tant de choses intéressantes ont été soulevées, j'en aurais pour trois pages. Mais y'a un truc qui m'a allumée dans ce que Tanya a écrit. Si les femmes sont mélangées avec les filles, mais ou sont donc les VRAIES filles et quels véhicules ont-elles pour s'exprimer? Ça m'amène à soulever un défi auquel nous faisons toutes face, en tant qu'intervenantes qui voulons donner la parole aux filles: on doit se refréner nous-mêmes parfois pour que notre objectif se réalise réellement, et pour privilégier le processus au résultat. On le sait, en faisant le magazine, et d'autres intervenants qui font d'autres projets m'en ont également parlé, on a parfois une tendance inconsciente à by-passer les filles pour mettre de l'avant nos propres valeurs et idéaux. C'est fou, mais en plus de se battre contre la société et les mainstream media, il faut aussi être toujours très conscientes de nos propres réflexes et actions. Je pense que c'est un grand défi pour tous les intervenants, tant pour nous qui travaillons auprès des filles que pour d'autres travaillant auprès d'autres groupes. Donner la parole entièrement est risqué. C'est un risque qui ne "fitte" pas dans le cadre de la société, des institutions, des bailleurs de fonds. Mais c'est le plus beau des risques. Je nous souhaite une longue aventure très risquée dans laquelle les filles auront toute la place nécessaire pour prendre la parole.