Feminist Alliance

• Introductions
• Constitution:
• Discussion/edits
• Add to mission statement: intersectionality, commitedness to striving to end all forms of oppression
• Add clause allowing people to revisit/review meeting structure
• ROAR: Tweak language to include queer/trans people who feel comfortable in an all-female identified space
• Add clause to review constitution within a month of each academic year
• Vote to ratify by 2/3^rd majority
• Unanimously in favor!
• Reminder about upcoming elections
• Next week Fem Alliance is opening filing for next year’s positions
• Either 1 president or 2 co-presidents (if you want to be co-presidents with somebody, start talking about that/figuring it out now)
• Designated Person: see job description on constitution
• Treasurer: handles finances
• Web person: responsible for updating the website
• See constitution for clarifying information about doubling up on positions, etc
• Feel free to talk to Faren and/or Rachel about president position, Julia about DP/treasurer
• Two weeks from now: announce candidates
• Three weeks from now: vote
• Misc Opinion Columns
• Violence Against Women Act in danger of not getting passed
• Does anyone want to write an opinion piece for the misc about it?
• Email opinions editor Hannah Blume: hablume@vassar.edu
• Upcoming events:
• All-female variety show
• Sydney: SAAW is having an art show, maybe we could use the pieces for the variety show event
• Tentative date: April 21^st
• Earth Week
• Busy week for Fem Alliance – Pauline Park & Variety Show
• Does someone want to take on doing something for Earth Week? Email Faren or Rachel or talk to one/both of them
• Sexual Assault Awareness Week
• 2^nd week in April (the whole month is Sexual Assault Awareness Month)
• CARES: daytime programming, different every day
• Speakout
• Speaker: Miriam Perez (feministing blogger)
• Film screening – need ideas for films! Contact Julia
• Art show – in the Leob?
• If you want to help organize this/flyer etc, email Julia
• FLLAC: Screening of Women Art Revolution
• Check Fem Alliance Upcoming Events page
• Screening of Miss Representation
• Next Thursday @ 7PM in Blodgett
• Deals with problematic portrayals of women in the media
• Panel afterwards
• Flyers later this week
• South Asian Women
• South Asian Students Alliance: 3-part series on South Asian Women in various professions
• They want to put Fem Alliance’s name on the poster
• Funding: $50.00 from Fem Alliance
• Pauline Park
• Asian-American transfeminist coming to speak here in April
• April 18^th, Wednesday evening
• Lecture/discussion
• Teach-in about Attacks on Planned Parenthood
• Friday, May 4^th 12-4PM in the Villard Room
• Collaboration with Vassar Democrats
• Email aldeane@vassar.edu if you want to get involved
• CLRG: Conversation Dinner
• Tuesday, April 17^th
• Fruit Salad
• Tomorrow in the LGBTQ Center at 12pm
• Discussion around family relationships/how they change after coming to Vassar
• New SAVP Coordinator
• Successful campaign for restored SAVP Coordinator Position
• Elizabeth: starts this summer, will be here for the fall semester

Minutes (Feb 28, 2011)

• Introductions
• Discussion time: negotiated readings (Stewart Hall: media theorist – “encoding and decoding”: the creator has encoded something and the reader decodes something, they may or may not be the same).  How do we engage with pop cultural texts?  What do we do when a text is problematic, but we still enjoy it and/or read it?  How can we use the feminist toolkit to unpack these texts?
• Pop culture can help point out/show evidence of how things are messed up in culture; looking at it can be a fun intellectual exercise
• Intro foreign language classes are really heteronormative and it’s not really appropriate to point it out
• Frustrating to receive bad attitudes from other people when you bring up a dialogue about problematic things
• A lot of the time, when TV shows try to do a good job of dealing with problematic issues, they fail miserably and you wish they hadn’t even tried because it sets a bad example for how issues should be dealt with
• Business
• Upcoming Events
• International Women’s Day
• 2:30PM on the Walkway Over the Hudson, March 8^th
•  http://www.dutchesscountyregionalchamber.org/IWD_2012/index.html
• Occupy Education Rally on Thursday, March 1st
• Potential Planned Parenthood event
• Discretionary fund could provide some funds
• Someone from fem alliance could be on panel
• Hopefully early May before finals get busy
• Pauline Park update
• Asian-American transfeminist coming to speak at Vassar; need dates, collaboration with TransMission
• GAAP: waiting to hear back about funding
• New date: April 18
• All-Female Variety Show update
• Discussion: potential names? Something with fem- prefix?
• HUZZAH: An All-Female Variety Show
• Constitution
• Official name of organization: The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance – national organization with which we are no longer affiliated.
• Do we want to use the word “feminist” in the name? has some bad implications but may still be necessary to work with
• New official name: Feminist Alliance
• Constitution consists of 10 articles
• Mission Statement
• Election Procedures
• A link to the constitution-in-progress is here.  Please look it over before meeting if you have a chance. You can comment on it if you want (highlight, insert à comment) and we will ratify it after break.

Minutes (Feb 21, 2012)

• Intros
• Discussion: reclaiming words
• When is a pejorative word ready to be reclaimed? Who gets to reclaim which words? What happens when some people think a word is ready to be reclaimed but other people continue to find it offensive, dehumanizing, or hurtful?
• The word “bitch”: loaded with a lot of sexist tropes, used to describe women who are loud/express opinions (unpopular opinions), who don’t fit into what women are supposed to be.
• use in the queer men’s community
• thrown around a lot more than the word “cunt”
• has dual meanings: either a woman who does a man’s bidding (like a dog) or a woman who has her own opinions and comes into conflict with men
• “Bitch Magazine”: for women with thoughts
• “slut”
• doesn’t really have a male equivalent
• many words describe people who have a lot of sexual partners: some are gendered, some are not, but most of the words that only describe women are pejorative
• what is gained by reclaiming words like these/is it worth it?
• Reclaiming right to be a woman and be sexual, take the power away from denigrating women for doing that
• What’s more empowering is being able to choose what you want to do with your sexuality; how much sex you want to have (if any), etc a problem in placing emphasis on empowering people by reclaiming a word that only honors and values one choice
• Contributes to virgin/whore dichotomy
• conscious reclaiming: the word “dyke” refers to a certain identity category
• only the people who are subjected to insult by that word can reclaim it, and they should only use it to refer to themselves individually, never make the decision to reclaim it for another person by calling them an insulting word
• basically, don’t use reclaimed words toward people unless they have consented to it.
• Updates
• Bitchfork
• WVKR, mostly woman-fronted bands, radically patriarchy-resistant, alternative music festival
• Rachel and Faren met with organizing committee
• They said that they’ve thought about the use of “Bitchfork” and still plan to use it, cited some other feminist bases that uses “bitch” as empowering word
• Sometimes feminists don’t agree on things, and that’s okay – maybe they aren’t explicitly identifying it as feminist because of connotations of “feminism” as a one-stranded theory/practice, only representing a very narrow political ideology?
• Fem Alliance is gonna tap out of being involved in this event at this point since we weren’t really involved to begin with
• Merely Bitches theater production
• Working title for Merely Players production
• Fem alliance emailed the director: he seems pretty attached to the title, possibly because he wants to attract people who might not otherwise come with a light-hearted title
• Some people in fem alliance are uncomfortable with combination of “merely” and “bitches,” also the use of the word “bitch” by a male director is problematic
• Trigger warnings for theater productions
• Sounds like it will be discussed at all-organization meeting next week
• Consent disclaimers on party posters?
• Might have subliminal effect on party-goers
• Would demonstrate Vassar’s focus on keeping women safe
• Think about what this disclaimer might look like: we’ll talk about it next week
• New Projects
• Possible collab on screening of “Women, Art, Revolution”  with FLLAC tentatively April 12th
• Explores feminist artwork/art history, lots of cool historical footage
• Art department is sponsoring screening
• Does fem alliance want to be involved? Yes!
• Fem Alliance should be able to contribute some money, maybe have a discussion panel
• Think about other programming ideas
• Upcoming events
• Screening of “The Help” tomorrow (Wednesday) in the CDF at 7PM
• Thursday @ 6PM lecture on “The Help” in Sanders Classroom
• Tabling @ All College Day tomorrow (Wednesday)
• All Female Variety Show
• Subcommittee meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9pm in the Retreat.
• Brie is point person
• Feminist study time
• Mondays 6-9pm in the women’s center with snacks and tea
• Budgeting meeting
• Thursday at 5:30pm in the Retreat
• Pauline Park
• Activist and speaker: talks about trans women’s issues, Asian-American issues, and their intersections
• Collab with TransMission: event focusing on trans issues
• Roar
• Sundays from 10-11:20pm in the Faculty Parlor

Steering Committee

• Contact Pauline Park about possible speaking collab with TransMission
• Figure out display for All-College Day table

Minutes (Feb 14, 2012)

• Introductions
• Vagina Monologues Discussion
• Locus for feminist discussion, often the only one on a lot of campuses – must make sure that the conversation continues after the event, make sure that its not the only representation of feminism
• Creates feeling of community, solidarity
• Without background of feminist theory, might be less powerful
• TVM is important because people are uncomfortable talking about vaginas
• Exclusionary: draws divide between American women and other women around the globe, also limits “female experience” to people who have vaginas
• Talk-backs, display encourages people to be engaged, allows people to see that they’re not the only ones who have criticisms
• Ways to improve
• Possibly add monologues written by Vassar students that address things that are questionable – legally, not allowed
• might have an entirely different event of Vassar student monologues as a response. Amherst did “Vagina Confessions” without the companion of TVM and it went really well
• emphasize things that are problematic and that the cast is aware of them to make it clear to audience going in
• Upcoming Events
• Feminist Music Festival?
• Email aldeane@vassar.edu if you have suggestions/want to be involved with coming up with a name
• WVKR is putting on all-female music festival with artists outside school. Problematic names: want to have a conversation about it
• Name ideas:
• “Red Tent”/”Red Stage”: like the idea of celebrating female spaces, but not excluding people who don’t menstruate/referencing a biblical menstrual tent
• “Warp the Patriarchy Tour”
• “Fem ______” Fem-aroo? Femjamz, fembeats, etc
• Keep thinking about ideas, we will talk about it again next week
• Earth Week
• Hosted by Vassar Greens, after break in April
• They want to know if Fem Alliance wants to be involved: do we want to/what do we want to do?
• Ecofeminism subcommittee: email fatang@vassar.edu if you want to be on it
• All-female variety show with on-campus performance groups: Fem Alliance’s big event for the semester
• Variety Show Subcommittee
• If you’re interested in being point person or being on the committee, email: fatang@vassar.edu
• Point person: must be at all Fem Alliance/steering committee, being responsible for subcommittee (providing updates, organizing meetings, keep track of things that need to get done/who needs to do it, how much it will cost)
• Committee Check-in
• Spectrum
• Squirm is having sex-toy auction fundraiser Saturday 8-12pm in the Jade Parlor
• April 11^th CARES Sexual Assault Awareness Week
• Contact cares@vassar.edu if you want to be involved
• CLRG: Campus Life Resource Group
• Meeting to talk about campus life/puts on campus dinners,
• All College Day (next Wednesday)
• Conversations around tensions on campus
• Flyer will come up in email
• Fem Alliance Tabling @ All College Day 1:30-3:00PM in the Villard Room à signup will go out to fem alliance email
• Fem Alliance Business
• Written structure of organization/constitution: how we represent ourselves to VSA/the world
• If you’re interested in contributing, email fatang@vassar.edu
• Julia Ding as both treasurer and DP
• Two roles should be totally separate and non-conflicting
• If anyone has an issue with her doing both roles, talk to Rachel or Faren (or email either of them) at your convenience
• V-Day related Until the Violence Stops screening and panel on Thursday at 8PM Rocky 200
• History of V-Day campaign/global movement against violence towards women & girls: we want to talk critically about movement at the screening
• Info on Fem Alliance facebook group
• Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/242769435807962/
• Feminist hang-out/study space
• Mondays 6-9PM in the women’s center with tea (In Strong off of the parlor)

Steering Committee

• Events
• National Abortion “Bowl-A-Thon” (National Abortion Fund Committee)
• Raises funds for people who cannot afford to have abortions
• They want to raise money by having a bowl-a-thon – should Fem Alliance do it? It sounds complicated, expensive, and time-consuming – people might not take it seriously
• Perhaps instead we could have a bowling field trip because we like bowling
• Feminist Coming Out Day
• Feminist pride day. Marh 8^th (over spring break)
• Fem Alliance could throw our own that’s not over spring break, but it would be less connected with national campaign
• Make some “I Am A Feminist” –esque t-shirts? Bring this up in general body
• “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts
• “WMST – there it is” / “hooked on hooks, stuck on Steinem, lovin on lorde, burning for butler, pissed at the patriarchy” t-shirts available in WMST office on 2^nd floor of New England (cash only)
• Trans-focused event
• Potential speaker:
• Pauline Park: trans woman, gender rights activist, involved in big name organizations
• From New York, so cheaper: work with transmission for funding
• http://www.paulinepark.com/
• Miss Representation screening collab w/Misc
• Didn’t work out last semester
• Want panel with powerful women in media speakers: Elizabeth DeBold, Patty Rousseau, and more
• Office of Health Ed planning on doing a screening – they’re willing to do it with us
• Fem Alliance can’t contribute much: a little money, person power. Also sponsored by Misc and Office of Health Ed
• Will keep posted when we learn more about it
• “Merely Bitches” play (working title, but there are posters up in the CC with that title)
• WVKR All-female music festival: “Bitchfork”?
• Faren and Rachel will send Thea an email about setting up a meeting to talk about political implications of feminist music festival and title
• Trigger warning for play that includes sexual violence
• Director doesn’t think it’s necessary to put a trigger warning on the poster because he’s concerned about spoiling the storyline
• Email heads of theater orgs and ask to require trigger warnings for sexual assault, domestic violence, suicide (need more comprehensive list of things) for performances that include these things – Faren and Rachel will write this email tomorrow

Minutes from February 7, 2012

• Introductions: Favorite De-stressor
• DP (Re)Elections
• Discussion: Trans People and Women’s Spaces (Led by Tristan)
• Events/Subcommittees
• GAAP Conference (Happened)
• Planned on holding more meetings for students interested in activism
• First meeting: Feb 24 4-6pm, College Center MPR
• Email aldeane@vassar.edu
• “VaJammin”
• No new information
• Spectrum
• No new information
• CLRG
• All College Day topic: Change at Vassar
• Consensus on Tabling for this event
• Operations Committee
• Holding meeting to discuss how student government operates
• Interested in attending? Email fatang@vassar.edu
• Interested in sitting on CLRG (Tues 3-4pm)? Email fatang@vassar.edu
• Vagina Monologues!!
• Subcommittee Meeting tomorrow (Wed) at 7pm in Shiva
• Still need tablers to sell Vagina Cookies
• (Also, buy Vagina cookies in retreat all week)
• Shows are Thursday, Friday, Saturday 8pm
• Reserve tickets at info desk
• Need tablers to sell Vag cookies at shows (you get guaranteed seat if you sign table!)
• If you have articles/thoughts/images pertinent to the Vagina Monologues that you would like displayed at the showings, please email them to Lauren lamulligan@vassar.edu
• Women’s Center Study/Chat time is happening
• Monday 6-9pm
• SAVP Coordinator is being hired!
• Email fatang@vassar.edu if you have questions/concerns about the hiring process or that you wish to voice to possible candidates
• Queer Lady Parties is looking for possible new names
• Wolf Parties?
• If you have feelings about this email fatang@vassar.edu
• Battered Women’s Services Haircut Fund Raiser
• February 17^th, 11am-6pm, Renee’s Hair Salon
• Address: 1649 East Main Street, Wappinger Falls
• You can also just donate!
• Email anrhoads@vassar.edu if you want more information

Minutes for Steering Committee

• DP Ballots Counted
• Julia Ding is new DP
• Consensus on allowing Julia to do both Treasurer and DP
• Need to double-check with General Body