Category Archives: blogher

#WomensLives :: Unifying voices through #TellYourStory

If there is one thing you should know about me and social media, its that I place Twitter at the top of my list of must-use social media tools. Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook and spend way too many hours a day on it, but its Twitter that I turn to most for day-to-day information. It’s helped me get through traffic back-ups, severe weather and lets me feel not-so-far-away when something happens back home in Texas.

So needless to say, when the headline, “In Turkey, sometimes it takes a hashtag to be heard” came across PRI’s Across Women’s Lives, it jumped out at me. It talks about the  Twitter campaign #sendeanlat — or #tellyourstory — started in Turkey for women to tell their own personal stories about experiencing violence, or in many cases their attempts to avoid the violence.

It came on the heels of 20-year-old Özgecan Aslan being raped and stabbed to death by the driver of her bus. She was on her way home from college to visit her parents in southern Turkey when her life was cut short. According to women’s rights activists in Turkey, the tragedy was just one story of women being harassed, raped, beaten and killed with little-to-no consequences for their attackers.

Through the #sendeanlat / #tellyourstory hashtag, the stories of women going out of their way to avoid violence are just as staggering as the harassment they experience despite their best efforts. Through the hashtag(s), there is a wonderful strength in numbers, and I hope authorities are listening.

Three that jumped out at me, one from the article, two  I found reading the hashtag feed myself:

 

Why did these jump out at me? Because they all read like something I would do/have done. Right here in America. Because even if the law is far more strict regarding rape, murder and other violent acts, it doesn’t mean women here don’t still feel the need to be proactive against potential violence.

I used to keep an empty can of husband’s chew on the dashboard of my truck at all times. I’m not entirely sure when I quit doing that. But my hope was it would keep the truck from looking like a woman drove it. I’d often keep a baseball cap in my truck. When I drove home from going out late at night, I’d often throw it on so that perhaps my silhouette would look a little less feminine. I doubled that focus after a Central Texas woman was run off a rural road, kidnapped, raped and beaten in 2006.

When my husband goes on the road, I go out of my way to try to hide the fact he’s not home. I’m careful to keep certain things about my day the same, whether he’s home or not. I refuse to go to the grocery store at night alone. When I was bartending, I loved that most of our regulars refused to let us bartenders walk to our cars alone after closing.

Meanwhile, a tweet like this also stood out to me:

Not long ago, I had someone who left me feeling endlessly uncomfortable. Someone who left me literally sobbing my heart out driving home a few times, because he was so oblivious to how he kept “crossing the line” with me. It got to where I wanted to dress up to go out with my husband, but I’d find myself dressing way down just to avoid comments from this person about how I looked. I almost threw out my favorite pair of boots, because he felt it okay to make leering comments about them.

That’s not okay! That’s NEVER okay! Not here, not in Turkey, not in any country. And perhaps if we can all step up and tell or stories, we can empower each other and open other’s eyes.

Won’t you join in… Please. #sendeanlat … #TellYourStory

#womenslives#WomensLives is a media partnership between Public Radio International (PRI) and SheKnows Media, BlogHer‘s parent company, aiming to change the portrayal and coverage of women in media. I felt our standing up for ourselves fell right in line with this initiative. 

In Turkey, sometimes it takes a hashtag to be heard

 

#WomensLives :: Something important happened yesterday

There’s something about me I don’t (think) I talk about all that much. It’s the fact that my degree is in journalism. Oh, I talk about being an Aggie and what Texas A&M means to me, but I don’t talk much about the fact that my degree is in journalism. But. It is:

diploma-instagram

My final semester, Texas A&M University decided it would no longer offer Journalism as a major. (It has since changed its tune… it only took 10 years to do so, though.) I suppose that should have been a foreboding of sorts for me.

Between when I graduated in 2003 and today, I worked about a year and a half at a newspaper (click here to see my personal article archive) before walking away from the field. I consider this blog and interactions I have often on Twitter as my keeping up with my interest and deep down love for the field of journalism.

But as with things you love, its easy to also hate it… and to perhaps hate it a little more than anyone who didn’t at one time see it as their future. I know what good journalism is… and its very, very hard to find today.

It is for this reason that I jumped on the opportunity to join the #WomensLives initiative, a media partnership between Public Radio International (PRI) and SheKnows Media, BlogHer‘s parent company. (I’ve proudly been a part of the BlogHer network for years.) Perhaps I could be part of an initiative to fix a part of what is wrong in the news media today.

Did you know that only about 24% of all news subjects talk about women in any way, and only six percent of news stories highlight gender in/equality. Staggering, but true.  Staggering and unacceptable.

This initiative — #WomensLives — kicked off yesterday with a bang. Literally hundreds of women’s voices have come together to be heard. SheKnows Media is helping us as members of our community start conversations about the PRI’s Across Women’s Lives series using the #WomensLives hashtag across social media and through individual points of views on personal blogs.

I am SO excited to see where this initiative takes me — takes ALL of us. For the rest of this year, I’ll be blogging on topics directly related to #WomensLives as well as sharing links to other article. I welcome an open — respectful — dialogue about all the topics that will come be brought to light.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter and Facebook, and keep checking the #WomensLives hashtag regularly to find even more open and interesting discussions directly relating to women and media.

Let’s make a difference together!

#womenslivesLearn more over at BlogHer about #WomensLives!

You’re Invited: SheKnows Media and PRI Announce News Incubator #womenslives