By Shanice Davis
Assistant Features Editor
Feminist Anonymous (FA) organization leader, Karen GuzmXn said FA is not yet a recognized group on campus, but they seek to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression.
“We are trying to reintroduce a lot of values that have been lost on our campus and a lot of them have to do with reemphasizing that rape and sexual assault are an actual crime,” GuzmXn said.
A few years ago, the organization received backfire when the group decided to voice their opinion about sexual assault and the campus’ lack of support for victims. As a result, many women were silenced and quit the club because they were scared. GuzmXn said that she, herself is a survivor and had to deal with a sexual assault case. It was that experience that made her a stronger person, one who was willing to bring the issue out of the dark to spread awareness.
Awareness doesn’t stop there. FA has a couple events for Herstory Month, including the Vagina Monologues, which took place at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, March 13 and at 2:30 p.m. in Spanish and at 7:30 p.m. in English on Saturday, March 14. The Vagina Monologues is a play that consists of stories of various women throughout the world, all geared towards raising awareness about women’s health, sexuality and the violence directed towards them. Also, sometime in April, there will be the event, “Take Back the Night” and if anyone is interested in helping organize it, FA would greatly appreciate anyone who reaches out to them to help.
With FA not being recognized on campus, the group has one main goal at the moment.
“We hope to be able to be an established organization on campus,” GuzmXn said. “We are trying to recruit as many men and women to the organization because we want to create a new generation and a new wave on campus that’s all about gender equality, social justice and activism because for us, we like highlighting the fact that feminism is about ending all oppression.”
In addition, FA strives to focus on things the campus needs to help facilitate everybody’s needs on campus. This includes possibly having more lights, so that women won’t feel scared as they’re walking at night, or how to work with other organizations to ensure that parking fees go down. GuzmXn said that a change on campus starts with the students.
“We are really powerful in our own way, when we mobilize on the things we want,” she said.
And as for the debate of men and women in today’s society, GuzmXn believes that inequality does not stop at simply men and women, it is much more deeply rooted than that.
“A lot of times when you talk about gender and inequality today, in mainstream media, what happens is, you compare the amount that women make to that of men,” GuzmXn said. “A lot of the self-proclaimed feminists say ‘Oh women aren’t being paid as much as men, it’s awful!’ Of course we are against gender inequality and we want to do everything we can to highlight it, to address it as a problem, to accept and acknowledge this problem and transform it.”
While this is an important issue, there are many other aspects to the problem that do not get spoken about.
“But, what we also like to point out, is that when you talk about this gap you exclude women of color because that analogy that’s used so often is actually what a White women would be making versus a man,” GuzmXn said. “It’s important because women of color, specifically Black and Latinas actually make significantly less than that. So when you talk about this pay gap, you also have to address that there’s something deeper to that; when race comes in there’s a greater gap otherwise we are doing the same thing our ancestors messed up on.”
To join, contact Feminists Anonymous through their Facebook page, www.facebook.com/FeministsAnonymous