March Blog Post

            “Words are a powerful medium, they can be both oppressive and liberating”. This specific sentence is found in the article How Poetry Can Help Fight Gender Inequality, I personally believe that sentence and the article which it was from was some of the most impactful material I read from this month for this class.

            The excerpt I chose is spoken by a man named Andres Gomez who uses poetry as a tool to deliver his message of equality. Gomez grew up with a more sensitive and emotional nature which made him an outsider, which forced him to reflect on gender roles and stereotypes imposed by society, thus influencing him to battle the notion of hyper masculinity that many boys grow up with. So he now uses poetry as a tool to advocate for equality and speak out against the destructive symptoms of patriarchy.

             The sentence that defines the limits of words is simple yet does a great job of articulating and illustrating the power that we as people have every day when we make a choice to vocalize a thought. When Gomez states “words can both be oppressive and liberating”, this is an example of how his poems are meant to liberate people and encourage us to advocate for what we believe in rather than make us feel influenced to hold ourselves and others to impossible standards held by the unjust exercise of authority that society has raised us to believe in. This sentence specifically encouraged me to think more about what I chose to say, and how it’s affecting others around me.

            Alanna Vagianos writes an awesome article through the Huffington Post: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/04/slam-poems-feminist_n_6792536.html). This article entitled “14 Slam Poems That Pack a Serious Feminist Punch” is pretty self-explanatory, she posts 14 powerful feminist slam poems. I highly recommend taking a look at a few of these, they’re all very impactful and liberating, they range from talking about appearance, challenging rape culture, and talking honestly on various heavy topics. The overall point of this article, she specifically states, is to “implore us to keep fighting and to remember the importance of gender equality”. Which it does just that, which reminds me of the importance of what Gomez has to say by having the power to liberate others with our words.