Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

[Dina Hornreich <hornreichdina AT gmail.com>]

Dear friends (new & old):

Our current socio-technical realities continue to validate creativity and other “feminine” sensibilities through our use of information, media, and technology artefacts supporting the emergence of “prosumerist” communicative practices. 

Media pollution, information poverty, techno-lust, pluralistic ignorance, and digital resignation are crashing our culture. This ongoing “over differentiation” offers new ways for identifying our individual preferences, styles, aptitudes, modalities, and orientations which have adapted in ways that continue to transform our lifestyle choices. Because we can be creative (but not intelligent) and we can be intelligent (but not wise); yet wisdom encompasses both creativity and intelligence! 

Now, it is time to “wise up” by agreeing to become “data feminists” who will usher in a conceptual age by aggregating our existing resources and otherwise realigning our efforts to better support our democratic dispositions. As such, my goals persist in establishing a task force of informed, engaged, and wise citizens who strive for more equitable access to the resources we need, want, and deserve for intellectual, physical, socio-emotional, spiritual, and financial wellbeing in order to succeed as individuals and communities who could better coexist organically, analogically, and across the metaverse. 

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A qualitative test of longevity for creative content (experiences using images, text, audio, video, etc.) should rest in its ability to reinvent itself across temporal and spatial boundaries: organic instrumentations, analog recordings, digital downloads, and everything in-between (or beyond?!). The performing arts should offer additional opportunities for shared experiences and other expressive outlets for establishing common ground in order to promote healthier social connections across micro, meso, and macro formats which tend to serve as community building platforms.

Accordingly, I remain convinced that the medium is the lesson; so I am trying to build a template for an arty/punky upgrade to more educational works (like the musical “Free to be you and me”); and these efforts are based around my response to ideas about Mean Girls Feminism. 

I put these ideas into a wiki article as an update to my Typical Girls listserv: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/NAMP:_Not_Another_Marketing_Ploy.) I had facetiously started calling this project landiapalooza/paloozalandia; but it's an extrapolation on the listserv (web 1.0) to social media (web 3.0) progression which recognizes how conceivability implies possibilities; thereby raising questions about ethics, appropriateness, and effectiveness. 

But again, I’m considering it as an upgrade to the concepts that originally inspired the 1974 show “Free to be you and me” (which can be sampled here: https://www.discogs.com/master/124538-Marlo-Thomas-And-Friends-Free-To-Be-You-And-Me). Because I try not to forget that we are all deplorables; and that is precisely why I believe feminism is for everybody! This is why we should continue to “manifest the x (chromosome)” — because we all have at least one!

My goal is to help us to envision sustainable change and otherwise better support our perceived needs, wants, and desires for building solidarity in becoming a more participatory democracy of informed, engaged, & wise citizens who can live, love, learn, work, create, grow, and lead individually, communally, and across the metaverse. Furthermore, we should be laying the foundation for reinforcing the collaborative, egalitarian, & introspective discernments that impact prosumerist decision-making habits which affect our everyday choices on numerous levels (healthcare, education, religion, arts & entertainment, economics, government, and beyond). Therefore, I am pondering whether I can use a “backward design” approach to accomplish these goals.

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We might ponder ways of better developing synchronous and asynchronous content across organic, analog, and digital formats. These efforts are explicitly for:

• Stopping the epidemics of misinformation, disinformation, & malinformation (propaganda) from disrupting our information, media, & technology (IMT) ecosystems by facilitating the effective, appropriate, & ethical comprehension/production of information, media, & technology artefacts on our journeys toward integrative recovery & holistic wellbeing.

• Facilitating the acquisition of lifelong literacies, instead of reinforcing the perception that "natural vulnerabilities" are "permanent deficiencies," as a community of learners struggling to fight the onslaught of unhealthy messages generated by practices which condone/promote the exploitation of typical human fallibilities reinforcing the greedy, violent, and misogynistic approaches of a plutocratic tyranny (technocracy??) who resorts to criminalizing, pathologizing, and otherwise blaming the victims of their wanton ludicrousness. (The separation of church and state does not sanction immorality!)

• Alerting consumers to the impact of numerous illusions and other deceptive efforts that turn our individual differences into manufactured deviations (and other forms of "learned helplessness"); thereby revealing systemic injustices that are perpetuated by ongoing inequitable power dynamics (i.e. colonialism) and other accessibility barriers to the basic resources that support our universal human needs, wants, & desires for lifelong goal attainment.

My ongoing efforts have roughly followed this agenda: 

September: The International Day of Peace on 9/21; and it is sponsored by the United Nations <https://media.un.org/unifeed/en/asset/d196/d1969555>

October: Media Literacy Education week is the last week in October. The National Association for Media Literacy Education <https://namle.org/about> sponsors this event. 

November: Buy Nothing Day is right after Thanksgiving (fka “Black Friday”). Adbusters Media Foundation sponsors this event <https://www.buynothingday.co.uk/>.

December: Human Rights Day is 12/10 and it is sponsored by the United Nations <https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day>; Bill of Rights day is 12/15 and the National Archives offers resources for that observance <https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/bill-of-rights>.

January: Public Broadcasting Day is 1/13 and Smithsonian has done a good job with that idea <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/radio-activity-the-100th-anniversary-of-public-broadcasting-6555594/>; National Technology Day is 1/06 and the Electronics Value Recovery offers insight for this observance <https://electronicsvaluerecovery.com/2023/01/06/from-the-wheel-to-the-web-national-technology-day-january-6/>.

February: Skip the Straw day is 2/27 and you can learn more about that movement <https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/the-last-plastic-straw-movement>

March: Farmworkers Day (fka: Cesar Chavez day) is 3/31; and there is more about that renaming <https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260sb1394>

April: Global volunteer month with a fundraising event on 4/21; “Points of Light” offers interesting fodder with that observance <https://www.pointsoflight.org/global-volunteer-month/>

May: Screen-free week is a weeklong event occurring at the beginning of the month. The FairPlay organization in Boston sponsors this programming: <https://fairplayforkids.org/mission-impact/>

June: National Camera Day is 6/29; Purdue University offers helpful ideas for that observance <https://www.press.purdue.edu/blog/2023/06/29/reading-the-world-through-the-lens-of-a-camera-books-for-national-camera-day/>.

July: The International Day of Friendship is 7/30; which was proclaimed in 2011 by the United Nations <https://www.un.org/en/observances/friendship-day>

August: Women’s Equality Day is 8/26 <https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/commemorations/womens-equality-day/>; and National Radio Day is 8/20 <https://www.nationalradioday.com/about/>

FYI: These ongoing efforts are being compiled under the guise of “a Project 2041”: <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zTi7lNVI5TPXke6HC1hsafpO2NBiGbymw2kTZ01672w/edit?usp=drivesdk>

Modern learning environments are often expanding their offerings to include a variety of innovative experiences as laboratories for ecosystemic progress. As a seasoned instructor in information, media, communication, and technology literacies, I continue to benefit from over 25+ years of expertise that uniquely combines an MS in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) with a Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS). 

From my experiences as a classroom language communication teacher leader in public high schools and community colleges to my efforts in administrating library services, programs, databases, collections, events, and facilities; I fully appreciate the logic and rationale for including diverse perspectives on our journeys which we can explore under the “protective layer” of various learning “microcosms.” As such I remain committed to seeking ways for more equitably offering accessible support networks (and otherwise implementing universal design principles) by apprehending the variety of inequitable barriers which prevent social, academic, and vocational success and overall civic engagement. 

Obviously, these can be difficult conversations which can occur through formal and informal scholarly communicative exchanges across disciplines; but ongoing iterations of meta-literacy frameworks (e.g. NAMLE, ACRL, UNESCO, and IFLA) offer support and encouragement for these efforts because they substantiate their crucial role in supporting the development of our self-concepts. It is an approach that uniquely promotes an elevation of “feminine” sensibilities (e.g. artistic, spiritual, socio-emotional, etc.) for improved self-awareness which is an important consideration for supporting learners who are seeking meaningful engagements when using the multitude of platforms, tools, and resources offered by the information, media, and technology resource collections available to the stakeholding constituencies surrounding us. 

These are practices that have been formally aggregated and categorized as “Data Feminism.” And they represent efforts to promote an overall agenda that I consider to be consistent with those articulated amongst our local communities’ mission, vision, and other strategic planning initiatives. Moreover, I have adopted this “rubric” for these efforts based on the Global Leadership & Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Project whose criteria supports: uncertainty avoidance; power distance; institutional collectivism; in-group collectivism; gender egalitarianism; assertiveness; future orientation; performance orientation; and a humane orientation.

Obviously, this is an artificial construct; but it is based on an all encompassing view that authentic experiences tend to recognize that humankind doesn’t exactly repeat itself — but we are rhythmic! A fundamental awareness that should offer more equitable opportunities for rebuilding in the post-COVID era. Gatekeepers and safeguards persist across numerous socio-cultural infrastructures; but we might be able to revise our criteria in order to better support wisdom as a meta-heuristic that better incorporates cognitive, affective, behavioral, and meta-cognitive competencies as a shared goal for civic participation across micro, meso, and macro situations.

Marsha Linehan’s therapeutic approach suggests four “core areas” of skills for assessing the acquisition of these competencies: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Pick any label you like for our deplorably “human conditions;” but we are all nonetheless hooked on bullsh*t (and it is driving each of us DEIMOCKRAZY!).

And that is why I am promoting communicative literacies for improved success in school, at work, with family, and for fun; and accommodating lifelong learners’ orientations, modalities, preferences, styles, & aptitudes in order to validate social intuitionism as a meta-heuristic approach to wisdom attainment.

Thank you for reading; and (as always) please be well!

-Dina

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Dina L. Hornreich, MS, MLIS 

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hornreichdina AT gmail.com