Women's resource center: The future of feminism

By: Kimberly Tsao

Posted: 5/13/09

Bonnie Sugiyama, director of the Women's Resource Center, would like students to dress up their speculums.

When she worked at the women's center at Cal State Sacramento, she said she held a "Decorate Your Speculum Day" to soothe people's fears about gynecologists and the tools they use. Doctors insert speculums into vaginas in order to inspect them during a check-up.

"It was a way to introduce people to the speculum in a fun way and you could paint it," she said. "We had people make alligators and Barbies. You just paste googly eyes and paint them and put hair on them. It's really quite cute and funny. But you could also talk about the appointment and what they do during the appointment, so people are less scared to go in and actually do it, because it's really important to get that test done."

Shawn Chan, finance and accounting manager for the Associated Students, said the organization gave the center $17,227 for the 2008-09 school year. He said the proposed budget for next year is $18,050.

Sugiyama said she hopes to recruit more students, regardless of their majors.

"I was at Sonoma State for a few years and I actually worked with a couple of professors and did course credit for internships also in the center, so if people wanted to volunteer for course credit and they found a professor that's willing to do that, I'm more than happy to sign off on paperwork," she said.

Future events may include self-defense trainings, an all-day mentor event between SJSU students and alumni, as well as breast cancer walks and runs. She may also hold retreats for people who are interested in feminism issues, but she acknowledged that such people might be difficult to find.

"If you give them definitions of what feminism is, most of them will say, 'Yes, I believe in all of those things,' and then if you say, 'Well, those are all the things that are feminism, Do you identify as a feminist?' most people will say - a lot of people will say - 'No,' and it's kind of interesting just because of that negative connotation - that word," she said. "But the basics of feminism is (to) believe in equal rights and the ability to have a choice in decisions that are made for ourselves. And I'm not necessarily talking about choice for - its choice for as in what happens to your body, but it's also choice in what career you want to do or if you want to get married or if you want to have children.

For Sugiyama, it's all about choice.

"I had one person come up to me and say, 'Well, I want to be barefoot and pregnant. What if that's what I want?' Well, if you want that, that's fine, but if you feel like you're forcing that decision, then that's not OK," she said. "Feminism is about giving people the opportunity to make that choice."