Name: Hannah Cartier
Year: Sophomore
Major: Arts and Humanities, minoring in Women’s and Gender Studies
Hometown: Clarkston, Michigan
Cartier enjoys writing and performing advocacy slam poetry.
What are your plans post-graduation? I would like to join the Peace Corps after graduation, and after that, I would like to open my own nonprofit for women and children of developing countries. Or I could become a PETA activist, that’s always an option.
What are your interests? I love to write poetry, dance and make music (anything that evokes feeling).
Why do you like slam poetry? I mean, I’m a writer, but I feel like if I haven’t read a poem out loud, then it hasn’t come full-circle and hasn’t reached its true potential. Slam poetry is also a great outlet for activism, and that’s another part of speaking the poem – it’s not going to reach audiences, generally, from just sitting in a notebook.
What does activism mean to you? I mean, it’s more of advocating rather than activism. A lot of my activism lies in my feminism. I may not want a certain thing, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t fight for another person to have it.
What does feminism mean to you, and what would you like it to mean to other people if you consider yourself an advocate? I guess to me, it means supporting the choices of other women, even if I might not necessarily make that choice myself. I really hope that, when faced with feminism, other women keep that in mind – that although their ideals may not align with another woman’s, it doesn’t mean they can’t respect, or even support, another woman who may want something different from themselves. I don’t believe that there’s one form of feminism or a certain kind of feminist.
Tell me about some advocacy that you’re currently involved in? I’m focusing on writing right now. I’m actually focusing on writing my first book. It’s going to be titled: “Netflix and Chill: a Culture Where the Zipper Becomes the Last Line of Defense.” I really want to focus on young adults that are growing up in a very negative sex culture – that we do have the ability to communicate our desires sexually, insightfully. It’s going to focus around my experiences and other women I met throughout high school – how we never felt comfortable when with a partner to actually say what we wanted AND needed because we didn’t feel like we could say it. Our current culture doesn’t advocate communication among partners during sex. Lack of communication comes with certain sex slangs, such as Netflix and chill. When someone says, ‘hey, Netflix and chill?’ it could mean different things among different people. Rather than just coming out and asking, ‘would you like to have sex with me?’ it’s kind of behind this wall of sex slang that kind of deceeds people, especially women, of what kind of situation it is. It really promotes rape culture, in a way, that you don’t have to ask, ‘do you want to have sex?’