Leader in the Field Interview

I interviewed Bliss Brown, the Program Coordinator for OU’s Gender and Equality Center. Bliss is someone I truly admire, a strong, feminist leader who has caused a lot of change.

Bliss Brown was born in Texas, but moved to Jenks, Oklahoma when she was 5. She went to Jenks Public Schools. She grew up surrounded by those with a right-side-way of thinking. Her parents were conservative but more open-minded socially. When Bliss was in High School, she was a member of the show choir. She would volunteer with the show choir every year. One year’s service project was creating recordings of the choir members reading children’s books and donating the recordings to Tulsa’s domestic violence center. This was when she was first introduced to women’s issues. She also had many gay friends in high school, and was in the process of understanding her own sexual orientation. She then became familiar with LGBTQ based discrimination. This led to her gaining empathy for other people experiencing different types of discrimination. She didn’t really call herself a feminist until she came to OU, when after hearing, learning, and talking about feminism she realized it would be ridiculous not to call herself a feminist. She has never heard any negativity about her feminism, though she has encountered some about LGBTQ issues. When she first came to the University of Oklahoma, Bliss took Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies as an elective, just because. She ended up loving it so much that she eventually switched from being a pre-med, nursing major, to a Women’s and Gender Studies and Human Relations double major. For a while she was considering majoring in Psychology, but after a Physiology Psychology class decided she wanted to teach people about sex, gender, and other feminist topics. She got her Bachelor’s and is currently in graduate school for social work.

Bliss is the Program Coordinator for the Gender and Equality Center at OU. She is 24 and says she never expected to have her dream job at 24. She works in the area of prevention. The biggest part of her job is coordinating the Step In Speak Out program that is mandatory for all Freshmen to go through. She also oversees other gender-based violence prevention and awareness programs, specifically the Greek Ally training program. During her years at OU, Bliss was a part of the Greek life. She was a member of Delta Gamma. She enjoyed it and said it benefitted her in many ways. She also shared a story of some of the activism she did within the sorority: ““I made it so that my sorority, when I joined, you know, they gave us a PowerPoint presentation of all the rules that we had to follow, and one of those rules was that your date parties must only be male, and I didn’t like that and there was a point where I was dating a girl, and I wanted to bring her to the date party, and I went ahead and I just called the legal representation nationally, for national Delta Gamma, and well, in our bibles it says you know, we do not discriminate based on “xyz”, and sexual orientation was included in that on the national website, and so I called them and they were like, “we’ll talk to your chapter advisor”, and then the next day they said, “you can bring a girl!”

Leadership Advice from Bliss:

“Sometimes you have to meet people where they’re at. Sometimes people will be ignorant or bigoted because of their lack of understanding, you know, they’re just uneducated and then you know, some people say things (like) “you’re really offensive”, and it may just be because they just don’t know, or they’re uneducated. So, it’s okay to call someone out if your goal is to express frustration but if your goal is to educate them and try to recruit them to assuming your perspective then you can’t get angry with people or be aggressive because that’s just going to turn people away. Sometimes you have to be patient, listen to them, and understand that they’re not going to understand everything right away. But maybe you can plant a little nugget in their brain and see what happens.”

“A lot of times there are conversations between two people where no one is really listening and you’ve just got to listen, even if their views are problematic, even if they’re wrong, just sit and listen to what they have to say and a lot of times they will reciprocate that. Just be patient and listen to them too. Asking questions is a good idea too.”

Bliss’s Professional Advice on How to be a Leader in College: “Definitely finding those organizations that you can get involved with and looking for volunteer opportunities because there are a lot of nonprofits and organizations that need help, and it’s kind of trendy right now to be an activist or anything social justice oriented, but we’re still having trouble finding volunteers, and really getting people to commit their time to it.”

“Educate yourself, listen to podcasts, read articles..”

Bliss’s Book Recommendation: Asking For It by Kate Harding

If Bliss had to pick a word to describe herself, it would be “Passionate”.

 Fun Fact: Bliss Brown got her job after David Boren made a statement regarding rape preventive behaviors that received a lot of backlash. He had to apologize, and also, meet some demands of the protestors on campus. One of their demands was to create a program to educate everyone about rape and how to prevent it. Bliss had interned at the GEC and was close with the director of the program, Kathy A Fahl. Kathy, whom Bliss described as a professional mentor, informed Bliss of the job opportunity. 

If you want more info on Bliss!

http://wgs.ou.edu/bliss-brown

http://www.ou.edu/content/gec/staff.html

photo source: Staff, www.ou.edu/content/gec/staff.html.