fConnie has 8 post(s)

In Lila Abu- Lughod’s essay, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”, she talks about how muslim women are seen as needing to be saved by the western culture and how what they see as feminism or being saved is different from what we think they need. One point she makes is how we see the burqas as something that muslim women are forced to wear by Islam and it is somehow constricting them of what they are allowed to do and wear. However, she points out that the burqas is something many muslim women choose to wear and it can separate what they consider their private or public lives. The burqa is also representative of their culture and religion, which also shows what part of society muslim women belong to and relate themselves to. She makes a further point where she says that seeing the burqa as old fashioned or oppressive instead of seeing it as a important representation of who the muslim women are and what they choose to be, is putting ourselves, the western people, above them in society when truly this sort of hierarchy shouldn’t exist. The sole act of thinking muslim women need saving is making us seem like we think we don’t need saving and that something about their society, culture, or religion is wrong. We shouldn’t be enforcing our western ideas of what is ideal on them. As for the “vocation of saving others”, she says that it shouldn’t be seen as saving them. Instead, it should be seen as bettering people around the world in general, men or women, and being aware that there are many different cultures. While trying to “save” these women we should be able to see what is truly good for women from their point of view and not solely a western point of view.

I think Amalia Cabezas defines sexual citizenship as women being able to choose what they want to do with their own bodies and how they express their sexuality. She talks about how the women in Cuba and Dominican Republic often choose to have sexual relationships with the tourists that visit there so that they can provide for themselves an their family. The tourists have money and can also provide food, clothes, etc. for them. Even more important though is that many of them are also seeking to be able to have a longer lasting relationship that will eventually let them be able to move to a different country and get married. These women however, are seen as bad or “sexual deviants”. The problem with this is that sex workers are classified because of their race, class, and culture. For example, according to Amalia Cabezas, a white women who spent time with a mexican tourist, and also had sex and received items from the man wouldn’t be seen as a sex worker. Instead, it would be seen as a romantic relationship that could bloom into something more. This wasn’t met with any negative reactions. However, women that were seen as a lower race or class would seen as sex workers and prostitutes. They would get arrested by the police if they were seen bothering tourists and be abused physically. Of course, this includes women who are seen as outside heteronormativity also as they are seen as dangerous because they don’t fit into a gender that is seen as normal by the state. The women that are involved in sex tourism are blamed for having a no morals or greedy instead of it being blamed on the tourist and tourism. Despite all of this, men involved in sex tourist are seen as heroes that help improve tourism and help the state get more money from them.

Black women that worked for white households were able to see the differences that separated the “insiders” and the “outsiders” since they would do domestic work such as cleaning, cooking, and even taking care of the white families’ children. However, they were never considered part of the family and sometimes even ignored which made them “outsiders”. Since they were able to experience both of these worlds, it allowed black women to look at the oppression they were experiencing objectively. This lead to black women setting their own ideas about who they were and being able to see what was really oppressing them and how, which is important so that other black women could identify with something that they could relate too, such as a culture, that wasn’t seen as completely negative. These ideas helped contribute to sociology and our understanding of culture because this objective standpoint black women had allowed them to pinpoint what were actual problems that that were oppressing them in society. For example, Sojourner Truth pointed out that even if black men get their rights, black women would still be oppressed by the black men if they don’t also get theirs. Black women have a better understanding of oppression because they experience it from multiple sides instead of contradictory sides. They experience being oppressed as a woman and being oppressed as a black person,  whereas a black man might only experience being oppressed as a black person since men in general are still seen as superior. This also questions things that might not have been brought up or talked about as much such as the “white male insiderism” which fits a lot of people, including black women, into a society where the world, cultures, and how certain people and genders should act, are viewed through a white male standpoint, instead of one that represents multiple races, genders, and classes.

Heterosexuality being institutionalized forces all women to be seen and regarded as having to fit a certain role, which in turn, oppresses them. This idea of women only being able to be heterosexual is forced upon on them by men and being lesbian is seen as taboo or even not existent in our society. In media, such as movies, shows, and art, women are mostly shown to be in heterosexual relationships, whereas lesbian relationships are almost never shown. Chick flicks, for example, almost always show a woman and man trying to pursue a relationship with each other. But then there are almost none showing a woman and woman relationship. The way the media sort of ignores the existence of lesbian relationships further perpetuates how society forces women into having heterosexual relationships, as women feel less comfortable admitting they are lesbian and even less are comfortable confronting problems that are oppressing them in everyday life.   Women are paid less in a work place because of this institutionalization as they are still seen as below men. They are taken advantage of sexually and if they refuse, they risk losing their job to the men that are trying to control their sexuality and how they express it. Many cultures still see women as objects that can be gifted in marriage or used in rape. In general, women are seen as needing men to survive and if they don’t, they are perceived to be abnormal even though being lesbian shouldn’t have such a huge taboo around it. These underlying social norms forces women into not being able to express their sexuality and in turn many women are stuck in heterosexual relationships that they are not happy with. It is also hard for women to identify with being lesbian as society does not talk about it openly and tries to hide it, forcing female thoughts and ideas to be dominated by male ones.

When the land started to become privatized and work was changed into a free wage labor market, almost all women lost their production jobs such as working on the field. Instead, they were degraded to the point where almost anything they did was seen as housekeeping or helping the man. This started happening because women lost their land, or a common area, where they could talk to other women and share ideas without the influence of males. It was also harder for women to work production jobs and travel since they had to take care of children or would get pregnant which meant it was harder for them to do the job even if they were available. This caused many women to riot which eventually lead to them being arrested and further degraded.

When women did any work it was seen as housekeeping work no matter what it was and that they were working for the men. If there was women working in production, it was only cause they were seen as there to help their husbands. In France, women were expected to register their pregnancies and weren’t allowed to terminate them. Contraception was also made illegal,  These laws were of course made by men. There was a huge emphasis on women keeping their babies because more children meant that in the future, there would be more people working in production if they were male. Women being pregnant and giving birth was also eventually credited to the men who were doctors in society instead of the women. The men were said to be giving life even though it was the women who had the baby in her womb and gave birth. This system was seen as profitable since both men and especially women were getting paid less than how much the products they made would be sold for, which meant more money for the state.

Even before a child is born, parents want to know if the child is a boy or girl. However, when intersexuality is introduced to parents they find it hard to identify with their baby since the question of is it a boy or girl becomes the most important question to them and the doctors. Parents want their children to fit in and be able to tell people they know that they had either or girl or boy, which forces the baby to be identified as either one, so the baby can fit into the culture that puts people into two genders, male or female. Any other “gender” is generally seen as unaccepted. Since these genders are so set in stone, doctors are pressured to quickly identify the baby’s gender, mostly by looking at if the baby has male or female looking genitals. Usually if the doctors see the baby has a something resembling a developed clitoris they say it is male, or if there are genitals that look similar to female ones then the baby is identified as female. Surgery can be used to make them look either more male or more female and causes no trauma to the baby if done at the right time.
The gender these babies are given determine how their parents will raise them, and, most likely, what their gender will be their whole lives. This is important so they can fit into society and be seen as a male or female instead of telling someone they are intersexual, which will make them seem weird to the majority of society. The surgeries done by doctors are also important so the baby itself won’t get confused later in life about what gender they are and how to handle that. The gender is identified right away, most importantly, so the baby will live a happy life without questioning what gender they are if they do not wish to.

Schiebinger is saying that the project was so critical because the skeletons were used to separate and define the roles of women and men in the eighteen and nineteenth century. The parts of the skeleton, such as the skull, pelvis, waist, and limbs were drawn and analyzed by scientists. However, the problem was that a large majority of these scientists were men which resulted in women being defined by the men who drew the female skeletons. The skeleton drawings were also meant to represent the culture there, so it didn’t include any black men or women which future skews the inaccuracy of the drawings since black people were compared to these drawings also. Many skeleton drawings showed women having wider pelvises compared to men. This was interpreted so that women were seen as motherly and the wider pelvises meant that their roles in society were meant to have children and raise them. The size of the skull was also a large issue that was debated. At first the fact that the women’s skulls were larger than men’s meant that they were more intelligent according to Ackermann however, Barclay said the large skulls women had were similar to children and just because they were larger didn’t mean women were more intelligent. The comparison of women to children lead to them being seen as not fully matured, and because they weren’t fully matured they were less intelligent compared to men. This was even worse since women’s intellect was determined solely by the skeleton drawings that were drawn by men and also interpreted by men. Women weren’t seen as being able to be smart and be scientists like men were because of how negatively some of the skeleton drawings were analyzed by some male scientists. The fact that women were seen as less intelligent prevented them from participating in anything related to science such as medicine. This influenced society to see science as something only related to men and women weren’t smart enough to participate in.

By mentioning both Charlotte Woodward and Sojourner Truth and their contributions to the Women’s Rights movement, Davis is emphasizing how important it was for middle class white women to be able to understand the situations that other women were also in. After hearing first hand accounts of the women working in the mills and Sojourner Truth’s experiences as a slave, it forced the middle class white women to realize that working women and women slaves are still women that should have the same rights that they were advocating for. Davis is also saying that these different experiences actually benefited the women’s rights movement and without them the outcome might’ve been different. Many of the first conventions, such as the one at Seneca Falls was only initially meant to address the issues middle class white women had, such as after being married they are solely dependent on their husband and are expected to be housewives. It was only after Charlotte Woodward and others working women spoke out that many others addressed their issues as real issues. Even then, there were no black women at the Seneca Falls convention which means their rights were not included. I feel like Davis is also trying to point out the irony of what happened since the middle class women wanted equal rights as men but they, themselves, left out women who were different than them.

It was at the National Convention on Women’s Rights, where Sojourner Truth talked about her life when she was a slave, and through her speeches, proved to other women and men that were there, that black women are also women and should be included in all the things the Women’s Rights movement was fighting for. These conventions helped to get the stories of the working women, and the black women out there so their issues would also be included in this fight for women’s rights. Eventually, many women such as Angelina Grimke advocated for all women’s rights. Hearing the stories of the black women, working women, and others at the conventions brought all women together to fight for their rights instead of against each other. Without people like Charlotte Woodward and Sojourner Truth telling the middle class white women what their lives were like, they might have been fighting for their each individual rights, such as,  just solely Black Liberation instead of also Women’s Rights.