fIvan has 12 post(s)

I think Schiebinger’s response to why the anatomy of white women and men became critical for the medical community in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because it was to determine what the position of women’s role in society would be by comparing the female skeleton to the male skeleton as well as the child skeleton and figuring out how to draw the accurate depiction of a skeleton diagram for female since they already had one for male. These skeleton parts included the skull where female’s had a smaller skull compared to the male (I think this made the anatomist at that time who were mostly male think that males were smarter than females because males had a bigger skull and usually when you are referring to something bigger it could mean how smart you are which we know today isn’t always the case as whales have bigger brain than human beings, but there aren’t really that intelligent as human in terms of innovating and creating things), the pelvis where the female’s had a larger pelvis compared to the male (I think this made the anatomist think that females were meant to be a mother by giving birth to a child and taking care of it), and other bones and organs.

I think the depiction of skeleton drawing/diagram that the anatomist were trying to draw eventually represented what they were suppose to represent, but there was a lot of disagreement on whether the drawing was correct and whether or not the bone depiction was correct, where males were represented as masculine (having masculine features such as muscles, but I guess bones can have that as well) and females were represented as feminine. These representation were drawn by mostly male anatomist and whether they are correct or not led to another argument of what the correct version should be because not everyone would agree with one another and this is how science was able to become correct, without the gender issues.

I think Davis is trying to tell us that the conventions started off as a anti slavery convention and eventually women, usually middle class, began to work together with the abolition group, African American, to fight for their rights. This is probably because at this time in the period women’s rights didn’t really exist and with the support of Frederick Douglas this allowed the women to have a chance to fight for their rights. Also during this time the South economy was based on slavery so trying to abolish slavery as well as getting rights for women allowed the women to see something that the African American saw so working together was probably a good choice. They were also treated some what unfairly at the job like being paid lower income compared to white men, etc… This was also during the time when Industrial Revolution was taking place so most of the jobs that women did was being replaced by factories and the role for women began to change. However not all women worked together (supported the abolition it was like they were only fighting for their rights as gender, but not color) with the abolition group because during some convention like the Seneca Fall Convention not many issues were being discussed, except the electoral power – rights for women to vote, until later on when more conventions were planned out in different location and different person giving the speech or representing/leading the convention. These locations and person probably played a big role for what was being decided in the next convention like what was being said and what was being represented by that person because depending on where the person is from, their environment, they will act differently from someone else that grew up elsewhere and also the people they grew up with could determine how they act (it gives them that specific identity that each individual has just like how in that school that the African American girl attended the principal made the white girls vote to determine whether the black girl should continue attending). Eventually I think Davis was telling us that these conventions was successful and made way for changes into the future. Even though the fight for rights were different (for women it was their rights to be treated equally compared to their counterparts, for African American it was also their rights along with being free from slavery – a free person) they came together to fight together for what they thought was right and made a big change.