fJu Yong has 12 post(s)

From the essay, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,” Lila Abu-Lughod consists about the a moral of kindness, benevolence, and sympathy extended to all human beings and the human right in the 21^st century, and she focused on the stereotype that people have on Muslim women. Lila Abu-Lughod wrote about whether Muslim women need saving or not. The reason why she wrote about this essay is because she wants other people who are idiotic or have no knowledge about confusing condition that presents in the burka. Lila Abu-Lughod pointed out the problems from the facts that some ignorant Americans think the meaning of the veiling, which is the covering of the face, is that women lost their right to speak at the society. American people think Afghan women still under the strong oppression because they didn’t rip off the burqas in the country of liberation, and they believe themselves as that they need to understand and acknowledge how oppressed they are. Against this belief, Lila Abu-Lughod state that liberation in this country give rights for them to cover themselves with burka or not, but most of the Afghan women determined to wear burqas. Burqas contains various meanings such as individualistic, societal, cultural and mostly the religious one. Lila Abu-Lughod think people in United States have an stubborn ideas on the veiling and she added that there are many other pressing issues to take care with worry about themselves with Muslim women.

Since American people think they are on the superior condition than the other, it drives them a desire to save people, and it looks like condescending. People think learning about other countries cultures is troublesome and try not to learn about them, and people are trying to westernize people, which is the action of removing their own agency and ignoring their culture.

In the past, there was a period that industrialization started and they needed more natural resources and labors. European colonizers started to invade other countries to achieve sexual conquest and exploitation. Caribbean region was colonized by the European countries. Cuban was one of the countries that colonized by Europeans. Since women was considered as properties during this period, sex was part of the economic and social process, so women was trafficking, and used for breeding of slaves, and hiring of the wet nurses to the use of concubine and prostitute (pg 988). Because of this colonization, world started globalization. Because of this globalization, it affects the definition of sex. Globalization developed sexual acts and identities. Since women was supposed to work, the only working force they had was their body, so women became prostitute and solt their body to earn money. According to Amelia Cabezas, sexual citizenship is a kind of relationship at the sex tourism. This term is saying that people who are offering the sexual acts have complete control of sexual right. She differentiate between sexual worker and people who are out of category, saying that society considered sexual worker as forced to offer sex, which caused by economic status or color of skin or gender, and looked down on them. People having sexual relationship with tourists because it earn better wages than other normal jobs. Things shown from people, particular for women who occupy positions outside “heteronormativity”, promises that come to these relationships are economic supports or ending this for better opportunity. Amelia Cabezas brought many examples to such as interviews. One of the example is the interview of Yolanda. She was a tourist, and as she worked in the area, she had meaningful relationship with tourists and eventually it returned to help to support her family.

In the book Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique, Roderick Ferguson described the characteristics of connection between property, capital, and prostitution within the idea of society of capitalism. Roderick Ferguson described this with the term called “queer of color” analysis. He described this as nascent and emergent formation that pass over gender and sexual idea of racialized boundary.  When he talked about the history of America, it showed how hierarchy of the society started to build based upon the background of industrialization, and social status and labor division. In addition, there was exclusion of African American in United States so that it led to lack of human rights and they treated as slaves. This discrimination and racism showed the lack of right in economic and racial status. In the beginning, Roderick Ferguson explained the pictures that describe the discrimination and racism during this period. And then he connected to the sexual status, which shows patriarchy of man over women and children. In the introduction, he focused his analysis on Marlon Rigg’s “Tongues United, which described drag queen prostitute who is black. This way of earning income made them lesser than the normal way of earning money so that it made prostitute against the social norm of property, capital and prostitution. Prostitution considered as illegal in most of the countries. However, the fact that both black and prostitute made more connection to the Roderick Ferguson’s queer of color anaylsis, because both black and prostitute was considered as lower status compared to norm. therefore, if there was a prostitute who is black, this would make them face more problematic situation than the other prostitute. since it showed the combination of black and prostitute, which are both inferior things, they were in position where people won’t accept them in society as same as other, and this represent the queer of color.

In the essay, Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queen, Cathy Cohen pays attention to the feature of queer political activism. Society in this period was trying to change the understanding and responding to sexuality and oppressed the minor communities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Dominant society categorizes heterosexuality as the top class of society, and state that heterosexuality is norm and oppressed queer activists. Cathy Cohen found that looked at the factors that inhibited the radical potential of queer activism. Cath Cohen states that heteronormativity, the idea that homosexual relationship is bad, stopped growing of the queer activism. She is worried about “those manifestations of queer politics in which the capital and advantage invested in a range of sexual categories”(441) are ignored. Therefore, it brought to the result of reproduction of political identities that are narrowed and homogenized so that it inhibits the radical potential of queer politics. She thought it limited the character of queer politics that are comprehensive and transformational. To go against this unfair treatment, people who were discriminated and oppressed stood up together to show that they also have identity and there is no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Queer activists were focusing on removing this discrimination and oppression. However, People who were queer activist were people in the minor societies such as black so that they had less advantages to describe their status to other people. Unfortunately, oppression on this group continued and they didn’t get chance to get accepted in the society as norm. If we look at the society we live nowadays, there are still so many forms of things that minority people get oppressed and not accepted as the part of their society. Although there are many people who are trying to show people that there are no harm to accept them as society, people still avoid to accept them in society.

During the period of slavery, African American were treated as less powerful outsiders compared to white society who were powerful insider. There were no chances for African Americans to impact the society because everything was dominated by the white society. For example, the only chance for African American women to be in the “insider” was hired as domestic workers of white people. As African American became part of the insider, they started to recognized that it wasn’t the natural things like the intellect, talent, or humanity of white people that placed them in the superior status of society but it was the advantage of the racism such as education, environment…etc. Especially, the emerging black feminist literature gave a standpoint of different analyses of races, class, and gender. In the essay, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” Patricia Hill Collins claims that the experiences of the black women society accentuate the tension which created by encountering of the weaker outsider community against the typical thought of a stronger insider community. It’s called The Black Feminist.

The Black Feminist, who was considered as “outsiders”, impacts the sociology fields and comprehension of society and culture. Patricia Hill Collins showed the Black Feminist thoughts with three key themes that represented in the examples of cross-disciplinary literatures. Black Feminist revealed the meaning of self-definition and self-valuation. For example, African American in this period thought they were born as slaves and they were positioned at lower status of the society. However, the literature work by Mae king and Cheryl Glikes revealed the function of stereotypes controlled by dominant white society. Then African Americans started self-valuation. Eventually, African American women were not only available to reject psychological oppression in their internal side but also achieved the inner strength. Another factor that influence the thought of African American women is culture. They put lots of effort to represent the importance of culture, which made huge effects on clarification of African American women’s standpoint.

There are so many organization and community of women who focuses on the androncentrism of humans right discussion, because modern society think that men have stronger power compared to women so that society have characteristics of treating male better than female. Therefore, feminist stood up and fought for their right with the idea of androncentrism. However, Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi contends that this critiques of human right based on androcentrism brought the results that human right instrument can not recognized or protect the exclusion, constraints, and abuses of women’s lives. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi claims that feminists rather needs to focus on heterosexism rather than androcentrism. They believed heterosexism is a correct way to interpret the relationship of gender difference and human right.
Society itself has two different codes of men and women. As the gender having different codes on them, female and male had different subjectivities and identities. From that point, society started to make hierarchy of gender. Since men have stronger bodies compared to women’s, male was at the higher position of society than women, which led to bad treatment on women. The gender difference and human right showed in the past. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi showed many examples that heterosexism is used to show the relationship of gender difference and human right. For example, in the Maxim and the supporters of it, they believed that people who have more powers (strength) and economic status are controlling the power of labor and social inequality. Therefore, women started to lose their property right and denied it by the society politically and economically. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi consists that as they focused on heterosexism, we saw the historical time that progressed the different human right between women and men. Instead of focusing on the huge factor androcentrism, they limit the space to focus on.

Many people in this world think heterosexuality, being attracted at male and female each other, is the natural thing as a human being. However, in her essay, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Adrienne Rich contends that heterosexuality is not natural thing in mankind, but an institution forced by societies and culture that oppress women into subordinate situation. For example, throughout many generations, women were depend on men economically and therefore they had less right in the family. The only way for women to get the power was a marriage. However, as female got depend on male, societies started to represent the male power over female.

Male had stronger power so that they denied women sexuality. In addition, male forced female to satisfy male sexuality by means of rape, which including marital rape. Therefore, society only gave an option of heterosexual marriage, and women had no chance to show their sexuality, and hid them to stay in the society. Women had to be in that format no matter what the marriage made them happy or not. On the other hand, nowadays, women have power and right to achieve those economic status so that they started to get out of that social institution of heterosexuality, and having relation of lesbian like homosexual marriage. Nevertheless, male still trying to oppress rebel of female. For example, most of the States in United States have laws that homosexual marriage is illegal. In addition, there are still oppression of male towards female to keep the male power over female. We could see it by the number of males working at professional jobs compare to number of females’.

Another point Rich argued in this essay is about the potential of feminist thought. It is true that most female in this world are heterosexual. However, Rich pointed out that Feminist didn’t concern or include the existence of lesbian in the writings like feminist scholarship. Rich see that lesbian is also part of the feminist. All these examples that Rich wrote on her essay proves that women have lack of choice which led to inhibition of women to show their true sexuality.

According to “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” Gayle Rubin contends that strict thought that people have about sex restrict the advancement of ideas and stereotypes on sex. Gayle Rubin showed us how United States and Western culture used laws to control people’s thoughts about sexuality. These assumptions on sexuality that made by laws looks like true opinions on sex so that people rarely make objections to these assumptions. As a result, these assumptions restricted people from developing their ideas of sex, and political discussion on sexuality.
In 1950s, United States made a major change in the group of sexuality from prostitution or masturbation to ‘homosexual menace’ and ‘sex offender’. The period was before and after WWII so that the sex offender became public fears. The term ‘sex offender’ sometimes stood for rapist, sometimes to ‘child molesters’, and lastly it functioned as a code for homosexuals. These change even affected in politics. From the last 6 years, United States and Canada went through huge sexual repression in political senses. For example, in 1977, news media unexpectedly reported on gay bars, arrests for prostitution, and investigation on productions and distribution of porno so that the police activity against gay community became severe.
I think people started to have stereotypes on LGBT from the past so that it became serious problems nowadays. For example, I was born in South Korea and lived there for 15 years, and thorough out 15 years, I didn’t even know the presence of LGBT until I read the comics about it. There were no educations about LGBT 5 years ago. Therefore, people treated people who are LGBT as ‘abnormal’ being so that there were mistreatments on them and even led some of them to death.

Abelove, Henry, Michèle Aina. Barale, and David M. Halperin. The Lesbian and gay studies reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.

In the Middle age, Europe was using feudal economy system. Emperor was giving territories to feudal lords, and they were having full authorities of that land. However, at the late Middle Age, feudal economy was destroyed, and new system called ‘Capitalism’ exposed to outside. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. This new economic and political system looked like a revolution of economic system because this system was putting emphasis on the equality of people. However, as the time passed, capitalism started to cause many problems. In the Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Frederici state that capitalism created sexism and racism in the society. For example, she showed disparagement of women while capitalism was the economic and social system.

During the transition from feudalism to capitalism, over-exploitation threatened the collapse of the whole system. In addition, the workforce was barely survived. To keep the capitalism, it required the process which was making people in the society like a work-machine, and the conquest of women to the reproduction of the work-force. The subjugation of women was achieved by “witch hunt.” In addition, women were treated badly as labor. For example, Women were paid less than men, and increasingly excluded from most wage work. Furthermore, state policies were exacerbated misogyny within the working class and male craftsmen fought to cut off women who were in many professions, because they were afraid that women’s participation would drop the value of their own work. Women’s activity came to be considered as ‘not workers.’

Eventually, this degradation of women helped capitalism to create wealth. For instance, the sexual division of labor divided and controlled the working class. These processes allowed the capitalist class to secure control over labor.

In the essay “The Medical Construction of Gender”, Suzanne Kessler showed that physicians in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries decided the gender of the infants by biological factors, and parents and their children with intersex just followed the data that was given from laboratory. However, as the time passed, people started to realize that cultural factors are more important than biological ones to decide the sex of the patients. There are the factors that changed considerations of physicians, parents and patients towards intersexuality.

In eighteenth century, people thought gender is decided by the complex tests such as genetics, and physicians were choosing the gender of male or female by the size of the penis. For example, if penis was too small compare to ‘normal size of penis, physicians told parents that it as clitoris and asked them to take surgery to remove it. However, when the endocrinologist asked there’s no point of taking all tests if parents are going to choose gender by genitalia, parents were hard to choose their child’s gender.

This problem appeared because parents weren’t knowledgeable enough to understand intersexuality. For instances, people in France started to choose the neuter names like Jean, because they were unsure of their child’s sex. Therefore, physicians were also started teach the parents about intersexuality, and normalized the intersexuality to them. For example, physicians teach parents normal fatal development characteristics of male and absence of maleness shows that baby has femaleness. In addition, they also make parents believe their baby is normal by telling them its small defects like mole or hemangioma. Most importantly, physicians started to mention that social factors are more important than the biological factors for development of gender. Although they used all biological tests to figure out the gender, they said it’s really depend on how people treated their child as male or female.

In conclusion, physicians, parents and patient add lots of effort to decide the gender from either male or female, but just as Suzanne Kessler mentioned, most important thing is not putting gender just into either female or male but consider intersexuality as a gender.