Talking Post #5

PBS, People Like Us & CWCS; Social Inequality, A Feminist Issue?

"Class can be harder to spot than racial or ethnic differences, 

yet in many ways it's the most important predictor of what kind 

of financial and educational opportunities someone will have in life."

This quote I found on the People Like Us background really stood out to me throughout my reading. It is very deep and very true! 

     While on the PBS, People Like Us website, I started by just reading about everybody and checking out the short videos they had of everyone. The video I wanted to see most was of Tammy Crabtree who was Ginny in the stories section, but they didn't have a short film about him. Tammy lives in a trailer with 4 teenage kids. Every day she has to walk 10 miles to and from Burger King where she works. She has a 16-year old son that hates being seeing around her because of what others say. He wants to become a lawyer when he grows up but he knows of the things that will be in the way of him getting that.

     The next person I read about was Dana Felty's "Don't Get Above Your Raisin." The phrase "Getting Above Your Raisin" means wanting to change your social class. Dana is a young woman who moves to DC from Kentucky to become a journalist but she has to deal with the thought that her family and everyone in her small hometown thinks she's rejecting her roots. Even though she probably just wants better for herself. 
     Another person I read about was Ginie Sayles, a woman who after dealing with life being poor marries a millionaire. She then comes to writing books about how to deal with rich people and marrying rich people. She goes across the country teaching lessons to young women about these such matters as well.
    Reading these stories made me think about how economic inequality is a feminist issue. All these women are dealing with different social classes. Social class has a grand effect on women. Ginie was once poor and now by marriage, she's rich, had it not been for her husband she probably wouldn't be as successful as she is now because she wouldn't have been able to write books about marrying rich people or dealing with rich people because she wouldn't have had that experience. Dana has to deal with people saying she's rejecting her roots because she's trying to moving to DC to better herself, can we say that had she been a male, "he" probably would've been praised for doing the same thing? Maybe they could've even said that he's trying to bring his small hometown to the top in a way? We won't know but we can't dismiss it. Tammy was the female dealing with the hardest time. You don't make much of an income at Burger King as is, now having to deal with that income with 4 teenage kids makes it 100 times harder. On top of that, a son who doesn't want to be seen around her and wants to be a lawyer, which is the 17th most high paying job according to AskMen.com (SMH AT THE WEBSITE NAME, THEIR SLOGAN BTW IS "BECOME A BETTER MAN", BUT WE WON'T GET TO THAT). Economic inequality is definitely a feminist issue. 


     Next I checked out CWCS, the Center for Working Class Studies, and I won't lie I was a little lost, I didn't know where to start. So I started by reading their Why & How and the first paragraph basically summed up to me the entire website: 

"Even as traditional blue-collar jobs seem to be disappearing, 
the working class remains a vital part of America's culture and economy.  
It includes everyone from an autoworker to the waitress who serves you lunch.  
Yet the experiences and views of working-class people are often ignored.  
At the Center for Wroking-Class Studies (CWCS), 
we challenge myths about the working class, 
sponsor arts and education projects that honor workers, 
and engage local, national, and international communities in 
conversations that take working-class experience and concerns seriously."

I then decided to check out other links on their websites. I went to their resources and went to links and found a Social Inequality and Classes Section. When I got their I found a couple of websites labeled inequalities and found  Forbes 400 Richest People in America.  I found it interesting so I decided to check it out. After going through the first 100 people, something became apparent, not too many women are on this list. I went through 100 people and there were only 5 girls on the list. Out of the 5 girls, 1 was famous for Walmart,along with her family, 1 was famous for candy, another was famous because of media,  1 because of Fidelity, and the last one was famous because of pipelines. It's interesting because when I looked at the mens reasons for becoming rich, it was stuff like investments, CEO's of big companies, casinos, construction of other big "manly" things. It's funny that most of these women were rich off of stores, food and media, other then the Walmart girl. It's funny because even though they were BILLIONAIRES, they were still rich for being "women." I hope what you get what I'm saying lol. Either way, economic inequality is an feminist issue here as well even when the people are of a higher social class. 

I found this video of rapper Tupac Shakur talking about social inequality and I thought it was extremely interesting! I loved seeing him, someone who meant so much to the African American culture speaking about something so important and meaningful: PLEASE WATCH THE WHOLE THING!! 

 

This song was really deep because Tupac addresses race and social class and goes very much with the video above, even though the song came out way after.. Tupac- Changes

 
"We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive."

Point for Class: 

When I read Ginie Sayles' story I was like damn it's very golddigger-ish of her, then I stepped back and thought twice about what she's doing. She's taking the situation she was handed, whether or not she's truly in love with this millionaire or not, and writing about it to make her own income out of it. One could say she's doing her own thing and making money for herself. But she wouldn't have the perspective that she has  now if she didn't marry this man. So is it gold digging? Would this situation had been different if she wasn't born poor and she came from a upper class family and she was writing this book?

Talking Post #4

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence: Adrienne Rich

ARGUMENT

So, I won't lie Professor Bogad scared the crap out of me in class when she told us that this reading was extremely hard, so I did exactly what she suggested. I read some summaries online and got a better idea of what was to come before I actually started doing the reading, so it wasn't really that bad!

Adrienne Rich's main arguments are that women are afraid to be who they truly are because of society; compulsory heterosexuality is the idea that women are supposed to be heterosexual without a preference just because they are a woman. The other main argument she had was about lesbian existence.

Compulsory heterosexuality is when men command and force women's sexuality. "..women have been convinced that marriage and sexual orientation toward men are inevitable- even if unsatisfying or oppressive- components of their lives (p. 86)." When women resisted compulsory heterosexuality, things like rape, prostitution, pornography and genital mutilation occurs. Rich feels like women shouldn't have to depend on men as any type of support. She has a framework that she got from Kathleen Gough's 8 characteristics of male power in societies that include the power of men:

1. to deny women sexuality: ex. removal of the clitoris like FGM

2. or to force it upon them: ex. rape or wife beating

3. to command or exploit their labor to control their produce: ex. pimping

4. to control or rob them of their children: ex. legal kidnapping

5. to confine them physically and prevent their movement: ex. keeping them confined in the home

6. to use them as objects in male transactions: pimping or arranged marriage

7. to cramp their creativeness: ex. not allowing them to be creative

8. to withhold from them large areas of the society's knowledge and cultural attainments: ex. pretty self explanatory

Because of compulsory heterosexuality, women allow sexual harassment in the workplace because they feel that's the only way they can get a job and keep a job regardless of the job description (p. 86). In the workplace, a woman can be a closeted lesbian and it's okay as long as she can play and dress the part of a heterosexual woman. Which brings up Rich's next main argument. She argues about lesbian existence or lack thereof because lesbianism is socially unacceptable because all the proof from historical lesbian experiences were destroyed. Rich wants to expand lesbianism to an experience that brings women together because it is something that we can only experience with one another. The next quote she got from the poet H.D. which I felt sums up the experience women share: 

"I know that this experience, this writing-on-the-wall

before me, could not be shared with anyone expect the

firl who stood so bravely there beside me. This girl said

without hesitation, "Go on." It was she really who had

the detachment and integrity of the Pythoness of Delphi.

But it was I, battered and dissociated. . . who was seeing

the pictures, and who was reading the writing or

granted the inner vision. Or perhaps, in some sense, we

were "seeing" it together, for without her, admittedly, I

could not have gone on."

Throughtout history, lesbians were thought of female versions of male homosexuality, but Rich said if you are to compare lesbian existence to male homosexulaity would be to completely ignore the existence of lesbians. 

The last of Rich's argument was about lesbian continuum, that we are all in this continuum whether we are or arent lesbian, "-from the infant suckling at his mother's breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmin sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother's milk smell in her own, to two women, like Virginia Woolf's Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory, to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women (p. 91)."

Sexual harrassment - A funny video I found about sexual harrassment

Comment for class: 

"I do not assume that mothering by women is a "sufficient cause" of lesbian existence. But the issue of mothering by women has been much in the air of late, usually accompanied by the view that increased parenting by men would minimize antagonism between the sexes and equalize the sexual imbalance of power and males over females." 

I wanted to discuss this in class with everyone whether or not people agreed about this. Would parenting by mean really decrease the hostility between men and women later on in life, or is it something that you need a balance from both parents to achieve. Or can just the parenting from a mother be enough to find the balance of power between both sexes?

Talking Post #3

Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein

HYPERLINKS

According to Wikipedia, gender neutrality "describes the idea that language and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing people by their gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than the other."

Peggy Orenstein argues that our society has used toys as a way to separate girls and boys and in a way teach them gender roles and she also discusses the impact that Barbie dolls and other toys for girls have on body image for these young girls and the message that it is sending out to them.

Orenstein's main arguement was how gender roles is so deeply enforced in children toys, lifestyles and just about anything. A girl can be praised by telling her "You look so pretty, you look beautiful." while we tell a boy "you're so smart." It's as if we are telling the young girls that appearance is what is most important. At a young age, kids develop gender roles because it's all around them since they're born; girls have pink rooms filled with dolls, pretend homes and are generally clean while a boy's room is blue filled with cars, video games, sports paraphernalia and is usually messy. This video is an interview with 4 kids where they are asked questions like who cleans the house, who takes care of the baby and who works. The kids said that the mom cleans and takes care of the children while the dad works, the whole breadwinner idea is already implanted into their heads at such a young age because that is what they see at home and in the media. Orenstein argues that the stories that children read promotes that man are supposed to take care of you while you stay at home and be a "princess" which is wrong because Orenstein doesn't want the girls to depend on anyone. 

   

Orenstein then goes on to talk about her experience at the Toy Fair when she went to the Fisher- Price showroom where she seen first hand how divided the toys were, the girls section was decorated with a banner saying "BEAUTIFUL, PRETTY, COLORFUL" while the boy's section had a banner saying "ENERGY, HEROES, POWER." It encourages boys to create things while girl toys do doll's hair, style dolls, bake, and play with doll babies. This video goes over ads on tv for children's toys and how "gender role-ized" it is (I know that's not a word, lol just sounded right). The video like Orenstein talks about how toys tell kids the different roles that boys and girls have to fulfill.

     

Another one of Orenstein's arguement was that Barbie and the Disney princesses give young girls the impression that they need to be perfect and when they are perfect their lives will be perfect. 

  

In this video the narrator discusses how Barbie was always a very sexy doll how she was unrealistic. With so many young girls looking up to Barbie, how could you have something that isn't even possible. Orenstein doesn't deny that Barbie does connect parents to their children because it was something that was passed down from generation to generation. But then parents introduced Barbies to their kids before they reached the demographic age required for a Barbie. Orenstein talks about the Princesses also and how they send out a message to girls to be perfect which adds alot of pressure to young girls. The plot line of the princesses and how they're all beautiful and they find their perfect man and live happily ever after is something Orenstein wants to protect her daughter from.

Check this video out of subliminals in Disney movies, this particular one about Beauty and the Beast. 

Comment for class:

What I wanted to talk about in class is about Disney movies like the one I posted a video about. I read that alot of Disney movies do this where there insert the word sex into random locations of the movie or they have little dirty moments like in the Little Mermaid when she was getting married and the priest had a boner! Disney movies are what we all grew up watching and it'll probably be something passed to the next generation whether it be our kids or grandkids. But if there are all these little subliminals, it is something we'd watch our future kids to watch? Or even now, would we want our brothers and sisters watching it?

Talking post #2

Gloria Anzaldua: La conciencia de la mestiza: 
                                    Towards a New Consciousness 
REFLECTION


 It was a good read. She spent a lot of time talking about just getting together with everyone and to "transfer ideas and information from one culture to another." Overall what I got from this reading is that in order to create change we must change first.


Some parts of the reading really hit home; I am a woman born in a different country coming to America at a very young age finding it extremely hard to fit in. I was stuck being Cape Verdean in America. Just like la mestiza, we were both stuck and basically torn in between the two. At home, my grandparents would take care of all the kids before and after school and speak to us in our dialect of creole and she would expect us to speak back to her in the same dialect, but in school I was placed in ESL and taught how to speak english. I was so confused on which side to be on.
The Cape Verdean culture has very strict gender roles, which are basically set in stone, there isn't really a way of changing the "rules." At a young age, women are taught to cook, clean and become the best woman they can be for their future husbands. "For men like my father, being "macho" meant being strong enough to protect and support my mother and us, yet being able to show love." It's crazy how similar this is to our culture. While women are taught to be "women," men are taught to be "men." They hang out with their fathers all day whether it is learning to have the ultimate vegetable garden to have all the things women need to cook, going to work with them, or playing soccer which is the main sport in Cape Verde. 
 When I first came to America, I always felt like I had to choose between being American or being Cape Verdean and I realized as did la mestiza that you don't have to let go off your culture but just understand and accept your surroundings. It might not be easy but it can be done if you're open. It was hard for la mestiza and it will be hard for anyone but you just have to be willing to accept it all.




POINT FOR CLASS
I thought it was extremely interesting how in Johnson's reading it was helping us open our eyes to white privilege: accepting it and trying to take the right steps to become part of the solution while in Anzaldua's reading it was saying that we, as minorities, have to stop waiting for everyone else to make a change. "We need to allow whites to be our allies." It sounds so good and it should be easy, but is it possible? 

LINK

"They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. but I haven't, we haven't" -This quote made me remember this video I seen in another one of my classes about how language brings generations together.

Speaking In Tongues Short Film

Racism videos

On my first post I had put a link called Racism In The Elevator and the dude in it has a few videos about racism in different locations, so I decided to post up a couple more from his youtube page! Hope y'all enjoy it! ^_^ 


P.S. It's okay to laugh, I laughed too...


"911 emergency, I'd like to report a stolen car"


"It's not black to be in a suit, or to be well-spoken"

Talking Point #1

Privilege, Power and Difference- Allan G. Johnson 

QUOTES.

"But all these indignities that my whiteness protects me from are part of her everyday existence. And it doesn't matter how she dresses or behaves or that she's an executive in a larger corporation. Her being black and the realtors' and bankers' and clerks' being white in a racist society is all it takes."

This quote in the reading was very deep to me. It's so true everything he says because she will always be in a lose lose situation. She could come in a suit to a store or any location and just because the color of her skin, she will be followed around and asked if she can be "helped" throughout her entire time there. Johnson states in the beginning of the reading that trouble in race is an issue of difference in our society. This african american women who happens to be a coworker of his has so many disadvantages when it comes to being a woman and an african american one at that. Unlike him, race and gender play  a huge role in her life that she can't control.

"An adolescent boy who appears too willing to defer to his mother risks being called a "mama's boy" in the same way that a husband who appears in any way subordinate to his wife is often labeled "henpecked" ... The counterpart for girls carries no such stigma. "Daddy's girl" isn't considered an insult in this culture, and.. contains no specific insulting terms for a wife who is under the control of her husband."

Soooo, I think I smell a double standard. Johnson uses this example to describe another form of privilege called conferred dominance according to McIntosh. Conferred dominance is when one group has power over the other group. In this case, it's the men having more power then the women. WHICH I find ridiculous, so basically I felt like it was saying that women can't be in control of their husbands without men feeling some type of way but it's cool when men are in control and women aren't insulted by it. Anyways  .. Johnson states that in culture it's acceptable when women are under control of their husbands.

"It's relatively easy for people to be unaware of how privilege affects them."

Sometimes people are blinded by something that is right in front of their faces. They don't see something that is so obvious because they don't realize how much it pertains to their lives because that privilege has been attached to them for as long as they been on this very earth. Johnson goes on to say that he can be just as talented, aspired and motivated as the next person, but because he is a white , male, heterosexual, middle-class professional , he is more likely to get praised for awarded for it. It's not like he uses  it to his advantage, but the next person isn't awarded and praised, because their race, gender, social class and other categories don't fit all together like his. 

MCFN's Intuition For Thought: Comment/ Point to Share

"We look to other people to tell us that we measure up, that we matter, that we're okay"

The way this society has become, we turn to others' opinions and society's opinion about what's acceptable and not acceptable, cool and not cool. This quote can be read by anyone and it would make them think. We have to be leaders instead of followers always going to other people. And this goes back to the conferred dominance with women always going to their significant others to see if what they're doing is okay. 


"Stupid white b*tch"

MCFN.

My name is Merylda N. Over break I just relaxed and hung out with family and friends preparing myself for the tough semester I have coming up in the Spring. I'm taking this class to fulfill my 120 credits I need to graduate. When I'm not in class, I watch movies, read books, use my phone and write.