It is hard to to understand the battle of discomfort within your own skin. The largest organism of your body, the protection of you from the outside world. Yet for many, the skin is what causes them harm. How the world interprets their skin, assess’ their skin, judges their skin, causes destruction to the being within the skin. The mounds of skin that establishes weakness,the shaft of skin that stabilizes power. The skin that places you as a statistic. The skin that registers you as invalid. The size of the skin that deems you disgusting, or worthy. The skin that you pay to cover, because the same skin makes you pay if you don’t. The skin that wounds when physically assaulted, but the skin that hurts when its emotionally processed.
The skin you don’t choose. The rights your skin entitles you to. The limits your skin puts on your achievement. You don’t choose the names your skin warrants you. The skin that holds the pigment of success. The protection of skin is contradicted by the pain it inspires. The skin that separates each other by codes of conduct. The skin that hides what is felt within, but what is felt is because of the skin that shows whats out.
A permanent statement of the being, without their consent. A signed contract without jurisdiction or permission. A cage. The skin that holds us is the same skin that pushes us down.
On quest day, Damarus challenged the assumed role of women as only victims in the process of sex trafficking. We hear sex trafficking and we assume that the male domination that is prevalent in our world is yet again the basis of such a business. Think again, as yes often times women are traded for their sexual holes, then women are often the handholders of the sales. They own the women , the business deals, women, negotiation the women. They assume roles held by men. The power is finally held by the women.
Yet the power is existant at the expense of the female dignity. sex slaves. again,held prisoner by our vagina. Owned by the vagina. the business of sex. The estimated value of the vagina.
The irony that women assume the position ofpower and dominace by owning and prepetuating the opression of their sisters. They make the money making man into a money making women by selling the profit attached to the female body. Is the only way to get ahead to put us behind? We can’t ignore the degrading violence that sex trafficking puts on women. How yes, women are vitcims. A life determined by their ability to accept. And this ownership is then furthered by the actions of other women. So to commend the female breeching of the business world. Of establishing independence and earning on their own. Do I praise the entrepreneurship that breeches the constructs of the housewife, or do I acknowledge the abuse of the women, the women that serve as the stepping stones to success. The women trapped by there ability to pleasure a penis. The women that are seen as meal tickets. As mere pawns. What woman do I fight for?
Vagina=$. $= power. power=control. Vagina=control.
Controlled by vagina.
reclaim the word bitch. bitch.
I hear it.
reclaim it.
claim the pain that is spewed by the words. as it falls out of the mouths the the bitter taste nestles in my ears and floods my mind.
claim it.
claim image,the mindset that manifests over the formality of bitch. the anger that trails the name bitch. bitch has a picture. it has a face.
the powerful female, the dominated man. both a bitch.
stop being a bitch, you are such a bitch,why are you so bitchy. wow what a bitch. shes such a bitch. hes such a little bitch.
take bitch back, the manifesto says so. to take it back. I don’t want it.
I sit at friendly’s I take note of the signs on the bathrooms. the gender destinations. teh markings that determine what parts go where. the toolsof each gender, prescribe them a place of proper, supposed, and normal existence. A world of either or. no room for variance. no acceptance of difference. no compassion toward the suffocating predicament of the binary.
but the binary is not the only standard of society that is pereptuated by the stalls. as the the manufactured figrues on the door stare back at me, i am reminded of my role. my reporductive duties. the two doors, one marked by the male. the single male. his privacy. his domain. the other, a a variety. the other door is branded by the female body, the disabled body,and the family body.
we have,as women, the mark of expectancy. the expectations of the weaker body. the body of expecting. motherhood. that is our door. or door of placement our door of expectancy.
as the man stands at his door. parading his strenght, his independence he separates himself from the lesser. from the weaker. from the challenged. from the lepers of society.
hunger+self loathing= beautiful
The Body Image presentation was a display of our country’s female motto: Dying to be thin.
what happened to women? It is both sad and disturbing what defines beauty. how eating disorders award you fame. how the smaller the silhouette the more beautiful you become. we are cherished by our waistline, or lack there of.
deprivation is the key to success. hunger makes you stronger. neglect the urge to survive, isn’t being pretty the most important?
[I think I am okay the the way I am:well that is your first mistake, you weren’t expected to think]
I want an end, I want a definitive answer to how we combat the need to be thin. How we fight the magazines, the tv shows, the victoria secret models, the clothing stores, the sizes. I want an end, I need an end. How can we teach all women, from ages 4 to 46 to 63 from sizes 4 to 12 to XXL that they are real beauty. that they are life. that they feel real love. that they know true happiness.
How can I teach myself. that I am real beauty. That I am real life. that have and can give real love.
when will I know true happiness?
maybe when Im thinner…
hunger+self loathing=beautiful
oices of Diversity are an organization that exposes the misrepresentations of minorities in the media. They reveal the perpetuated stereotypes that cripple the success of the non-heternomrative and want to hear the input and reaction to the injustices.
Martin Luther King stood up , for fought for, and died for what society today still deals with. Though his struggle was in large part for the integration and unification of black and white, his ideals and his approach to life, his mentality to our being should be applied to not only the issue of color, but also that of gender. Not only his values but also his beliefs can be viewed through the scope of feminism. If we apply his tactics and belief that in America we have the right for all liberties we begin to touch upon the fundamentals of feminism. That regardless of color, of social class or status, and above all regardless of gender, we have the rights to live in happiness, in success, in good health, and in self-sufficiency.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Smith from the Communication department delivered his speech and shared qualities and ideas of Martin Luther King Jr. When listening to these, through the ears of feminist interest, I became curious as to what the result would be of the imposition of his mentalities on battle of feminism. What stood out the most to me, was his notion to not only free the oppressed from their oppressors, but to just as vehemently strive to free the oppressors from their duty of oppression. The change must be on both sides, not one fighting for their equality and demanding that the other is in the wrong, but a demand for change from both spectrums. To remove the need for oppression, does that challenge what J.S. Mill promotes as the innate structure of society? Even still, Martin Luther King Jr.’s idea humanizes the oppressors and weakens their stance by casing on them a light that shows their need as well.
Take a look at the life we have in front of us, the oppressed or the oppressor. the male or the female, the white or the black, the speech last night proved that when it comes to these situations, our mentality should not be crippled by the focus of the what is, or the how it is in terms of circumstance, but more importantly, and more beneficially our focus should reside in the what is possible, or how it could be.
Can we remove the structures of gender from our society? In doing so, by removing the structures of gender, do we jeopardize removing identity from within ourselves?
In society, as Riley explains, femininity and feminism are socially manifested through the masculine ideals as well as the negative persona attached the constructs of “femininity”. I feel a sense of shame when reading this piece, shameful that I embrace that I am a woman. As I think about what I am, who I am, I identify with my “gender”.Being a woman may separate me from the male dominance, the male blanket representing security at one instance and oppression the next, but I can not deny my femininity.
To deny it would be to remove a structure however societal constructed it may be, from who I am. By removing “woman” or denying its relevance do we not give in to the perpetuated negativity supposedly linked to femininity? By challenging the system of gender, and trying to manipulate the binary system of male and female, do we promote the notion that being a woman is in fact undesirable? Refusing to accept “woman” does not liberate woman as Riley would say but it serves to exploit the privileges of femininity and discourages any pride a woman has for being who she is. Wanting to remove that does not make her more human, what does it mean to be human to a woman who refuses to see herself as that. Yes, man has a position of substance, of power, and innate ruling within our society, but if does his male possession make him more human? By removing the system of gender, we do not promote the humanness of one another; we are only masking an entity that I for one am not ashamed to identify with.
Femininity:
a quality for many
a life style for some
an identity for few
a restriction for all.
In The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir takes the approach that that women are the silver medal of the sexes, always coming second to the triumphant male. Women are deemed an insufficient version of the male, a sort of trial error that has lasted too long. Woman is the second child of society who is stuck with the hand-me-downs.
Beauvoir expresses the idea that women are “haunted by their femininity”, whether the characteristics are biological or socially constructed, we are stained by our womanhood and carry with us the negatives that coincide with the position of the other (Beauvoir 148). our variance from men is registered as peculiar and our estrangement from normalcy cements us in a position of depreciating power. As women we differ from men and instead of being commended for possessing unique attributes or viewed as an opportunity for a different perception, we are labeled as inferior.
Being the other is being the useless. Beauvoir suspects that man can view him self without woman and that his being would in no way be jeopardized (aside from the absence of sexual pleasure) if woman was limited (Beauvoir 149).
But can’t it be said that as a culture we take comfort in the presence of the other? Do we not develop who are we are by experiencing what we are not? To limit the presence of the other is to challenge the definition of our identity. Is it possible to remove the structures of man and woman of feminine vs. masculine? In doing so do we create an opportunity for an equitable cohesion of humans or do we risk losing ourselves by limiting profound characteristic of identity?
In response to Goldman
I’m extremely fascinated by the idea that prostitution was an escape from monotony. Prostitution: as sense of freedom? This never crossed my mind. Perhaps because as a culture we are programmed to think that customs that exceed the boundaries of normalcy are immediately deemed inappropriate and wrong. The shock invoked by the idea that fiscal sexual freedom is an escape for some people is a product of society. The discomfort we are “supposed” to feel when addressing matters of such a risqué nature cripples us in viewing non-normative behaviors in a positive light. Unless of course we can make money of it, then and only then can we provide a justification for steeping outside the lines close mindedly installed by society.
How can we be so quick to disregard history when establishing the norms of sex? Goldman shares how prostitution was used to idolize the women in Asia, North Africa and Greece and provides that it was a tool of the Gods (Goldman 111). What has taken place, what reasoning has come about that shapes our fear of sexuality? Why is sex so taboo?
To think that I have been managing my boredom by changing my hair style when the entire time I could have been having sex and getting paid for it.
C.P. G: What is the going rate of a wife these days?
Gilman in Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution analyzes the marital relationships through an economical scope. She expands on the idea that “all living things are economically dependent upon others”, and applies this to the roles of man and wife within a marriage (Gilman 101). She challenges the reader to view the obligations of the wife; tending to the children and maintaining the home, as a labor that earns her the economic support of her husband. Not only does the labors of a wife earn her a share of the income, Gilman provides that is also permits her husband to produce the wealth for the family because of she works to create such an atmosphere”
What I enjoyed about Gilman’s piece is that it views a wife/mothers work at the house not as “earning her keep” but as a way to enable the development and prosperity of the family. For far too long the “house wife” has carried stigma of having the easy way out by “just” cleaning and cooking and raising the children. More times than not, the mental and physical strain of creating a stable environment is taken for granted. What is known as making the house a home is chalked off as an easy gig and is deemed an innate chore of women. Our societal views promote that the wealth of a person is based on their income and we attach a price tag to a person’s accomplishments. And because wives, and mothers don’t receive a W2 form for each year, we don’t view their work as comparable or significant next to the labor that earns the paycheck.
I take a personal interest in this piece because I have lived in a house that promotes the ideas Gilman has touched upon. My mother has raised my sister and I when my father has worked for 12-hour days and brought home the bacon. This was the arrangement when we were young and it lasted until we are both practically out of the house. From time to time this has created some turmoil for my parents because within a marriage, money is often times viewed as power. So when the money is made, the maker feels they have more of a right to determine its usage. This strips the validity of wife’s sacrifice to raise the family and deems her work as inferior that of her husbands. aka Mom and Dad.
How does a family overcome what society promotes?
