Wednesday, January 27, 2010
This happens a lot
The first thing that crept into my mind after reading the Dubois article and the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 is that the sentiments felt by women, can be compared to those felt by the early Native Americans and Mexicans working in the United States. Women have felt that even though they put in the work, (like the women who planned the abolitionist movement), they still get walked over and dont get equal rights. Native Americans were given the same treatment from the early settlers. The early settlers may not have survived on the new American had the Natives not shown them how to hunt, etc. and yet they were killed for being a lesser race. I know it sounds dramatic but c'mon what would men do without women? And not to sound racist at all, but at the same time, its evident that many illegal immigrants are the ones running this country via infrastructure, manual labor, etc. Yet while they do all the hard labor, they still don't get equal rights. I know that the former has to do with their "illegal" citizenship, but even with that aside, the premise is the same. Women work just as hard as men, and for a while felt walked over. Unlike Dubois though, I don't believe that just two waves of feminism will "save us". We still have a long way to go. There is still doubt about a woman becoming the U.S. president. I think that even though we've grown to be a little more politicall open, the issue is clear that men still take women for granted, and wish we WANTED to live in the "womens sphere" so that we would stop being hired over them. But actually, with more and more women pursuing professional careers, and going to college, this will soon change, but not soon enough. With the raunch culture growing in popularity, where are we headed? Are we no longer able to argue that women are capable of doing what men are because we choose to act dumb by stripping and working at hooters? Why aren't more women going to school? Is there still an appeal to living in the "womens sphere" because I just don't see it.
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Monica brings up a comparison that I had not thought of initially when reading -- one between women and Native Americans and/or illegal immigrants. It is just another case of a marginalized group of people working extremely hard only to be treated as inferior.
ReplyDeleteI found the Declaration of the Seneca Falls Convention a very effective way to get across the message the feminist moving was trying to put forth. Using the model of the US Declaration of Independence to explain how the rights of 50% of the country were not being protected, shows that women are educated, strong, and serious about the things they believe they deserve. It shows that they have taken the time to understand the rights granted to them by the founders of our country and want things to change. It seems to me as though this must have grabbed the attention of conservative men involved in the upper levels of politics, as they are essentially attacking these men of NOT upholding the ideals that our country is generally very proud of.
Furthermore, I found the following line of Ellen DuBois' "Femenism Old Wave and New Wave" very compelling:
"We work in women's liberation because we are not permitted to function fully in other movements for social change and because, if we don't demand our own liberation, no one else will."
I find this to be a very important quotation because it directly rejects the notion that women did not care about other movements that may have been more dire, as well as any suggestion that they were being selfish and taking attention of way from more pressing issues of basic rights infringements. Women TRIED to help these movements, but were not allowed to help to their full potential. It also shows the need for women to stop depending on men and take matters into their own hands.
Momo raises really great questions that make me wonder if today's female comunity is helping and promoting equal rights by their behavior and actions. In the reading of Dubois we can can understand the difficult situation that women went through beucase of oppression and inequality. Loreita and Elizabeth worked really hard for woman's rights and dedicated much of their lives to women's liberation. Now we have many more right than we used to because of these
ReplyDeletefemale activist, however, we dont really think about this anymore. Fighting for equality and getting rid off the idea of women as a commodity doesnt seem female's primary interest anymore. We can see this by the rauch culture that Levy talks about. Women posing in playboy magazines and claim to be fighting for women's liberation when they are only objectifying themselves.
I think that there are still women working in the "female sphere" because while we have rights as men, this idea of inferiority has been internalized and it becomes hard for women to be confident in "male" careers, etc. To just give an example, in high school, my teachers would call on guys rather than girls becuase they thought they would have the correct answers. In Math, men are much more acknowledged and celbrated boosting up their confidence in sciences and math. For women, on the other hand, their confidence weakens.
I feel like in some kind of way to really achieve equality between female and males we need to "reprogram" people's mind and like Dubois says, the vision we should have of a new society would be one in which, as Dubois says,
sex role sterotypes are obiterated.
Hi Monica, Rose, and Missy,
ReplyDeleteNice discussion! Monica, your connection between women's rights/disenfranchisement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the status of illegal immigrants today is a great one. One of your classmates took this idea in a different direction that's also interesting to remember: where are many of these illegal immigrants working? They're often -- particularly the woman among them -- relegated to domestic labor, "women's work" in place of (middle- and upper-class) women who work outside the home. How might that complicate your ideas even further? Are we moving "forward" if domestic work is simply being transferred from some women to others?