Roger Mojica

[humansofnewyork]

“My mom went off when she found out I was gay. It’s not accepted in Jamaican culture. I had to pretend I was ‘over it’ just so I could stay in the house. I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about it. I was always getting in fights with other kids. I didn’t even have a real friend until I was seventeen. I joined my school’s volleyball team, and the coach paired me up with a boy named Winnie to work on drills. I was still in the closet. He was much more flamboyant than me. He’d make me laugh. We’d talk about other boys on the team. He showed me how to not take myself so seriously. And we had similar backgrounds too. Winnie lived in a single parent home. His mother didn’t accept his lifestyle either. Sometimes we’d talk on the phone at night. Or we’d get a slice of pizza after practice. These were things that I’d never done with anyone before. I never pursued anything romantic because I couldn’t risk the friendship. It was the first time I didn’t feel alone.“

[hatueylouverture-blog]

The Color of Feminisn

In “The Bridge Called My Back” by Moraga & Anzaldua the authors explain that the reason they are writing the book is that racism in feminism needs to be acknowledged and dealt with. They explain that white women tend to forget that they are not the only ones fighting for women’s rights, and they are not the only ones being oppressed by Patriarchy.

I have noticed that most of the time when feminists are given a platform to speak or when the media chooses to acknowledge feminist they usually have a white woman advocating for it. It seems that even the thought of letting a woman of color complain about gender inequality is too much of a privilege, even when saying you’re oppressed will make people oppress you more. If anything feminists should focus more on women of color because they experience inequality in a greater way, they are oppressed because of the color of their skin and their gender.

[softcore-revolutionary]

[hatueylouverture-blog]

The Problem That Has No Name

In “The Problem That Has No Name” by Betty Friedan the author explains how in the beginning of the twentieth-century women were being taught from a young age how to be more feminine. Because being more feminine was used as a way to show women how to fit in society “equally” most women accepted it. Women were starting to get married at the age of 17 in order to have a head start into becoming the perfect housewife. Women were no longer pursuing a college education, it got to the point that because being a housewife was so important and seemed like the perfect role even women with cancer refused treatments because they would make them “unfeminine”.

Although at the beginning most women were satisfied with just being housewives, eventually women began to feel unhappy, they began to feel incomplete even though they were following all the steps required to be a “perfect” housewife. Newspapers and magazines criticized these unhappy women because they believed housewives had everything a woman ever needed. Psychologists and doctors believed that the unhappy housewives were just spoiled women who couldn’t find satisfaction in their roles. They even suggested that women should not go to college because getting an education would cause them to suffer the “housewife dilemma”, education would just interfere with women’s duty of serving her husband and kids.

It seems to me that women in the early twentieth century were tricked into being housewives. Women have always endured being seen as weaker and less than men, and the chance to be the other “half” of a suburban household was finally gonna give women the chance to finally feel useful in their society. Of course, it didn’t work because women are not meant to be kept at home doing “housewife” things. Women are human beings with the same needs and ambitions as any man. In today’s society there is a slightly better shift for women to be treated equally to men, this has come from feminists groups and people that are challenging today’s social norms into opening their eyes and seeing women as human beings, they are not sexual objects, or reproductive objects or weaker than men, they are human beings and deserve to be treated as such.

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Women

"The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir explains that throughout time women have always been seen as weaker and useless co.pared to men. Everything women are weak for actually make them stronger than men, yes they have reproductive organs but that doesn't mean they are weaker, if anything that makes them stronger, women are able to create life, their bodies are capable of nurturing and making human beings and at the same they can do the same thing men do as well. Women are seen as a sex object, just there for sexual pleasure and reproductivity. Although women have tried to rally against men and change the way society treats them the author of the article suggests that it will not work because since the beginning of time women have been seen as weaker, it is engraved in society, it is seen as normal to treat women as the weaker species. Women are not seen as human beings but as women, women has become a word that means weaker than man, weaker of the sexes.

[black-to-the-bones-deactivated2]

the most accurate thing i have seen in a while

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Feminism

“Feminist Theory” by Wendy K. Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski is comprised of 10 essays that deal with feminist theories and ideas. Each essay discusses a certain point that is either helping the feminist movement or holding it back. Even though feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, there is turmoil in the feminism movement. There is a racial divide between colored feminist and white feminist due to white feminist being seen as more equal to men due to white privilege. Black feminist struggle because the black community sees them as traitors to the racial movement they have been fighting in for so long.

Although feminism isn’t perfect they are still an important movement that is encouraging women to take control of their bodies and mind and not let men define them in a patriarchal way, women are mostly judged on physical appearance while men are judged on their mental capabilities.

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Gender Stereotyping and Patriarchy go hand in hand.

In the article “ “Patriarchy, the system: An it, not a he, a them, or an us;” by Allan G. Johnson, the author explains that in order for society to get rid of patriarchy we must first realize that it is not a problem created by individuals but that it is a systematic problem. Because patriarchy is “invisible” like privilege it is impossible to get rid of it until we acknowledge that it is here. Patriarchy is part of cultures, and religions, even in our family households we practice patriarchy; everyone in a household has a role, the father must work to provide for the family, not talk about his feelings, and not allow his wife to work because her job is taking care of the kids and the house. We will never be able to see our potentials if we keep treating each other differently because of our genders.

Patriarchy is even embedded in the use of language, for example, the definition of the word virgin in today’s society is someone who is heterosexually inexperienced and thus incomplete, but if you define it without a patriarchal influence on it, the word virgin can be defined as a woman who is unattached, unclaimed, and unowned by any man and therefore independent and autonomous. Not only does patriarchy affect the definition of certain words that are usually used to describe aspects of women, patriarchy also influences the way the English vocabulary uses words to describe women, as Laurel Richardson states in her article “Gender Stereotyping in the English Language”; “in terms of grammatical and semantic structure, women do not have a fully autonomous, independent existence; they are part of the man. The language is not divided into male and female with distinct conjugations and declensions”, instead whenever the word man is used as an indefinite pronoun it refers to both men and women. Although women have obviously been around as long as men, mankind is the word used to describe men and women. This decision to use man to describe two genders is fuel to what patriarchy stands for, it’s as if someone said: “Men are obviously better than women in every way so when we want to include men and women in one word we’ll use the name of the better one among the two.”

[hatueylouverture-blog]

White Privilege

In the article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh the author explains and makes a checklist of what white privilege is. The author compares white privilege with male privilege and explains that they are both products of denial because they are born out of societies interlocking hierarchies. Because she is white and privileged she is able to do things that those that are not privileged have most likely never experienced. For example, on her checklist, she put that if a police officer pulls her over it’s not because of her race, or that she can turn on the TV and always find something to watch with characters of her race in it. Because she is privileged she has come to realize that she has taken most of the things that her privilege allows her to do as granted, she argues that the things her privilege allow her to do should be allowed for anybody no matter the race. At the end of the article the author asks “Having described white privilege, what will I do with it?” and to that she answers “it is an open question whether whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily-awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.”.  

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Male Privilege

“The Male Privilege Checklist” by Barry Deutsch is a list of privileged things men can, and most likely will experience in their lifetime. It shows perfectly how men benefit from their privilege and women have to deal with it because men don’t see it, it’s already embedded in society. Male privilege can be seen everywhere. Political representatives are mostly men, individuals with the most power over societies are mostly men. There are more women in the United States than men yet we have never had a female President. Men don’t have to worry about being raped, yet when you see a woman on the streets late at night, in the back of your head you wonder why are they out because it is dangerous for them. We cannot keep believing that we are a just and equal society if we keep ignoring the fact that men are privileged.

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Privileged

Privilege is invisible to the privileged but very present to the non-privileged. In the article “Making Systems of Privilege Visible” by Stephanie M. Wildman and Adrienne D. Davis, the authors explain that nothing can be done about privilege because privilege has not been recognized in legal language and doctrine. Because of the exclusion of privilege from legal reasoning, it is impossible to address issues of systemic unfairness within our societies. Privilege can be used by dominant genders (males) and dominant races (white). Race and gender already make it hard to see each other as whole people and adding the privilege to it will just add more to the problem. For example, between a white man and a white woman running for presidency of United States the white male is more likely become president of the United States (as seen in recent events), yet if a black woman is also running for the presidency her chances are less than that of a white woman because white privilege and racism.

Privilege can even be seen in language, a King, and a Queen might be considered royalty and all powerful over the people they rule yet the Queen has less power than the King, the King has control over his army, not the Queen, the Queen is just filling out the role of wife with a few extra perks. Because privilege is invisible to those that possess it are able to judge those that are not privileged without guilt because the privileged feel that they earned the benefits of their privilege through hard work.

The article also explains how white people use privilege unknowingly to ignore the fact that they are systematically supporting racism. By ignoring racism privileged white people believe that they are not racist, yet by doing that they are doing the opposite, they are supporting racism. Racism cannot be solved by ignoring and telling yourself you’re not racist, racism is not a problem that certain racist individuals believe in, racism is a systematic idea embedded within society that every time it’s ignored becomes more powerful. As one of the authors says at the end of the article “Whites spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that we are not racist. A big step would be for whites to admit that we are racist and then to consider what to do about it.”.

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Do you know your role?

After reading “The Social Construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber I've come to realize that the gender role is a socially constructed idea created in order to control our social standings. Although gender is transforming into something more fluid in today’s society, it still has a long way to go before it can be considered balanced, women are still paid less than men for the same jobs, men are still expected to be the providers for their family while women clean and cook.

Although we might not think about it gender is what influences almost all the decisions we make in life. Decisions and actions made by men always seem to be regarded with more importance than that made by a woman, if a woman starts a secretary and becomes assistant manager most people think she did something unconventional to get that promotion, but when a man does the same thing he is seen as a hard worker who sacrificed a lot. There are even jobs that tend to be seen as gender specific rather than unisex, kindergarten teachers, secretaries, and child care workers are usually work positions done by women while logging workers, automotive body repairers, and roofers tend to be jobs for men even though their gender difference would not affect their job efficiency.  

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Gender Outlaw

After taking the Gender Aptitude Test written by Kate Bornstein I received an overall score of Gender Outlaw, meaning that I have been educating myself more on gender. Even though I am satisfied with my score I feel like I still have a lot more to educate myself on. I wish I had learned more when at a younger age because there were a lot of unnecessary rules that I had to follow that prevented me from making my own thought out decisions.

At the age of 21, I started to realize that the rules implemented by society for gender roles didn’t make any sense. “How is it possible for people to tell others what they can and cannot do with their bodies and minds?” “What is morally wrong with same sex relationships?” “What is morally wrong with sex changes?” “Why do I hate homosexual and transgendered people?”. All these questions were spinning in my head for years until I decided that it was wrong of me to hate someone because I didn’t understand them. For the first time, I wondered, “How would I feel if somebody judged me based on my sexual needs or because of the way I dressed?.” It seems to me that gender roles were implemented by a group of people who were afraid of things that were different from them, the difference between individuals always seems to create hate. The difference should not create hate, it should create understanding and acceptance through curiosity and education.

[hatueylouverture-blog]

Rules for Girls.

The short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid deals with the responsibilities and expectations women have to learn in order to have the “perfect” role in society. The story is written in a non-traditional way. The majority of the story consists of rules women have to follow and after a few rules, the story warns women that they will be considered sluts if they decide not to follow the rules. The story implies that women should learn how to cook for men, how to iron dress clothes, how to be “ladylike” and not look like a slut.

 Although the story was written in 1974, most women around the world today are still expected to follow these “rules” implemented by chauvinistic men. It is never implied in the story that a woman should have an independent mind. It is never implied that they should seek leadership roles; it is always implied that they should just be “Yes” women and do as they are told. When women are not told what to do all the time, they should already know all their chores and roles in society.