Women and the Environment

(Response to Kirk overview)

            “A culture against women is a culture against nature.” (Kirk p. 560)

            All across the world, globalization is affecting women by altering the environment.  In India, where seed companies have licensed their products to farmers, those farmers often kill themselves because they cannot repay their debts.  In America, women farmers are often niche workers, working on infertile land and conducting laborious agriculture.

            What’s the source of the problem for the environment?  Patriarchy.  Capitalist values lead to raping the environment.  Militarist values lead to war, and in the home, the devaluing of women and violence against them.  In our modern patriarchy, technology is above nature in our hierarchy of values, and we treat nature like we treat our world’s women: with rape, disregard and marginalization.

            High cost low output globalized farming is partly to blame.  Biodiversity in Punjab has been reduced.  Wheat and Rice are grown primarily, and there is an influx of disease and pests.  Chemical fertilizers and pesticides require massive amounts of water.  Overwatering leads to desertification.  In this way, the global capitalist environment has created local devastation in India.  To recoup debts, people sell their daughters, or since a daughter requires the father to give up a large dowry, often those babies are killed.  In India, there are 925 women for each 1000 men.  Even then, capitalist agriculture returns 1/3 of it’s input labor and money, while a natural region with natural agriculture returns it’s input as crops by 20 times!

            Capitalism has polluted our oceans.  The Aleut or Eskimo, who still eat lots of sea mammals, build up PCBs in their breast milk.  PCBs are petroleum fuel pollutants that build up in the breast milk of those who are affected, and those pollutants are passed onto the young.

            Even when the governments of the world have surpluses of grain, Earth’s people go hungry.  The Earth is enough for everyone’s needs, but not for some people’s greed.  Capitalist greed and devaluation of women go hand in hand however.

            “Why women?  Because our present patriarchy enshrines together the hatred of women and the hatred of nature.” (Kirk p.560)

            The situation is bleak but not impossible.  Feminism encourages us to be non-violent, and to address the human species place in the web of nature.  We can only rape and kill our planet, and our women, for so long.  We are at a cusp in today’s society – do we go forward, into the sustainable future, and abandon patriarchy and capitalism, or do we go backward, catapulting our corporations into wellbeing, and sending the human race back 10,000 years into slavery?
            How are women connected to the environment?  Deep ecology is one idea that combines with feminism to promote the idea that we are all connected to the environment.  The environment is feminized, with imagery like the "virgin forest" or "raping of the earth" - it's resources must be productive.  A bioregion can only support so much agriculture and water use - we must learn to live sustainably and be ecofeminists.
            Part of the problem is that there is a lack of international environmental justice.  Companies can pollute the environment, even with smokestacks polluting the air, yet that's government sanctioned.  A lot of waste gets located in poorer communities due to "Not in My Back Yard" syndrome which advocates relocating waste sites away from communities - who are able to advocate against it.  The communities which are too poor to advocate, their mothers and fathers are probably hard at work, end up hosting toxic waste because of government subsidies that are available to bulk up the budget of local communities.
           Food and water security is a huge issue - sometimes our food and water comes from distant communities that due to international regulations have been forced to provide exports at the expense of other government and community efforts that might benefit locals more.  If we can create re-localization, and focus on remaining sustainable within our particular bio-regions, then neighbors are feeding one another and the global demon of capitalism is defeated.  We all get to choose how we spend our dollar, after all, and the more we spend local the more we defeat globalization and the more attention we can spend on our local environment.
            Water supplies suffer from globalized economy - there is pressure on governments from international corporations to privatize pristine water supplies in foreign communities.  When water isn't bought by global corporations, it's polluted, and unfit for drinking.  Many small communities suffer from pollution, especially after floods and natural disasters.  The #1 cause of infant death, diarrhea, worldwide results from intestinal bacteria and virus that come from dirty water.

            What we need is a paradigm shift in human thinking.  The institutions which my country gave birth are sucking up the life of this planet, and in an attitude of systematic physical and spiritual violence, globalization is devastating local farms and bank accounts.  Where will our world be in 100 years?  Will corporations rule the world, with governments taking the back seat, and people living under their thumb?  Or will people rule the world, and the corporations will exist to further the needs of the people.

            How about we start some for-the-people global corporations?  To start, let’s end seed royalties – everyone has the right to grow food!  What’s more important – lining the pockets of our capitalist industry, or providing for the wellbeing of local farmers and consumers?  Not only does quality of food and diversity of crops suffer when large companies move in, but the farmer is turned into a slave to world markets – which are inherently unstable.  Buy local, sell local, end globalization!
 

Women in Crime

            The situation for women who are pitted against institutional law (and inadvertently, secular values) is somewhat bleak.  Sometimes, when society has not assumed it’s responsibility for the individual, women live in state of poverty by no personal intention but are stuck by a variety of institutionalized systems of inequality such as planned parenthood, which assumes control of the direction of the welfare applicants life, regardless of it’s affect on the wellbeing of the applicant.  These women in poverty, many of whom are hardworking, hold strong values, love their children and husbands, become criminals in our system sometimes just for accepting the help of welfare and being unable to comply with the requirements.

At other times, when a good job is a long commute (think Maine), and the economy is slow moving with few opportunities, women in poverty turn to drug dealing to put food in their families mouths without being taxed, which is understandable when the other option is seeing your family starve.

            The United States is #1 in the world for producing criminals, where we are 5% of the world population, but we have 25% of the world’s prisoners (Kirk p.444).  Is this because law enforcement is keeping us safer?  Unfortunately it is partly because the definition crimes has been broadened.

            “The dramatic increase in imprisonment of women has been driven primarily by “the war on drugs” and mandatory sentencing for drug offenses…” (Kirk p. 446)

            In 2006, women made up 7.2% of imprisoned humans in America.  29% of women in prison are imprisoned for drug offenses, and 34% were imprisoned for violent crimes.  When women become violent, it is generally in self-defense against abusive spouses and partners.

            In the movie “Sin by Silence,” Brenda Clubine, a woman incarcerated for killing her abusive husband, kept up spirits behind bars by implementing a women’s support group of at least 25 women who were all survivors of abusive husbands that they had killed in self defense.

            It’s not just self defense.  It’s not just that these women are abused.  The abuse is physical, emotional, psychological, and rational.  And only in 1992 was “battered women syndrome” considered admissible evidence in court.  Some women who had dispatched their terrifying and cruel husbands before 1992 were not able to get a proper defense.  Brenda eventually wrote to the governor and got her case appealed.  Other women appealed and were turned down.

            Emotionally this is sacrilege.  These women, who could have been anyone’s sisters or friends, these loving women who spoke most of the time of caring for their children and making sacrifices for the kids, these women are in jail.  Some of them have been in prison for over 25 years.  We removed them from society, but put them under secure circumstances to “rehabilitate them.”  The only good that was done to them was what good they accomplished for themselves by connecting with their feelings and forming a support group. 

It makes me wonder.  What if in our system of law, if a judge meted out a consequence, he was willing to accept the same consequence on himself if he was wrong?  I think our society would be less happy go lucky about handing out punishments and severing women from society if judges were more liable to the wellbeing of those they supposedly incarcerated with the intention of “improving through participation in the justice system.”

Finally, for those women incarcerated, are they treated equally?  Forced to use the “facilities” in front of male guards, dress and undress in cells open to male prison authority’s eyes, not allowed to touch or hug their loved ones, the answer is no.  New York operates a boot camp for women where women are forced to have short hair, are humiliated for disobedience, and emotionally broken in a military style.  Is this equal treatment?  It has been called “equality with a vengeance.” (Kirk p.454)

            What’s the solution?  Incarceration is treating the symptom of the problem of women, poverty, and crime.  Education is the most pro-active approach we have.  Unfortunately, prison budgets are going up and school budgets are going down.  Pat Carlen argued that versus incarceration, women ought to be supervised within their communities, where they can remain connected to their children and families, and continue to feel like a human being (prison is degrading on the self and sense of self).  On top of education, women need therapy!  For the amount of money we spend on the criminal justice system, how about free mental and emotional health care?  Am I being too bold in saying that the best way to address emotional and mental stability is through proven therapeutic practice, not punitive measures?  Are human beings animals, that we learn best by the whip?  No indeed women are thinking, feeling creatures.

            Is a woman a criminal when she kills an abusive husband?  When she steals a loaf of bread, or sells her body?  Crime is situational.  A woman in a tough situation will sometimes commit a crime, even if it’s property theft to make some cash to get groceries or gasoline or propane.  Should we punish a woman for being a criminal?  Or should we address the situation that caused a crime to become necessary for a woman and her family’s survival?  We are faced in our society today with a tough choice:  are women criminals, or people?  Indeed they are people, and deserve to be treated humanely, and imprisonment and separation from society is at it’s least, inhumane.

Women in Religion

(In response to, Grandmother of the Sun: The Power of Woman in Native America (and other readings))

            “This spirit, this power of intelligence, has many names and many emblems.  She appears on the plains, in the forests, in the great canyons, on the mesas, beneath the seas.  To her we owe our very breath, and to her our prayers are sent…” (Paula Allen, p.1)

            Since the beginning of time, humans have felt the presence of the divine watching over us (or not).  Spiritual truth is a many sided diamond, with as many lenses as there are humans to perceive it in their lives.  We look today at women through a humanitarian lens, and we seek to uncover some of that spiritual truth as it relates to the oppression of women in modern religion.

Gender stratification is evident in many religions of modern time, from Islamic cultures where women are generally not allowed to be seen with men non-related to them, are not allowed to drive a car, and generally do not go to school, to Christian cultures where the priesthood and church hierarchy is a selection of males, and women are thought to have brought “original sin” to humankind, and indeed, the devil will someday arrive on earth in the form of a woman riding a multi headed dragon.

            Historically, we can look at the dark ages up to the sixteen hundreds, when the crusades were not only against the Muslims, whose culture survived the crusades in the arid regions more distant from central Europe, but against pagans and druids who made up the matriarchal culture of women-empowered witches.  Those women were considered heretics by the Church because they could ease the pain of childbirth using herbs (which seemed like magic – a Christian taboo), so those witches were burned or subjugated.  For some time, people of the countryside practiced both religions as a way of going half way with the authority of the church.  But eventually the old ways died out into secrecy as the church became more and more authoritarian.

            Speaking of the church subjugating locals, Europeans moved into Africa in the colonial period, where tribal worship began, where even today women practice the Shona culture.  In their religion, different land wand water animals are archetypes and family emblems.  Since a symbol can mean anything, we degrade that kind of culture in American perception as monkey worship.  In fact these animals are such a deep part of African life that they come to represent human value that is subjugated in modern times by the church.  The locals incorporate Christianity into their worship somewhat awkwardly, again attempting to go half way with the modern father-god-worship culture on Earth.  The locals are battling deforestation and depletion and export of natural resources among other problems.  A return to so called “ancestral values” is called for by the Kenyan Green Belt Movement.  It sounds like they are listening to their erotic sense of what is right and taking action against globalization, by planting trees and encouraging sustainable farming of local foodstuff.  Reclaiming their local sovereignty and recovering cultural meaning from dying religion is important to women whose culture and way of life has been uprooted and modified to suit the global agenda.

            Even Native American tradition (of the Hopi people) acknowledges the creative and central godly powers of Spider Woman and Sand Alter or Childbirth-Water woman.  However, the cultures belonging to pagans, Native Americans, and many other tribal peoples of the world have been marginalized in modern society.  The Goddess of the pagans and the Sand-Altar Woman and other tribal goddesses have been turned into representations of mere fertility, indeed, sexuality, as if a woman god must be a sexual creature.  Thought woman, creatrix of all things, whose thought allows all things to be and move in Hopi mythology, is marginalized this way:

            “To assign to this great being (Thought Woman) the position of “fertility goddess” is exceedingly demeaning: it trivializes the tribes and it trivializes the power of woman.” (Paula Allen, p.1)

            The stratification that has occurred, the suppression of the positive goddess images and beliefs, has been strategic.  Women have their place in Islam, in Christianity, and maybe a better place in druidism.  But how does this relate to women’s issues in today’s society?

            Reproductive rights of women are affected.  Who has the right to reproduce, in Jewish societies, in Islamic societies, in China?  When there is a problem of female infanticide, it is clear that the males hold the right to reproduce themselves, and that females are merely utilized for this purpose.

            There is violence against women in religion.  In Islam, a tradition masquerading as a religion, women who are suspected victims of rape by their brothers are killed by their own families to restore the honor of the men.  Not only that, there is spiritual violence rampant in the religions of the world today.  Religions and institutions don’t want people to doubt, or at worst, listen to their own sense of truth.  The goal of institutional religion is to remove all doubt, to cut off a person completely from their own erotic sense of what is right and good.  This is spiritual violence.  Sometimes the oppression is internalized, and a person can be disconnected from their own sense of truth for a long time, and strongly support a system that marginalizes their own mental and emotional clarity about spiritual truth.

            The object of consciousness-raising is to reconnect with the erotic.  Religion, if it is to exist on earth, should exist in the service of the wellbeing of the human’s who practice it.  Religious truths extracted from doctrine must be humanitarian, and when they’re not, (e.g. in Catholicism, women are advised against birth control as being sinful), we need to take religion into our own hands and adapt it.  Once we are aware that stratification exists, we can take steps to change the entrenched values.

            At a micro level, women encounter stratification right in their homes, indeed, in Islam, the family is thought to be a microcosm of the Arabic community at large, and it is, for as long as there is violence against women in an Islamic or American home, there will be violence in the community at large.  At a micro level we face our friends and family and look at reshaping those bonds to be more permissive of women’s freedoms and rights.  At the national and global level, consciousness raising leads to acts of activism that change a country, or otherwise, a small act can be catapulted to the spotlight and given major meaning to the national and global communities.  Right now the “blu bra revolution” is occurring in Islamic culture, where some men who attacked a woman are being shamed and losing their honor instead of the woman who was assaulted and left half naked in the street losing her “sexual honor”.

            The path of least resistance is an issue to women in religion.  Often when we have raised our consciousness and feel some oppression in our own religion, it is easy to let it slide and be complacent, because to challenge the patriarchal status quo in the world’s major religions and your friends and family is a huge challenge.  The key is to pick your battles and choose your battlegrounds.  When we are persuading are close friends and family to be less gender stratified, a good tactic is to divide and conquer.  We can't persuade a person or society to change unless we understand the issues at work in their minds.

            Sexual Agency is an issue to women in religion.  In Islam, all sex outside of marriage is considered adultery and is illegal.  In Catholicism, women are allowed to have sex, within marriage, but not use birth control.  Abstinence is promoted in America for religious reasons, when “safe sex” policies world wide reduce teen pregnancy more.

            Social Conditioning is an issue because we don’t always get to choose our own religion, it is given to us by society and family, and indeed we accept it and it becomes a framework for the meaning in our lives.  The erotic is again important because sometimes we are socially conditioned to believe things that go against our wise inner nature, our erotic sense of truth.

            Overall women’s place in religion is tenuous.  We need women priests, we need Islamic women who are allowed to drive and leave their homes, we need native American kids taught that their gods are more than just sex and birthing objects.  How do we get there?

            Religion uses guilt to control women and men.  Look at body image in religion.  In Islam, women are objectified as such sexual objects that they must cover themselves lest they soil another man’s honor at a distance (or pants).  In Christianity, women are given images of the virgin Mary or the virgin de Guadalupe to hold themselves to, unrealistic images that are impossible to achieve and end up causing self doubt and lack of self esteem.

            My conclusion is that changing the attitudes of the world’s religions, institutions, and individuals will have to deal with addressing guilt.  Guilt is normally what we experience when we know we have done something wrong.  Religion uses guilt as a weapon, a threat of hell-fire, even in Wicca and Buddhism there is the idea of “karma” which will “come back and bite you in the ass.” for your bad actions and thoughts.  The other option is humor.  If we’re not feeling guilty about our failures, it’s because we know the God or Goddess looking over this universe has a knowing smile on its face.  The purpose of religion ought not to be to threaten guilt or punishment to insure cultural norms, but to encourage wellbeing and healthy functioning of women and men and encourage cultural norms to develop out of our own erotic sense of rightness.  Religion originally came from human insight, not the other way around, and we need to restore that attitude to the world’s dogmatic religions.

            Finally, is it ok to be angry at God?  If we feel undervalued by our religion, if it hurts, what then?  It is only through the full expression of anger and the validation of the meaning and values behind the anger that can change the community or institution in question.  Being angry is so important, being connected to our own feelings.  I’m angry too.  Anger can’t go into a box inside, that’s a way to dissolve a person’s sanity away, that’s the ultimate spiritual violence we can do to someone, is to take away the agency of their self-respect.  Feel your feelings, they’re what the Goddess gave us to guide us in this crazy gender stratified world.

Globalization

(Response to Kirk: Living in a Globalized World)

            “The Global Call to Action against Poverty, the world’s largest anti-poverty coalition, continues to pressure the governments of richer countries to address global imbalances of wealth and power.” (Kirk p. 389)

            Globally, the system of capitalization keeps third world or “devastated” countries in poverty.  Workers are given low wages, bad working conditions, unstable positions, and often unsafe working conditions.  If the workers try to unionize, the big American corporations move their factory somewhere else.

            Democracy was originally a government “of the people, for the people.”  Unfortunately, corporations which were originally only legal entities have now gained rights and personhood in law:

            “In an 1866 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declared corporations legal persons.  Gradually they were given a long list of civil and political rights, such as free speech, property rights, and the right to define and control investment, production, and the organization of work.” (Kirk p. 390)

            The laws of our country and the execution of its practices around large corporations creates a global state of devastation.  Third world countries have been exploited by global capitalism, their natural resources subject to international trade agreements.  The WTO uses secret tribunals to determine damages in trade disagreements between less powerful and more powerful countries.  The IMF requires countries to change structurally and value exports, much like Planned Parenthood controls women’s lives in exchange for so called “help,” which is largely enslavement.

            National organizations are restructuring our planet’s economy worldwide.  Small countries are being forced to organize their economies in a certain way, and pander to global interests, as well as secular and private ones.  Many countries were forced to remove price caps on food for instance, which leads to destabilization in favor of corporations who can maximize the profit margin and minimize wages paid.

            Overall I am appalled.  In Mexico the unemployment rate has reached 50%.  It’s not because Mexicans don’t want to start businesses, it’s because their rights have been infringed to the point that the large corporations and international community hold the economic playing cards.  The multinational corporations can sell and manufacture products at the lowest cost to themselves, causing a low-wage competition in devastated (third world) countries.  Part of the problem is the fluidity of capital – when a US corporation can move it’s operations without any responsibility to keep the locals in a third world country employed, massive devaluation and devastation of the third world country results.

If our society is to survive, worker rights must be advocated and corporations must be liable to the individual they employ.  If Nike wants to pull it’s operations out of one country and put them in another, it should bear a responsibility to the people whose lives it is displacing with its “conspicuous consumption” of the cheapest available labor on Earth.

We are additionally facing a pandemic of evil where women and children are sold into the global sex trade.  India panders to the corrupt cops and statesmen who conceal and continue running whorehouses.  When the cheapest labor is slave labor, and legislators are participating in the system, what can be done?  Who will police the police? 

It is extremely important for international journalists to penetrate unjust situations and expose them to world scrutiny.  Even then, it is not governments who will object – it’s the people who object, who know that if one of their brothers or sisters is enslaved, so might they lose their rights and privileges also.

This reading makes me wonder – when will globalization hit my backyard?  Will my friends, family, and neighbors be struggling against faceless corporations? We will have to make the choice to support our friends and neighbors and small businesses when that times comes, and it already has.  We struggle against the forces of local dismantlement and disempowerment every day, with each economic choice we make.  I only hope that my neighbors keep their female children, and do not resort to selling them into slavery because the global system hasn’t properly divided Earth’s resources to those that deserve them: the workers.

We all have a dollar to spend, and collectively, as we spend it, we shape the globe.  We need a system that maximizes human wellbeing for the many, not human wealth for the few.  Each day we make a choice between globalization and localization.  It is as simple as the choice between slavery and freedom.

Augusta State House Visit

On March 28 I visited the Maine State House in Augusta with my women studies class and professor.  The first things I noticed inside the building were many pictures of middle aged white bearded men.  Very few blacks and women were represented by the selection of artwork.  In the hall was a defibrillator, used to restart someone’s heart by shocking them.  In the women’s bathroom was a personal scale.  These items show that particular groups of people work and are stereotyped at the state house.  The defibrillator is there due to the large numbers of older legislators, and the scale is in the women’s bathroom, well, because obviously women should be concerned with their weight when they are about to vote on important decisions for the community (?).

Our local legislator, Erin D. Herbig, from Belfast was available for interview that day.  My first question, to get right to the point, was a big one: “Do you feel respected?” Erin indicated  that (and this is my recollection, as she spoke too quickly to quote: ) she was aware of some gender bias, but that largely she felt respected as a state representative by the other legislators who were around 70% men.  What was further encouraging is that she felt that despite the bi-partisanship of the house of legislators, which might be inclined to work towards different ends, the republican and democrat legislators tended to cooperate to achieve things for the community.

That day in the house, a bill was being debated that would give the agro tourism a waver of liability for certain mishaps that might happen on the farm, i.e.: “I fell in your tractor rut.”  The argument for was that we needed to take some of the burden off of our local farmers who were threatened by unconscionable lawsuits.  However, Erin indicated that, to paraphrase, “If we take away liability for farmers, then pretty soon the lobsterman will want reduced liability.  And then eventually nobody can sue anybody.”  This is technically the “slippery slope” argument, as she pointed out, which is an argument where one small concession will lead to greater and greater change.  A society where nobody can sue anybody?  People might have to be more personally responsible.  It doesn’t sound like a terrible world.  On the other hand, people who are bad or negligent still ought to be liable for certain damages, for instance when an employee operates on faulty equipment owned by a company and gets hurt, it seems pretty important that people take responsibility for their action or inaction in dangerous situations.  It’s a hard call.

They spoke in the house about agro tourism but in actuality the debate was relevant for feminism.  After all, part of the fear around women’s rights, to the white middle aged man, is that small concessions of freedom, simply taking the chain off of women’s ankle (for instance, by requiring 50% sexual representation in government decision making bodies) may lead to greater and greater concessions of freedom and even matriarchy.

It was great however to see Erin and her female colleagues representing their groups.  In first wave feminism men argued that women’s rights were represented by the men in government.  In modern day, to see women representing themselves is amazing.  Our society has come an incredibly long way since the days when Sojourner truth argued for the right of blacks and women to vote.  When women participate in the legislature and protect the rights of the minority they are protecting my rights and the rights of others.  Social identity theory teaches us that as a member of the human species, if one of my brothers or sisters is subjugated for being a different color or sexual orientation, I know that I could just as easily lose my own rights and privileges for some arbitrary quality like skin color or sexual preference that ought not be used to measure a human.  If just one of my brothers and sisters is oppressed, I know, I am on a very real slippery slope towards losing my own rights.

The overall feeling at the state house was that people from all across the state had gotten together to vote on important issues because they care about the community.  I normally don’t vote so I feel more encouraged to take part in the democracy we have in America.  Next time I hear there’s a vote coming up for a local representative, I’ll pay more attention.

The Reproductive Right

(Response to If These Uterine Walls Could Talk)

            “Thirteen states have introduced laws that would allow pharmacists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to refuse to distribute medication that goes against their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.” (Valenti p. 86)

     We live in a society where doctors can refuse to treat us if it goes against their morals.  This seemingly innocuous idea can actually prevent women from getting the abortions and contraception that they need.

     We live in a society where women do not have essential rights concerning their own bodies.  Since Roe vs. Wade, which advocated abortion rights, additional legislation has essentially made abortions largely unavailable to women and girls.  The truth is, 1/3 of women have abortions and 99% use contraception.  The problem is driven by anti-sexuality, as exemplified by Dr Janet Woodcock of the FDA when she said:

“(I) could not anticipate or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors (resulting from public access to the morning after pill), such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of (the morning after pill) EC.”(Valenti p. 89)

     Sex based cults?  No cults, to my knowledge exist, and those fears are urban legend and or Hollywood based.  But we can see the problem is that our government officials are against teenage promiscuity, and they believe that abortion and contraception add to that problem, which is an essential problem for the religious right who want to prevent teenage sex (and essentially punish women by forcing them to get pregnant and remain pregnant) and for the republicans who want the religious right vote.

     Essentially we are facing an anti-sex movement, and it manifests itself in the debate around abortion.  Eleven states are trying to ban abortion.  Some have mandatory waiting periods that prevent and discourage mothers from receiving the abortion they want.  Lawmakers in Alabama and South Dakota both pushed for anti-abortion laws that made no exception for rape and incest related pregnancies.

     In certain states where abortion is illegal, a teen can still appear before a judge and petition for her right.  These women are sometimes battered and or psychologically stressed and in no condition to appear before a judge, yet that’s the only way they can achieve bodily sanctity.  A proposed law in Virginia stated that women would be unable to receive fertilization treatments, while another law simultaneously outlaws gay marriage.  Effect:  Lesbians, as “single women,” cannot receive fertility treatments or acquire help with conception.  There’s some definite anti-gay agenda in state legislation in that case.

     A lot of the anti-sex argument is that contraceptives and abortions will turn women into sluts.  Women however probably take the issue more personally and seriously than the old white rich men who theorize about young slutty pregnant women.  As stated, these are individual cases of pregnant women with real needs, and real assessments of their possible children’s future welfare, not just general cases.  It’s less important whether individual babies are killed or saved, what’s important is that the mother has the choice.  Even if the husband or legislator wants the baby to come to term, it’s not really their right to tell you “you have to undergo this arduous 10 month process where your body gets hijacked by a fetus.”

     Sometimes, advocates for birth control go too far.  An organization calling itself “Project Prevention” pays women to receive sterilization or long term birth control.  They put up signs in neighborhoods where there are female addicts that say things like “Addicted to Drugs?  Want $200?” (Valenti p. 106).  This kind of abuse of those who are addicts has to stop.  No one should hand an addict $200, that’s not good for their welfare and is unconscionable.  These women need serious help, not just a drug fix.

     Even conscientious adults who acquire birth control are in danger of complications from an improperly administered morning after pill called RU-486.  In Europe it is less dangerous, because they monitor women closely for complications.  In one woman’s private experience, entitled Personal Belongings, a local clinic misdoses her with RU-486 and does not do proper blood tests and preventative examinations that could have given her a better experience.  Even when contraception and abortions are available, they are sometimes not properly administered.

     It makes me wonder what exactly is at the root of the anti-women’s-sexuality argument?  I get that our culture doesn’t want women as sluts (while simultaneously worshipping their sexuality in the media), but I’m mystified.  I get that this is a problem, but I’ve never been one of those people.  I’ve never said to myself, “Gee, certain women shouldn’t be allowed to have babies”, or “Women shouldn’t be allowed abortions in general.” It seems like a lot of the pressure is coming from conservative Christianity, and also old money conservative republicans in general.  I think the problem is that there are people who try to play to the masses.  First, let’s convince people that abortion is bad.  Then let’s promote my candidates leadership by campaigning against abortion.

     The story of the woman in Accidents is revealing.  Aunt Joan is retarded and suffering, should she have been aborted?  And what if I had been aborted?  The fact is I am lucky, my mother did not consider an abortion when I was born. But had she been considering it, it would have probably been in lieu of my future welfare, of and her own future welfare.  I stand up for my mother’s right for abortion, and it is also the right of the unborn child not to be born into a crappy life.     Overall, our society is in a tenuous place.  Will Roe vs. Wade be overturned?  What new definitions and distinctions about abortions will our society adopt?  Let’s hope for our mothers and sisters that the religious right and republican conservatives do not get their way.  Let’s hope for a future where women have sanctity over their own bodies – indeed, the right to decide what can live in their uterus, and when and for what reasons pregnancy should be prevented or aborted.

     Finally, I wanted to add that parental consent is an issue with abortion - in cases of incest or abuse, the parents consent to abortion is not always relevant, yet some states have those parental consent laws.  Are there parental consent laws for masturbation?  After all, you're killing all those sperm, all those unborn babies.  More evidence of gender stratification.

The Egg and the Sperm

     “(The egg’s role is likened to) that of sleeping beauty: ‘a dormant bride awaiting her mate’s magic kiss,” which instills the spirit that brings her life.  Sperm, by contrast, have a ‘mission.’” (Martin p. 490)

     Even in modern biology, language is skewed at the cellular level.  Sperm “swim vigorously” while an egg “passes” from the ovaries into the uterus.  Even religious language is used:

     “The egg coat, its protective barrier, is sometimes called it’s “vestments,” a term usually reserved for sacred, religious dress.  The egg is said to have a “Corona,” a crown, and to be accompanied by “Attendant Cells.” (Martin p.490)

     So deep in our language, the egg appears to be a religious queen, however incapable of movement and mission, while the sperm are the King and “key” and the egg is the “lock.”  Sperm are regularly personified as vigorous progenitors, indeed, the “fertilizers” of the egg.

     The reading struck me as revolutionary – indeed, the personalities we give to the male and female reproductive systems are indeed microscopic representations of the gender stratification in our own society.  When the egg was not being viewed as passive, it was almost described as spiderlike, “capturing” the sperm, “harpooning” it with enzymes.  If women’s bodies aren’t portrayed as passive, they are portrayed as dangerous and aggressive.  Language is such a human endeavor, I think personification is a natural thing we do to the outside world, and see gender stratification in the personification of sex cells is almost overwhelming.  Even science skews data along gender lines.

     It makes me wonder, what does pregnancy look like from the empowered eggs perspective?  Indeed, it makes a wondrous journey down the fallopian tubes, it situates itself in the creative womb, indeed, it and it alone admits the sperm, no penetration can occur without the egg’s cooperation and encouragement.  Indeed, the egg invites the sperm, the sperm, it merely has to seek the egg.  The egg is the source of life, indeed, the egg fertilizes the sperm, and creates the embryo, the zygote, the place where all humanity begins: within a woman’s body, and it is her body’s incredible wisdom that perpetuates humankind.

     It makes me wonder, how do I use gender stratification in my personal language?  I find myself examining my use of words a lot, and I hope that someday if and when I write scholarly papers, I will do so with a mote of consciousness devoted to gender stratification awareness.  The problem of stratification in the language of biology is huge, I have only just examined the tip of the iceberg, and I will always keep my eyes open for those stratified representations that science gives us.  I am especially fed up with social evolution theory that emphasizes women’s physical signs of health and attractiveness as primary goals for women as if those evolved into actual gender stratified roles.  No, those goals are culturally instilled by this sort of science, and the scientific theories are cultural theories that do little to explain evolution.  What they really explain well is the gender stratified state of our society’s body of scientific knowledge.

     All the day’s readings were connected.  We examined women’s health, abortion, and surrogate motherhood to name a few.  In all these cases we come up against gender stratification.  In the story of surrogate motherhood, the judge decided that “surrogate motherhood was not good for her children,” and her husband with his lawyer managed to take away her home and children, while leaving her with half the mortgage payment.  We also came up against Christian values – conservatives who are basically against anything they can’t control.  Empowered women who take their motherhood into their own hands and have faith in themselves are a huge threat to the established government and Christianity, so women’s rights must be marginalized by society, by judges, by lawyers, by everyone to maintain the status quo.

     What kind of world would it be if women were empowered?  The ads would say “Motherhood – your body, your wisdom, your choice,” not “abortion is murder,” not “surrogacy is frowned upon by society.” There are so many negative messages to women about their bodies, it’s epidemic, affecting the entire planet, and it’s endemic to particular cities and countries more than others.  Thailand had a disturbingly high C-section rate, for instance.

     Overall, the picture of gender stratification in society is becoming clear to me.  Empowered women, women who are in touch with their own erotic, are the biggest threat to gender stratified society that there is.  They represent powerful mother goddess energy – transformative energy, energy that doesn’t take shit from nobody.  Think about it ladies, it’s your body, it’s your life, don’t be subjugated by the fictitious cultural knowledge that our scientists spread every day.  I’ll never envision a sperm on a mission by itself again – indeed, the egg is the locus of pregnancy in my honest opinion, and if there is gender stratification at the cellular language level, it ought to be empowering to women – they are the one’s responsible for the miracle of human life on the planet, and if we ever take that away from them, we will have taken the purpose from their lives and the power from their wombs.

Violence against women

(reponse to readings from Kirk)

     I found myself deeply disturbed by this class’s unit on violence against women.  Not only is it an endemic problem (1/4 to 1/5 women have been sexually assaulted), it is mostly perpetrated by men that are known to the women – friends, boyfriends, lovers.  3% of men who were murdered were murdered by their wives.  33% of women who are murdered are killed by their husbands.

     “Every year, as many as 4 million American women are physically abused by men who promised to love them” (Kirk p. 260)

     Violence against women often goes unreported.  Sometimes, the trauma of a rape will cause a woman to not immediately report a rape.  In that case, a legal statute of limitations imposed by the patriarchy prevents women from seeking justice on old crimes.  The truth of the matter however is that women need time to recover and feel strong enough to fight for their rights after such violation.

     “Between 1992 and 2000, an estimated 63 percent of completed rapes and 65 percent of attempted rapes were not reported to the police” (Kirk p. 262)

     In Radical Pleasure, we learn that recovery from rape is anything but ordinary.  We must overcome our tendency to dwell in the victim position and remain feeling powerless.  Simultaneously, we cannot be consumed by hate against our attackers:

     “When we refuse healing for the sake of rage, we are remaking ourselves in the image of those who hurt us, becoming the embodiment of the wound, forsaking both ourselves and the abandoned children who grew up to torment us.”

     This quote highlights the role that society plays in raising individual men who are violent against women.  One researcher noticed that rapists and those who were violent against women seemed to be normal men.  I would assert that they are not normal men, that appearances can be deceiving.  Social gendering starts at a young age, filling men’s heads with images of objectified women, and objects are acceptable targets for violence and sexuality, because they are dehumanized and marginalized in the media and in every day interactions.

     What are the causes of violence against women?  There are some factors that contribute to women’s bad position in society.  Economically, women earn less than men and are often dependant upon spouses who are abusive and know they have their women in between a rock and a hard place financially.  Sexual harassment in the workplace is the fusion of two powerful positions – boss over employee, and man over woman.  Women are an elected minority in American government.  More women than men favor gun control, banning the international arms trade, reductions in military spending, and disarmament.  These are larger manifestations of the violence of the world’s patriarchies.  The heads of our countries fight each other by conscripting out nations youth into the military.  The tendency towards violence by the patriarchy is strong, whether it is expressing itself as violence against women or violence against other countries.

     In “I am not a rapist,” men are invited to discuss and discover what it means to live in a society where men are feared.  Basically it’s a sad state, but it highlights an issue.  I have accidentally physically harmed my spouse before, and I still feel guilty about it, but I think it was situational.  I’m not a violent person, but I’ve committed violence against women.  I’ve also made amendments to wield my physical body more carefully.. Even a strong finger can leave a bruise.  I live with the monster that I have shown myself to be in some ways.  And when I encounter women who have experienced men’s degradation, I know my own acute shame from when I harmed my wife.  I think it’s good that I have shame and feelings about it – the problem is when there is denial, and no amendment of change.

     I find myself asking, what can an individual really do to change anything?  Not only am I isolated, I feel like my voice is a whisper in a sea of shouting.  How can we change the capitalist-military regime?  We will never be able to address violence against women on a microscopic level if we do not address the global manifestations of violence that are in the news every day.  We could live on a paradise planet, but the patriarchy and capitalism give us economic disparity, wealth disparity, rights disparities.  As an individual I have to make individual changes, and with what power I do have, I have to wield it to increase women’s rights.  And what would I do if I had the whole planet at my command?  What changes would I make, how would I make it work?

    I mean, ultimately this class is about discovering and implementing a better societal system.  We need world unity and we need some more socialist values – capitalism has raped our women and our wallets long enough.  How about we create a system that maximizes human happiness instead of putting the most dollars in the fewest pockets?  We need a system that doesn’t channel all the dollars and resources into the hands of the few.

Women's Body Image

(response to The More You Subtract, The More You Add)


     What are the factors that contribute to women's body image in today's society?  Especially, how does the media perpetuate images of women’s bodies and simultaneously send the message to conform to that impossible standard?  What effect does this have on women's self esteem?

     “our children are… brought up by the mass media.” (Kirk p. 231)

     The mass media takes away our self esteem through unrealistic, over-perfect images (of white and mulatto women, not black) and then sells us products to enhance our self esteem (which is only possible by enhancing how we look), with advertising phrases like “He says the first thing he noticed about you is your great personality…  He lies.” (Kirk p. 232).  Other popular social gendering is that women shouldn’t speak, with advertisements like, “Make a statement without saying a word,” (Kirk p. 235).  Also, women should be small, an add for a collapsible excersize device claims, “Soon, you’ll both be taking up less space,” (Kirk p. 235).  What we find across the board is that women’s confidence is first systematically degraded and then women are offered empowerment through products like hairspray: “Never lose control,” (Kirk p.238) face powder: “An enlightening experience.” (Kirk p.238) girdles: “only victoria’s secret could make control so sensual,” (Kirk p. 238), and hairspray again: “The possibilities are endless.” (Kirk p. 238)

     Overall, we have a whole selection of beauty enhancing products that advertise themselves to those hungry for empowerment, who are women who have taken to heart the over-perfect image of women’s bodies that the media offers and lost their self esteem, and they could really care less about looking perfect.  But because in American society beauty is the thing in the media we equate the most with self-esteem for women, that’s what women tend to seek is physical beauty as the path to "feeling and being free."  It's a typical confuse and distract strategy by the patriarchal system.

     Before television reached Fiji, it was normal to compliment someone by saying “you gained weight” and it was considered a bad thing to be “going thin.”  Within three years after television reached the island, the risk of eating disorders for teens had doubled.  Those girls who were heavy viewers of television were 50% more likely to describe themselves as fat and 30% more likely to diet than those girls who watched television less frequently.” (Kirk p. 234).
     Basically the media distorts women’s body image for profit.  This reading relates to Beauty Within and Without.  The article’s main point was that feminism had created some real gains in women’s rights and also that it is important to prevent the patriarchy from informing the beauty industry about women’s body image.  It also relates to the article Women’s Bodies Women’s Health because the media perpetuates the idea that fat women are necessarily unhealthy, which is not always true.  Female and disabled bodies are portrayed in the media as inferior, women are often frail and half starved and looking away from the camera, while men stand tall and proud.  What we need is healthy body image.  In Big Beauty a fat girl buys a tank-top and at first is too shy to wear it.. When she finally wears it, she finds she feels good about herself and that feeling sexy is ok.  Fat women are taught that they are not sexy by the media, and they are told to have surgeries to nip and tuck, and the rest of the time, women’s value is reduced to the status of their physical body, and used like a seal of approval on products that we should buy. 

     “Dominant U.S. culture often reduces women to bodies, valuing us only as sex objects or as bearers of children.  The advertising industry uses women’s bodies to sell shampoo, soft drinks, beer, tires, cars, fax machines, chain saws, and gun holdsters, as well as concepts of womanliness, manliness, and heteronormativity.” (Kirk p. 208)

     So women are sex objects in modern society.  It makes me wonder, where does it begin?  I mean, I can see that perhaps there are some CEOs of advertising in that wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “How can I degrade women and make them feel less beautiful while using their bodies to sell products” etc.  So there are these evil people in powerful positions I think controlling the status quo of large corporations.  But it must also come down to what happens in the home.  I feel like the problem must be individual men, and a lot of the degradation must occur right there in the home.  So I think there must be a “front line” to feminism, where those women and men in powerful or just oppressive conditions have to fight for all of us who might be getting it comparatively easy – because if the few can have their human rights broken, so can the many.  Think of how much it would rock the boat if a first-lady decided to be pro-feminist!

     Since we’re not all in that position it’s important to make changes in small ways.  We all have to be an activist when the time comes for us to stand up for our rights.  If I met someone who I judged to be sexist, who I thought had an attitude about women, that would probably make me prickly and I would probably hash out my women’s studies knowledge against his women’s stereotypes.  Viva la revolution!

     In Letting Justice Flow, a disabled woman pees the bible garden of a university because the president refused to build her a bathroom.  When she threatened to involve the media (they’re not all bad), she finally got satisfaction.  We don’t always choose to be on the frontlines – but activism, in small and large ways, is always important.  What I’ve learned is that the micro, meso, macro, and global levels are all different manifestations of individual human behavior.  So if small changes can take place at a personal level, sometimes those can cascade to greater levels of change.  Change sometimes starts in the home or just with the dissuasion of sexist humour in the right situation.

     In Yay for Hairy Women we learned about a girl who generally felt good about having hairy legs – and when she shaved concentric circles in them, everybody at school sort of realized that they being prejudice against her was stupid.  I think she made a good point.  But what I realized is that the media is one factor contributing to women’s body image – but there are social factors too, where interpersonal behaviors can encourage someone to feel good about themselves.  The girl in this story mentioned that her mother didn’t shave her legs and that she had a babysitter that set the stage for her rebelliousness by saying “Yay for hairy women!” and encouraging her not to shave.  So the media is a factor, but there are also interpersonal factors at work that can overcome the media’s over-perfect images.

     As part of this weeks blog entry, I sat at a coffee shop and observed for signs of societal symbolic body-image conditioning.  I noticed that some women were wearing sweaters that only came halfway down their backs, because the popular fashion perpetuated by the media is for sweaters to be “cute and short,” not “effective and warm.”  I also noticed that several women were wearing perfumes and the men weren’t, and it’s not like women smell bad.  The media however gives them self-esteem messages about using those products.  In the orient small feet were the popular self-esteem solution and they would bind their feet with cloth to prevent growth.  I also noticed the chairs were not fit for a sizeable person.  There weren’t even multiple sizes of chairs available for different sized people.  Indeed, we live in a “one size fits all” society.  Some women also wore high heels – evidence of an attempt to conform to the acceptable height norm.  I also noticed that all the women had pierced ears and very few men did, or if they did, they were not wearing earrings.  I think this is an attempt to conform to the idea that women should decorate themselves at all times with shiny things as they are portrayed this way in the media, with excessively expensive jewelry and accessories.  Most women wore makeup, some women wore so much makeup and had even partially shaved and redrawn their eyebrows, while men engaged in no such activity.  Make-up is a socially gendered activity, and it’s mostly perpetuated by the advertising and makeup industry.  It’s a great example of how the media uses over-perfect images of bodies to sap self esteem in women, and then products are offered that “cure the problem.”
     Before I finish, I wanted to add that the article If Men Could Menstruate was a general article highlighting how the patriarchy hides it's mechinations behind "logic".  Indeed, the advertising industry appears logical.  If women want to look better, show them a pretty model and tell them what make up the model used.  It's just a system of logic meant to help women.  Wrong - logic is a face for the degredation of women in this case.  The patriarchy uses the idea of logic to conceal the horrors of an industry that systematically demeans women and disguises it as something else, even innocent captalism.  Is any captalism ever innocent?

     In conclusion, overthrow capitalism.  But since I don't know what to replace it with, let's just tackle the smaller issue.  In the short run we need some kind of national advertising health agency that can help us transform television into a healthier media.  As it is, television is pretty sick, it transforms women’s body image and self esteem, and it needs to stop.  And television isn’t the only problem – it’s all forms of media. Internet, radio, newspaper, anywhere that symbols occur in human communication.  Human’s are learning creatures, we learn from everything we experience, and when we’re exposed to lots of misinformation, inevitably more or less of it will get through.  So we need to address sexism, classism, racism, and all the problems that are fed by media misrepresentation.

Eroticism and Sexuality

             What does it meant to be an erotic creature?  Are males and females equal on the sexual front?  Where does social conditioning come from?  These and other questions are relevant when we think of human sexuality, which is really just one factor affecting the human erotic sense-ability.  The following quote illustrates the true meaning of the word “erotic” as it has been lost in American culture:

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all aspects – born of chaos and personifying creative power and harmony.” (Kirk p. 162)

Humans are erotic, spiritual creatures, separate from sexuality.  According to this definition, spirituality and eroticism go hand in hand!  Indeed, perfect spirituality is perfect love.  Eroticism is a personal sense we all have – a sense of what is right for ourselves, of how to love ourselves.  It is our personal eroticism that gives us a sense of the truth in life.  What feels right to people is according to the individual.

In standpoint theory, knowledge is culturally and invidually situated, according to the individual ‘erotic’ or ‘spiritual’ life of personal edification and validation that a person has.  The following quote illustrates the dowsing effect of our own erotic inner sense, and the connection to standpoint theory:

“ ‘It feels right to me’ acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light towards any understanding.” (Kirk p. 162)

What struck me about the eroticism reading is that we all have a fundamental lively energy that guides our sense of the truth – and that lively energy gets repressed and confined by cultural ideologies.  For instance, in Guadalupe the Sex Goddess, one woman’s path of personal sexual guilt and misunderstanding is apparent.  Finally, she reclaims the symbolic image of Guadalupe that presented unrealistic expectations of women, and forms a symbol for herself of positive sexuality and motherhood, while also becoming sexually educated.  She reclaims this symbol as part of her personal erotic and/or spiritual process as illustrated by the following two quotes:

“She is Guadalupe the sex goddess, a goddess who makes me feel good about my sexual power, my sexual energy” (Kirk p.166)

“My virgin de Guadalupe is not the mother of God.  She is God.  She is a face for a god, without a face, an indigena for a god without ethnicity, a female deity for a god who is genderless, but I also understand that for her to approach me, for me to finally open the door and accept her, she had to be a woman like me.” (Kirk p. 167)

After finishing today’s readings, I find myself asking, “how can we change things”?  I see that there are a lot of problems in our society.  For instance, sex is commonly about male pleasure, when it should be about both sexes pleasure.  Perhaps two individuals could come to an understanding of that, and be feminist, and lead a more respectful sexual relationship, but there are factors at work.  Where does the malformed social conditioning (social gendering) start?  For Guadalupe, she cited that her mother told her strange facts, like a woman is allowed to use a tampon once she is married (although they still use pads even then) among other misinformation (her mother taught her to respect the virgin of Guadalupe, an effeminate image probably created by men).

            So we can see that a lot of the problem is social conditioning and stereotypes in the article Women's Sexuality, bad facts from parents, and even distorted images perpetuated by society.  So the solution would be to do two things:  Get some positive female images out there into society, and also, spread correct information about human sexuality, and spread an equal-opportunity perspective for sexual satisfaction.  Part of the author of the article’s problem was that the sexual education information available to her was terrible, and she new next to nothing about her own vagina.  So education is part of the problem also.

            Part of eroticism is proper sexuality – being true to ourselves, our own needs, what our own inner spark of life has to say about our sex life.  Life is erotic – it fulfills our deepest longings at times – and sexuality is erotic, because we find some deep meaning in sexuality.  What’s important is not just being assertive about our sexual needs in uneven situations, but counteracting the cultural ideologies that prevent us from being safe sexually (ideas like “men don’t like condoms” and “STDs are inevitable”) and/or prevent us from being fully sexually, and erotically, satisfied.

The main point of the article If It's Not On, It's Not On was that it’s not lack of assertiveness that tends to create health and sexual displeasure risks, it’s the systematic ideas that are perpetuated about healthy sexuality – mainly that women are perfunctory and that male pleasure is central, cause women to marginalize their own feelings about personal health and sexual pleasure.  What society needs is better, clearer education, and also classes like I am taking now: women’s awareness.  Imagine a world where everyone had taken women’s studies 101, it would be a different world, a sexually and erotically educated world.

            Finally, can sex be non-erotic?  If it’s not deeply fulfilling and validating to the spark of inner being of those involved, if it’s not a life-affirming experience, it’s not erotic, it’s just sex.  Pornography is recorded sexuality without eroticism – no one is having their feelings validated, no one (except the men perhaps) feel good about what they are doing.  I feel this quote adds dimension to our established definition of the erotic, and as I finish with it, think to yourself, “in what ways do I suppress my true feelings in favor of popular ideologies or acceptance?  In what ways do I have sensation without feeling?”  Probably, you can think of times in your inner life when there has been a separation of church and state, per se.  The quote is as follows:

“… Pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling.  Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.”

Eroticism at its best is sensation and feeling together under the roof of self-love.  For women in a patriarchal society that is especially important.  However, it’s something we can all aspire to.