fLesley has 13 post(s)

In the reading,” Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”, Lila Abu-Lughod critiques on how Americans have the tendency to think that they are saving the Muslim women. She mentions how rather than “saving” them, they should be more interested in  learning the history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history. Abu-Lughod talks about an interview where the reporter from the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer and First Lady Laura Bush’s radio were going  to talk about women and Islam and contacted her to see if she was able to give some background. She looked at the questions that they were going to ask the panelist and Abu-Lughod commented that the questions were  hopelessly general. She stated how if you would to replace the word Muslim with any other religion it would not make any sense. She also mentions “Most pressing for me was why the Muslim woman in general, and the Afghan woman in particular, were so crucial to this cultural mode of explanation, which ignored the complex entanglements in which we are all implicated, in sometimes surprising alignments”( Abu-Lughod, 784). She follows up by asking why were these females being mobilized in the war against terrorism. Abu-Lughod  mentions how there was a constant slippage between the Taliban and the terrorists in Laura Bush’s radio. This slippage made it seem as if they were one word. Also there was a blurring of the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women’s continuing malnutrition, poverty, and ill health. Laura Bush speech mentions how the American bombing in Afghanistan and military gain was the reason to why women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. Abu-Lughod mentioned how that statement haunts any person that has studied colonial history do to the fact that it had no outside knowledge of the topic. To conclude from this reading it, it appears that Abu-Lughod wanted to stress that instead of thinking about “saving” the women, educate yourself first.

In Amalia L. Cabezas’ article, “Between Love and Money”, she talks about sex, tourism, and citizenship in
Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Globalization has a big impact to these countries on how sexuality is tied with citizenship. She interviews multiple workers that work in the tourist area. The tourism industry is the primary economic development strategy in both Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The information that Cabezas gets from the workers at the resorts are very interesting. The people from Cuba and the Dominican Republic talk about pingueros and sanky pankys which are men who look for foreign tourists, providing sexual services and companionship to both men and women, straight and gay. Some young men that are considered to be pingueros admitted that being a pinguero is a business which helps them provide for themselves and even provides for their family. One of the most important social impact of tourism is the fact that it involves sex tourism.  Many of the young men and women hope that their connections with foreigners will lead to marriage and migration. Cabezas also mentions how studies show that  that most pingueros, jineteras, and sanky pankys prefer to accept gifts of clothing, jewelry, and meals from tourists rather than to negotiate money for sex. They prefer that because accepting direct cash is basically prostitution which they do not desire. Getting married is one of their hopes so they can end up getting a visa. This right here shows how sex tourism does complicate the traditional views about citizenship and nationality. Also tourism deals with occupational segregation because the training and distribution of work are organized according to racial, sexual, and gender considerations. Most of the front desk workers are lighter skinned Cubans, while entertainment workers and back-kitchen help are mainly black. Race plays a big role in whether or not you are considered a sex worker. A mulata from Santiago living in Havana is automatically categorized as a sex worker meanwhile a pale skinned university student, who only dates foreigners and eventually marries a Frenchman, is not considered a sex worker.

In the reading “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?” by Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi, they mention the term commons. The term commons was first referred to the land of the fifteenth century English villagers where they could freely graze their sheep and cattle, collect firewood, and hunt game. The British then took the land and didn’t let the commoners use it. The word commons could also mean the community of families that people belonged to within the care chain. The purpose of migration was to seek for better paying jobs. The mothers would be more likely to migrate away from their own families including their young children is all due to higher paying jobs. You would think that the commons that are left in their home lands would be against migration but they actually benefited from it. The mothers would send back home  remittances. The third world government capitalized from it as well because they were able to tax  hard currency remittances. Even though the mothers were providing for their children they did face a huge social cost which was shame. Talking about how the mother’s children were doing was a taboo topic, they were sensitive and considered it a private matter. Alexandro Portes defines social capital as the accumulation of “social chits”. In the exchange of social chits, they leave open the time for repayment. Between migrant mother and caring-giving kin, there is an exchange of social chits. This right here would be considered the term care chains. While the mother is off working, either her older daughter, her sister, or any sort of kin would look after her younger children. Even with the conflict of not being there for their children, most migrants saw themselves as using their remittances to better their families, which are the commons.

There has been plethora times in my life where I have felt/been treated like an “outsider”. The one that I will be talking about was how I felt like an outsider growing up in my own family. Growing up in my family I was the youngest of my siblings and cousins. I was also the darkest person in my family. My siblings would always joke around stating how I am adopted due to the fact that I was  darker than my parents and them. There was even a time during the summer where I went to the pool with my cousins and I ended up getting darker and they made a comment how I looked like Harriet Tubman, so I just walked away and then seconds later they asked where did I go and one of my cousins yelled out, she’s probably in the underground railroad. All of my cousins then proceeded  to laugh. My own family made me feel like an outsider all because I was  darker then them. They made it seem like being dark was a negative thing. That experience made me realize how people can be so quick to judge you for what you look like and not for who you are. In Patricia Hill-Collins’ essay “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought”, she states how these experiences can teach us more about society and the nature of oppression. By going through these “outsider” moments she states how the marginalized groups have common experiences, which brings them together. She talks about how black women have been a marginalized group for the longest. With their many experiences of feeling like outsiders, black women found it really important to insist on self-definition, self-valuation, and the necessity for a Black female-centered analysis. This is significant because it is an important way of resisting the dehumanization experiences of the dominate group. The experiences of feeling like an outsider really helps you realize how society views differences, also being treated like an outsider brings you closer to the other outsiders where you soon form common understanding and bring awareness about such issues.

In part four chapter four of Foucault work, Foucault mentions the idea of “a technology of sex”. In order to go into depth of the concept you have to know what he is talking about when he mentions “a technology of sex”. Foucault states that during the end of the eighteenth century a new technology of sex emerged. He states the word new due to the fact that it escaped ministerial institution without being completely removed from the topic of sin. Foucault also uses the word new due to the fact that sex expanded to three stand points which were of  pedagogy, of medicine and of demography. Within these three applications Foucault brings them to tie with the specific sexuality of children, the sexual physiology strange to women, and the spontaneous regulations of births. All three applications were coming from the methods that had already been formed by Christianity, now the technology of sex was ordered in relation to the medical institution, the exigency of normality, and the problem of life and illness. With this all being said, it is clear to state that Foucault  is trying to explain that the notion of sex is starting to move away from the church. Foucault talks about the the medicine of perversions and the programs of eugenics. Both were considered to be the two great innovations in the technology of sex of the second half of the nineteenth century. This led to the assumption that heredity that was charged with many diseases ended up making a sexual pervert. This technology of sex also went on to explain how a sexual perversion resulted in being in your genetics meaning it will be pasted on to the next generation as well. Foucault also states that this technology of sex was nothing more than a
medical theory and didn’t have much scientific proof to support its theory. To conclude with this application the medicine stand point of a technology of sex just shows how sex is still being controlled, but this time it is not only by the church.

In Part one of the passage of History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault  talks about how the history of sexuality changed throughout the course of time. Foucault starts off part one by stating that society favors the Victorian regime and has been supporting it even up to today. He goes into chronological order in how sexuality was seen. In the beginning of the seventeenth century sex was not a taboo topic but seen more of a regular activity that wasn’t looked down upon. This wouldn’t be able to last that long because the subject of sex was considered to be a thing to be talked about in secret all thanks to the Victorian bourgeoisie. The talk of sex was now repressed, children could not hear of such things due to the fact that children had no sex. Foucault then talks about the only places where sexuality  was allowed was in the brothel and the mental hospital. The people in those places were considered those “other Victorians”. Now Foucault goes into more detail on sexual repression, Foucault states how sex was seen in a political stand point as well. Now talking about sex would be seen as an action of going against the law. Foucault then states how speaking about sex in terms of repression gives the people to go against the power. Sex as in today is an ancient form of preaching. Foucault then mentions the hypocrisy that has taken place for more than a century and asks the question about, why do we say that we are repressed? He also then asks the question of what led us to this point of being repressed. Since the beginning of time sex was always considered a sin. People today still hold that repression which shows that it is still an issue.                                               Question 1: What are some examples that led to Foucault believing that sex is repressed? Question 2: If sex was to never be repressed by the Victorians, would you think sex would have ever reached to such a taboo topic?

In the essay of Bell Hooks “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” she mentions the term the Other. Personally, I fell that the Other is people that are from other races and how white people are intrigued by them, even in a sexual aspect. The Other would be people of  African,  native american, Asian decent, basically anyone outside of the white race. Otherness can be seen as productive due to the fact that it can add spice to the white culture. With this being said Otherness in a sense can change the status quo, which disturbs the equilibrium of the norm. Hooks mentions how when she was teaching in Yale she over heard how the white boys wanted to fuck the Other. To the white boys the Other would give them an opportunity to enter the world of experience. You would think that by the white boys wanting to fuck the Others would be a sense of them dominating the Other since that is how it worked back in the day, but the boys did not even see it in that way which is a sense of some form of Otherness being productive. Otherness lets the people to explore a world of difference which make a more intense pleasure since they are discovering something new and out of the ordinary. Hooks also mentions how Otherness lures a combination of  pleasure and danger, which could mean that it creates excitement to relationships. It leads to a society becoming more common with diversity. The cultural appropriation  of the Other helps ease the feeling of oppression that the Others faced. The relationship of whites  being sexually intrigued of the Other does not seem like a bad thing in this reading. The concept of Otherness can help break through the challenge of white supremacy and finally bring some sense of unity.

In the first two chapters of C.J. Pascoe’s book, she touches on the subjects on how the students, administrators, and teachers have an effect on the cultural meaning of gender and sexuality at River High. Chapter one starts off talking about the skits the senior boys do in order to be crowned Mr. Cougar. Pascoe describes what took place in this skit which was two nerds get their girls “kidnapped” by gangstas and they would eventually have to end up working out in order to scare the gangstas and end up winning their girls back. This right here shows how the students viewed being weak as a less masculine feature and that being strong is the more masculine thing. Also this shows that women are just a prize to men and women are defenseless due to the fact that the girls couldn’t fight off the gangstas themselves. The students would view drama classes and the Gay/Straight Alliance as being a fag and the masculine sites to be auto shop and weight lifting. The administration also contributes to the meaning of gender and sexuality at River High due to the fact that the organization of school activities encouraging heterosexual pairings, such as the Winter Ball, school rallies, plays, dances and proms. By making events that are meant for heterosexual pairing it teaches the students to think that a boy and girl pairing is the right way to do dances and anything besides that is considered unusual/being a fag. The dress code for the girls also prove that gender differentiation takes place in River High. To emphasize more on the concept of gender differentiation, official school policies encouraged sexual abstinence and discouraged homosexuality. The teachers had a role in this as well. Pascoe mentions a teacher, Ms. Mac, where she  frequently drew on and reinforced concepts of heterosexuality in her teaching. She also had a wall of senior pictures where the vast majority of the pictures showed boy and girl pairs dressed in their formal best. This right here shows that  heterosexuality was celebrated as opposed to homosexuality.

In the works of Morgan and Federici the concept of “monstrosity” was addressed multiple times. In the work of Morgan, she wrote about how the the male travelers viewed the bodies of black women. Most of the descriptions that were used included the word monstrous. The concept of  “monstrosity” was used more to describe the mothers, on page sixteen Ligon states that mothers became monstrous and it reinforces their racial distinction. Throughout Morgan’s work the men go into full detail explaining the monstrosity of the the women’s bodies. One of the main points the men used to explain that they are a monstrosity was due to their breast. Again, on page sixteen they mentioned that images of female devils were depicted with sagging breast. Mothers would feed their babies on their backs and would just move their breast over their shoulder. The men used this description to justify that black women, especially mothers, were a “monstrosity”. In the work of Federici, she explains how women were degraded in many forms. The concept of “monstrosity” again was used more by men and how they viewed women. In this work women were considered to be so monstrous that they  believed they were true witches. During this time in the reading of Morgan, women were looked down upon if they worked out of their homes. On page one hundred and twelve there is an image of a women challenging the sexual hierarchy and  beating up her husband. In this image, it depicts the women as the evil one in the drawing where her husband looks at her with pure fear in his eyes. This right here demonstrates how men pictured women as a “monstrosity”. Federici emphasized how women were considered monstrous if they tried to play a role that was considered more for a male while Morgan demonstrates that women were depict as a “monstrosity” due to how men viewed their bodies.

In chapter one of  Jennifer Morgan’s book she talks about the Male Travelers,  Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology.  In this chapter the connection between the female body and racism are talked about especially by the analysis of the male travelers/writers. I realized that the words monstrous and human savage was repeated multiple times in this chapter. Many of the men used these words to describe the African female bodies. Richard Ligon mentions the breast of a black women, how they hung down below their belly buttons and at a distance they look like they had six legs. This implication states that they thought of the women’s body as inhuman and  monstrous. The breast of the women are mentioned a lot throughout this chapter as well. Felix Spoeri, a Swiss physician, stated that the length of enslaved women breast are long due to the fact that they are naked all the time. Also since they have long breast they would just throw the breast across there shoulder and feed their babies on their backs. This leads to another racist idea they came up with which is that since the babies are on the back feeding, their noses are flattened due to knocking them continually against the back and shoulders of the mothers, concluding why all of their noses look the same (flat). Going back into the female body, Theodor de Bry depicts Indians as  aggressive and savage. He shows women eating from a grill with human body parts that are being cooked. With that going on the women were presented with long breast falling below their waist. From those contexts women with long breast were considered savages to English readers.

Question: Why was the length of a women’s breast so important and why does long breast automatically have an association with being monstrous and a human savage?