fkiersten has 13 post(s)

I have a question on the final exam essay. For Section 2, question 3 what exactly is this question asking? Are you asking how the readings of history contribute to gender and sexuality studies? And it says choose at least two and no more than three people. Do we have to talk about the first three people you gave and compare it to two other people?

Can you give me an example on how I would structure and answer this question?

Prof Bullock’s response:

Yes, I’m asking how these historical works contribute to the study of gender and sexuality. You don’t have to address all three. Choose either Davis, Federici or Foucault. Then explain how this work relates to 2 / 3 works from the list provided.

The structure of your response is up to you. For example, how you read Davis (if this is the primary text you choose to address) should be used to underscore the bearing of her work on other material we read.

Let me know if you have additional questions.

In the article, “Affective Economies” written by Sarah Ahmed, she discusses how hate attends to our emotions within our economic structure. Emotions play a crucial role within everyones everyday lives, Whether its talking about a sad show you saw, or something that made you laugh. In the beginning of her article, the narrative talks about how it is the love for the nation that makes other people hate one another. In this article, Sarah Ahmed want people to realize that people love to hate one another. There is a huge correlation between loving and hating. In today’s economy you need to have a job in order to earn money. Most people will get a job with something they have interest in doing. They will end up loving their job, but if the economy goes to dumps and people start getting laid off and loosing their jobs, it causes fear to rise. When fear of losing something you have happen, it can cause hatred. You can start hating the people who will take your job etc. Some people can say that our emotions are the problems, not the individual. Ahmed state on page 119, “in such affective economies, emotions do things, and they align individuals with communities- or bodily space with social space- through they very intensity of their attachments. Rather seeing emotions as psychological dispositions, we need to consider how they work, in concrete and particular ways, to mediate the relationship between psychic and the social, and between the individual and the collective.” I agree with this statement here. In oder for love and hate to come about, you need to take a step back and look at your emotions and how they can contribute to your everyday life, if your emotions are a positive impact or a negative impact. Your emotions become a property when you discuss how a certain thing may make you feel.

In the article, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” written by Lila Abu-Lughod, she explains the difficulties Muslim women and people of the Islamic culture face. Muslim people are judges based off of their appearance and their culture. Muslim women have to fight for their rights and freedoms in their homeland because they have very little freedom. Since the terror attack in New York City on 9/11, Muslim men and woman have been subjected and treated poorly just because of their religion and beliefs. Most muslim women will wear a hijab which covers her hair on her head. Sometime’s muslim women would wear a burqa which covers them from head to toe. If these women did not cover themselves they would be threatened and even harmed. These muslim women have been oppressed in so many ways. In my opinion going off of the title of this article, yes I do believe that Muslim women need saving. These women are being discriminated against just because of their religion. Even though many feel muslim women are being oppressed by wearing these burqas, it is also a sign or respect for their religion and their culture by wearing them. It is too show that they are being modest. I once watched a video online about muslim women talking about wearing their hijabs and most of them like wearing them because it is normal for them. One of the main reasoning behind wearing these is so men can fall in love with a women by who she is as a person, and not what she looks like, her inner beauty.

In Amelia Cabezas article, the topic regarding ‘sex tourism’ take place all around the world, especially in poor countries such as the Caribbean countries including Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In Cabezas article she talks about the four S’s. She states, “Despite these important differences, my aim is to demonstrate similar economic and social outcomes that stem from the adoption of international tourism— or the four S’s, as they are known in the literature: sun, sea, sand, and sex— to create economic growth” (Cabezas 990) Sex tourism that occurs within these countries are often brushed away and not taking seriously. Since these countries have a lack of work, they depend on things such as sex tourism to earn a living. On page 992, Cabezas states that sex tourism is not only about sex and money, but about opportunities that is provided as well. Sex tourism can provides opportunities for recreation, consumption, travel, migration and marriage. Sex tourism is considered a illicit activity. The role of sexuality and sexual identity play a major role in sex tourism These people in these countries have relied on tour related jobs, such as sex tourism to be able to make a living for themselves. Both men and women had participated in sex tourism, and some of them hoping to gain a relationship with the tourist in hopes of having something more. Even though, these sorts of things are morally incorrect, the government and police officers of these Caribbean countries pretended they did not know what was going on because the money they were making was benefiting the country. The women and men were offered their bodies in exchange of gifts and food. The male sex workers in these countries were viewed as heroes and people were proud of them. On the other hand, the women in the countries were not viewed as heroes. They were viewed as animals and can be brought shame upon their family.

In the article, “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?” Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasvian Uma Devi had argued that the main focus on the concept of the commons to understand the South and North migration. This article discussed how mothers from southern countries have to leave their family and children and travel to northern countries to care and take care of families that is not their own. When they travel to these northern countries, they get jobs such as nannies, caregivers, etc. These writers of this article talks about the commons. The commons is the community of families within the care chain. There is many different arguments about the feelings of this article. Many people would assume that these mothers are bad mothers because they are leaving their families in order to go take care of another family. The biological kids of the mothers are left with other relatives to take care of them. There are both advantages and disadvantages for these women to become migrants and travel the world taking care of other people. Most of the time, the money they make they send it back home to there family. Everything one way or another has to come down to the economical system. The reason these women would travel to other countries and leave their families is so they can earn money. Usually most of the time these women have migrated from third world countries that are very poor and will go to a country that is extremely rich like the United States.  These woman had to have a balance between their work life and their personal life.

There have been a few times in my life when I felt like an outsider. Fortunately it has not happened a lot, but when it does happen it can be extremely hard. I’ve had a learning disability my entire life and I have struggled with it for as long as I can remember. Growing up, for all my exams and quizzes from as early as elementary school, I had to leave the classroom and take it in a special location. I used to be so embarrassed by this because I just wanted to take the exam in my classroom with all my other peers. Having a disability has made me feel like an outsider and made me feel down about myself. It had me questioning myself, that I was not as smart as my friends because I would take me extra time to just finish one assignment. As I have grown older, and became more mature, I have accepted my learning disability because it made me who I am. Instead of being embarrassed by this, I learned to embrace it and not be ashamed of who I am. Correlating my feelings with Paticia Hill-Collin’s essay, “Learning from the Outsider Within” she talks about all different kinds of stereotypes and labels that people have and even give themselves. She discussed families within her essay who comes from all different types of backgrounds.  All of these families she talked about came from different backgrounds, yet they all had a time where they experienced what it felt like to be an outsiders.  Many people think that there is a certain path we as people are suppose to follow. Sometimes, thing’s do not always go as they are suppose too. Social media is a huge influence on our society today. People have this idea in there head on what they are suppose to look like because of the media. 99% of the people do not look like anything compared to what is shown on TV and magazines. This causes people to feel down about themselves and make them feel like an outsider because they believe they are not socially accepted.

Kiersten Ahle

Assignment #8

In part four, chapter four of “History of Sexuality” written by Foucault, he emphasizes “technology of sex” (1978:123) Back then, sex was a topic people would only discuss in the privacy of their own homes. It was not a topic to be talked about in public, as most people considered it to be a sin. During the end of the eighteenth century, a completely new technology of sex had emerged. Through pedagogy, medicine, and economics, it made sex a concert of the state. Sex had become a matter that required the social body as a whole, and to be placed under surveillance. Due to medicine being a concern regarding sex, its objective was the sexual physiology peculiar to women and the regulation of births. Foucault technology of sex was a repressive theory. Since the topic of sex so repressed, it became a topic that people wanted to talk about since it was not allowed. Sex was an important topic of confession within the church because they would confess the sinful act of sex or anything related to sex, since they know it was wrong. The discussion of sex is still repressed today, and I believe it always will be. Many people learn about sex education today in school during health class. I do not think sex should be repressed, instead I think it is something people should be able to talk about so they know knowledge about it and know all the facts and risk that comes along with it. When Foucault talks about sex and medicine, he tries to correlate how medicine can control sex, especially within the lower economic class. The upper class had many theories that they were trying to force upon the lower class in terms of repression and sex. The technology of sex was trying to make the topic of sex not the social norm.

I read Part 1 of The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault. Part one described the Victorian regime and how we continue to be dominated by it today. The seventeenth century was a time of direct gestures, shameless discourses and open transgression. This was a period of when bodies “made a display of themselves.” Sexuality had been careful confined during the Victorian bourgeoisie. When talking about the subject of sex, you had to be silent about it. The conjugal couple had imposed themselves as models and enforced the norm, truth, and reserved the right to speak while retaining the principle of secrecy. During this time. children were not allowed to have sex, talk about sex or even hear sexual comments or acts. These were some of the characteristics that were features attributes to repression. The topic of sex was not allowed to be spoken of during this tine. If it was necessary for sexual acts, the brothels and the mental hospitals would be places they can be freely with their sexuality. Only in these places would sex have the right. In other places it would be considered taboo, nonexistence and silent. If sex is so rigorously repressed, it is because it is incompatible with a general and intensive work imperative. The demand for sexual freedom had become very popular and the right to speak about it by gaining knowledge from it. A question I have after reading The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault, was why having sex and speaking about anything sex related was such a sin and banned against? Another question I have after reading this article was, why did sexual repression come about in there first place? How did it establish?

In C.J Pascoe’s book, the roles of gender identity and sexual orientation was a huge factor that was discussed, especially in the begging of chapter 1 where he explained the skit that took place in this high-school. The theme that was portrayed in this skit highlights the themes of masculinity and sexuality that is present in high school. The contest that was taking place in this skit was called the Mr. Cougar competition and it shows the different dynamics of sexuality, gender, social class, and race. The skit starts off with two nerds who are un-masculine and have high pitched voices and can not protect their girlfriends when they are kidnapped by the complete opposite version of themselves. The skit shows how they do a complete 360 change in their overall appearance and act like someone who they are not, just to prove to themselves and everyone around them that they are masculine. When they were trying to change who they were by working out, it showed that they were weak and came across as they were homosexual. In representing black men, the ganstas in this skit symbolized the hyper- sexuality by threatening the white men’s control over how they treat and protect their women.  I believe the entire message of this skit was wrong in so many ways by how they were trying portray that if your a young man you have to act a certain way. You need to be masculine and straight and act a certain way, because if not it wouldn’t be considered the “norm”. The administration of this school must agree with this skit because they approved of it and allowed it be shown in-front of the school, meaning they agree with the skits overall message of it. The administration must be trying to prove a message of a certain norm they want to have in their school, that in order to be a regular boy you must be masculine and powerful and heterosexual and not homosexual and a nerd/weak. Gender and sexuality was a huge part in this skit and I believe that is not the social norm. It does not matter in today’s day what sexuality identity you are or how you even identify yourself. I believe that there is no social norm and everyone should choose to live their life the way they want too.

Both Morgan and Davis works, talks about the concept of labor within woman and how overtime they were oppressed with little opportunities given to them. During these time periods, women were not treated with equal rights. In Morgans work, he described that when the English men and women were settled into the New World colonies, they had struggled with the females being too weak to do any work. They needed both White and Black women to do the hard manual labor. The women were forced to do these hard labors no matter what condition they were in, if they were sick or even if they were pregnant, they worked. People would disagree that the women shouldn’t be working if having any of these conditions but they would not back down from the job. In Davis work, it talked about how women had faced many obstacles with oppression but more so Black women then White women.  Black women have worked outside of their homes. Since Black women were considered slaves, the labor they went through took over their lives. Women were viewed no less than men, so they were viewed as profitable labor units. One of the scholars in Davis work said that the slave woman was first a full-time worker for her owner, and then a wife, mother and homemaker. Back then women’s roles were emphasizes as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husband, however, Black women were anomalies. Most Black who were slaves were either a house servant or a nanny. Both of these works talked about the struggles regarding the harsh labor the women back then had to experience. I believed regardless if you were a women, the difficulty of the labor back then was more determined on what race you were if anything. I think Black women had faced more serve labor than a White women faced during this time period. What made these too works connected was that these women would refuse to give up  doing labor because they felt like they needed to do something for themselves, by sustaining a proper and consistent lifestyles.