fDanielle has 14 post(s)

In Chapter 1 “ Male Travelers, Female Bodies and Racial Ideology,” Jennifer Morgan discusses how European explorers and settlers compared the bodies of females and how these colonizers used race to justify the differences they saw in the female body. One European explorer Ligon, found great beauty in an African woman he saw on Cape Verde, so much so, he compared her to the queen of England. He then came to see another view of the black female, a grotesque beast. He explained that her breasts hung down so low, you would think she was a six-legged creature. This view of the black women equates them to the likes of animals and it dehumanizes them. By comparing black women to animals, this reinforces white superiority. One passage Morgan discusses is Vespucci’s 1502 voyage and his account of what he saw. Vespucci, like other European explorers tried to use race and the female body to construct a social hierarchy where Europeans would be at the top. Vespucci praises the Native woman for maintaining an aesthetically pleasing body and is in awe with how she carries herself with ease, though pregnant. It was believed that Africans didn’t feel pain during childbirth, especially because they had many children, therefore it became easier to give birth. He was used to seeing the pain that came with pregnancy, as European females didn’t do heavy labor and were constantly in pain.They didn’t have as many children as their counterparts African and Native American women however, continued to do manual labor, with great strength.
Morgan discusses how cultural differences help categorize Native women as monsters compared to European women. It is the native women’s custom to walk around with few pieces of clothes, large rings in her ears and jewelry in her nose amongst other things. All of these things were not familiar to European settlers, which allowed them to subject native people people to inferiority and to believe that they were devilish. Benzoni stated that the differences made the native woman appear as a monster rather than a human being (2004:19). European women were considered to be dainty and covered up. They were the model of what every female should be like. They weren’t the savages and barbarians. The dehumanizing and criticizing of native culture allowed European settlers to believe in their superiority.

Question: If these voyagers read these accounts and saw it was customary in the islands and the Americas to dress and act a certain way, what made them think it was for Europeans to decide what should be the “norm” and socially acceptable?

In “The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women,” Federici described how a new social hierarchy in Europe led to the degradation of women. One of the events that led to the degradation of women was the enclosure system. Under this system, land was fenced off and no longer available as communal agricultural fields, thus making it hard for people to support themselves and their families. Money became the means by which one could support their families. In this type of society where land was privatized, it would prove to be quite challenging for women, as they weren’t able to migrate like their male counterparts due to lifecycle events like pregnancies. They were also left with the task of child rearing and not many options were available to women to work for wages. Women had to continue doing domestic work which was becoming increasingly undervalued. In the new society of production and reproduction labor, only production labor was lauded and celebrated while domestic labor was deemed good- for- nothing from an economic standpoint. When women did work, their wages were far more inferior than the wages of their male equivalent. This gender pay gap is a prime example of how women were degraded so that they would have to depend on men to take care of them.
With the new society that was developing, the wages people got were so low that they couldn’t afford decent food. Their diets consisted of bread, since that was the most affordable thing. Since people, couldn’t even feed themselves, women didn’t reproduce as much. The logical reasoning being that they could not afford to feed another mouth. Since the population was decreasing, the state decided to adopt new rules that allowed them to control a woman’s reproductive rights. The government sought out to punish women who committed what they believed to be reproductive crimes. The state degraded women by conducting a witch hunt, in which they vilified forms of birth control like contraception and fined women for abortions. Pregnant women were observed to make sure they didn’t terminate their pregnancies. Marriage was given a premium while celibacy was punished according to the new laws put in place. The privatization of land led to the new social hierarchy that allowed the government to control a woman’s body. This newfound control that the government gained violated the rights of women and it shows how low on the social ladder women were. It also shows the misogynistic culture of Europe during this time period.

In Chapter 3 of Women, Race, & Class, Davis discusses many historical figures and events that led to the rise of the Women’s Right’s movement and conventions. One of the conventions Davis focuses on is the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. She explains the interrelationship of race, class, and gender in regards to the agenda of this convention.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott decided to hold the convention to challenge the oppression of women in society. While Stanton thought the introduction of woman suffrage would be a great platform to lead into the discussion of equality for women, Mott thought this idea to be a little too radical for their time. Therefore, the main focus of the convention was the institution of marriage and the many confines and fortification it put around women. The women who attended the convention rallied for challenging the political, social, domestic and religious climate that oppressed them. Davis argued that while this convention served as a recognition of the dilemma of middle class white women, it totally disregarded the crisis and perplexity of the situation of working class white women and black women, collectively.
Davis introduced Charlotte Woodward – the only woman who attended the convention that was able to exercise her right to vote- to show how class played a role in the convention. Unlike the majority of the women who attended, Woodward was a working class woman whose motives were very different from her counterparts. The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments were a list of demands for equality based on the struggles of middle classes white women, signed by the attendees. Woodward and the other working class women however, wanted instructions of how they can further improve their lives as workers. This was not one of the points of main focus until the end of the convention. This furthers Davis’s argument that the groundbreaking movements Stanton and Mott’s forerunners made were being overlooked, as Stanton and Mott moved the women’s liberation movement in their own direction.
Race plays into the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 because not one black woman was present. On top of that, the agenda didn’t even mention black women, which was surprising due to the prior contributions of black women to the cause. Two years after the Seneca Falls Convention, Sojourner Truth spoke at the National Convention on Women’s Rights. She was able to articulate an argument with incontestable logic, that annihilated the terrible misconception that female weakness was incompatible with the right to vote (Davis, 1981:66).
In this Chapter, Davis explains how the women’s rights movements had faults and weaknesses because the leaders, rather that focusing on how race and class affects the rights of all women, they tried to separate it into two different quantities. Davis explains that in an industrial capitalistic economy, social problems, such as the fight for women’s rights does affect economic interests. She says that it was a flaw on the part of the leaders of the women’s movement to think that slavery in the South, profiteering of workers in the North and social oppression of women were not methodically related (1981:71)

Hi everyone, my name is Danielle Edwards. I am from Brooklyn. I am a first year student here at Hunter College. I intend to be a political science major with a concentration in international relations and affairs. I would also like to minor in film studies or philosophy because I am very interested in these areas too. For this class, I am particularly looking forward to learning more about the history of women in society and how the roles of women have shifted over time. I would also like to learn why in today’s society there is still a lot of discrimination towards women and the LGBTQ+ community and why there are still stereotypes about genders and sexuality which still shape people’s opinions.