fKimberly has 14 post(s)

In Jennifer Morgan’s Male Travelers, Female bodies, and Racial Ideology , we see how the appearance of the female body is used to justify racism, and how it intensifies the damage done by racism. Because some of the African women had a different body type than some of the European women, the Europeans wanted to find a way to make sense of all of their differences by stating that the black race was inferior. They tried to prove it through religion by depicting devils as women with sagging breast. They did it through literature that described black women as being unwomanly and even animalistic. The culture of people who were foreign to the Europeans were seen through the women of that particular region. African women holding their babies on their backs were believed to be the reason that black people have wider noses than Europeans, so they were blamed for making the black race inferior. Everyone comes from a woman so the way to target an entire race is through the women. People felt that they were able to justify racism by finding ways to connect the women and their bodies to monstrous creatures, and therefore her offspring would be less than human. The appearance of the female body was used to intensify the damage done by racism because by trying to scientifically prove superiority, and because literature , art and even religion was used show superiority, racism became more than just hatred. It is a belief system and a way of life. It alters the way Africans are viewed and how they view themselves. We see the results of this even now where many people feel that superiority can be scientifically proven. We even see it in how we currently have a European standard of beauty. When Ligon described some of the beautiful black women he made sure to note that they were an exception because they didn’t have typical African features. Women’s bodies were used to add another layer to racism.

Question: Why were the women the only ones viewed as being responsible for the inferiority of a race when it takes a man and a woman to create a child?

In Federici’s The Accumulation of Labor and Degradation of Women, we are given many examples of how women were looked at as second class citizens. They couldn’t make their own decisions, and even their own bodies didn’t truly belong to themselves because it was seen as property of the state for the sole purpose of reproduction. One of the events mentioned that played a part in women being devalued happened in 1624 in York. Women protested by rioting and destroying an enclosure which led to them going to prison. Women were so opposed to enclosures because they were even more negatively impacted by them than the men were at the time . For the women, it was even more difficult to work, get money, and help provide food and shelter for their families. Before this, women weren’t prosecuted for crimes because they were looked at as belonging to their husbands legally. This event helped change how they were treated by the law. We see how women eventually start to be prosecuted at alarming rates for complications with their pregnancies and their babies dying. Another contributor to the degradation of women during this time was the popular literature on the social aspects of the 17th century life which dealt with the power struggle between men and women. In this type of literature, female characters were depicted as aggressive and unruly often times physically hurting their husbands. This led men to want to exclude women from the work force even more out of fear that women will become too powerful. Women who went against the norm of working only in the home were given a bad reputation in regards to their sexuality. The men feared losing their jobs to women who would work for much less than they would. Federici shows us that women always had a specific set of expectations that were given to her by men. When mercantilism became the way of life, and the higher the population the more money the state could make, women were then seen as breeders. Then when the ideals on femininity began to change, women were expected to be passive and suppress their sexuality as a way of being more virtuous than their male counterparts. All of this related to the degradation of women because they were never given the freedom to just do what they wanted to do, and they weren’t treated equally under the law and in everyday interactions.

Chapter 3 of Angela Davis’ Women,Race & Class gave great insight on the origin of the women’s rights movement, and shows us how intertwined it was with the abolitionist movement. Davis references Sojourner Truth and her poem, “Ain’t I a Woman”, to show that even within a marginalized group, there is a hierarchy that is put in place due to your gender, race and class.

The term “double oppression” was used in reference to the women who worked, and had to deal with the hardships of being a woman and a worker. Triple oppression is a more suitable term to describe Truth’s predicament. Truth being a black woman who was a former slave puts her in the marginalized sections of gender, race and class. Davis emphasized that these groups we are placed in impacts our perception of issues and the motives behind our fight against it. Black women were excluded from the discussion on women’s rights. They were not mentioned at the Seneca Falls meeting at all. Sojourner’s voice was needed in order to show how women who share her identities as poor and black experience oppression. In Truth’s poem she speaks on how women are physically stronger than they are credited for, and she goes against the notion that male supremacy was apart of the Christian faith. These arguments are due to her identity as a woman. She then goes on to condemn the white women who excluded the black woman’s narrative from this movement. She does this because of her more specific identity as a black woman. She reminds everyone that black women are women too, and deserve to be apart of the discussion and fight. Charlotte Woodward who was a working class white woman got involved in this movement because of her identity as a lower class white woman looking for better work conditions. Though Truth and Woodward are both women, they experienced womanhood differently. A principal who was an abolitionist and a woman didn’t want black girls attending her school. Though she shared the same sex as these girls, there was a difference between them. There was a classification within a classification that couldn’t be ignored. Davis’ reference to Truth highlights this.

Hello everyone! My name is Kimberly Walters, but most people just call me Kim. I’m a sophomore here at Hunter, and I currently don’t have a major declared but I’ve been thinking about majoring in chemistry. I am a first generation American. My mom is from Guyana, and my dad is from Jamaica. I’ve visited both countries when I was younger and it was such an amazing experience to see where I come from. I have an extremely large family that I am so grateful for. My grandparents on my mom’s side have 16 children, so I grew up with many cousins. My family isn’t perfect but we are very close. I’m from long island and I lived here most of my life, but I have spent a portion of my life living in Georgia. I liked living there but I much rather live here.

I decided to take this class so I can get a better understanding of gender politics. Everything that I know is derived from what I see online, and I would prefer to learn more about this in an educational environment. I’ve seen first hand how there is inequality between men and women, and I’m interested to know about the history of this. From the first day of class alone I can tell that I have so much more to learn and I’m excited to become more educated on this topic.