fMiguel has 13 post(s)

One of the ways in which Jennifer Morgan approaches the issue of racism and its connection to the female body is through physiognomy of women as a whole. The word itself is defined as a person’s facial characteristics. However, she makes a point to note that Europeans had a cataloged view of what indigenous people looked like based upon the writings of people from the past. And this perspective, whether accurate to the time period, or the people being documented or not, was what shaped their understanding, and later, their perspective of superiority towards women of color, and people of color in general. One of the main ways that this is addressed is through the promiscuity that is perpetuated throughout the old literature that is being digested by the Europeans of this time period. What’s curious about this is that women of other nations, typically those of color, are described in almost complete contrast to their European counterparts. Either as being naked, long-breasted, savage, and most curiously whether they are able to have a lot of children or only a few. What’s even more interesting is that both ends of this position are seemingly bad. It’s bad for a woman to only have one child in her lifetime, but it’s also bad if she has too many as Aristotle would describe Egyptian women. For fear of risking a bad apple, apparently. That’s a curious oversight, though, I think because it shows that perhaps the intention when examining people outside of their culture and understanding, their was already initial feelings of superiority. And this natural feeling of superiority is something that perhaps biased the initial perspective of the people documenting the indigenous folk. This initial bias is probably laid the groundwork for the initial perpetuation of racism that would later give reason to enslave women and people of color in the future.

Silvia Federici explains how the privatization of land had a very specific and calculated impact that affected not just the economy, but women as well. The privatization of land through enclosure forced women into a position where they felt the need to riot. It was explained that communal farming land was one of the places where women could share information, advice, and consult the men working and have almost equal footing. By abolishing open land farming, women lost this privilege and in turn, lost a lot of what gave them power (Frederici, 2004:81).  Later, during the Jacobean period, riots led predominantly by woman surged. The reason for this was because it was largely believed that women were above the law as their marriage offered them protection because of their husbands. However, this protection would quickly be removed when men were caught being disguised as women to avoid punishment. (Frederici, 2004:83). Women were the most affected by the removal of community lands as they could not become nomadic workers due to violence by men as well as the burden of children and pregnancy. All of these issues made it hard for women to find independence and not rely on men. And all these issues were largely brought on by the privatization of land. The only other options left were to join the military as cooks, prostitutes, washers and wives. But this too would no longer be an option by the 17th century when the armies became further regimented and women were expelled from the battlefield (Frederici, 2004:83).The limiting of options,  the change in lifestyle, and the forcing of women to feel as though they had no other option but to riot and protest the changes that were happening are obvious signs that women suffered at the hand of economical shift from communal land owning to a more capitalist approach.

Hello my name is Miguel Montana and this is my second semester at Hunter College. I like photography and poetry. I hope to get a chance to meet all of you! Couple more things about me, I’m 22 years old and have attended four different colleges because I like a varied experience. I’m also incredibly obsessed with chocolate covered raisins, so there’s that.