Doubt

Let me preface this post with a little background information. I was raised Christian, in the Methodist church. My grandmother on my mom’s side was a Mennonite, and my father’s dad was a minister. Religion and spirituality have always been an important cornerstone of my family, but never at the expense of humanity. I was taught that helping others is the most important thing we can do with our time here on earth. Religion isn’t about condemning others; it’s about leading by example, and supporting others through the good times and the bad.

That being said, I’ve been struggling a lot with religion over the past few years. I’ve been studying sociology, which has opened my eyes to the vast inequality and greed that exists in the world. I have learned about pain, discrimination, hatred, and the sheer lack of opportunity available to groups of individuals. Mostly, I have learned that the vast majority of individuals are painfully unaware of this fact. When people close their eyes to others’ suffering, there is no way that change can occur. I have become disheartened by the lack of knowledge, lack of curiosity, and lack of compassion in the society around me. This disappointment has shaken me to the core, making me question: How could any God that I believe in allow such pain and suffering to continue?

I recently learned that I am not alone in my doubt. When I was visiting my sister a few weeks ago, we were discussing her work. She is a nurse in the E.R. She discussed several heartbreaking cases with me, and expressed concern at the number of patients she receives that are addicted to drugs. At one point in our discussion, she exclaimed in an exasperated tone, “Why would God create substances that can make people so addicted to them?” Her words stuck with me. Though her question came from her own experience, they seemed to echo the question that had been weighing down on me for years.

I’ve spent a lot of time being angry. And I’ve directed much of this anger at God. How? Why? How can you allow such suffering? Why am I so blessed? Instead of feeling grateful for the many amazing things I have experienced in my life, I have felt guilty—that others were not in similar situations as me. That no matter how hard they worked, they will most likely never be able to achieve my same successes, through no fault of their own. This mixture of guilt and anger is toxic. It creates a sense of hopelessness, a lack of motivation, and an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and despair.

“Why would God create substances that can make people so addicted to them?” For weeks I tried to forget about it, but it just wouldn’t go away. This nagging question in the back of my mind. “Why?” And suddenly it hit me. God didn’t create these substances. We did. Human greed did. The most addicting drugs were created by humans. Who were trying to take their high to the next level. Who were trying to make money off the addiction of others. Who wanted to become rich. Famous. Powerful. God didn’t create these drugs, nor did God create inequality. Humans did. And if humans created these things, they can also unmake these things! And for the first time in years, I felt hope. Hope that things could change.

 I’m not saying that all of my questions were answered. Or that I’m not still angry with God. But I realize that we need hard times in order to appreciate the good times. I know that God created free will. Because while forcing people to love you and to always be happy may be possible, it would not be genuine. It would be quite a lonely eternity. Allowing people to choose to love you—to make their own mistakes—that’s what love is all about. So God gave us free will, and we have abused it. We have caused pain and suffering on others. We have created inequality, greed, addiction, and pain. But if we have created these things, we have the ability to unmake them as well. We have the power to love others, to heal them, to support them, to give second chances, to forgive.

I’m not naive. I know this road won’t be easy. We certainly cannot right every wrong we have committed in my lifetime, but we can take a step toward forgiveness. And slowly, together, we can work for a more equal world.

The 99% vs. Citizens United

I will consider corporations people when they can be drafted, sent overseas, and put their lives on the line daily to fight in the wars their greed has created. I will consider corporations people when they can be jailed, imprisoned, or face the death penalty for their crimes. I will consider corporations people when they know what hunger is, and how to feed their families on minimum wage. I will consider them people when they are forced to watch their children, brothers, mothers, and friends slowly die from diseases that access to health care could have prevented. I will consider them people when they must watch their children attend underfunded, broken, and dilapidated schools while schools across town are equipped with the best teachers, new buildings, and the latest technology. I will consider them people when they are called pariah, raccoons, and lazy free riders for going bankrupt and getting bailed out on the taxpayer’s dollar. I will consider corporations people when they show compassion to their workers, a truly human emotion, instead of exploiting them for their own gain. I will consider them people when they know what it truly means to be powerless; to not have a voice. I will consider corporations people when they stop privatizing their profits, but nationalizing their costs; expecting American citizens to clean up their pollution, abandoned cities, and waste. I will consider corporations people when they are expected to act as ethically and financially responsible as we, the 99%, are all expected to act.

Reclaiming the Active Body

In the article, “Exhuming Women’s Premarket Duties in the Care of the Dead,” Rundblad discusses how the preparation of bodies for burial used to be women’s work. This work was seen as an extension of the care work that women typically engage in, and these women earned the title “shrouding women.” As the economy grew and occupations became more specialized, the funeral industry developed, and men took over primary care of the dead. To justify their usurpation of what used to be a job only for women, men claimed that caring for the dead went against the “nature” of women. Advertisements put out by the funeral industry depicted men in active roles and women as props to be looked at. In this way, women were subordinated by the spread of these sex-stereotypical beliefs about the passive nature of women. When I stopped to consider this, a series of other papers we have read this semester came to mind. I realized that women’s subordination stems from one, core assumption about the difference between men and women’s bodies. Men’s bodies are active, and women’s bodies are passive objects that exist for the pleasure of men. This theme of active versus passive gendered bodies is readily apparent in discourse surrounding differences in reproduction, physical space, and beauty ideals.

When examining reproduction literature, the article, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” serves as a primary example. In this paper, Martin analyzes biological literature and finds that when the egg and sperm are discussed in the context of reproduction, the sperm is cast as the active “swimmer” who forges ahead and penetrates the egg. The egg, on the other hand, is painted as being very passive during this whole process. Recent evidence, however, shows that the egg is indeed an active participant in reproduction by trapping the sperm with adhesive molecules. Despite this new evidence, the old account of the active sperm and the passive egg still persists. Even during childbirth, a very active, physically draining activity, women often act passively by being polite and deferring their own needs as to not imposition doctors or their husbands. When they do actively make demands, Martin finds, they often feel guilty about their behavior later. This shows that women have internalized beliefs that they should be passive, even in physically demanding tasks like childbirth.

Likewise, the active versus passive nature of gendered bodies is apparent in literature about physical space. In, “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools,” Martin finds that boys are not discouraged from having active bodies that take up space, but that girls bodies are much more regulated. Girls were often told to raise their hands before speaking and passively wait for their turn to be called on. Play space is also confined for girls as they take up about 1/10th of the physical space that boys do on the playground. In addition to this, Thorne also finds that boys are much more likely to encroach on girl’s play than vice versa. This reinforces the notion of boys having active bodies that not only physically take up more space, but that can also encroach on the space of others.

If women are merely passive objects that exist for the pleasure of men, it makes sense that beauty norms are especially poignant for women. Weitz discusses how women both accommodate and resist oppression through their hair style choice. By choosing a style that accommodates traditional ideals of feminine beauty, women accommodate their oppression but also gain power as they are treated better than the women who choose to resist traditional hair ideals of feminine beauty. This shows how important looks are for women, and how they negotiate their power through their appearance rather than through their competence. Glen also emphasizes the importance of beauty ideals for women. In, “Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin lighteners,” she finds that women go to extreme, potentially dangerous lengths to lighten the color of their skin in order to come closer to the ideal of feminine beauty. Similarly, the ideal female body is not only beautiful, but also young. This means that aging women face higher pressure to resist the aging process through dieting or getting their gray hair dyed. These articles show that women have internalized their ascribed role as passive objects for the enjoyment of men.

This review of the class literature supports my assertion that the oppression of women is fueled by an assumption about the difference between gendered bodies. Men’s bodies are active, and women’s bodies are passive objects that exist for the pleasure of men. This assumption is internalized by women and is reflected in their reproductive processes, the physical space they demand, the beauty work they engage in, and in the strategies employed to resist aging. Women who resist the role of passive objects face negative implications. In her work on aging, Clarke finds that women who do shed the burden of beauty ideology resign themselves to exclusion, invisibility, and social devaluation. Internalizing this oppressive assumption about gendered bodies causes inner conflict as well. This is reflected in women’s eating disorders and in the drastic measures they take to alter their bodies through cosmetic surgery. In order to alleviate these complex social problems, women must reclaim their active bodies.

The Way I See It #5

Jesus ate with tax collectors. He said, let he without sin cast the first stone. He overturned the tables of corruption. He fed the hungry. He loved his neighbor. He preached forgiveness. If Jesus were alive today, he would be called a socialist and a liberal extremist. I am truly honored to be called the same.

The Way I See It #4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBaKMpA0JbU&feature=related

Blaming the Victim

When reading the articles this week about violent and victimized bodies, I was surprised at the lack attention given to the phenomenon of blaming the victim. Two articles in particular stuck out to me as overlooking this important theme. Jocelyn Hollander discusses in her article, “Vulnerability and Dangerousness: The Construction of Gender through Conversations about Violence,” that everyday conversations reinforce views of women as vulnerable to violence and men as potentially dangerous. She points out that though men are most often targets of violence, women fear being a victim of violence much more than men. She claims that this is because widely shared conceptions of gender associate femininity with vulnerability and masculinity with dangerousness. In her discussion, however, Hollander fails to consider that this fear of victimization is exacerbated by the knowledge of the blame that will be attributed to a woman if she is victimized.

Hollander points out that women who are seen as being at the peak of sexual desirability are considered the most vulnerable. She does not, however, consider that this may be due to the fact that society is likely to blame women for being raped because by being sexually attractive or dressed too provocatively they were in some way “asking for it”. Angela, a participant in Hollander’s study highlights this in her statement, “I have a feeling for these young girls, when they’re running, and they wear this little provocative stuff. And I make [my daughter] cover up.” This shows that Angela is not only fearful of her daughter being victimized, but also that she knows that society places fault on women who decide not to “cover up.” Women in this study also frequently mention walking in groups, avoiding sketchy areas at night, asking men to walk them to their cars, and practicing other protective measures. While these examples support the author’s point that women feel more vulnerable to violence, they also speak to the idea that women are required to take these steps in order to avoid double victimization. In other words, women that do not take precautionary steps are often blamed for any violence directed towards them. Women should not walk alone at night, wear tight clothing, travel alone, and go running by themselves, along with a multitude of other constraints. Women know that should they violate anything on this expansive list of restrictions on their personal agency, they are not only more likely to be victimized, but also blamed for their victimization.

Brent Staples article, “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders his Power to Alter Public Space,” also neglects this theme of blaming women for their victimization. In this reflection, Staples discusses his experiences as a black man walking the streets of Chicago. He explains the multitude of constraints placed on him to give other pedestrians, especially women, a great deal of space so that they do not feel threatened by his presence. We see through the eyes of a young man facing the stigma of discrimination, and fearing that one false move might set off an altercation. Throughout the article, however, I could not help but consider the perspective of these women walking the streets late at night, clutching their purses close to them and crossing the street. Just as discriminatory beliefs create a societal fear of the young, black man, these beliefs also tell women that they should not be walking alone at night, flashing around their money, and talking to strangers. Women are not only fearful that they may be victimized by some strange man on the street, but also that they will be blamed for their victimization. It seems, then, that it is not just discriminatory beliefs about young, black men, but also sexism and blaming of the victim that is causing women to cross the street.

The “Ideal” Body Type

In, “Women and Their Hair: Seeking Power through Resistance and Accommodation,” Rose Weitz explains that the body is a site for struggle over power, especially between men and women. Women use their bodies in ways to gain power either by accommodating conventional ideas about beauty or by resisting these norms. Weitz claims that hairstyles are a prime example of this power struggle. Some women seek to gain power by embodying cultural norms about hair, while others seek less feminine, professional styles so that they will be taken more seriously. Similarly, Evelyn Glenn argues in, “Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing of Skin Lighteners,” that light skin operates as a form of symbolic capital, and that women use skin lighteners to climb the social hierarchy. She stresses that women use these skin lighteners in an attempt to achieve conventional ideas of whiter skin color to gain power. While both articles state that ideas of attractiveness vary by region, class, ethnicity, and country, they still operate under the assumption that there is some “ideal” conventional view of beauty. Weitz claims that the traditional view of attractive female hair is long, curly, blonde, and intentionally styled hair. Glenn claims that women seek to achieve white skin. By assuming, however, that there is an “ideal” beauty type, the authors are insinuating that some females could possibly possess these ideal traits and embody this powerful, self-confident woman who has no insecurities about her body. This seems highly unlikely. Instead, I argue there is no sole ideal body type for women, and that beauty is sought by altering one’s natural appearance.

Weitz claims that women with long, curly, blonde, styled hair best fit the conventional idea of beauty. If this were true, it would seem that women with curly hair would not have to do much to style their hair. This is not the case, however. Many women with naturally curly hair spend hours applying straitening lotion and flat ironing their hair until it is strait and smooth. Many females with straight hair, on the other hand, spend money on perms to give volume to their so called dull hair. It does not seem that there is some “ideal” hairstyle, but rather an idea that hair in its natural state is not beautiful. Glenn explains that darker women use skin lighteners in order to achieve this ideal image of whiteness. She briefly mentions tanning, but then quickly moves on saying that this was a craze in the 30’s and 40’s but has largely gone away since the 80’s when sun rays were found to be damaging. Glenn dismisses tanning too quickly without considering how many women still go to tanning beds, as well as products geared toward darkening the skin like spray tans and lotions. Again, it seems that there is no ideal skin tone, merely the idea that one’s natural skin tone is not beautiful enough.

It is obvious that certain norms about beauty do exist. Being overweight, being a minority, and having acne are obviously strikes against ideas of feminine beauty. It is also important not to overlook historical context in which whiter skin has been valued at the expense of those with darker skin. To suggest, however, that there is some ideal type of female beauty suggests that some women are safe from scrutiny. This, however, does not seem to be the case. It is more plausible that there is a looser framework of ideals of femininity, and while some may fit these ideals better than others, no female can be considered the ideal type. Instead, females are conditioned to believe that they are not beautiful naturally, and must substantially alter their bodies in order to achieve this elusive “ideal” type.