Introduction
For my Women’s and
Genders Studies Final Project I decided to find cultural artifacts, both
positive and negative, that represent four sections that we learned in
discussion and lecture.
Those four sections are:
1. Heterosexuality, Lesbianism, and Feminism: In this section you will find an
artifact that defines homophobia, another with a fun picture of Spongebob
Squarepants explaining the difference between Homosexuality and Homophobia, and
another is a video of Mitt Romney and his stance on abortion, gay rights, and
gay marriage. The texts used for this section are Michael Kimmel’s “Masculinity
as Homophobia,” Suzanne Pharr’s “Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism,” and Keith
Olberman’s “Gay Marriage is a Question of Love.”
2. Racism: in this section you
will find three videos. Two from Reckless Tortuga, and one by Wanda Sykes. The texts
used in this section are: Peggy Mc Intosh “White Privilege and Male Privilege”
172-176, Beverly Daniels Tatum , “Defining
Racism: Can We Talk?”123-130, Rita Chaudhry Sethi “Smells Like Racism” 141-148,
and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva “Color-Blind Racism” 131-137.
3. Class, Disability, and Immigration: in this section you will find three very different
but related pictures. The texts used in this section are: The Wage Gap 346-351, and Ruth Conniff
“Women Losing Ground” 342-344
4. The Female Body: in this section you will find three
images that stood out as artifacts to me. The texts used in this section are: Abra Chernik “The Body Politic” 130-132, and Natasha Singer “For You, My
Lovely, A Face Lift” 455-458
Heterosexuality, Lesbianism and Feminism
This image really caught my eyes because I felt that it
captured the entire essence of what homophobia is. An insecurity of being
heterosexual; being heterosexual entails that one has standards and pillars
that dictate what they should and should not do. Heterosexual is what one
strives to be, while homosexual is what one uses as guidelines that help them
get on the “straight” train. People try so hard to avoid being branded as
homosexual like it is such a big insult. For example, men use masculinity as
homophobia. Masculinity consists of possessing the characteristics of being
aggressive, competitive, violent, dominant, and in control.
“Within the dominant
culture, the masculinity that defines white, middle class, early middle-aged,
heterosexual men is the masculinity that sets the standard for other men,
against which other men are measured and more often than not, found wanting”
(Kimmel, 84). Any action that suggests femininity in the slightest, calls for
being labeled “homo,” therefore men try to avoid that and this is where we see
homophobia. Gay men are seen as a threat to male dominance and control. As a
result, “they are seen as betrayers, as traitors who must be punished and
eliminated,” (Pharr, 167). This is where the violent hate crimes derive from.
I found this image to be really funny because it has
Spongebob Squarepants in it and there was a whole controversy about how the
show was inappropriate for kids because it “explicitly showed homosexual acts.”
The fact that parents were so riled up shows that we live in a society where
not much has changed yet. Women, people of color, and LGBTQ’s are still treated
harshly as unequals and are oppressed. In the image, underneath Spongebob’s
forever smiling face, it says “HOMOSEXUALITY: Some people are proud of it,”
then underneath that it says “HOMOPHOBIA is gay.” There is a funny twist on
words here, because usually it is the other way around. This struck out to me
as a positive cultural artifact since homosexuality is something that many have
a hard time admitting because they have to be afraid of what others think,
especially of what homophobics (most heterosexuals) will do to them.
This is the first thing that I have seen that is denouncing
homophobia in a way that makes a lot of sense. The term gay is usually used in
a negative way, but finally it is used in the correct way. According to Suzanne
Pharr in “Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism,” heterosexism and homophobia work
together to enforce compulsory heterosexuality and that bastion of patriarchal
power, the nuclear family. Heterosexuals who have homophobia try to enforce
their beliefs of compulsory heterosexuality onto homosexuals and have no
respect whatsoever for their feelings. They call them names like “fag, dyke,
homo, and gay.” I
feel that most of the time, men are the one who are calling other men by these
names because they are afraid of being called these names first, and they want
to uphold some kind of masculinity by stepping on someone else who probably
doesn’t fit the description. They are usually insecure about their own
sexuality. “The hegemonic definition of manhood is a man in power, a man with
power, and a man of power;” being masculine means being strong , successful,
capable, and in control (Kimmel, 84). “Masculine men” are able to demonstrate
these characteristics by denouncing anything that resembles femininity, in
other words anyone who doesn’t display enough masculine traits, or just is not
a heterosexual.
Mitt
Romney on Abortion, Homosexuality, and Gay Marriage
In this video Mitt Romney is interviewed on his “flip-flop”
standpoints on abortion, homosexuality, and gay marriage; the term flip-flop
describing his changing positions, from supporter to non-supporter. He makes it
very clear that he was once a supporter of gay-marriage, and pro-choice
(abortion), and that now he is against both. He clearly stated throughout the video
that he believes every life deserves to come into the world regardless of the
circumstances, and “that marriage is strictly a relationship between one man
and one woman.” Yet, when questioned about this refuted by insisting that he
supported gay rights, spoke to many gay rights leaders/activists, and that many
of the people who worked with him were gay. In many ways the statements being
made were both hypocritical and involving tokenism.
If he insists that he supports gay
rights, then why take away the most basic one? Marriage is what any normal
person wants, everyone has the most basic civil right to happiness and love.
Who does Mitt Romney think he is, trying to take that away and having the
audacity to even deny it? Marriage doesn’t exist between one man and one woman,
but it exists between two people who will promise to love each other for as
long as they can. Romney said that he supported gay rights, meaning that he
thinks that they deserve the same legal rights as any person in the country as
it only pertains to employment opportunities and health benefits, but he’s
already taking away a legal right that they have had since birth (Olbermann,
446). Mitt Romney embodies the current
and past ideology of compulsory heterosexuality in his statements where
“marriage is strictly a relationship between one man and one woman,” one man
and one woman for the purposes of procreation and world population, since
“man/man and woman/woman cant procreate” therefore the relationship is “just
not right,” since the world already is not populated enough (Katz, 73).
Racism
In this video, Marcus Stone is going for a job interview at
Tweak Energy. He receives much prejudiced, discriminatory, racist, and overall
ignorant comments from the receptionist and the interviewer; both of whom were
white. It started with the receptionist in the beginning, when she started to
ask him several questions including: “What are you? What else is in there?” to
which Marcus repeatedly answered that he is black, yet the receptionist lady
would not believe him. She kept on insisting that “there was something else in
there,” by adding on that his “eyes were so light and beautiful, and he’s so
light skinned.” She assumed that he was mixed with a white race.. “The
distortion of historical information about people of color leads young people
(and older people, too) to make assumptions that may go unchallenged for a long
time” (Tatum, 124).
When Marcus finally
told her what might have been the sad truth, that maybe generations ago her
great grandfather raped his great grandmother she finally shut up. Her
assumptions that blacks can only be “beautiful” when mixed with other races and
her notion of what beauty is derives from what she had not been told about
history and/or information that was omitted, which made her oblivious to what
Marcus told her. The reason that she turned quiet was probably because she felt
guilty. This takes us back to the notion of white privilege. White privilege, a
term coined by Peggy McIntosh, is advantage of white people over blacks and
other minorities, is given to them because of their skin color. Whites benefit
from skin color as an asset that can be used to “systematically overempower
certain groups,” and this privilege “confers dominance because of one’s race”
(McIntosh, 175). In this case, it is her guilt caused by her unearned privilege
that caused her to go silent. Before that, it was her privilege that allowed her
to make such baseless assumptions and ask such rude questions.
This video takes place in a crime scene investigation with
Officer Jones who is soon to be promoted to detective, and the detective. From
the very beginning of the video I could tell that I wouldn’t like the detective
and it turned out to be true for the rest of the video. At the crime scene was
a dead female body, and a dusty, blood-covered Lugz boot (which by the way honestly looked like a Timberland boot
so I checked if it was a real brand, and guess what? It was!). throughout the
entire video the detective repeatedly makes baseless assumptions and racist
comments including: “Good old affirmative action (after hearing about Officer
Jones possible promotion),” “gang-related crime because there’s a Lugz boot,”
“black gang-banger,” “jungle fever (that because she was sexually attracted to
black males, that’s what got her killed),” and that “he was a drug dealer,”
because of the dust on his boot.
On the other hand, Officer Jones
deduced that the man who killed the 19yr old white woman wore a size 12 boot,
and worked at a dusty construction site that required him to wear Lugz boots.
At the end Officer Andrews arrested and brought in a white guy, proving the
detective wrong in his baseless assumptions. Now the detective might not
consider himself racist, because most people like him unconsciously
admit to something called color-blind racism which in other words is a “new
racism” that maintains the practices of white privilege, and tends to be
slippery, institutional, and seemingly nonracial (Bonilla-Silva, 132). When the
white detective assumed that it was affirmative action, that the police dept.
had to fill in a black person quota, he actually performed a racial analysis
that “considered economic scapegoating as an avenue for racial harassment and
racial victimization” (Sethi, 147).
I really like
this video because it was hilarious, yet true at the same time. In this video
Wanda Sykes, a very famous and funny comedian, goes over the topics of race and
reverse racism. She makes visible to the audience what we didn’t see although
it was right there in our faces; we just didn’t know what to identify it with
and if it was really an issue. She goes on to say that race and gender is only
questioned when you are not a white man, and that white men get scared when
someone outside of their race gets a little power because they might do “unto
them what they did to that race in the past.” When other races start to speak
up, they start using the term “reverse racism” out of this fear that the other
races are becoming too powerful; basically a nice way of saying “I don’t like
how you are speaking up now, can’t you be quiet like before?”
Wanda makes the statement that whatever these white men are
afraid of is Karma. Karma is according to Google:
|
They are afraid of karma in the way that they
are afraid that now that minorities are getting a little powerful by finding
their voice and might eventually step over them. They would feel like they
would have to start taking responsibility for their ancestors’ past actions
that caused the minorities to be in the place they are now, in
destitution and one of unequal economic and education opportunities (Bonilla-Silva, 133). This takes away from their white
privilege of not having to feel responsible for the past (McIntosh, 172-177).
Class, Disability, Immigration
http://www.collapseboard.com/everett-true/sexism-etc-female-music-critics-wanted-for-collapse-board/
Above is a billboard advertisement of a car called the Fiat
127 Palio, that says on it “If it were a lady, it would get its bottom
pinched.” In response to that, an anonymous woman wrote “If this lady was a car
she’d run you down.” I found this to be a very positive artifact because in
this day and age where sexism really should not be an issue, some brave soul
wrote back to this horrible advertisement (not that I wouldn’t do that if I
didn’t have a can of spray, I just wouldn’t be as creative J ) whoever came up with
this slogan, I believe is probably one of
the many misogynist men on this planet. Why do women have to get their
bottoms pinched? Why not another noun other than “lady,” maybe “man”? I am
pretty sure men like their butts pinched too.
I don’t think that any human being
likes to get their bottom pinched. This goes back to the ideology of women not
being seen as human beings, but rather objects and commodities. Objects are
always fine with being touched because they don’t have a voice; women are
different, they are human beings and can express emotions. However, media
represents women as objects willing and happy to be touched, through things
such as music videos. That is not the case in real life though. If any guy on
the streets tries to grab a woman, he will either get punched in the face or
kicked in the balls.
This picture stuck out to me as a positive artifact because
it does not makes sense, but the fact that it doesn’t make sense, makes sense
though (really confusing right? Don’t worry too much, I will explain). In this
picture, there is a baby girl and a baby boy looking underneath their underwear
into their genitalia. Underneath, the caption says “OH! THAT EXPLAINS THE
DIFFERENCE IN OUR PAY.” Currently in America, there is a huge disparity over
the tremendous wage gap between men and women in the same exact profession.
There is absolutely no reason that justifies it and that is why the picture
above makes so much sense. For the simple difference in sex, one gender is
earning more than the other would. In our case men are making much more than
women even in the same exact fields and professions.
The average full-time working woman still gets paid 77
cents for every dollar that a full-time man is earning. This is better than two
decades ago when women were only earning 59 cents for every dollar that men
made (The Wage Gap and Its Costs, 346). You would have thought that, “Hey now
that we are in a more ‘civil, equal, and modern age’ the 21st
century, maybe we will finally get paid equal too!” That’s wrong because even
after many decades we are not even on par with $1. When will we ever reach full
economic equality, and will it ever be attainable? The wage gap, not only
affects women, but the families being supported by women as well. However,
sexism still exists and society still hasn’t adjusted to the reality of
“two-career families” (Conniff, 343).
Women still get paid 77
cents for every dollar that full-time working men are earning (The Wage Gap and
Its Costs, 346). The workplace is hostile to women, especially mothers because
life becomes difficult for them due to inflexible work arrangements, job
discrimination, lack of child care, lack of parental leave, and lack of sick
leave. Also, women still have that domestic responsibility at home. After
working for long hours and not enough money, they have to go back home to take
care of “domestic and childrearing duties, madly scrambling to balance their competing
responsibilities,” (Conniff, 343). This explains the crouching position in the
picture above. Even after reaching “equality” women can still be found in the
crouching and bending down position of being overworked and overstressed.
The Female Body
The image on the left looks
attainable because she looks healthy; eating healthy and keeping active will
help one attain this goal. However, to attain the body image on the right, one
would have to go to extreme lengths such as starving and depriving herself of
basic human needs. This image is usually what is provided to us in magazines
and on tv, and it is usually what media is telling us to be. This image really
reminded me of “The Body Politic” by Abra Chernik. The author suffered through
bulimia and anorexia because she grew up wanting to be like the girls in the
magazines, skinny, thin, and fragile. She later found her strength to get over
her illnesses after almost reaching death and she recovered and found that
depriving yourself of needs does not make you beautiful or powerful. To attain
the kind of beauty on the right, one would also probably have to go through
plastic surgery, not particularly on the body but mostly the face.
I also found this image to be a positive image. The woman in the picture is dressed like this: http://bonnieblythe.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/feminism.jpg . unfortunately I still don’t know the name of that famous historical figure, but the woman above is dressed and posed like her. On her arm is written: Anti-barbie, and the speech bubble above her head says “She’s plastic for a reason.” Barbie is the first woman other than our moms that we look up to and play with as children. She defines our standards of what we need to strive to be in the future when we grow up to be women, too. But, we strive to attain a fake and impossible image. Hence, she is plastic and fake.
This image also relates to the next one very closely.
In the image above we
have a model with outlines all over her body and she is holding a Barbie doll.
This woman is a normal sized person and the outlines all over her body show how
much of her body she would have to remove/cut off/ burn fat off of, in order to
have the “perfect body image” that Barbie has and represents for little girls.
Not only would she have to lose weight, but she would also have to lift up
parts of her body and face through the use of plastic surgery.
This image represents the
sad reality of what girls think they should be and what they are encouraged to
be by family members, friends, society, and media. They are encouraged and
provided with “gifts” in the form of plastic surgery and weight loss surgery it
has become normal for girls to receive and accept these gifts (Singer, 458).
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