What is Harrassment?

        While reading Freedman, No turning back, the History of feminism and the future of Women. The author quotes Rousseau as to a women’s place, “Woman is framed particularly for the delight and pleasure of man”. (Freedman, 48). And while Rousseau is an 18^th century Romanticism philosopher this ideology of women still has merit today. When you look at sexual harassment through this lens, it is easily understood how we are all forced to “do” gender. 

     Sexual Harassment is a form of social control to control a men or women into acting properly by societal norms for both gender and race.  If women are framed for men as Rousseau attests then it stands to reason, that any dynamic or behavior that contradicts this ideology threatens society.

 Salaam,  addresses this behavior in another way in her book, “The verbal and physical violations in the Dominican Republic and the United States hinged on men’s relationship to women as objects for gratification”(Hernandez and Rehman, 335). In order to receive gratification men must make women feel powerless. In taking power from women men redeem themselves and women become objects for the delight or pleasure of men.

 But what has always struck me as strange is that we all seem to look for men’s pleasure and their gratification we must always seem to forget our own and how our lives don’t necessarily need to be an extension of men.

 In studying sexual harassment this week, I understand how sexual harassment is in fact a form of social control as described in the text the biggest example of sexual harassment and social control of women and race for me are the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings.   This is the beginning of defining sexual harassment in the workplace for women.

What is Harrasment?

        While reading Freedman, No turning back, the History of feminism and the future of Women. The author quotes Rousseau as to a women’s place, “Woman is framed particularly for the delight and pleasure of man”. (Freedman, 48). And while Rousseau is an 18^th century Romanticism philosopher this ideology of women still has merit today. When you look at sexual harassment through this lens, it is easily understood how we are all forced to “do” gender. 

     Sexual Harassment is a form of social control to control a men or women into acting properly by societal norms for both gender and race.  If women are framed for men as Rousseau attests then it stands to reason, that any dynamic or behavior that contradicts this ideology threatens society.

 Salaam,  addresses this behavior in another way in her book, “The verbal and physical violations in the Dominican Republic and the United States hinged on men’s relationship to women as objects for gratification”(Hernandez and Rehman, 335). In order to receive gratification men must make women feel powerless. In taking power from women men redeem themselves and women become objects for the delight or pleasure of men.

 But what has always struck me as strange is that we all seem to look for men’s pleasure and their gratification we must always seem to forget our own and how our lives don’t necessarily need to be an extension of men.

 In studying sexual harassment this week, I understand how sexual harassment is in fact a form of social control as described in the text the biggest example of sexual harassment and social control of women and race for me are the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings.   This is the beginning of defining sexual harassment in the workplace for women.

Care Work

 As I read the assignment, Emerging theories of Care and Work, by Paula England I never understood the formula for determine the pay rate of jobs.  When I think how important it is for our children and how sometimes women are required to attend to care for others to be considered a woman. But what happens if the care giver is a man?

I ask this question because recently my grandmother died and I attend a care givers workshop with Visiting Nurse Association where I met a man who took care of his mother.

As I listened to him I realized how bias I HAD BEEN IN MY THINKING ABOUT CARE GIVING, and while I had resources he had a more difficult time getting help. Most people expected his wife (I don’t know if he is married or not) to take care of his mother not him. But yet so did I even when there were many times when I resented   the expectations from everyone that I would be taking care of my grandmother, Yet when I read the article I now understand that care work is devalued, and how we are often prisoners to love and it makes us poor as a nation, race society and mostly as women. Maybe the solution is to have more men in for of care, to equalize but maybe it would have the same results as when women were began to teach.

Gender Scripts

      In reading the chapter this week and watching the show Detroit 187 on ABC It place in my mind the differences of sexuality and the different perceptions   men and women have of sexuality. .

 In the text, it states “American men, especially young men are expected to express stereotyped masculinity through their bodies, by the way they move, sit eat, gesture and so forth” (Spade & Valentine, 284).

 As a watched the show one of the homicide victims was a cross dresser, known as D. He was an entertainer with a fan who dressed, and saw himself as a man who found men dressed as women beautiful and intriguing.  What makes this so difficult is that the fan was a married man. He compartmentalized his life as an admirer of cross dressers and a husband as two separate entities.

 But that was not so for his wife. She felt there was something wrong in her marriage and one night she followed him the club where D worked and discovered her husband’s secret. When she asked D to stop seeing her husband,   “He told her he was not responsible for her inability to keep her man at home”, the wife lost her temper and killed him…

  What I took from this show and the perception of gender is that perception is everything, the husband so himself as a man,   and in probably every other aspect of his life the husband expressed himself in the way that was expected, except when he attended the club. I don’t think that the wife or husband would have gone to such lengths to protect his masculine identity, if he was seeing a woman, and not a man dressed as a woman.  What I believe was largest threat to society, is the fact that D emulates neither a male or female in a stereotypical fashion, and any threat to a norm is attacked. Any threat to the script, of gender makes society uncomfortable.

What does Hue mean?

Posted on February 10, 2011 by tstand

In reading the article, “Yearning for lightness” When Glenn discusses that capital necessary for socioeconomic achievement is equal to the hue of skin. I must say, I had been pretty discouraged. But once I understood how economics and capitalism is driving the issue and it is not limited to America but it is a worldwide market. I see this as the larger issue of subverting real issues for women with mundane ones without merit. What makes tragic for people of color is the systematic continuous dominance of Western cultural values and the devaluing of one’s own…
“In Africa there are images of Black people trying to wash away the “Black”, and become white. Mercury is used in some of these skin lightening products and as well as being highly toxic, the side effects can cause severe kidney damage. Products that are banned in Western cities find a place in poor ones.
In India, light skin seems to collate to a better marriage match. The levels of color are familiar; they can see themselves as “dark” “wheatish” with a desire to be “fair”. (242)These classifications seem similar to my own experience with color such as “Black” Coal Black” “Brown” Light, Mixed, and Fair.
Not to mention the effects on Asian and Latin American, Mexican women. What does this mean for women and how we look at each other, when we can get past such a petty issues as the hue of a women’s skin. This issue is basically a slight of hand or distraction from the real issues for all women that have nothing to do with appearance or hue of skin.

What does hue mean?

In reading the article, “Yearning for lightness” When Glenn discusses that capital necessary for socioeconomic achievement is equal to the hue of skin. I must say, I had been pretty discouraged. But once I understood how economics and capitalism is driving the issue and it is not limited to America but it is a worldwide market. I see this as the larger issue of subverting real issues for women with mundane ones without merit. What makes tragic for people of color is the systematic continuous dominance of Western cultural values and the devaluing of one’s own…
“In Africa there are images of Black people trying to wash away the “Black”, and become white. Mercury is used in some of these skin lightening products and as well as being highly toxic, the side effects can cause severe kidney damage. Products that are banned in Western cities find a place in poor ones.
In India, light skin seems to collate to a better marriage match. The levels of color are familiar; they can see themselves as “dark” “wheatish” with a desire to be “fair”. (242)These classifications seem similar to my own experience with color such as “Black” Coal Black” “Brown” Light, Mixed, and Fair.
Not to mention the effects on Asian and Latin American, Mexican women. What does this mean for women and how we look at each other, when we can get past such a petty issues as the hue of a women’s skin. This issue is basically a slight of hand or distraction from the real issues for all women that have nothing to do with appearance or hue of skin.

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