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jumpinjamesjr · 5 years

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What Are the Biggest Problems Women Face Today?

It's been a memorable year for ladies. There are more serving in Congress than any other time in recent memory, and a record number are as of now running for president in 2020. Yet, even with these critical increases, ladies—both in the U.S. what's more, around the globe—can in any case discover sex equity subtle.

For International Women's Day this year, we solicited some from the most intriguing ladies we know—including a few of those previously mentioned administrators and presidential competitors—to let us know: What do you believe is the greatest test confronting ladies in the U.S. today? Furthermore, what do you believe is the greatest test confronting ladies globally today? This is what they needed to state.

The absence of ladies in places of intensity

Amy Klobuchar is a Democratic U.S. congressperson from Minnesota. She is running for president in 2020.

One of the battles that underlies the entirety of our approach fights is the proceeded with absence of ladies in places of intensity. From corporate meeting rooms, to the courts and political administration around the globe, the absence of ladies in senior positions keeps on obstructing progress on issues from pay to compassionate guide to segregation in the entirety of its structures. The sooner we comprehend that the absence of ladies in positions of authority keeps down ladies, however all individuals, the sooner we will have the option to propel society all in all.

Male controlled society

Keisha N. Blain shows history at the University of Pittsburgh and right now fills in as leader of the African American Intellectual History Society. She is writer of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018) and co-editorial manager of a few books, including To Turn The Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (2019).

The greatest test confronting ladies in the United States today is male centric society. This is particularly apparent in the domain of governmental issues. Despite a lady's understanding, instruction or capacities, the man centric nature of U.S. society encourages the observation that ladies are less qualified and less able than men. What male controlled society has done is persuade individuals that a solid and astute lady speaks to an issue; an interruption to the social request as opposed to a vital piece of it. One-sided media inclusion of ladies government officials—stories that attention on ladies' style and takes a gander to the detriment of their thoughts on strategy—underscores this point. It is accordingly no happenstance that the U.S. is totally out of venture with the remainder of the world with regards to choosing a lady as president. While ladies have kept up the most elevated office of authority in Liberia, India, the United Kingdom, Dominica and numerous different countries over the globe, the equivalent can't be said for the United States.

From a worldwide viewpoint, probably the greatest test confronting ladies is instructive imbalance. Regardless of the numerous additions of current women's activist developments in the Americas, Africa, Asia and past, many despite everything accept that ladies are less deserving of the equivalent instructive open doors stood to men. While there is no denying that neediness, geology and different components add to tremendous variations in instruction, male controlled society legitimizes this forswearing of chance. It takes care of the message that men ought to use the force and ladies ought to possess a subordinate situation in every aspect of society. This obsolete, yet constant, perspective powers instructive imbalance and a large group of different abberations along the lines of sex on national and global levels.

Insufficient ladies at the table

Kamala Harris is a Democratic U.S. congressperson from California. She is running for president in 2020.

I don't believe it's conceivable to name only one test—from the economy to environmental change to criminal equity change to national security, all issues are ladies' issues—yet I accept a vital aspect for handling the difficulties we face is guaranteeing ladies are at the table, deciding. Something I've seen again and again in my own vocation is that ladies in power bring an alternate point of view, a basic viewpoint. We made incredible walks in 2018, with an extraordinary number of ladies pursuing position, and more than 100 ladies sworn in to the 116th Congress. Be that as it may, we despite everything have far to go; the U.S. positions 75th out of 193 nations as far as ladies' portrayal in government. Also, this is really a worldwide issue. In case you're attempting to handle the world's issues, you ought to get notification from a large portion of the total populace. Along these lines, we have to keep shouting out for the benefit of each lady's entitlement to be heard and understand her capacity. My mom used to tell my sister and me, "You might be the first, however ensure you aren't the last." I've always remembered that.

Sexism, bigotry and monetary imbalance

Rebecca Traister is an author everywhere for New York magazine and The Cut.

The very intense blend of sexism, bigotry and monetary imbalance—this may appear too expansive an answer however it essentially covers it on both a local and worldwide front. The entirety of the individual difficulties we might be enticed to rank are symptomatic of these enormous fundamental force awkward nature, working couple.

Injury focused women's liberation

Christina Hoff Sommers is an occupant researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the writer of a few books including Who Stole Feminism? what's more, The War Against Boys. She co-has The Femsplainers. Follow her @Chsommers.

The risk of mischief is a human consistent, yet by any sensible measure, American ladies are among the most secure, freest, most beneficial, most open door rich ladies on Earth. From multiple points of view, we are not simply doing just as men, we are outperforming them. In any case, all over the place, particularly on school grounds, young ladies are being instructed that they are powerless, delicate and in up and coming peril. Another injury focused woman's rights has grabbed hold. Its essential center isn't uniformity with men—yet rather security from them. This past June, the Reuters Foundation discharged an overview reporting that the U.S. was one of the best 10 most perilous nations on the planet for ladies—more risky than even Iran or North Korea. The investigation was unbelievably defective and ended up being a study of "observations" of anonymous "specialists." But in the present condition of dread and frenzy, different news associations revealed the ridiculous discoveries. This new ethic of dread and delicacy is noxious and incapacitating—however it's making progress. American ladies should fight the temptation to imagine the world is fixed against us when it isn't.

The image is distinctive in the creating scene. In nations like Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia and Egypt ladies are fighting with practices, for example, respect killings, genital mutilation, corrosive burnings, youngster marriage and sexual orientation politically-sanctioned racial segregation. Be that as it may, there is uplifting news. The quantity of taught ladies in these nations has arrived at minimum amount and they are making their quality felt. Wajeha Al-Huwaider has been known as the "Rosa Parks of Saudi Arabia." In 2008, she made a universal sensation by posting a video of herself driving a vehicle. Until a couple of months back, ladies were not permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia. On account of ladies like her, the laws are starting to change. Dr. Hawa Abdi, a 71-year-old Somalian specialist and legal counselor, is said to be "a balance of Mother Teresa and Rambo." She established a medical clinic and exile camp in country Somalia that offers a sheltered space to almost 100,000 of the world's most jeopardized men, ladies and kids. Under her authority, the settlement is advancing into a model common society. The difficulties confronting ladies in the creating scene are overwhelming. In any case, without precedent for history, a considerable armed force of bold and unflinching ladies is on the walk.

Access to rise to circumstance

Ertharin Cousin is recognized individual of Global Food and Agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the previous official executive of the United Nations World Food Program.

As the previous official chief of the World Food Program I was regularly lowered by ladies in struggle or emergency circumstances who, when gotten some information about their needs, needed nothing for themselves except for asked that we instruct their little girls. Instruction, these moms accepted, would give their little girls open doors they, in light of their sexual orientation, were denied. Sadly, even with satisfactory training, ladies here in the United States just as ladies across a great part of the world despite everything need equivalent access to circumstance.

Notwithstanding many years of outstanding advancement, at home and abroad, a reality where openings are not characterized by sex presently can't seem to be all around accomplished. Much all the more vexing, in such a large number of spots the world over, ladies practicing or in any event, looking for their fundamental rights is deciphered as a direct and destabilizing challenge to existing force structures. A few systems are presently attempting to move back the hard-won privileges of ladies and young ladies. Hence, today I join the voices of ladies pioneers from around the globe requesting governments, the private segment and common society revitalize and reinvest in the strategies just as in the lawful and social structures that will accomplish overall sex fairness and consideration.

Here in the U.S. we as of late chosen a record number of new congressional agents. In different pieces of the world, political powers take steps to disintegrate the advancement that we have made at both the national level and through milestone worldwide motivation. Regardless of whether these powers succeed will rely upon whether ladies pioneers and backers of today and tomorrow, and all who remain with them, perceive the desperation and risk of inaction. Moms and fathers whether in South Sudan or the South Side of Chicago, are doing their part to request quality training for their little girls. It is up to ladies pioneers and promoters, including the recently stamped congressional pioneers, a considerable lot of whom profit by past aggregate exertion and remain upon the shoulders of such a significant number of, to push and hold all the way open the entryways of chance. Guaranteeing each lady and young lady. If you interested about it read more

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foalofthewind · 5 years

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Gender in Khita

The functioning of Khitan society is heavily based on their conceptions of gender, which dictate the social roles and responsibilities of an individual and serve to uphold its matriarchal structure. These conceptions are related to anatomical sex, but are separate to Khitan views of sexuality.

Three genders are recognised:

1) The ‘intellectual’ gender - Comprised of cis women. These individuals hold political power and make all decisions. They are the only parent formally recognised by a child, as evidenced by the matronymic naming system, and only their offspring of the same gender can legally inherit land/titles/money. Women are viewed as the most ‘cerebral’ gender, in that their emotion/passion is channelled towards the intellectual (rather than the physical or spiritual), and hence are the ‘default’ gender. The first people to inhabit the world were thought to be women. Gods and spirits associated with women, and to whom women pray, are those representative of order, creation and knowledge. Traditional clothing tends to be fairly simple and modest - the skin that is shown is not viewed sexually, and is simply a matter of physical convenience. All positions of power that are not religious are held exclusively by women.

2) The ‘emotional’ gender - Comprised of cis men. These individuals hold power only in relation to women, and are associated with instinctual, primal living. Thus, men are viewed as fundamentally emotional, aggressive, and sexual, and are valued for their contributions to the arts (particularly dance and story-telling - theatre is almost entirely male), historiography, warfare, and hunting/land management. Their spiritual realm consists of gods/spirits associated with such areas. However, they are seen as too impulsive and irrational to hold positions or make decisions that are independent to the other genders. They live heavily ritualised and communal lives with little control over their future, and have no official parental role as they are viewed as concubines of women (although it is common for fathers to interact with their offspring). They are expected to submit personal goals/desires to their assigned social role and craft. The traditional dress of men is highly decorative, promiscuous, and prioritises physique, and also involves specific application of facial/body cosmetics.

3) The ‘celestial’ gender - Comprised of two types of individuals - those who possess a strong affinity towards the gender role not assigned to them according to physical sex, and those who possess intersex features. The former are thought to have received direct access to the spiritual world, which has allowed them to transcend the defined sex-gender association. This access can be granted at any age, and destines the individual for a rigorous spiritual journey involving defined periods of living as both genders, and without gender. This is combined with the learning of sacred knowledge and skills to refine their spiritual access. Such individuals make up the religious class of Khitan society. The journey is long and few individuals complete the full cycle, however this is expected and forms the basis of the religious hierarchy. Traditional dress is dependent on their status and journey-stage, and includes both female and male elements. They are the only gender able to hold power apart from women.

In contrast, intersex individuals are viewed as entirely holy - the mortal vessels/aspects of true spirits, possessed of a deep connection to the natural world of the region they are born in. Their lives are highly variable, with some individuals living almost-normally as whichever gender (or none) they choose, and others existing as hermits in the wild or sacred beings within dedicated temples. They are thought to be the only individuals capable of truly navigating/interpreting the future, and thus all soothsaying or predictive roles are held by them. Hence, some extremely important government positions are occupied by this class of the celestial gender.

Note: The social roles of the third gender were inspired by the conceptions of gender amongst the Bugis, an ethnic group native to South Sulawesi.

#The Archipelago #khita #khitanese gender

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comradekellzwweapons-blog · 6 years

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Gun Control Lead Off

As a Marxist, I cannot and do not support gun control reforms. American violence did not begin with school shootings, nor will it end with regulating individual weapons. It's important to point out that school shootings are extremely rare, with statistics showing children are more likely to die on their way to school any given day than being shot inside of their school. Though a difficult topic to navigate emotionally, we should not let the media magnifying glass dictate how we approach the issue of violence in our society. With ever-increasing instances of police brutality, imperialist attacks on the working class abroad, deathly poverty and inequality, amongst countless other things, it's understandable to see America as becoming increasingly violent and needing a fix. Sadly, no quick fix exist. Any attempt to address violence in our society must also be paired with an analysis of the root causes of violence, how the State perpetuates and uses violence politically, and how careless reforms will mean increased violence in our most oppressed communities.

Historically, gun control has been used against black/brown people and the working class to uphold white supremacy and the violent capitalist mode of production. This can, and should, be traced back to the conception of our country as a colony and then as a State. The United States was founded on violence, against both indigenous populations native to the lands, and towards the enslaved Black and brown populations who were made to literally build our country. The Second Amendment is a product of this time; the settlers were legally able to continue to use violent means to expand the colony state by waging war against the Natives they found to be in their way. Ridding the Constitution of the Second Amendment will not rid the Constitution, nor the country, of it's violence or hypocrisy. Tidying up the Second Amendment will have grave consequences. You can't erase history or simply smooth over centuries of racism, sexism, and class conflict. Especially not with gun control laws from the same institutions creating and upholding those oppressions. From slavery and colonization, to the Trail of Tears and the black codes, our “justice system” was crafted to uphold this violence for the continuation of capitalism. Mumia Abu-Jamal put it's it eloquently,

“Social structures—courts, police, prisons, etc.—have within them a deep bias about what constitutes crime and what does not. Any social structure is a product of its previous historical, economic and social iterations, and these previous forms bear significant influence on later forms. The present system, in addition to being increasingly repressive, is the logical inheritance of its racist, hierarchical, exploitative past, and it is also a reactive formation against attempts to transform, democratize, and socialize it.”

When attempting to address violence, we cannot take reforms out of the context of the violent State in which laws and reforms are written and enforced. Any guesswork of demands will have very serious real-world consequences, especially in our communities of color and working class areas. These communities already bear the brunt of capitalist violence, with disproportional rates of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and over-policing, to name a select few. Gun control laws will be a double-edged sword in increasing violence by ramping up racist enforcement of superfluous laws, and by leaving those who most need protection personally defenseless while under more policing. Once we acknowledge who the state prefers policed and defenseless, it's only logical to assume our government will act as it always has in the face of any “violence” related reform.

As socialists we understand that our society has enough homes, work, food, medicine, etc., to go around but supplies are increasingly monopolized in limited hands. Upholding this system of capitalism requires violence, from the police who enforce fundamentally unjust laws, the capitalists who enforce wage labor for survival, to the military who plunder the working classes in other countries when sectors our country has been squeezed to its pulp. If this is hard to conceptualize, imagine being homeless and sleeping underneath the window of an empty townhouse. What stops you from breaking inside to get a good, warm nights sleep? The property laws that enforce homelessness, the militarized police that enforce those laws, or the threat of violent prisons where lawbreakers are enslaved? We must ask ourselves, where is the violence in this situation rooted? Is it when the homeless person breaks a window, or when the police break the homeless person, or is it the fact that a home sits empty while members of our community freeze in the streets. This is a violence that effects every person that lives under capitalism and imperialism, as we all must participate in the system for survival. To address the violence we must address the system.

By acknowledging the root cause of our historical and overarching violence problem, we can analyze which reforms help the working class, and which do not address the root and in turn harm the working class. For example, the liberal reform of increasing the number of “school resource officers”. While on the surface this may seem helpful in the specific instance of fending off a school shooter, these officers essentially take on the role of school police throughout the school year when school shootings aren't happening. Armed guards, metal detectors, strict discipline, constant surveillance... These reforms manage to widen the school-to-prison pipeline by simply removing the pipeline. It has incalculable consequences for every black and brown student who are already 4 times as likely to be suspended, twice as likely to be arrested, and nearly twice as likely to be expelled than their white counterparts. This idea of reducing violence in a single theoretical scenario will definitely increase the violence our marginalized students face every single day. The resources could be better spent by hiring new teachers, ensuring classrooms have enough supplies, or expanding extracurricular activities. To quote Angela Davis,

“When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison."

Another liberal reform worth mentioning is the idea that stricter background checks will curve gun violence. Currently through the Brady Bill, firearm retailers must run a background check on purchasers through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, an FBI database that enforces the Gun Control Act of 1968. The word “criminal” should immediately alert anybody who understands the mechanisms of the State. To quote Mumia once again, “crime is simply a conception of harm held by those who have power to make laws.” Under the Gun Control Act, people prohibited from owning guns include anybody arrested of a crime facing over a year imprisonment, anybody taking illegal substances or medical marijuana, any immigrant that lives in the US illegally, and anybody tried for domestic violence. Granted some these sound reasonable enough, if it weren't for our racialized and inherently violent state upholding these controls. Black people are incarcerated at a rate of 3.6 times that of white people, and poorer people are more likely to be incarcerated than those of a higher class, meaning the “year in jail” limit disproportionately limits the working class, specifically working class black people, from owning arms. The undocumented community is also barred from legally owning arms, despite the constant threat of violence and deportation from ICE. While those convicted of domestic violence are barred, this does not include law enforcement, who's families are 4 times more likely to experience domestic violence than those of the general population. To allow the State to tighten background check criteria will only perpetuate the racialized enforcement of who can and cannot own arms. Men like Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter who murdered 58 people and injured over 500, routinely pass the background check as it was not crafted to stop them. How could a law be written that restricts certain types of people, frankly white males, usually with a history of DV, militarism, or right-wing ideologies, from owning guns when so many of those same types of people make up our police forces, militaries, and governing bodies?

All of these examples are way the State prohibits people from legally owning guns, but we must not forget that legally obtaining arms is not the only way to obtain arms. Our country has an estimated 300 million firearms, not including black market guns for which we don't have an accurate count. If a person wants to buy a gun legally, they're subjected to State scrutiny that discriminates based on race and class. If a person wants to get a gun illegally, or off the books of the racist State, they risk much higher charges and longer incarceration if caught. Given the States lack of interest in regulating arms manufacturers, who “donate” to the NRA who then buy the politicians who run the State, guns themselves do not seem to be the problem. Rather, it's when the State's monopoly on violence is threatened by those who have the desire or material benefit in addressing the State itself. Gun control laws, and the police who enforce them, are simply self-preservation acts of racist, oppressive institutions.

While this all may seem discouraging or abysmal, analyzing the root causes of violence and the politics surrounding violence is vital to eliminating it. Capitalism and our bourgeois government that upholds it was founded on violence and must inflict violence on the working class to keep itself running. Attempts to address violence without addressing the root cause will fall short, will not bring about a radical change, and can possibly backfire by placing the working class under tighter State scrutiny. If we attempt to change the system within it, our choices are largely between the Democratic and Republican parties. While the Republican party is quickly written off for its strong ties with the NRA, violent militarism, or general disregard for human life over profits, it's worth noting that the same can pretty much be said for the Democratic party as well. They're the "lesser evil” choice between the two, but once we adopt the realization that capitalism is the root cause of what we believe is so bad about the Republicans, we must also realize that the Democratic party is a capitalist party that overall exists to uphold capitalism and is extremely violent as well. For example, the most unarguably “progressive” of the Democrats, Bernie Sanders, supports the state of Israel in its colonization of Palestine, a mirror image of the colonization the white settlers perpetrated on the indigenous here in our own country. Are we willing to ignore violence as long as it's not us, not our country, not our people? Or do we stand in solidarity with the working class around the world in the rejection of violence, be it colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, etc. Democrat Barack Obama deployed drone strikes 10 times as much as his predecessor George W Bush. He spent billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the failing big banks, while income inequality, homelessness, poverty, and wage stagnation continued to grow. He also built the deportation apparatus, the Department of Homeland Security, that Trump utilizes to deport people today. If I didn't say “Barack Obama,” you probably would have guessed he was of the Republican Party. And if so, it's due time to break with the idea that the Democrats are the “lesser of two evils” when even the “lesser evil” includes deportation, drone strikes, imperial wars, and general negligence to improving conditions of human life.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that we must move away from the two-party, capitalist system and build towards something that prioritizes human life over greed, profit, and violence. Violence cannot be reformed away in an inherently violent system. As a matter of harm reduction for the time being, we must support any reform that challenges the capitalist hold on the working class is a reform that will in turn reduce violence. We need to demand higher wages and an end to austerity, to address income inequality that forces people into poverty while the wealthy exploit and squander. We need to demand guaranteed free housing to eradicate homelessness, as housing is a human right. We need to demand a socialized, single-payer healthcare system, as healthcare is a human right as well. “Demand” does not mean begging the capitalist class to piss pity upon us, but it is a declaration that we will stop at nothing to bring about our demands and the end of capitalism and its ills. It's inevitable that more people realize the violence capitalism perpetrates worldwide, and that is it in the material interest of society to eradicate capitalism by building socialism. We don't need racism, we don't need sexism, we don't need poverty or homelessness, we don't need wars, and we don't need to slave away our lives creating profit for the wealthy. This is in the interest of all of humanity. As Karl Marx once said, “Capitalism contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

#gun control #second amendment #Marxist #Marxism #march for our lives

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leviathangourmet · 6 years

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”On October 10, 1993, when the Violence Against Women act of 1994 was under debate in the Senate, the Toledo blade published an article about the methods feminists were using to push for the bill to become law. On page 8, Blade staff writers Nara Shoenberg and Sam Roe described a key aspect of the process; how feminists create data to support their narrative.

“Researchers say they can just as easily design a study that finds 1 in 4 women have been raped as 1 in 50. A slight change in the definition of rape or the way questions are worded can yield dramatically different results. Scientists responsible for the highest numbers are passionate advocates who believe rape is very common. This troubles even some in the field.

One scientist is a self-described radical feminist. Another conducted her study with the backing of Ms. Magazine, for years a leading voice in the women’s movement. Still another helped open one of the country’s first rape crisis centers. All told, some critics conclude the rape numbers are inflated. They charge this has been done to boost support for the cause.”

This is not anything new. The movement did the same thing in the 70s, prior to getting the Family Violence Prevention and Services act of 1984 passed. In 1978 during hearings before the House of Representatives subcommittee on select education, as the 95th congress debated HR 7927 & 8948, feminists did the same thing while testifying on the topics of intimate partner and sexual violence. They cited Susan Brownmiller’s writing to support portraying violence against women as a defining male characteristic. They even cherry-picked Erin Pizzey’s work, using what would support their female victim narrative while excluding everything she learned about gender parity in partner violence. They lied to congress, saying there was no available evidence on male victims, when they knew from the very writings from which they quoted, that Erin Pizzey had sheltered male victims and counseled violent women in her shelters.

They strove to get a gendered law passed, but their efforts at the time failed. FVPSA passed as Title III of H.R.1904 - the Child Abuse Amendments of 1984. This was passed by the 98th Congress and signed into law by then-president Ronald Reagan. It created grants to be distributed to state governments for the establishment, maintenance, and expansion of programs and projects to: (1) prevent incidents of family violence; and (2) provide shelter and related assistance for victims and dependents of victims of family violence in order to prevent future violent incidents. Local agencies, nonprofits, and tribal organizations were eligible for such grants as long as they could show a demonstrated record of serving victims of family violence, domestic violence, or dating violence, and their children. The law did not include any gender specificity. Organizations that helped men were not excluded from funding. In fact, gender discrimination in the application of policy related to this funding would make applicants ineligible for receipt of these federal funds.

This is where federal funding for shelters for victims of family violence originated - not with VAWA, but with FVPSA. What VAWA did, in addition to increases in funding that could have been passed in a simple update, was gender the wording of FVPSA to designate women as victims and men as perpetrators, allowing for the exclusion of men from victim’s shelters and other programs not geared toward modifying perpetrator behavior. Shelters were renamed in the law, from “domestic abuse shelters” to “battered women’s shelters.” Victim’s advocates to accompany domestic violence accusers in the courtroom were also funded by VAWA, as well as data collection from the now women-only shelters, to create a body of evidence supporting the continued gendering of the law. There is funding in the law for training to impose the now-discredited, gender-biased duluth model of handling intimate partner and sexual violence on the entire criminal justice system from law enforcement through the courts and into the prison system. As I pointed out previously, every one of these federally-funded initiatives is administered by gender studies majors, with jobs created in the resulting industries going to gender ideologues.

This meal ticket for feminist hatemongers was achieved by demonizing men as a population of sexually predatory and callously domineering thugs. In their 1978 congressional testimony, feminists cited Susan Brownmiller, from her book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape:

“As the first permanent acquisition of man, his first piece of real property, woman was, in fact, the original building block, the cornerstone of the ‘House of the Father.’ Man’s forcible extension of his boundaries to his mate and later to their offspring was the beginning of his concept of ownership.” In fact, studies have shown that wife abuse has its roots in the very structure of society and the family where the husband is expected to play the role of leader. If this position is threatened, many men fall back on their ultimate resource of physical force. The widespread existence of wife beating today underscores the fact that these societal expectations are still prevalent.

To get the data used to promote the Violence Against Women act, Mary P. Koss designed and interpreted her research with such bias that her conclusions were in contradiction to approximately ½ of her subjects’ stated evaluation of their own experiences, and to approximately ¾ of her subjects’ post-incident behavioral evidence. She later added to her writings on the topic a statement intended to justify excluding female perpetration against male victims from her work:

“Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman.”

Feminist rape culture theory has been used to promote changes to state and federal law that have chipped away at due process rights for accused men. These have included protections for accusers proved to have criminally exploited the justice system as a tool of abuse, exclusion of certain types of potentially exculpatory evidence, and policy designed to reverse the burden of proof in so-called “gender violence” cases.

This same formula is how feminists created a similar wave of new positions on university campuses with the sexualizing of Title IX, the passage of the Clery act, and more recently, the Campus SaVE act. Koss’s methodology has become the standard in feminist-led research that influences the creation of law and policy, with the Centers for Disease Control’s National Intimate Partner & Sexual Violence survey, which cites Koss’s prevalence research standards as one of its sources, producing data that was used to promote both the Dear Colleague guidance and the Campus SaVE act.

Feminists have started quite a few hashtags on social media in an effort to use a multitude of female victim anecdotes to further spread the impression that men as a population are sexually violent. When #MeToo broke, they were appalled to see male victims of sexually violent women posting in it, and reacted with outrage and venom. This, the men were told, was not for them. How dare they #manterrupt a moment for #WomenEmpowerment! Get your own hashtag, feminists whined. Leave ours alone. Of course, as soon as #MenToo was coined, that was invaded with angry accusations that it was created to distract from #MeToo.

We in the men’s rights movement are constantly admonished that feminists do not hate men. In fact, feminist writer Lindy West penned an entire article full of myths and misconceptions, and dripping with false condescension, to explain this to us. Unfortunately for her, Suzanna Danuta Walters, professor of sociology, director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, and editor of the gender studies journal Signs, didn’t get West’s memo. Her article, Why can’t we hate men, was just as filled with myths, misconceptions, and contempt, but at least she was honest about one thing.

Feminism is absolutely misandric. No, the movement isn’t just about hating men. Its entire ideology and the commercial enterprises it supports all rely on that hatred. It is the bread under the movement’s butter, the foundation upon which the victim narrative its practitioners exploit rests, without which not one thin dime would be raised for their initiatives. Male guilt fuels that narrative, and the narrative fuels their every sales pitch in one of the longest-running scams in modern history.

This is why today, we’re seeing feminist animosity and antagonism so ramped up. This is where the panic you can hear in the sound file we’ve been listening to, with the speaker revisiting the history of that scam and wondering what went wrong, comes from. The hysteria we’re seeing today among proponents of gendered law and policy on sexual misconduct is very telling. This is the first time in decades that their scam has been challenged and they have lost ground. They had taken academia, gained another market for accuser’s advocates and services, and secured control over the educational and living environment on university campuses. The DeVoss walkback of the Dear Colleague guidance isn’t just a minor setback to them. It’s a slap across the face to a couple of generations of feminists who have seen nothing but administrative coddling throughout their years of activism. I believe this is only the beginning of what will prove to be a long, darkly comical tantrum, and folks, we’d better have our facts and our popcorn ready, because it’s gonna get interesting.” — (Honey Badger Radio, HBR Talk 51)

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w2NPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XgMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6359,2509421&hl=en

http://breakingtheglasses.blogspot.com/2013/01/vawa-is-not-like-that.html

#feminism #honey badger radio #video #honey badger brigade #patriarchy #domestic violence #violence against women #men's rights #men's issues #archive

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kathleenseiber · 3 years

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‘Boys and their toys’: how overt masculinity dominates Australia’s relationship with water

Overly masculine environments affect the way decisions are made.

By Anna Kosovac.

In Australia over recent months, the fury of women has been hard to ignore. The anger, much of it directed at the toxic masculine culture of Parliament House, has sparked a national conversation about how these attitudes harm women.

The movement has led me to think about how masculine cultures pervade our relationship with water. I worked as a civil engineer in the water industry for nine years, managing projects from planning through to construction. I’m now a water policy researcher, and in a recent paper I explored how dominant masculinity is limiting our response to dire water problems.

Overly masculine environments affect the way decisions are made. In particular, a reliance on technological and infrastructure “fixes” to solve problems is linked to masculine ideas of power.

Under this way of thinking, water is to be controlled, re-purposed and rerouted as needed. I believe we must reassess these old methods. Does it really need to be all about control and power? Managing water in tandem with nature may be more prudent.

Dams and other major water infrastructure are a mainstay of male-dominated water management. Shutterstock

Hiring women is not enough

In the case of federal parliament, the toxic masculinity problem has partly been blamed on a lack of women in senior roles. Similarly, in the area of water supply, sewerage and drainage services, only 19.8% of the workforce comprises people who identify as women (compared to 50.5% across all industries). The sector include state government departments, water authorities and consultancies.

Globally, the lack of women in water engineering has primarily been addressed by increasing the representation of women in the field, on boards and in management.

However creating a more diverse workforce does not automatically lead to a diversity of thinking. In the case of water management, hiring women, or others such as LGBTI and Indigenous employees, does not necessarily mean their contributions are valued. Very often, a masculine culture prevails.

Read more: Cosmos Briefing: Water Policy in Australia

Hiring women is not enough – their contribution should be valued. Shutterstock

Pipelines and gadgets aren’t always the answer

Toxic masculinity doesn’t just refer to overtly sexist cultures or allegations of sexual assault. It can also refer to male-dominated decision making where other ideas are undervalued.

Take, for example, the dominant “technocracy” approach to water management, in which infrastructure and technology is relied on to solve problems.

In Australia as elsewhere, this can perhaps be seen in the emergence of “smart water management” which uses gadgets such as smart meters and other technology to gather and communicate real-time data to help address water management challenges.

As other researchers have argued, this “boys and their toys” approach perpetuates a mindset that sustainability problems – often caused by deep-seated structural and behaviour faults such as over-consumption – can be solved with engineering and technology.

Read more: Gender inequality impact on children

The idea that technology is a symbol of masculinity has been explored by many feminist theorists.

Technical prowess, being “in control” and rationality have historically been seen as typically male characteristics. And senior technological roles are usually occupied by men.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with using technology to solve water issues. But when technocratic thinking is “monolithic” and ignores wider societal issues, it can become a problem.

Take, for example, Victoria’s North-South pipeline built during the Millennium Drought. This A$750 million piece of infrastructure connected to Melbourne in 2010 but has lain idle ever since – largely due to fears from farmers that taking water from rural areas will hurt agricultural output.

Similarly, desalination plants in many parts of Australia are an expensive technological approach that solve one problem, yet can create many others. They use a lot of energy, which contributes to climate change if drawn from fossil fuels, and can damage marine life.

Most technology jobs in water management are occupied by men. Shutterstock

Finding another way

Global water scarcity is inescapable. Water use is growing at a rate faster than population growth while climate change is diminishing clean water suppies in many areas.

We need look no further than Australia’s trouble-plagued Murray Darling Basin to know it’s time to reassess the old methods and explore new ways in our relationship with water.

Exerting control over water – say, building an extensive sewer network and water supply system – may have been needed when Australia was modernising. But now it’s time to take a more humble approach that works in tandem with the environment.

A different approach would incorporate valuable knowledge in the social sciences, such as recognising the politics and social issues at play in how we manage water.

For example, in 2006 residents in the Queensland town of Toowoomba rejected the prospect of drinking recycled wastewater after a highly politicised referendum campaign. Residents had just three months to consider the proposal, which divided the community. A non-masculine approach might involve better public consultation and an effort by authorities to understand community attitudes prior to planning.

Read more: Gender equality in astronomy could take 60 years to achieve

Australians are the world’s greatest per capita consumers of water. A new approach might also involve questioning this consumptive behaviour and reducing our water use, rather than relying on technological fixes.

Such approaches are likely to require giving up some control. And it may require working closely with traditional owners to incorporate Indigenous understandings of water.

In 2017 for example, the New Zealand government passed legislation that recognised the Whanganui River catchment as a legal person. The reform formally acknowledged the special relationship local Māori have with the river.

This different approach may also mean moving to community decision making models or even programs to increase youth involvement in water management.

An over-reliance on technology and infrastructure papers over the need to understand the behaviours that lead to water problems. We must seek new, sustainable approaches that recognise the role of water in our social, political and cultural lives.

Anna Kosovac, Research Fellow in Water Policy, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Boys and their toys’: how overt masculinity dominates Australia’s relationship with water published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

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surly01 · 4 years

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The Avatar of American Apartheid

The Trump years have revealed new truths about our relatives, neighbors, and friends. Or former friends. They have embraced the Avatar of American Apartheid.

We’ve had to open our eyes to the fact that some with whom we’ve happily shared parts of our lives stand revealed as racist to the core. Just fine with kidnapping and incarceration of immigrant children, forced family separations, and compulsory hysterectomies for some refugee women. OK with cancellation of decades of environmental regulation and climate change denial. OK with the negligent homicide that comprises the administration’s Covid-19 response. Enthused about deploying anonymized companies of military-style shock troops into the streets to “black bag” protesters and gas peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights. Fully embracing the author of 20,000-plus lies, the serial sexual assaults, the mind-bending attacks on institutions great and small.

Enough. I am not fine with any of the above, nor am I fine with those who are.

Some reading this might protest, “But I’m not a racist. I have a black friend/co-worker/neighbor, etc.” The election of the first Black President led many believe that we had entered a “post-racial society.” In arguments elsewhere about structural racism in the US, my opponents have cited Obama’s election as proof that race issues were now over. Would that it were so. Trump’s election has revealed American Apartheid as it really is. Howard Zinn and others have brought the receipts to show American history is a procession of mass murder and colonial appropriation, an uncomfortable truth we remain unwilling to hear. And the resurgence of the hard edge of neo-confederate militia rage and racist taunts from Charlottesville to Michigan highlight the dark stain on America’s soul.

America is as divided as it was in the 1850s, in that tense time of conflict before the Civil War. The windfall of territories gained in the wake of the War with Mexico led to arguments about how those territories would be apportioned between slave states and free states. This led to the Compromise of 1850, a package of bills abolishing slavery in Washington DC, admission to the Union of California as a free state, and enhancement of the Fugitive Slave Act. This last required northern magistrates to act as agents and slavecatchers for southern slave-owners. The Compromise also provided for existing territories to be admitted as “slave” or “free” depending on the inhabitants’ electoral will. This led to “Bleeding Kansas,” those battles waged between roving bands of abolitionists and slaveholders, and where abolitionist John Brown made his bones. A period of widespread domestic terror.

Much has been made of the rural-urban divide, which is actually the 21st-century code for racism. In a recent National Review column, Rich Lowry observed that Trump is

“the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between,” including “the 1619 Project.”

Those who live in Trump country, where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence, care little for what he does as long as it gives them license to hate liberals. The bigger the outrage, the louder the applause. Thus when Trump said, “he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue...,” he was correct. Non-Trump-cult members who wonder “how can they still back Trump after this scandal or the next” fail to understand the underlying motivating factor of his support. It’s “fuck liberals.” Since according minorities their constitutionally-guaranteed rights would require an acknowledgement of America’s actual history of racism, it is vigorously opposed by change-resistant conservatives determined to preserve the prerogatives of white entitlement.

Attempts to have a logical, rational conversation with Trumpists invariably reveals a person who believes their well-being depends upon avoiding things they’d rather not know. Or who will replace evidence with an alternative set of facts, generally created of whole cloth and breathed into life like a golem through repetition in right-wing media.

Consider QAnon, that hatchery of right-wing fucknuttery. Scratch their “Save the Children” marketing disguise and find revealed a narrative similar to that in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. Central to the mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.

Consider the current package of accusations:

A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.

Thus are “The Protocols” repackaged by QAnon for Americans largely ignorant of history. Some have even suggested that QAnon is a Nazi cult, rebranded. What is appalling is that so many of our neighbors, relatives, and “friends” are so credulous.

As David Pollard has observed,

Trump’s support among white males remains basically unchanged over the past four years. This, not Republicans, is his real base — a clear majority of white males continue to support Trump, and it hasn’t been that long since they were the only people allowed to vote. Whites, and male whites moreso, have voted against every Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And let’s be clear — I didn’t say, old white males. Young white males of all voting-age groups remain committed, almost as much as their older counterparts, to support Trump. Their entrance into the voting age cohorts has barely caused a ripple in the plurality of white males supporting Trump. That may surprise you until you consider that a disproportionate number (about half) of young voters are nonwhite (only a quarter of boomers are nonwhite), so looking at the entire youth cohort’s seemingly progressive attitudes obscures the reality that most young whites hew to the same extreme right-wing politics that the majority of old whites subscribe to; there’s just fewer of them.

We’ll leave it for you to consider that it means that a majority of white males of all ages are knowingly prepared to vote again for a blatantly corrupt candidate, a pathological liar, mentally deranged, uninformed, racist, sexist, utterly without principle, and increasingly untethered to reality. One whose “White House Science Office” takes credit for ‘ending’ the pandemic as infections mount to all-time highs.

But after 20,000 lies, who’s left to quibble?

“I love the poorly educated.” Donald J. Trump

Trump may lose the election, but white American males (and some true-believing females) aren’t going anywhere. They are the product of our systemically racist, sexist, patriarchal culture, born to preserve the prerogatives of white men of property while denying justice to the nonwhite, the native, the immigrant, the female, the “weak.” While they also control the courts, the banks, the legal system, and law enforcement, created in their likeness to support and preserve white male power, they are quick to snap into a well-practiced victim pose whenever challenged.

This past summer, members of the ShutDownDC movement protested at Chad Wolf’s home. They said,

“We know there are no career consequences for these men and women. We know there are no financial consequences for these men and women. We know there are no legal consequences for these men and women. We must make social consequences for these men and women. We must make it uncomfortable for them. We will not be good Germans. We will not be the people who sat by and watched our neighbors commit these atrocities and said nothing because their kids were home.”

The differences between both sides of a culture war are as strong as the conflict between “slave” and “free” in the 1850s, and are likewise framed in moral absolutes. No matter what happens on or after November 3, Trumpism remains with or without Trump. How will we live with its followers?. And whether or not there are “consequences” for their actions, the stink of Trump will never wash away, and what has been seen can’t be unseen. Nor will it be forgotten.

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auskultu · 7 years

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HUMPHREY URGES NEW AID TO POOR

IN DETROIT, HE SAYS NATION MUST PAY TO SET UP AN AMERICAN MARSHALL PLAN Jerry Flint, The New York Times, 3 August 1967

DETROIT — Vice President Humphrey called tonight for a massive effort to help the impoverished areas of the United States, an effort that he likened to the Marshall Plan.

The Vice President, speaking in Detroit, which last week experienced the nation’s most devastating Negro riot, also suggested that the states form “councils for civil peace” to prevent riots.

He said “the first thing is to re-establish law and order in this country by whatever legal means it takes to do it," and "the rule of the jungle must not and will not prevail.”

Speech Warmly Applauded More than 2,000 delegates and wives at a dinner meeting ending the convention of the National Association of Counties warmly applauded the Vice President’s speech in Cobo Hall.

Cyrus R. Vance, President Johnson’s personal representative in Detroit during last week’s riots, announced here today that “law and order have been restored to Detroit."

Mr. Humphrey emphasized that the same type of aid that had been used to help the underdeveloped countries be used to “help our own people,” including the same "methods, techonlogy and techniques."

If technical assistance of longterm low interest loans are needed for overseas development, surely they arc needed here at home.”

Price Must Be Paid Massive investment of private capital needed in new nations "is insured by your Government,” he told the county officials. He said such investment was also "needed in America's slums and rural poverty areas. Whatever it will take to get the job done we must be willing to pay the price," he said.

"Our commitment to the building of free, safe and Just communities must be no less than the commitment wc have made to militnry defense of our country, to the exploration of outer space, to the rebuilding of a devastated western Europe ufter World War II."

"We had a Marshall Plan for the Impoverished areas of Europe. Maybe we need an American plan for a new day,” he said.

The Vice President said, “A state council for civil peace should include representation from all racial and religious groups, the state attorney general’s offce, the Natonal Guard, law enforcement agencies and officials of local government.”

“It could provide a state community relations service designed to prevent violence and to gain community cooperation and hear the voices of those who have gone unheard. It could set up a coordinated early-warning system so that coming disorders might be detected in advance and perhaps, be stopped before they began,” he said.

Such a council “could provide a way and a means for those who would be the innocent victims of violence to have an opportunity to forestall that tragedy and to bring to bear their knowledge, their information and their sense of citizenship,” the Vice President went on.

Mr. Humphrey suggested similar metropolitan councils for civic peace be formed “with the same broadly based representation—to do the same job on a community basis."

These would be particularly useful where metropolitan boundaries cross state lines. Federal funds could he usde for such metropolitan councils, he said.

No Crisis Seen The Vice President said "our nation is in trouble" but he also said he expected the nation to make it through the present urban crisis.

He said he did not believe that the ghetto dwellers “will fall victim to the demagogues and agitators who would tear down what men of peace have built with their life’s blood over generations.”

He warned that “hopes raised must not be dashed” but, he' said, “the injustices of 100 years will not be wiped away in five, and the behavior patterns of a lifetime will not be wiped out in a month or two.”

He made three broad suggestions:

The first was the re-establishment of law and order. There is no justice for anyone, particularly the poor, “in senseless violence and lawlessness,” he said.

The second proposal was for “the hard, frustrating work of rooting out the conditions which have led to the slum and the life of physical and spiritual poverty within it.” He suggested efforts to improve jobs, education, housing, transportation, crime control and “participation by peoples in the life of their community so they become part of what they call us—the establishment."

Unified Effort Urged The third suggestion was for a unified effort at the community level using available buildings for community leaders to find jobs and recreation for youngsters.

The Vice President also met privately with Detroit’s Mayor, Jerome P. Cavanagh, Gov. George Romney, and Joseph Hudson Jr., a department store president who heads the planning effort for the rebuilding of devastated areas in the city.

The meeting was “constructive,” Mayor Cavanagh said. “He wasn’t in a position to commit cash but he understands these things very well,” the Mayor said.

Earlier today, Daniel P. Moynihan, a former Labor Department expert on Negro affairs, told the meeting that "anyone who suggests they know things that can solve the urban problems is a fool or a fraud.” Mr. Moynihan also spoke at a news conference.

"We cannot explain the events” this summer said Mr. Moynihan, who heads a Joint Center for Urban Studies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. As he spoke here, Detroit was still recovering from last week’s Negro riot.

The last of 4,700 Army paratroopers left the city and the National Guard, which had been federalized, was turned back to state control. Guardsmen still patrol parts of the city.

After touring the riot areas in Detroit, Mr. Moynihan said “you’ve got to clean it up. They still haven't cleaned up Watts yet," he added.

Mr. Moynihan also said he feared that the election of a right-wing President and repressive measures against Negroes could result from this summer’s rioting.

"Nihilism can ruin the slums; the reaction to it can ruin the nation," he said.

Mr. Moynihun suggested a three-point national program that lie said could help end discontent among the poor. The program included full employment, with the Government as an employer of "last resort," automatic family allowances and health care.

Mr, Moynihan noted, for example, that in the past as male Negro unemployment went up welfare went up. But since 1960 this has changed with welfare climbing during years of economic boom, he said.

Part of the problem is "an Image of who needed help that was almost romantic," he said. Liberals have not faced certain problems because they were “protecting the good name of the poor.” A new group of poor is growing up, he said, that some might call the undeserving poor.”

Traditional Negro leaders have not reached these people, he said. But the riots this summer may help Negro leaders recognize that the Negroes at the bottom “are in trouble.”

Mr. Moynihan also said a lack of a sense of "participation" was a serious problem.

"For 50 years The New York Times and all good American liberals” had one major cause, he said:

"Break Tammany Hall. Break the power of the bosses.”

But he said the old system did mean "some contacts with that lower class."

In 1965 Mr. Moynihan wrote a Government report entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, which became widely known as the Moynihan Report. It argued that the true cause of the American Negro's plight was an unstable family structure rooted in centuries of discrimination and economic starvation.

President Johnson planned to use the report as a basis for discussion at a White House civil rights conference in July, 1966. But after Negroes and whites criticized the renort, it was not used at the conference.

#1960s #1967 #1967 detroit riot #60s #detroit #economy #great society #hubert humphrey #inequality #marshall plan #pat moynihan #racism #sixties #social justice #riots

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canihldthemic · 4 years

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There’s a Fire this time: Recognizing the Burning House that is American Democracy (Part 1)

In lieu of the current events of this country I found it imperative to put this essay out into the world. One of my final assignments in my Foundations of American Political Theory class I was instructed to survey the relationship between the experiments of tyranny and democracy in this country. The following is my response.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the world, and lose his own soul? You can take my soul, give me the world!”

Nikki Giovanni in conversation with James Baldwin on SOUL!

“Make America great again.” A phrase that haunts thousands of us in our sleep. It implies a return to a time or institution which was better than what it is presently. It also begs the questions: When was it ever great? Better yet, to whom was it great to? Surveying the development and performance of American political thought requires a close look at what we actually consider that to be. This class and the many documents we analyzed reveals that American democratic structure rests at the intersection of tyranny and democracy. Webster defines tyranny as a cruel and oppressive government rule. It defines democracy as a form of government in which the people exercise the authority of government. Occurrences throughout American history indicates a constant construction and reconstruction of the American democratic institution. The system which we operate in today is not the same as the one that was formed at the beginning of the Great American Experiment. This very process reveals that the relationship between tyranny and democracy is mutually constitutive: tyranny is inevitable within a democracy which then can encourage tyranny then democracy and so on. The formation of American political thought and institutions were encouraged by tyrannical operations of Britain on the colonies. The settlers were forced to conceptualize a system which would protect their rights; thus democracy was born. Therefore, I believe that tyranny is the catalyst which urges people to operationalize their democratic principles. I will focus on Smith’s Our Republican Example, Wolin’s Contract and Birthright, Calhoun’s Speech on Reception of Abolition Petitions (1837), Du Bois’ Back to Slavery, Fisher Ames’ The Dangers of American Liberty, and Baldwain’s The Fire Next Time. Altogether these documents illustrate the formation and intentions of the American democratic insitution and how it responded to slavery and the events thereafer.

American political thought has constantly been held to an immovable definition that has become a standard for political institutions across the world, also known as American exceptionalism (Smith). This definition implies that America was founded on a set of republican ideals that would be carried out through political, social and economic practices. Judith Shklar’s posthumous anthology ,“Redeeming American Political Thought”, included her essay, Redeeming American Political Theory, where she surveyed the development of contemporary American political science and the institutions they reflect:

… American political theory has long been neglected. It has been charged with an obsessive and unconscious commitment to a liberal faith that prevents it from asking profound and critical questions. Incapable of envisaging alternatives... (Skhlar)

Contrary to the theory of American exceptionalism, Shklar believes that American political thought has no uniformity but it is a framework which adjusts and readjusts to the systematic rights and wrongs. Although both Smith and Shklar oppose each other they can agree that the main challenge of American political experiments are to create a system which is effective at “popular self-governance” (Smith). Throughout time it has been characterized with equality, liberalism, and egalitarianism to name a few. However, there have been a number of controversies throughout American history where the institution failed to respond in ways that it is characterized as; especially not democratically. If we intently look at these controversies it becomes apparent that tyranny has been the catalyst which reveals exactly how “democratic” American institutions are.

Once the Founders determined the republican self-governance was the structure that would hold this country and its citizens together they had to decide what was going to hold the citizens united to each other. A compromise between state and national financial interests supported the idea that the republic would be upheld through a political economy (Smith). Constitutional law legalized Congress to lay and collect taxes, establish laws pertaining to bankruptcy, coin and regulate the value of money and regulate international commerce. Through other laws the idea of nobility was established between states. Another component of a democracy is the role of the Constitution in establishing who the “people” are and how authority is shared among them. So, not only did these Constitutional laws define what the political economy was but it also defined who would be able to participate in the economy and how. By the 18th century democractic power had been extended only to land-owning white males. Smith(2012) highlights that Article 1, Section 8 authorizes Congress to regulate commerce with Indian tribes; other clauses legally recognized property in slaves. Together these two clauses consciously separated Native Americans and people of African descent from White Americans.This consequently laid the groundwork for racilized subjugation that will motivate the maltreatment of these people for centuries to come; especially during slavery.

The disregaurd of the humanity of Native Americans during colonization and African people throughout slavery was only the premise of tryanny in this nation. In the years of Reconstruction the powers that be had another opportunity to fortify the democractic structure by providing the rights to participate in democracy. While we studied the federalist papers and George Washington’s Farewell Address we became aware of politicians fears of the formation of factions. They theorized that the factions would lie in political parties or even divisions between the North and the South. Fisher Ames and I can agree that the faction which would be responsible for a revolution were actually formed by the Black and White people in this nation:But in democratic states there will be factions.The sovereign power being nominally in the hands of all, will be effectively within the grasp of a FEW; and, therefore, by the very laws of our nature, a few will combine, intrigue, lie, and fight to engross it to themselves. All history bears testimony, that this attempt has never yet been disappointed (Ames).Black slaves were responsible for a number of revolts from slaverys conception until its end. Additionally freed slaves were the spearheaders of the Abolitionist movement. On the other side of the arguemnt were White slaveowners and other citizens who had a number of fears that motivated their support for the maintainence of institutionlized slavery.

Many confederates, like John Calhoun, believed “that slavery was a moral and poltical evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it not in this true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for freer institutions in the world.” Moreover, Calhoun specifically argued that: A large portion of the Northern States believed slavery to be a sin, and would consider it as an obligation of conscience to abolish it if they should feel themselves in any degree responsible for its continuance— and that this doctrine would necessarily lead to the belief of such responsibility. I then predicted that it would commence as it has with this fanatical portion of society, and that they would begin their operations on the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless— and gradually extend upwards till they would become strong enough to obtain political control, when he and others holding the highest stations in society, would, however reluctant, be compelled to yield to their doctrines, or be driven into obscurity (Calhoun). They found this system essential to the economy of the south and therefore detrimental to the sustenance of the American economy if it were to be abolished. Once slavery had caused a great enough division to incite war between the North and the South President Abraham Lincoln decided to abolish its legalization in 1860, regardless of the concerns of the Confederates. This action may have seemed like a step towards democracy but in practice it was not. Although slaves were emancipated there was no system enlisted to incorporate these newly freed people into the democratic system as citizens. Many slaves had no jobs, property, or education and rarely had families which made it hard for them to grapple with their new reality. Not to mention the tremendous burden of generations of emotional, physical and psychological abuse:Inevitably, when men have long been trained to violence and murder, the habit projects itself into Civil life after peace, and there is crime and disorder and social upheaval, as we who live in the backwash of World War know too well (Du Bois).Many White Southerners were in fear of “losing their jobs, being declassed, degraded, or actually disgraced; of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children; of the actual pangs of hunger, of dirt, of crime. And of all this, most ubiquitous in modern industrial society is that fear of unemployment.” This fear manifested a war which was first carried out by lawless violence and then organized crime through the establishment of hate groups like the Klu Klux Klan. The action of the freedom which is granted to all people by birth has been paid for by the deaths of thousands of Black people during the reconstruction era. The war between Black and White people left the American government yet another opportunity to extend democracy to these newly emancipated slaves; yet again the system failed.

As time progressed a number of policies and institutions were established which continued to make it hard for African Americans to gain social, economic and political equality in this country. By the 1950s “The idle, the ambitious, and the needy will band together to break the hold that law has upon them, and then to get hold of law. . . .” (Ames). This was the start of the Civil Rights era. After centuries of oppression the Black people of this nation banded together for a revolution which would lead to desegregation, citizenship and voting rights to name a few. However, African American activists and scholars began to realize that more changes had to be made to ensure equality, James Baldwin was one of those activists. He used his book The Fire Next Time to discuss the predetermined destiny that was imposed on Black people simply because of our race:This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that it should perish… for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were thus expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity (Baldwin). In the pages thereafter, Baldwin goes on about the systemic limitations that are placed on Black lives which were the reality for Black people during civil rights and remains a reality of our lives today. But concludes with a breathtakingly empathetic understanding of the rage white people have towards Black people which is rooted in the “fear of losing their identity”, an identity that is rooted in privilege, power and subjugation. That understanding undergirds Baldwin’s belief that “we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.” At this moment in time, Black people have come to terms with the fact that the powers within this nation and the “democracy” that runs it never considered a reality where their property will exist as citizens. Now that this has occurred we are faced with the question of how we are going to achieve a true extension of democracy to our people. Now we approach my main point. Although America has cycled through years of systematic tyranny and then democratic extension, that extension has failed to reach minorities. Rather than jumping at the many opportunities to provide Black Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans and immigrants the equal opportunities to participate in a democracy. Wolin (1986) brings up a profound point, although racial minorities and women have the right to participate in democratic systems like voting, the system still fails to extend these minorities access to equitable resources, educations, healthy environments, safe neighborhoods, adequate and accessible health care, nutritious food, sufficient housing and representation in media that isn’t only restricted to stereotypes of their actual characters. Time and time again the American political institutions have prioritized a balance of power which favors “ the two great divisions of society” which “are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected.” (Calhoun, Speech in the US Senate, August 1849) rather than reinforcing democractic institutions. Instead of actually providing the social services that a government should provide, they find covert ways to restrict racial minorities, women, members of the LGTBQ+ community and the poor from having valuable roles in democracy. These actions show the true nature of the American democratic system and illuminates the fact that it prioritizes its power structure over human rights.

We fail by considering American political thought to be anything but everevovling. The beauty of the Great American experiment is found in the evolution of each of its stages results. Throughout time we have gone through the cycles of tyranny and democracy; we have identified sexism, racism, classism and other power imbalances reinstated by the government. Most recently we have come the closest we have ever been to a truly democratic system with an increase of representation of minorities in Congress and the extension of basic rights to historically disenfranchised people. Yet in that same vain our current presidency has also been the most overtly sexist, xenophobic, classist and racist president in contemporary times. That occurrence may not be a bad thing. As this paper has proved American democracy is contantly formed and refoormed with yranny as a catalyst for it all. Maybe President Trump’s unprecedented leadership is a marker for a great change in American democracy. Maybe one day, after a few more centuries of tyranny and democracy, subjugation and liberation, fires and rebirths my descendants will be able to enjoy an America that is actually great.

Reference

Ames, Fisher. The Dangers of American Liberty. 1805.

Baldwin, James. The Fire next Time. 1st Vintage International ed, Vintage International, 1993.

Calhoun, John C. Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions(1837). 1837.

Du Bois, William E. B. Black Reconstruction in America: 1860 - 1880. 1. ed, The Free Press, 1998.

Shklar, Judith N. “Redeeming American Political Theory.” American Political Science Review, vol. 85, no. 1, Mar. 1991, pp. 3–15. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.2307/1962875.

Smith, Rogers M. “‘Our Republican Example’: The Significance of the American Experiments in Government in the Twenty-First Century.” American Political Thought, vol. 1, no. 1, May 2012, pp. 101–28. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1086/664593.

Wolin, Sheldon S. “Contract and Birthright.” Political Theory, vol. 14, no. 2, May 1986, pp. 179–93. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1177/0090591786014002001.

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premimtimes · 4 years

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I. Introduction

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invites proposals from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement the Supporting Advancement of Gender Equality (SAGE) project. SAGE is a response to declining opportunities for women to participate in Nigeria’s political and electoral processes. As an illustration of this decline, of the 654 members elected to the Nigerian Senate since 1999, only 36, or six percent, have been women. To help address these challenges, NDI is calling for applications from NGOs to partner on four distinct project areas: (1) coordination of NGO advocacy efforts, (2) advocacy for legal reforms, (3) advocacy for political party reforms and (4) entrenching a masculinities approach.

Goal:

The goal of SAGE is to increase women’s representation in public office through advocacy for policy and legal reform.

Project Timeline: July 1, 2020 – August 16, 2021. Applicants should indicate the number of months they would propose to complete their project activities.

Project Description:

Under SAGE, NDI will work with a coalition led by four NGO partners. The coalition will advocate for electoral reforms (to the Constitution and Electoral Act) and the passage of the Gender and Equal Opportunities (GEO) bill, and work with key political leadership to build greater support for women’s meaningful participation in politics. Partners will have the opportunity to leverage support from national and international working groups. Coalition partners will develop strategies to help political leaders to better understand, and to both privately and publicly acknowledge, how gender inequality limits the ability of individuals, political institutions, and communities to reach their full political, economic, and social potential.

Selecting only one of the four focus areas below, applicants should propose strategies and activities to fulfill the objectives of that role and contribute to the broader goal of SAGE.

1. Serve as secretariat of the SAGE program, produce an initial political-economy assessment, produce analyses as required, convene quarterly meetings, organize major program events, monitor and evaluate impact of all SAGE activities.

2. Lead SAGE efforts to remove legal barriers that limit women’s political participation. Undertake analysis of the Constitution and Nigerian legal framework and identify barriers to as well as opportunities for enhancement of women’s participation in the political process; establish formal liaison with the national assembly, report on trends in the national assembly to promote necessary amendments to the constitution and the laws; report on emerging issues in the national assembly.

3. Direct program engagement with political party leadership to promote the nomination of women candidates for political office.

4. Support an international consultant to be identified by SAGE to assist SAGE partners in recruiting men in key roles to support and drive SAGE objectives.

Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, NDI anticipates that some activities may take place virtually or through other remote engagements. Applicants should explain how they will adapt to circumstances emerging from the health effects and related government restrictions. Proposals should clearly demonstrate how SAGE’s objectives can be strategically achieved while prioritizing the health and safety of all staff and partners.

II. Awards

NDI plans to issue four awards, one each to the four selected NGOs. The award amount not exceeding the ceilings below will be awarded to successful NGOs:

[table id=317 /]

The proposal budget shall not exceed the amount stated above. Kindly note that your proposed budget does not need to cover the full amount if the activities can be realized with less than the maximum amount stated. Additionally, the proposed budget cannot include: grants to other organizations, micro-loans, or contingencies. All costs must be budgeted directly, in the NDI proposed format (see section VI below) and have explanatory budget notes. Procurement of new equipment is limited to $1,000.

III. Implementation Timeline

The implementation timeline for the SAGE project is July 1, 2020, to August 16, 2021

Partners Eligibility Criteria:

All applicants should be registered NGOs with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). They must be neutral and free of any conflict of interest related to partisan competition in the elections or national or local administration of the elections. They must be firmly independent, objective in their approaches, unbiased and able to work with all political parties.

Applicants should have a demonstrated interest in Nigeria’s electoral process, women’s programming, capacity to influence political processes and outcomes, legislative advocacy experience and access to legislators, strong networks and relationships with political parties. Applicants must demonstrate thorough financial management, monitoring and evaluation, internal control systems, policies and procedures that comply with established US and Nigeria Government standards, laws and regulations.

IV. Application Process:

Interested applicants should develop a full proposal not exceeding ten (10) pages and based on the following structure:

Problem Statement and Background (1 page)

Describe the key barriers to women’s political participation. The Background should include relevant analysis of the political and electoral context of women’s participation. Please identify the needs or problems that exist and briefly explain how the proposed activities will meet these needs and contribute to longer-term impacts of gender equality advancement. The background should describe implications of the current COVID-19 pandemic for project objectives.

Project Activities/Description (5 pages)

1) Project Secretariat (advocacy coordination): The objective of this NGO is to serve as the convener and secretariat for the SAGE coalition. This organization will also be responsible for coordinating the activities of the National Working Group (NWG) and the International Working Group (IWG). The NWG and IWG are expected to jointly offer a unified course of action to influence stakeholders at all levels for specific legal and political party policy reforms. This organization will generate technical analysis for the program, including a political economy analysis (PEA) to inform advocacy. This partner will produce monthly briefing papers, organize a meeting to formalize the NWG, a public media launch of SAGE project and as needed under the SAGE project. This organization will monitor and evaluate the impact of all SAGE activities. Organizations applying for this project focus area must have excellent media and communication skills, capacity to manage a coalition and engage high-level stakeholders.

[table id=318 /]

2) Legal Reforms Advocates: The partner for this focus area will be responsible for advocating for legal reforms to enhance women’s political participation in Nigeria. This partner should propose a plan to thoroughly review all electoral laws, regulations, and policies to identify barriers to women’s political participation and lead legislative advocacy for implementation of SAGE recommendations. In addition, this NGO in coordination with the program secretariat will design and implement a legislative advocacy plan to work directly with lawmakers to ensure they have all necessary information on proposed legislation including the GEO bill. Organizations applying for this program area must demonstrate prior experience in the analysis of laws legislative advocacy.

[table id=319 /]

3) Political Party Coordinator: The NGO partner for this focus area will be responsible for advocating to political parties on achieving gender equality. The NGO partner will identify persons with influence on political party leadership who support SAGE objectives and will engage with the leadership to support women’s participation in decision making and nomination processes. They will review political party policies and procedures and draft recommendations for improvements. In addition, the NGO partner will develop an advocacy plan to engage party leadership in support of SAGE objectives. Organizations applying for this program area must have experience working with senior political party leaders and expertise on party constitution and procedures.

[table id=320 /]

4) Masculinities Approach Advisory Partner: The advancement of gender equality is often limited by traditional power structures and gender identities, and requires broader work to shift cultures within institutions to allow for more meaningful participation of women. To complement the advocacy for legal and policy reforms under this project, this NGO will be responsible for helping coalition partners mobilize male leaders to become change agents and in advocacy processes, political parties, and the parliament. The partner will evaluate the nature and impacts of masculinities in political structures on democratic processes and inclusion, and produce a handbook on how to recruit and build male champions. The NGO will serve as an advisory group for the rest of the SAGE coalition, provide training for SAGE coalition partners using the handbook and monitor the implementation of the handbook and SAGE coalition strategies throughout the lifespan of the program. This partner should demonstrate understanding of masculinities theory, its application to advocacy, and the gendered nature of national politics.

[table id=321 /]

Interested organizations are expected to demonstrate how they would take advantage of the ongoing constitutional and electoral reform processes in Nigeria to influence reform. Note: Organizations can apply for only one of these award categories.

This section should include activities) that demonstrate the methods by which the deliverables listed above will be achieved. In addition applicants must describe COVID-19 mitigation tactics.

Organizational Capacity:

This section should provide information about the organization, including but not limited to:

o Organizational structure (core staff, staff size, composition and contact details of board of directors) and organization human resource policy document;

o Previous experience with gender equality programming initiatives; and

o Experience with developing and implementing external communication and outreach programs, including press and stakeholder outreach, traditional and social media and other communications;

o Information about the applicant organization’s financial management policies that would ensure grant funds from NDI are utilized in accordance with USAID financial standards. Successful applicants will complete a pre-award questionnaire form provided by NDI.

V. Evaluation Criteria

Project Activities/Description (40 points)

o The degree to which the applicant demonstrates capacity to achieve project goals, how they would take advantage of ongoing constitutional and electoral reform processes in Nigeria to inform reforms, and how it intends to set up a functional team to respond to the needs of the project; how the applicant intends to coordinate advocacy and external communication with other partnering organizations, initiate reforms within political parties, the legislature, and other identified electoral stakeholders; and how the applicant intends to manage finances.

Organizational Capacity (30 points)

o The degree to which the application can provide evidence that its proposed staff possesses working experience and leadership qualities necessary to successfully implement the proposed activities.

o The degree to which the application can demonstrate effective internal management of the organization, including oversight functions of the board and a statement assuring a policy against salary tithing.

Budget (30 points)

o The budget falls under the relevant ceiling.

o The degree to which the applicant can produce a budget that reflects cost reasonableness, effectiveness and consistency.

o The budget notes clearly provides justification and necessary connection between the budget and project activities.

Note: NGOs can apply for ONLY one of the four coalition leadership roles.

VI. Submission Format

Interested organizations must submit a full proposal in PDF format not exceeding ten pages by June 3, 2020. The proposal should be submitted to NDI by email to [email protected] with the name of your program area as the subject of the email. NDI will respond to questions that seek clarification on the goals, criteria, and conditions of this award. Questions should be submitted on or before May 20, 2020.

All applications must be submitted with the following attachments: A completed application should consist of the following:

1. Valid registration as NGO with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)

2. Technical proposal with activities

3. Budget in Microsoft Excel showing formulas

4. Budget notes

5. Completed pre-award questionnaire (The pre-ward questionnaire can be downloaded through this link)

6. Organization Human resource policy document

Note: Applications that do not include all six attachments will not be considered.

VII. About NDI

NDI is a nonpartisan, non-governmental organization that responds to the worldwide quest for popular civic participation, open and competitive political systems, and representative and accountable government. Since its founding in 1983, NDI and its local partners have worked to establish and strengthen democratic institutions and practices by building political and civic organizations, safeguarding elections and promoting citizen participation, openness and accountability in government. You can learn more about the Institute on our website, www.ndi.org.

Illustrative SAGE Workflow

PROMOTED: National Democratic Institute: Request for Application I. Introduction The National Democratic Institute (NDI) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invites proposals from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement the Supporting Advancement of Gender Equality (SAGE) project.

#Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)#Covid-19 pandemic #International Working Group (IWG)#National Democratic Institute #NDI #Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)#United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

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caveartfair · 7 years

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Venice Biennale Curator Announced—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

01 Ralph Rugoff, director of London’s Hayward Gallery, will serve as the artistic director of the 2019 Venice Biennale.

(via the Venice Biennale and The Art Newspaper)

The Venice Biennale board of directors announced Rugoff’s appointment Friday. “The Venice Biennale is the oldest and most prestigious exhibition of its kind internationally,” Rugoff told The Art Newspaper. “I am really looking forward to taking on this new challenge alongside next year’s momentous reopening of the Hayward Gallery and upcoming exhibition programme.” As artistic director, Rugoff will curate the main exhibition at the historic Giardini and Arsenale for the 58th edition of the prestigious Venice event, which opens May 11, 2019. Rugoff was appointed director of the Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre in 2006 and also served as the artistic director of the 13th Lyon Biennale in 2015. Rugoff’s Venice Biennale will follow this year’s edition—the highest trafficked ever—which was curated by the Centre Pompidou’s Christine Macel.

02 A scuffle broke out between police and protesters over the removal of 44 artworks from a museum in Spain’s Catalonia region.

(The Guardian)

Police and hundreds of protesters clashed outside the Museum of Lleida in Catalonia on Monday. The region has been seeking independence from Spain’s central government, which has at times resulted in violence. The confrontation between around 500 protesters and police outside the museum is the latest development in a long-running dispute between Catalonia and the neighboring Aragón region. Nuns from Aragón sold the pieces, including paintings and reliefs, to Catalonia in the 1980s, but Aragón authorities called the sale illegal and sought their return. After Spain asserted direct control over Catalonia amid the semi-autonomous region’s recent push for independence, a judge in November ordered the Spanish minister of culture to return the pieces to Aragón. The move was met with dismay from leaders of the Catalan independence movement, and furious demonstrators chanted “Hands up! This is a robbery!” as police and experts entered the museum to take possession of the pieces.

03 China ended an unofficial 11-month ban on South Korean art.

(via The Art Newspaper)

The embargo on the display of South Korean art in China began after the United States deployed an anti-missile system system to South Korea. The ban was not announced as official state policy, since such prohibitions in China often rely on “rumour and self-censorship,” noted The Art Newspaper. The embargo had come as a surprise to dealers; one only learned about it after being advised to leave Korean names off the artist list of an upcoming exhibition in China, for which the dealer was denied a permit because of the Korean artists he intended to show. Korean artists were also noticeably absent from booths at art fairs in China including Shanghai’s West Bund and Art021 fairs in November, though dispute that caused the ban came to an end in late October, following what The Art Newspaper described as “high level talks” between South Korea and China. But uncertainty lingers. “It’s difficult for people to know [what’s going on] because on a Tuesday, the Chinese government could have a problem with Korea, then on Wednesday decide everything is fine,” one specialist in the Chinese market told the paper.

04 Archaeologists discovered two tombs in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor.

(via BBC News)

The tombs were found in the Draa Abul Naga necropolis—an area famous for its temples and burial spaces. So far, excavation has yielded the discovery of intricate wall murals, painted masks of wood, and a roughly 3,500-year-old mummy thought to date back to Egypt’s New Kingdom, as reported by the BBC last Saturday. The country’s antiquities ministry claimed that a German archeologist actually found the sites in the 1990s, but they remained sealed until recently. Researchers have speculated that the mummy in one tomb, likely an ancient Egyptian official, may be one of two individuals—a person named “Djehuty Mes” or a scribe named “Maati”—whose names appeared engraved at one of the tombs. The second tomb has yet to be fully excavated.

05 Artforum moved to dismiss the lawsuit that centers on sexual harassment allegations against former publisher Knight Landesman.

(via artnet News)

Former Artforum employee Amanda Schmitt filed the suit against the influential magazine and Landesman on October 25th, recounting years of sexual harassment while she was an assistant at the publication, and in the years after she left. Landesman resigned in October, on the same day Schmitt filed her complaint, which included both her graphic account of being sexually harassed and accusations from eight other women. The legal basis for the suit against Artforum is not sexual harassment, since the statute of limitations for such a claim has passed. Instead, Schmitt has accused the publication and Landesman of slander, retaliation, gross negligence, and defamation. A lawyer for Artforum denied the charges, and moved to have the case dismissed last Friday. Landesman could not be reached for comment by artnet News. An attorney for Schmitt called the publication’s motion out of line with its public commitment to reforming its workplace, telling artnet News, “instead of celebrating Schmitt’s courage, Artforum is raising meritless arguments to try to get her case thrown out.”

06 The Guggenheim announced the artists shortlisted for the 2018 Hugo Boss Prize.

(via the Guggenheim)

Bouchra Khalili, Simone Leigh, Teresa Margolles, Emeka Ogboh, Frances Stark, and Wu Tsang are the six artists shortlisted for the biennial award. Established in 1996, the Hugo Boss Prize is among contemporary art’s most prestigious accolades. The winning artist receives $100,000 and a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. This year’s list features a diverse range of artists from four different countries (half are from the United States), all “working at the vanguard of contemporary art practice, exploring urgent social issues, and providing new artistic vocabulary through which to examine personal and universal themes,” said Nancy Spector, chief curator and artistic director at the Guggenheim. The final winner will be announced in the fall of 2018. Artist Anicka Yi took home the prize in 2016, using her solo Guggenheim show to stage the celebrated exhibition “Life is Cheap,” which featured live ants and a olfactory element meant to meld the odor of those insects with that of Asian-American women.

07 Over 250 Documenta artists and curators signed a petition against “profit obsession” following the 2017 edition’s cost overruns.

(via Artforum and GoPetition)

The petition proposes a new supervisory structure for the international art exhibition, in which “elected public officials are joined by representatives of Contemporary Culture, Education, and International museum visitors.” It also condemns the lack of response from Documenta 14 in the face of attacks from Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, and affirms geographic freedom for the fair. A portion of the petition reads: “The current board, comprising of elected officials (from SPD, CDU, GRÜNE, LINKE, and Independent) have remained silent while the far-right nationalist party AfD has called Documenta 14 public artwork ‘entstellte Kunst,’ evoking the Nazi term ‘degenerate art,’ and sued the curatorial and management team, and the former Lord Mayor of Kassel who chaired the board for previous 14 years, in an act of intimidation.” The quinquennial exhibition was held this year in Athens in addition to its traditional site of Kassel, Germany, where it has been held since 1955. The extra site was found to be a major factor behind the show’s cost overruns, causing a roughly $6 million debt. Signatories include the artists Christian Boltanski, Johan Grimonprez, Hans Haacke, Sanja Iveković, Marta Minujin, and Stanley Whitney, and members of the curatorial team of Documenta 14, such as Pierre Bal-Blanc, Hendrik Folkerts, Dieter Roelstraete, and Monika Szewczyk.

08 On average, works by women artists fetch less at auction than those by men, a new study found.

(via The Art Newspaper)

A study out of the University of Luxembourg examined auction data from 1970 to 2013, analyzing a total of 1.5 million transactions. Researchers found that women’s artworks sold for an average of $25,262, while men’s sold for $48,212. They ruled out factors that could offer a “primary explanation” for this difference, including the work’s aesthetic qualities and women’s comparatively limited access to the art world, instead attributing the monetary gap to “societal bias,” The Art Newspaper reported. The researchers also studied attitudes towards women artists, finding that they were consistently ranked lower than their male peers. In one experiment, 2,000 individuals were shown computer-generated images that were assigned names of male and female artists. The works attributed to women were rated lower than those attributed to men.

09 A Manhattan art dealer is facing federal charges following allegations that he stole millions from clients through the fraudulent sale of works by major artists.

(via Bloomberg)

Ezra Chowaiki is accused of selling works by Wassily Kandinsky and other major artists to investors, promising a “quick resale and hefty profit,” wrote Bloomberg. Those resales never materialized, according to the complaint, with Chowaiki (of the recently bankrupt New York gallery Chowaiki & Co. Fine Art Ltd) allegedly keeping the investors’ money and the work, which he often didn’t own in the first place. In one instance, a Cayman Islands company allegedly paid $900,000 to purchase 50 percent share in a sculpture on the understanding that Chowaiki had another buyer lined up to pay $2.15 million for the piece. But after wiring Chowaiki the money, the company learned Chowaiki didn’t even own the work itself. The scheme allegedly began in 2015 and lasted until last month, the same time the gallery went bankrupt. The gallery’s majority owner said he alerted police when he was made aware of Chowaiki’s suspicious dealings.

10 An investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that Savannah College of Art and Design’s president has used the non-profit school to earn millions of dollars.

(via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The lengthy profile of Paula Wallace, the Georgia college’s founder and president, details her near-absolute control over the institution, history of hiring family members, and outsized pay packages. In 2014, she was the highest-paid college president, earning $9.6 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Her compensation between 2011 and 2015 was nearly $20 million, over three times as much as what Harvard’s president earned over the same period, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. She also had use of lavish homes in Savannah and the French region of Provence provided by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). The school relies on tuition payments and other student fees as its main source of revenue, and accepted almost 94 percent of applicants in 2014, according to the paper, who graduate with student debt burdens roughly 25 percent higher than the national average. The paper also documented extensive use of non-disclosure agreements between the school and its employees.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams—a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told—sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. — Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 1964 I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both. — Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1843 The accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against celebrity (mostly Hollywood) men by women who, mostly, worked under them in some capacity, or were trying to further their career with acting roles or writing jobs, etc. have created a public response not reached since the *Recovered Memories* epoch of judicial debacles and mob hysteria a couple decades back. But two things have struck me about the rise in fervor, as it’s experienced on social media and in mass media, and that is that almost none of these celebrities is accused of rape (Weinstein is accused of rape in one case, which he denies). And yet the topic of rape is argued all the time from both genders. A *Teen Vogue* writer suggested that locking up a few innocent men was a small enough price to pay to get rid of (her words) *patriarchy*. Never mind, I know. But still, it’s out there, the zeitgeist. And the second thing is that race mediates this discourse in ways that are largely invisible. The vast majority of women commenting on social media, that I have read, are white. Almost all are educated. The celebrity accusers are almost all white. Now, there seems to be two hidden aspects to this public phenomenon; one is race, as I say, and the other is the normalizing of punishment as a principle — and more, an amnesia regarding civil liberties, the rule of law, due process, the 6th Ammendment to the Bill of Rights, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. All of which stipulate the presumption of innocence. As well as the right to a speedy trial and the right to face and question one’s accuser. Every person accused of a crime should have their guilt or innocence determined by a fair and effective legal process. But the right to a fair trial is not just about protecting suspects and defendants. It also makes societies safer and stronger. Without fair trials, trust in justice and in government collapses. — Jago Russell But then, this idea of presumed innocence, along with unanimous verdicts and the like, are gradually being phased out of Western legal practice. The EU, for example, is embracing *Corpus Juris*, a system friendly to things like the Inquisition. It will reach the shores of North America, rest assured. And this trial by twitter is the front edges of that migration of draconian anti democratic autocratic jurisprudence. The canary in the mine shaft as it were. Almost all of the men accused in the fallout from the Weinstein story have left their jobs. Most deny the accusations. But almost all have had careers ruined. Now, in the US, close to 4000 black men were lynched in the U.S. between 1887 and 1950. Most in the South. With Alabama and Mississippi leading the way. Terror lynchings were horrific acts of violence whose perpetrators were never held accountable. Indeed, some “public spectacle lynchings” were attended by the entire white community and conducted as celebratory acts of racial control and domination. ( ) Large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands and including elected officials and prominent citizens, gathered to witness pre-planned, heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment, and/or burning of the victim. White press justified and promoted these carnival like events, with vendors selling food, printers producing postcards featuring photographs of the lynching and corpse, and the victim’s body parts collected as souvenirs. — Stewart Tolnay and E.M. Beck, A Festival of Violence, 1995 A good many lynchings were precipitated by accusations of rape. In fact, the entire psychological underpinnings of white supremicism carries a sexual connotation. Make any list of anti-black terrorism in the United States, and you’ll also have a list of attacks justified by the specter of black rape. The Tulsa race riot of 1921—when white Oklahomans burned and bombed a prosperous black section of the city—began after a black teenager was accused of attacking, and perhaps raping, a white girl in an elevator. The Rosewood massacre of 1923, in Florida, was also sparked by an accusation of rape. And most famously, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered after allegedly making sexual advances on a local white woman.” — Jamelle Bouie, The Deadly History of “They’re Raping our Women“, Slate, June 18, 2015. Now, again, to return to the current climate of white feminist outrage at, not rape, but what legally passes for in most states, ‘sexual assault’, or ‘sexual harassment’. To be clear, sexual harassment is defined as: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment, submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individuals, or such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. (29 C.F.R. § 1604.11 [1980]) In most cases under scrutiny by media, there is no work related causation, other than the implicit coercion that authority carries with it. And this is very much to the point. Those white educated mostly affluent women outraged over unwelcome advances, are not asking for compensation in relation to missed work. They are just angry at the indignity and humiliation of white patriarchy and obnoxious and even, often, threatening white bosses. And sometimes not even bosses. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about cat calls and subtle looks and touches that are all borderline legal problems for the perpetrators. There is only partially submerged or hidden trope in the public narrative around this celebrity misconduct. And that is race. Whites could not countenance the idea of a white woman desiring sex with a Negro, thus any physical relationship between a white woman and a black man had, by definition, to be an unwanted assault. — Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, January 2003. Now, there is something else being obscured in all this hashtag outrage. And that is the criminality and coercion of all labor under capitalism. Remember, too, that there is silence thus far from the most vulnerable women working in the West; au pairs, maids, factory workers and the like. Many of whom are immigrants or from immigrant families. Also, the most acute violence directed at the working class can be found in the near servitude of citrus pickers and migrant workers in states like Florida, California and Texas. There is very little media attention given to this.1 And one could also examine the actual rape conditions of American prisons and county correctional facilities (see below). The clear rape by proxy of young people intentionally put into cells with sexual predators. This is the disciplining of the underclass via sexual violence. But back to celebrity wrongdoing. The Kevin Spacey saga is interesting because Spacey is gay and the conditions and cultural signs are not really the same. The long standing marginalization of the queer community and the history of closeted movie stars is all pretty well known. Gay men were, historically, highly vulnerable and provided with almost no legal protection. So it is worth pondering the chorus of condemnation directed at Spacey. I have no doubt Spacey is guilty, at the very least, of being a powerful white man who abused his position and maybe worse. Maybe much worse given his history of familiarity with Jeffrey Epstein and the Clintons. But that is not today’s topic. The ever more conservative culture of white gay America is clear. And it is a reaction to those decades and decades of violence directed against it. But as in straight America, the most vulnerable are the poor, and much of the trans community. The affect and influence of physical beauty plays into these narratives in a profound way. As does the commodification and fetishizing of youth and beauty in the society overall. The selling of seduction. And in Hollywood, sex is the currency driving the industry. There is a massive business in personal trainers and cosmetic surgery. And in youth. So, one is talking about a country in which Puritan values run into their flip side in the selling of sex, both literal and figurative. But then the most repressive countries of the world, and historically, also have the most incidents of sexual violence. It is useful perhaps to revisit Marcuse’s notion of repressive desublimation. The 1% (or ruling class) are there to distract the populace from the growing economic chasm between themselves and the rest of us. And this is done by providing cheap satisfactions. The system grants the illusion of reform but simply repackages the same. White male power will now adjust to present itself as caring and sensitive to causing offense. Or will there be genuine structural and substantive change? The odds are against change if it challenges the ruling class. I also have noticed a new sort of white male subject position that insists on being the most feminist man in any discussion, and publicly self lacerates as evidence of his personal evolution. The confessional element in public discourse today looms over all of this. But I want to return to race a moment, here. Black male artists and performers were killed for having sexual or romantic relationships with white women (Sam Cooke comes to mind, or the well known story of Sammy Davis Jr. and Kim Novak). America was a slave owning society. It was built by slave labor, and to an only slightly lesser degree by immigrant labor. White men control the seats of power. They did in colonial America and they do today. There is an indelible psychoanalytical theme buried in American history and it turns on the vicious lynch mobs and race riots of the last century and before, and on the genocide of Native Americans. And it can seen in the history of the so called *Indian Schools* that forcibly took young native Americans from their families and placed them in boarding schools where the intention was to beat the *Indian* out of them (see Dennis Banks, who died just this last month). For there is something that had to be pacified and neutralized in indigenous peoples, just as there was in the former slave communities that were black America. And this is the narrative of White Supremacism. And it goes back to the first European ships landing on the shores of North America. The Puritan zealots, repressed and anal sadistic, and all the various sub categories of dissident Protestant sects that settled what is now the United States, shaped the identity of authority in this new country. They instilled a sense of superiority and purity — of moral cleanliness. The Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony outnumbered Plymouth’s Pilgrim settlers by about 10 to 1 and absorbed them in 1691. It is mainly the Puritans and their descendants, such as the Minutemen of Concord, who form the popular image of America’s early settlers. Ronald Reagan, for example, famously borrowed the wish that “we shall be a city upon a hill” – to be a “new Jerusalem,” God’s light to the nations – from the speech leader John Winthrop gave aboard the Arabella, the ship taking the first Puritan settlers to the New World. — Claude S. Fischer, Made in America, University of Chicago Press, 2010 Cotton Mather, the quintessential Puritan public servant, saw his congregation as a ‘chosen people’ and the elect of God. And their role was to clear space for the second coming of Christ. The Puritan sermon was not without clear instruction to beat the Black Devil back — as allegory and in daily life. Blackness was associated with Satan. It is interesting that as early as 1760 there are court records of severe brutal and sadistic punishment for white women caught having sex with black men. The woman caught with a white man usually paid a fine. The woman caught with an African was whipped, stripped naked, shunned and driven out of the settlement. Again, the ideological insistence on White specialness goes back to the founding fathers. And the sexual prohibitions placed on the women of the colony, who were second class citizens but still far more legally secure than black or Native women, were carefully codified. The piety of Antebellum America was one driven by the sadism and sexual panic associated with the *wildness* of the native or slave. And while one can accuse me of simplifying what is obviously complex, the point in context here is that the sexual repression of American puritanism ran through the society from its founding and it has never left. From the Scottsboro Boys to the Central Park Five, the stories share certain clear sensibilities. And today, in an age of electronic media and mass marketing of everything, including lingerie for five year olds (see Victoria’s Secret) this eruption of anger and outrage at the behavior of privileged white men, feels oddly linked to that shadow guilt and resentment of the white ruling class. The white patriarchy needs to abuse the help. And if the slave is now too much of a threat, then women will suffice. And, this is Capitalism after all, where everything is for sale. And much of the language of this anger at white patriachy takes on the quality of self help books and the therapy culture that favors empowerment over organizing. It also manufactures a kind of theatre of grief, in which the word “feelings” is used quite a bit. This is anger predicated upon an identity consensus. And the massive hashtag response speaks to a shared world view. There is a progressive aspect to it all, and that is clear. I think, anyway. The boorish and abusive and humiliating — a key word — behavior of men like Harvey Weinstein, and their default belief that they can do what they want, with women, with anyone under them, is being exposed. And that is good. (a side bar note…Richard Dreyfuss’ son gave an account of Spacey’s ugly behavior, but it’s interesting that the nepotism of this man even having an acting job passes without comment). But it is also reinforcing class distinctions. And it is somehow exclusionary — as identity based correctives always are. And in a culture of celebrity, some might suggest change will come only through cases involving the famous. Perhaps. But again, these accusations, many of them relatively minor, need to be placed in a context both of history and of class. None of the public discourse includes the fundamental coercion and exploitation of unprotected workers at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. There is little doubt that far worse occurs daily to less visible women than those working in media and mass culture. Just as, again, the U.S. Military is a shockingly out of control environment for female soldiers. But those without visibility, those whose abusers are not well known, they may or may not benefit anything from all this. But these women are less telegenic, and often uneducated. And then there is the violence against trans-women of color, which is well documented and of a severity and pervasiveness that amounts to a national disgrace. And yet, again, there is little discussion of it. It is simply a topic unsuited for mass media, and the selling of commodities. The outrage is, then, selective. This doesn’t mean many or even the majority of accusations are not legitimate. That’s the difficulty. But legitimate does not grant blanket condemnation. Cases are unique. Another factor that is being blurred. Everything is collapsed into rape, usually. And I’ve even heard the throwing about of the term pedophilia — something totally unrelated, actually. There is something curious and unsettling in not seeing the dangers of a mass enjoyment of punishment. For that is what disturbs me the most. The pleasure of the mob. For the issue here is to contextualize white male power and to contextualize the nature of selectivity in caring. And to unpack the frisson and selling of what is coming to be labeled ‘The Weinstein Effect’. Lynchings had vendors and souveniers. This is not the same, and yet there are similarities. And the manufacturing of the survivor identity (which originated with the Pre School cases) is handed out even if all that was survived was an unwelcome advance. What will be the effect down the road on sexual choices that may be seen as non-mainstream? The public narrative so far is linked with Hollywood. That should provide a moment of cautious hesitation for everyone. The decline of support for liberal approaches and the inability of liberals to solve the apparent paradoxes created by their beliefs left the crime issue to the conservatives. Conservatives pointed to the failures of liberal programs and emphasized that crime was a matter of individual choice and wickedness. They adhered to the “crime control” model of criminal justice that emphasizes “efficiency” in the criminal process. The model envisions a summary process, much like an assembly line, with reliance placed on administrative rather than judicial decision making. Central to the ideology of the crime control model are “the presumption of guilt. — Lynn N. Henderson, “The Wrong’s of Victims Rights”, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 1985. So, at the center of this, legally, is the victim’s rights movement. Now, partly this came from the quite correct lobbying from women’s movements regarding mistreatment of rape victims in court proceedings, and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But the changes, legally, were quickly appropriated by conservative forces. Lynn Henderson again… Victim’s rights proponents have succeeded in inducing the adoption of preventive detention laws in at least nine states. Victim’s rights advocates have played a role in bringing about other changes in criminal law and procedure. Partly as a result of victim’s rights advocacy, the number of laws requiring mandatory restitution to victims by offenders has also increased. Most of the victim’s rights activity has been far from dispassionate, and currently, the victim’s fights “movement” has a decidedly conservative bent. Although “victim’s rights” may be viewed as a populist movement responding to perceived injustices in the criminal process, genuine questions about victims and victimization have become increasingly coopted by the concerns of advocates of the “crime control” model of criminal justice. — Lynn N. Henderson, “The Wrong’s of Victims Rights”, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 1985. The image conjured by the phrase *victim* is that of an innocent victim. Again, the totalizing logic at work. The image for most of white America is again racially mediated. Victims are those hit by stray bullets from drive by shootings in gang wars (black and brown gangs). Victims are those nice folks mugged in public parking garages, and etc. The image is that of the non-provoking actor in a public morality play. Henderson (and others) have noted, too, that nobody can allow themselves to be seen as anti-victim. Hence the defendant is robbed of even more of his or her rights. And additionally, there is a rather large discussion to be had regarding the psychological damage from what are called *core crimes* (strong arm robbery, kidnapping, murder, rape, and aggravated assault). These are those traumas that force the victim to confront mortality. And such events are life altering. So, again, it is important not to conflate unwelcome come-ons with actual forcible rape. One thing is clear, though, and that is that the erosion of The Bill of Rights (something Obama helped shred) will accelerate now and these revelations on the guilt of the famous will help fast track new intrusions of privacy with added surveillance and police powers. Proof of guilt will soon seem a quaint idea if asked for, and due process a historical artifact, just as are habeas corpus, and double jeopardy. One should read the case histories of those freed by the Innocence Project. Many are rape (or include rape) cases. And the desire for shared victimhood is a powerful intoxicant. And the media bestowing terms like *heroic* on those coming forward seems oddly complicit in ruling class intentions to fully control the populace. For that IS the goal. Those in power, in positions of authority, feel immune to penalty. And largely they are immune. Just as police are rarely prosecuted for shooting black men and women. Prisons are not for the rich. They are for the poor. The questions about history and context are important and should be what the discussion focuses on. Rather than sanctioning white bourgeois grief and anger. I will end with a short anecdote. When I was in my early twenties I was arrested for robbery. I later beat that charge in a jury trial. It was not my first arrest, nor to be my last. But it was the first hold in custody that lasted longer than overnight. During my two week stay at L.A. County Jail I was in the general population. And LA County is one of the most overcrowded jails in the world. One night a guy came up to me right as the buzzer went off to return to your cell. I think you had ten or eleven seconds to get back to your cell before the doors closed. If you were caught outside you went to the hole. This guy was big. Very big. And he said, ‘I been watching you. I like your eyebrows…how they curve’. (yeah, well, that’s what he said). And then he said he had arranged with the trustee to have me spend the night in his cell (with six other guys). I said no, man, I don’t fuck around. But he started dragging me toward his cell. I yanked free and hit him as hard as I could in the face. He barely blinked. But time was short so he just said very calmly…’OK youngster, tomorrow night then’. And he ran down to his cell. I stepped into my cell and sat down. This old speed freak was across from me on the other bunk. I remember his name was Dino. I said, man, did you see that? He nodded. I said, what’s gonna happen? He said, well, your gonna get fucked. I lay there that night in a cold sweat. At 4 AM a guard came by and yelled…”Steppling, roll em up….”. I had gotten bailed out. What might have happened had someone not posted bail? I’d have been raped. And probably badly beaten for not going quietly. * Nobodies, The New Yorker, April 21, 2003. http://clubof.info/

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vmelo22-blog · 7 years

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Gender and Sexuality Portfolio Post One: Introduction to Special Interest Topic of Motherhood

As discussed in Gender Stories: Negotiating identity in a binary world, a gender binary system exists in our society, which appoints all people to one of two identities- male or female (Foss, Domenico, & Foss, 2013). The authors conceptualize the gender binary system as a matrix that serves as the backdrop for our daily gendered experiences, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. From our gender identity and gender expression, to our biological sex and attraction to others, the gender binary matrix functions as an ever-present and pervasive system that influences each of the different components of our gender, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. The gender binary not only restricts the number of gender identities and sets males and females as opposites, but it also creates a hierarchy in which one category is more valued than the other and suggests that the distinction between the categories is natural and inevitable (Foss, Domenico, & Foss, 2013). Even more, the gender binary reinforces distinct, normative roles for men and women and prescribes binary ideals of appearance, behavior, and personality (Foss, Domenico, & Foss, 2013). Starting in childhood and continuing throughout adulthood, we face pressures to conform to this socially-constructed “reality” of gender that is based on norms that are oftentimes impractical and unattainable. For many, this results in a constant and futile struggle to reconcile one’s complex and evolving gender with constraining norms, such as the “mythical norm” of “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure” (Launius & Hassel, 2015, p. 73). These gender norms are endorsed by the gender binary matrix yet are not necessarily enabled by it, given the complex intersection of gender with other micro-level identities (race, sexuality, class, age, etc.) and macro-level institutions (government and legal agencies, media, marriage structures, religion, educational institutions, etc.).

Through personal reflection on the gender binary matrix and the way it has influenced my behaviors and beliefs as an adult, I have identified motherhood as a special interest topic within the study of gender and sexuality due to the influence that my conceptualization of “motherhood” has had on my prospective career choices. I classify myself as a young, heterosexual, female minority of Hispanic ethnicity and low socioeconomic family background. Unlike many women of a similar ethnicity and socioeconomic status, I have been privileged to pursue a college education and I am now among the limited number of women who have the opportunity to pursue higher education and a well-established career. Specifically, I am an aspiring physician who envisions using an obstetrics and gynecology specialty to practice humanistic medicine that empowers disadvantaged women with the knowledge, support, and medical treatment that they need to take control of their health. Whether it comes to intellectual capabilities, passion, or the physical stamina and mental strength that is needed for this career, there is nothing that says I am not fit to pursue this career. On the contrary, I believe that my minority and low socioeconomic family status, Spanish ethnicity, exposure to substance abuse and mental health issues, and experience with public health work has equipped me with valuable competencies regarding the complexity of health that make me exceptionally well suited to pursue a career in medicine. Yet, in making my career choices, the seemingly impending challenge of motherhood almost served to dissuade me from choosing a profession that I feel is truly my vocational calling. I am 21 years old, have yet to commence medical school (let alone meet a suitable partner), and I am already feeling pressure to prepare myself to balance my career with the responsibility of caring for a family and living up to the idealized expectations of a mother who is selfless, devoted, and the primary caregiver to her children. This pressure, and my previously unconscious connection between womanhood and motherhood, is the gender binary matrix at play. It is the unwarranted, yet internalized sense of binary gender ideals that dictates what I should value in life as a woman. This reflection has sparked my interest in exploring the intersection between gender studies and motherhood to better understand my own gender experience and the experience of the women that I hope to one day serve as an obstetrician/gynecologist.

I began my review of the gender studies literature by using search terms such as “shame,” “pressure,” and “career” in conjunction with “motherhood.” Each search received between 4 and 29 results- “shame” having the least results and “career” having the most. A wide range of approaches to studying the challenges of womanhood and motherhood were presented. More specifically, the research questions centered around understanding how binary ideals for women and motherhood affected either 1) their individual mental and general health outcomes or 2) their career outlooks and expectations. The methodologies included surveys with a snowball sampling technique, cross-sectional study surveys, in-depth and semi-structured interviews, and analysis of online comments through feminist, discursive lens. Overall, the results showed the importance of assessing both micro- and macro-level influences on women’s gendered experience in order to create social policies that effectively enable women to have autonomy over their gendered experience. Many authors called for further studies addressing how women’s micro- and macro-level influences interact. With a few exceptions, most of the authors were females associated with academic institutions. Applying an intersectional feminist lens (which seeks to understand how women’s various identities intersect to influence their individual and institutional level experiences) to my own analysis of the literature, the articles can be compared and contrasted according to how they addressed the questions of “What about women?” and “Which women?” in relation to motherhood (Launius & Hassel, 2015).

To address the question “What about women?” (i.e. what are women experiencing) with regards to motherhood, several authors acknowledged the socio-cultural context that has created a gendered nature of parenting where women carry the primary responsibility of caring for the home and children (Blithe, 2017; Crofts & Coffey, 2017; Dow 2016; Henderson, Harmon, & Newman, 2017; Watt & McIntosh, 2012). This gendered pressure experienced by mothers (and not by fathers) influences women’s work and family decisions. Although the authors acknowledge that social changes, such as the women’s right movement of the 1960s and 1970s, have granted women agency in the public sphere, they continually note that women face cultural contradictions between the public, work sphere and the private, home sphere (Crofts & Coffey, 2017; Dow 2016; Henderson, Harmon, & Newman, 2017; Watt & McIntosh, 2012). The economic need for families to have dual incomes in our contemporary U.S. capitalist culture, and the expectation that women be fully dedicated to their employment, conflicts with the expectation that women be intensive mothers who prioritize parenting and commit to caring for the family (Crofts & Coffey, 2017; Dow 2016; Henderson, Harmon, & Newman, 2017; Watt & McIntosh, 2012). Two approaches were taken to examine the effects of the binary ideologies and cultural contradictions revolving motherhood—the authors I assessed studied either 1) the mental health effects of the impractical binary expectations (Henderson, Harmon, & Newman, 2017; Taylor & Wallace, 2012; Witvliet, Arah, Stronks, & Kunst, 2014) or 2) the consequences of the cultural contradictions in relation to women’s careers and public sphere expectations (Blithe, 2017; Crofts & Coffey, 2017; Dow 2016; Hoffman, 2017; Jacques & Radtke, 2012; Mariskind, 2017; Watt & McIntosh, 2012). Henderson, Harmon, and Newman (2017) employed a feminist sociology perspective to do a macro-level analysis of how the intensive mothering ideologies and the resulting pressure to be a perfect mother adversely affect the mental health outcomes of women. They found that the “perfect mother” ideology resulted in negative mental health outcomes (such as stress, anxiety, guilt, and low self-efficacy) for all mothers studied, regardless of whether or not the mothers bought into the ideology. This research highlighted the importance of looking at the macro-level of dominant ideologies and helped to reframe idealized motherhood as a public social issue and not a personal choice (Henderson, Harmon, & Newman, 2017). The theme of balancing macro-level analysis with micro-level analysis was also found throughout the literature that focused on the consequences of cultural contradictions in relation to women’s careers and public sphere expectations.

Although all of the authors I reviewed sought to understand women’s challenges with motherhood by asking about what women are experiencing, only a few tried to understand the nuanced lived experience of idealized motherhood by asking “Which women?”. Contrary to Henderson, Harmon, and Newman (2017), Dow (2016) found that the same binary mothering ideologies do not influence all women. Dow’s research showed that cultural expectations among African American mothers combine with structural and economic constraints to form the foundation of an alternate ideology of mothering that frames how women make decisions regarding motherhood (Dow, 2016). Dow connected a micro-level analysis of race with a macro-level analysis of ideology. Similarly, Hoffman (2017) asked “Which women?” by employing a micro-level analysis of class and its intersection with work and motherhood. Like Mariskind (2017), Hoffman’s (2017) research also focused on assessing and enabling parental leave policies that help women deal with the transition to motherhood. Paid parental leave policies, although scarce in the U.S., can provide a way for mothers to integrate their roles as both workers and caregivers (Mariskind, 2017). In assessing the association between self-assessed general health in women, motherhood, and gender inequality, Witvliet, Arah, Stronks, and Kunst (2014) chose to include a micro-level analysis of the role of marriage status and found that lone mothers reported the highest odds of poor general health. Age, as a micro-level identity, was assessed by Crofts and Coffey (2017), as well as Jacques and Radtke (2012). Their research focused on young women and their internalization of cultural ideals of womanhood in light of the post-feminist and neoliberal discourses of autonomy and individualism (Crofts & Coffey, 2017; Jacques & Radtke, 2012). Both studies found that young women are still aware of and feeling pressured by hegemonic motherhood ideologies, despite identification with the post-feminist and neoliberal discourses of “choice” (Crofts & Coffey 2017; Jacques & Radtke, 2012). The continued presence of hegemonic motherhood ideologies is framed as a major obstacle to achieving gender equality in the workplace.

Although significant strides have been made with women’s rights movements during the last two centuries, a gender binary matrix still exists and creates hegemonic ideologies that influence women’s work and family decisions. Women face a society that tells them that womanhood and motherhood are one in the same. They are expected to take on the responsibility of balancing their public and private spheres, but are set up for failure given the unrealistic and contradicting cultural expectations between their work and home lives. Contemporary women are told to “do it all”-- be loyal and committed to your work but prioritize motherhood and be a selfless and devoted caregiver. Women even pressure one another to “have it all,” while propagating a facade of “choice” in the matter. The results are adverse personal health outcomes and gender inequality in the workforce. To move forward with addressing these issues, idealized motherhood must be reframed as a public social issue and not a “personal choice”. There are complex interactions between micro-level identities (such as race, nationality, class, age etc.) and macro-level ideologies and structural institutions that need to be further studied to understand women’s challenges with motherhood. By further exploring the topic of motherhood in gender studies, I hope to learn more about the micro- and macro-influences in women’s lives and how this knowledge may be applied to enable women to construct their own ideals of good motherhood.

Works Cited

Blithe, S.J. (2017). This is not where we thought we would be: reviewing

the promise of feminism at the intersection of women and work. Women

and Language, 39.2, 31-51. doi: 10.1177/2046147X14563430.

Crofts, J., & Coffey, J. (2017). Young women’s negotiations of gender, the body

and the labor market in a post-feminist context. Journal of Gender

Studies, 26(5), 502-516. doi:10.1080/09589236.2015.1130610.

Dow, D.M. (2016). Integrated motherhood: beyond hegemonic ideologies of

motherhood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78, 180-196. doi:

10.1111/jomf.12264.

Foss, S.K., Domenico, M.E., Foss, K.A. (2013). Gender Stories: Negotiating

identity in a binary world. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Henderson, A., Harmon, S., & Newman, H. (2016). The price mothers pay, even

when they are not buying it: mental health consequences of idealized

motherhood. Sex Roles, 74, 512- 526. doi: 10.1007/s11199-015-0534-5.

Hoffman, C.M. (2017). “I got lucky”: class reproduction across the transition to

motherhood. The Journal of Women and Social Work, 32(4), 557-573. doi:

10.1177/0886109917713976.

Jacques, H.A., & Radtke, H.L. (2012). Constrained by choice: young women

negotiate the discourses of marriage and motherhood. Feminism &

Psychology, 22(4), 443-461. doi:10.1177/0959353512442929.

Launius, C., Hassel, H. (2015). Threshold concepts in women’s and gender

studies: Ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing. New York, NY: Taylor &

Francis.

Mariskind, C. (2017). Good mothers and responsible citizens: analysis of public

support for the extension of paid parental leave. Women’s Studies

International Forum, 61, 14- 19. Doi: 10.1016/j.wsif.2017.01.003.

Susan, W., & McIntosh, B. (2012). The motherhood career slide: a recent study

reveals that gender perceptions have a negative impact on women’s

career progression in nursing. Nursing Standard, 27 (4), 62-63. doi:

10.7748/ns2012.09.27.4.62.p9473.

Taylor, E. N., & Wallace, L. E. (2012). For shame: feminism, breastfeeding

advocacy, and maternal guilt. Hypatia, 27(1) 76- 98. doi: 10.1111/j.1527-

2001.2011.01238.x.

Witvliet, M.I., Arah, O.A., Stronks, K., & Kunst, A.E. (2014). A global study on

lone mothers: exploring the associations of self-assessed general health

with motherhood types and gender inequality in 32 countries. Women’s

Health Issues, 24(2), e177-e185. doi:10.1016/j.whi.2013.12.001.

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6thandbleecker-blog1 · 7 years

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Women As a Channel for Sexuality: But This Time, Non-Normative Sexuality

The Western stigma against polyamorous relationships will inevitably face its demise as women find independence outside of marriage, and the state can no longer instantiate respected recognition for relationships. With the rise of the single woman, sexuality and family structures will be redefined and determined through what the state fears is the demise of its control, surveillance, and monitoring of female bodies. Historically, any non-normative, that is non-heterosexual, non-monogamous relationships have encountered rigid, confining, and judgmental systems that deter and prevent legal recognition and legitimacy. Though the state still maintains some agency over the sexuality and behavior of citizens, individuals, particularly women, are choosing not to participate in the system of marriage entirely. Thus, the freedom of female sexuality is fueling the freedom and rise of non-normative relationships like polyamory because women’s lives outside of traditional, male dominated forms of political inclusion, such as marriage, call for different fulfillments.

Polyamory is relevant in contemporary society because intimate relationships and individual roles have experienced a transformation. The rise of the single woman in America has changed landscapes of life, including demands for pay equity, universal pre-K, and accessible reproductive rights. The legality of same-sex marriage has also transformed the nuclear family and challenged the institution of marriage as a mechanism to ensure heterogeneous relationships and procreation.

Currently, polyamory exists mostly as an underground or private lifestyle. Polyamory means to have more than one romantic partner with the consent and full knowledge of everyone involved. This type of relationship could mean a multitude of scenarios, from triads, to married couples finding separate partners, or sharing the same partners. Polyamory is not reducible to solely sexual aspects of a relationship; polyamorous relationships are all encompassing; they are a lifestyle, a companionship, a pool of income, or a support system. “Not all polyamorous people have multiple equally committed relationships, and many do designate a more central (typically live-in) relationship as ‘primary.’”1 The individuation of polyamorous relationships makes it unspecific and contingent on the philosophy of those involved in the configuration.

The definition of polyamory emphasizes long-term, emotionally intimate relationships. It is not about casual, open-relationships.2 Especially in polyamorous families, these terms and assumptions trivialize the validity of a polyamorous structure. Strictly sexual non-monogamies are also valid as long as it is consensual and honest for those involved. Polygamy, on the other hand, is the practice or condition of having more than one spouse, which does not apply to polyamory. And the legal reality is that polygamy is considered a crime.

The stigma against multiple partners is more than 1,850 years old.3 The structure of having multiple partners has been argued to be unjust, unnatural, and unfair to wives and children involved. The case for monogamous marriage begins with the claim that monogamy ensures the equal dignity and respect in the domestic sphere.4 History has shown that this is not the always case. In Ancient Greece, marriage functioned as an apparatus of the state and the political community. The primary mode of men attaining political involvement or participating within the city-state was to own land. Land was allotted to lineages, not individual men, ensuring that land allotments could then be inherited to another generation afterwards. This system consequently made the partnership and sexual activity of men and women a political and economic enterprise which the state’s existence depended on. And so, the material capacity of marriage was in its power to secure land and property ownerships, which equated to political participation, and which also created the obligation and anxiety to have a family. This anxiety of fertility and reproductive health was then placed on the female, whose purpose in marrying was to give her husband children.5 Once a woman became a wife, her body held an enormous responsibility for the state.

But this anxiety over national population, land ownership, and oligarchies is no longer relevant. Instead, marriage institutes aspects of capitalism to ensure specific social behaviors and culture. In empirical studies, marriage strategically “reduces male reproductive competition and suppresses intra-sexual competition, which shrinks the size of the pool of low-status, risk-oriented, unmarried men.”6 Marriage is also primarily a means to ensure that children are raised by one mother and one father.7 Marriage still withstands as a way to ensure beneficial behaviors for the state, but does not recognize the change in Western relationships and how individuals interact and utilize marriage.

Esther Perel, a Sex and Relationship Therapist, argues that today’s monogamous marriages and relationships fail more than ever because people look to one person to be their best friend, trusted confidant, supporter, and lover for life. She also notes that the definition of monogamy is outdated and no longer means what it used to or compliments the individualism of modern relationships (watch video). The prospect of monogamous relationships is overbearing, the semiotics of marriage are shifting, and women are attaining a newfound freedom and agency over their decisions in motherhood and love.

These all encompass a gap which polyamory fills. Polyamory disperses the many desires and demands Western relationships involve. It is the answer to the alternative of marriage, and can develop the devotion and degree of seriousness that most people associate with only marriage.8 The individuals who are consciously rejecting or postponing marriage are women. Women who have historically married much earlier and more often. For women, polyamory can be a way to have more control of professional and personal lives without the sacrifice that marriage might mean for them. Essentially, polyamory is a way for women to have more autonomy over their bodies and sexuality because in so many aspects of their lives, they lose and lack that autonomy.

For example, pregnancy has become a cultural phenomenon and a major point of discussion in contemporary political campaigns. When a woman becomes pregnant, whether or not she wants to be so, she is subject not only to her fetus’ symbolic, defining power in American politics, but also ‘patient-hood’ as opposed to ‘personhood.’ In Rosiland Pollack Petchesky’s text, “Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction,” she questions whether or not new reproductive technological tools, particularly the ultrasound machine, pose a threat or present an opportunity for women. She ask if the fetal image reinforces pressures on women to bear children or if it gives women freedom? Ultimately, the issue at stake is a control of power, that Petchesky’s views is in the eyes of men, literally. Her argument is that the fetal image reinstates the woman as a spectacle for the male gaze, revealing the systems, strategies, and objects in place to monitor and control the capacities of female sexuality and reproductive nature. More importantly, this text highlights the danger in abstracting the woman’s body in comparison to a fetus, giving the fetus autonomy, and possibly ignoring the woman’s complex personhood, her relationships, economic situation, health needs, and personal desires. This text exemplifies the use of medical technology as a source of power and surveillance over women’s bodies, whether or not they desire to be pregnant in a society that is still not designed to aid single mothers, pregnant women, and working mothers, or a combination of all three.

Pregnancy is therefore one point of the hysterization of women’s bodies. It is carried out through medicalizing the body under the narrative of the “responsibility women owe to the health of their children, the solidity of the family institution, and the safeguarding of society.”9 However, there has been a progressive shift in the way women control their biology; the Supreme Court case of 1972, Eisenstadt vs. Baird, was the first ruling that allowed unmarried people to possess contraception.10 This autonomy has quickly influenced women specifically because motherhood has been the assumed role for all women at one point in their lives.

In an NPR interview, author, Rebecca Traister states, “Thanks to development of reproductive rights, it has become a socially accepted norm to have children and lives outside of marriage. It is not a conscious choice to reject marriage, it is just the ability to live outside of marriage until the better opportunity arises.”11 Yet, if women are expected to adhere to the responsibilities of family and children whilst living in an era where marriage is not as common, there should exist some sort of compensation for their biological roles. “Our civic institutions still assume, reinforce, and determine historic assumptions of women’s roles” within the household and private sphere.12 School days end mid-afternoon and are protracted during summer vacation, businesses still do not allow for paid-leave, or give support for early-childhood education; Hilary Clinton has also spoken on these issues and stated, “I don’t think we could get it now.”13 If these are not subsidized by the government, who is expected to be the caretaker, at home parent, and financial provider? Single women, and also single parents, have a set of needs that have yet to be designed and imposed by the government. Therefore, must be an alternative relationship, structure, affair, community, support system that incubates these needs that are not recognized through aid programs or traditional relationships as of now.

If women are choosing not to get married, what untraditional routes are they choosing? It is important to include the criticism of polyamorous families because this is where single women who decide to become mothers might find themselves. Stigmas against poly families also show that the female body is not the only entity that the state continues to intervene in. The family, that is, the domain of the feminine body, infantile precocity, birth regulation, and to a lesser extent, incest, becomes the anchoring point of state regulated, ensured reproduction.14 This is where parts of Foucault’s texts can find relevance in contemporary discussions of sexuality. In the History of Sexuality, Foucault contests the division of child sexuality and adult sexuality stems from incestuous fears, etc, which appear as accusations made against poly families. Ryan Anderson, Ph.D. and author notes that marriage is the state’s least restrictive way to protect children. “The confusion resulting from further delinking childbearing from marriage would force the state to intervene more often in family life and expand welfare programs.”15 The question behind these societal changes narrows down to what merits a family?

The stigma against polyamorous families is out of fear for social instability. So much so that polyamorous families guide their social lives with extreme discretion and secrecy to prevent being cut off from legal, medical, and educational institutions.16 In an interview with Jonathan Zarantonello, a movie producer, author, and member of the polyamorous community, believes that the first step in the direction of multiple marriages was the legality of gay marriage, and that the desire to produce a child would require gay couples to include another person of the opposite sex in the relationship.17 He also notes that the “Madonna-Whore Complex,” a term coined by Freud as “women’s desirability/licentiousness and purity/maternal goodness as mutually exclusive traits.”18 This complex somehow finds its way into the home, where women are not supposed to mesh their “Madonna-Whore” personalities. The roles, biological functions, and desires conflict with traditional expectations of women who inhabit spheres of the home and care for children, but with polyamory, are encouraged to express all of these.19

Marriage is supposed to encourage the welfare of the child. The sexuality of children was first problematized in the 19th C when the chronic child masturbator, gendered bathrooms, and incestual fears were controlled by the deployment of the Christian methods of confession and separations within the home and public institutions.20 Within households, the dispersion of sexuality is also out of fear of incest, and where polyamorous family structures may find multiple sexual partners cohabiting a space of child development and fundamentalism. The question arises of where the threat of subversive sexualities stemmed from and what the state feels it must protect? Apparently, monogamous marriage “results in significant improvements in child welfare, including lower rates of neglect, abuse, accidental death, homicide and intra-household conflict.”21 And: “by shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, institutionalized monogamy increases long-term planning, economic productivity, savings and child investment.”22 Yet, The seeds of traditional marriage dates back to the Roman Empire and the ban of polygamy.23 And more contemporary empirical studies have proven that children that children can benefit from multiple adult supervision, in which traditional monogamous-marriage families also use care takers and nannies. In Elizabeth Sheff’s compilation of interviews with polyamorous families, she concludes that issues of adult sexuality, break-ups, family drama, child molestation all happen in non-poly families and are too often attributed to the subversiveness of multiple adult sexualities as uncontrolled behavior.24

These notions manifest within the home. Within a household, most times, bedrooms are sectioned off to signify different purpose, to hide an intimate aspect of life, and contain sexual relationships. As Michel Foucault notes in, The History of Sexuality, “The family cell, in the form in which it came to be valued in the course of the eighteenth century, made it possible for the main elements of the deployment of sexuality.”25 In the case of Foucault, the family household becomes a space of dispersed sexualities, in which sexuality is a mode of generation and reproduction, and whereby the female body is utilized for this reproductive function.26 The overarching goal of the state is to produce a healthy population, which in time, contributes to a healthy economy. The sustenance and survival of the state depends on the procreative behaviors of its current populous. And thus, the anchoring point of this regulated, ensured reproduction is the family cell, the bedroom, and their sexuality, which has somehow not been degraded because the institution of marriage acts as a device of maintaining these ancient, political needs.

Ultimately, the reason why women will be the channel through which polyamory becomes more normative is because women’s biological roles, political and societal roles, and sexuality have historically been controlled in traditional, normative relationships. Therefore, the liberation of women will guide the blossoming of social acceptance for polyamory. And in normalizing marital independence, as Susan B. Anthony stated in 1877, “Meanwhile, ‘the logic of events’ points, inevitably, to an epoch of single women...The women who will not be ruled must live without marriage.”27 So in the path to equality, there needs be an era in which women do not marry. Because women have been historically confined by their biological obligations to the state through marriage, and despite the cultural phenomenon marriage has become in the West, traditional marriage still upholds very ancient and unrealistic lifestyles for contemporary partners.

And in the grand scheme, all individuals must criticize their participation and choices in specific institutions and consider what ideals and norms they perpetuate by participating. Erich Fromm writes in, The Art of Loving, “Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individuals, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking-- and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.”28 In order to accept new ideas, the legal realities of the West must be reevaluated as conflicts to Western demands for individuality, freedom, novelty, trust, and equality.

Bibliography:

Anderson, Ryan T., Ph.D. "Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It." The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.

Copeland, Rebecca L., and Melek Ortabasi. "Daughters in Boxes." The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. 62-72. Print.

"FindLaw's United States Supreme Court Case and Opinions." Findlaw. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. Foucault, Michel. "Part Four: The Deployment of Sexuality." The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon, 1978. 117-32. Print. Frank, Katherine, and John DeLamater. "Deconstructing Monogamy: Boundaries, Identities, and Fluidities across Relationships." Understanding Non-Monogamies: Routledge Research in Gender and Society. Ed. Meg Barker and Darren Landridge. New York: Routledge, 2010. N. page. Print. Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. New York: Harper & Row, 1956. Print

Henrich, J., R. Boyd, and P. J. Richerson. "The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367.1589 (2012): 657-69. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. Lopez, Kathryn Jean. "Why Is Government Involved with Marriage Anyway?" National Review Online. N.p., 1 Apr. 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. "Monogamy Reduces Major Social Problems of Polygamist Cultures." EurekAlert The Global Source for Science News. UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, 23 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Mar. 2016. Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack. "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Production." JSTOR. Feminist Studies, 1987. Web. 16 Feb. 2016. Rabinow, Paul. "Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality." The Science Studies Reader (1999): 234-52. Wordpress. Routledge. Web. 16 Feb. 2016. Sheff, Elizabeth. "The Privileges of Perversities: Race, Class and Education amongst Polyamorist and Kinksters." Psychology and Sexuality 2.3 (n.d.): 193-233. Routledge, Sept. 2011. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. Sheff, Elisabeth. "Polyamorous Communities in the United States." The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families. N.p.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1969. N. pag. Print. Stevens, Angi Becker. "Polyamorous Relationships Are About More Than Just Couples." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 3 Dec. 2013. Web. 08 Apr. 2016. "Susan B Anthony’s Speech, “Homes of Single Women.” (October, 1877)." Transcribed by Mitchell Santine Gould from Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches, Ellen Carol Dubois, ed. (New York: Shocken Books, 1981), 146-151. Web. 9 Apr. 2016. Traister, Rebecca. "Single By Choice: Why Fewer American Women Are Married Than Ever Before." Interview by Terry Gross. NPR Books Author Interviews. Fresh Air. 1 Mar. 2016. Radio. Traister, Rebecca. "The Single American Woman." Editorial. New York Magazine 22 Feb. 2016: 43+. Print. Witte, John, Jr. "Why Two in One Flesh? The Western Case for Monogamy Over Polygamy." Emory Law Journal 64.1675 (n.d.): 1676-746. Print. Zarantonello, Jonathan. "Polyamory and Femininity." Personal interview. 16 Mar. 2016.

Annotated Bibliography Sources

Copeland, Rebecca L., and Melek Ortabasi. "Daughters in Boxes." The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. 62-72. Print. The analogy that author Kishida Shun provides in this narrative of Japanese culture and the upbringing of girls is reflective of historical and political disciplines that women have been subjected to. The narrative illustrates this delicate, but very real image of what happens to daughters as their self identity and personality become warped because of a path they must follow to attain womanly virtues. Essentially, the box that Shun builds progressively throughout her speech becomes an image of what the mattress symbolizes. The mattress is also a box, a physical example of Shun’s figurative box, imbued with purposes and representations. A mattress goes beyond providing hygiene and comfort, it is one of many objects that function as what Shun states as ‘encouraged domestic harmony,’ and ‘woman’s ability to produce good children.’ The mattress parallels the box that Shun paints. Therefore, her speech lends a poetic restrictions and implications of a box.

Foucault, Michel. "Part Four: The Deployment of Sexuality." The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon, 1978. 117-32. Print. Although Foucault’s work is infamous for sidestepping specific discussions of femininity, this text lends sight into the bio-political power that the government has over female biology. Foucault uses case studies ranging from Ancient Greek to 17th C ways of thinking and ideologies to explicate the diverse, yet strangely similar ways in which political and state-led rules immersed themselves in the formation of relationships. This particular text serves largest input into my paper; in Foucault’s discussion of the hysterization of women’s bodies and the socialization of procreation. These insights relate directly to the ways in which functions of biology create unspoken, but intuitive obligations and expectations. In other words, Foucault’s contestation of the family as a distributed and contained form of sexuality reveals that objects have capacitated and underpinned this familial structure. Architecture, interior design, and objects, such as the mattress, become crystalized appearances of a power relation that stems from historical, religious, and political incentives to control population and ensure the welfare of the state. This information is specifically cited in Section 3: Domain, of Foucault’s piece. Ultimately, this text supports my assertion that heterogeneous relationships and monitored female sexuality are services to and tools of the state.

Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack. "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Production." JSTOR. Feminist Studies, 1987. Web. 16 Feb. 2016. In Pollack’s text, she questions whether or not new reproductive technological tools, particularly the ultrasound machine, pose a threat or present an opportunity for women. She ask if the fetal image reinforces pressures on women to bear children or if it gives women freedom? Ultimately, the issue at stake is a control of power, that Pollack views is in the hands of men. Her argument that the fetal image reinstates the woman as a spectacle for the male gaze is relevant to my statements there are systems, strategies, and objects in place to monitor and control the capacities of female sexuality and reproductive nature. More importantly, this article highlights the danger in abstracting the woman’s body in comparison to a fetus, giving the fetus autonomy, and possibly ignoring the woman’s complex personhood, her relationships, economic situation, health needs, and personal desires. This article exemplifies the use of medical technology as a source of power and surveillance over women’s bodies, whether or not they desire to be pregnant.

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print. The author uses pain as object of understanding the human design and making processes, as well as how these processes are representations of the human body. This text applies to the work in my paper because it portrays the body as a tool and and channel. I utilize her work to dissect how women experience pain in terms of normal biological functions including menstruation and even prolonged pain during child birth and labor. Scarry’s analysis is important because it explains how pain acts as a mechanism of production, for example, in torture to produce a confession or in war to produce a surrender. My particular use of her work supports the idea that women are not reciprocated, appreciated, or aided for their biological labor and contribution to the state and a healthy population. Scarry’s discussion of projected phallus and womb shapes also lends support to my discussion of materialization and patterns of family behavior.

Traister, Rebecca. "The Single American Woman." Editorial. New York Magazine 22 Feb. 2016: 43+. Print. Currently published in New York Magazine, Traister’s article considers the ways in which marriage as an institution had limited women. Now, according to Traister, the rise in the single American woman has changed other landscapes of life including demands for pay equity, universal pre-K, and accessible reproductive rights.This information finds itself in my paper because it relates to marriage being used as a mechanism of ensuring heterogenous relationships and procreation. Now, these objectives become ambiguous as women, if they marry, marry later, and have somehow overcome expectations that, half a century ago, would seem scandalous. What Traister recognizes is the dismantlement of a power structure and the refashioning of the average female life. Her statistics and research are evidence of the political constraints and economic limitations that marriage generally had.

Sheff, Elisabeth. "Polyamorous Communities in the United States." The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families. N.p.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1969. N. pag. Print. This text is written as a summary of different polyamorist scenarios and personal stories, explicating the author’s claims and definitions. It describes the historical transformation of sexual and gender latitudes. The most relevant parts of this text that will be included in my paper are the discussions of social rejection, stigmas, and family vulnerability. I think I will also incorporate the author’s historical comments on communal living and use it as a model for more sustainable, sufficient life in contemporary society. And the third component of this text that pertains to my thesis is Sheff’s explanations of children within polyamory. Polyamory is usually discovered in adulthood and can therefore be confusing and, in some cases, traumatic, for children. This child/polyamory topic unravels parts of Foucault’s texts that can find relevance in contemporary discussions of sexuality. In the History of Sexuality, Foucault contests the division of child sexuality and adult sexuality stems from incestuous fears, etc, which appear as accusations made against poly families. This part of the paper will also discuss organizations such as DFCS.

Frank, Katherine, and John DeLamater. "Deconstructing Monogamy: Boundaries, Identities, and Fluidities across Relationships." Understanding Non-Monogamies: Rutledge Research in Gender and Society. Ed. Meg Barker and Darren Landridge. New York: Routledge, 2010. N. pag. Print. The sections of this book that I will focus on include the political mobilization of polyamory, young women and early sexual relationships, and privilege in the public sphere. These sections cover issues of political and legal recognition and how most of the regulations of these recognitions offset the benefits. These laws are important because in the shadow of them, polyamorists live in a rigid, confining, judgmental system that is inapplicable to their desired world. The discussion of young single women will also pertain to other texts included in my paper, as the discourse of sex as a social act becomes of greater importance and influence.

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citizensofpoverty · 7 years

Text

How can we solve it?

In recent years child marriage has gained increasing prominence on international and national development agendas. Today, we have a unique opportunity to act on this momentum and accelerate our efforts to help change the lives of girls and young women all over the world.

Ending child marriage requires work across all sectors and at all levels. It requires us to understand the complex drivers behind the practice in different contexts and adapt our interventions accordingly.

Girls Not Brides has developed a Theory of Change to demonstrate the range of approaches needed to address child marriage, and crucially highlight that everyone has a role to play. The Theory of Change stresses the importance of long-term, sustainable interventions that are coordinated, well-resourced and the result of shared learning.

Within the Theory of Change, four categories show where the majority of our efforts are aligned: empowering girls, mobilising families and communities, providing services and establishing and implementing laws and policies. Ending child marriage requires work which is mutually reinforcing across these areas.

These four strategy areas are used to illustrate the types of effective interventions that are helping to prevent child marriage and support married girls all over the world.

EMPOWERING GIRLS

Working directly with girls to give them the opportunity to build skills and knowledge, understand and exercise their rights and develop support networks, is an important part of our efforts to end child marriage.

Using an empowerment approach can lead to positive outcomes for girls and their families by supporting girls to become agents of change, helping them envisage what alternative roles could look like in their communities and ultimately helping them to forge their own pathway in life.

SAFE SPACE PROGRAMMES

Safe space programmes which offer a varied curriculum covering life skills, health and financial literacy can provide girls with an opportunity to build their skills, learn and meet friends and mentors in an informal setting and learn about the services they can access in their community.

Safe space programmes can successfully build girls’ self-confidence, agency and self-efficacy, which they need to thrive. They can provide a good alternative for girls who do not have access to formal education such as married girls. Having a safe regular meeting place allows girls to meet with peers and share experiences which can reduce their sense of isolation and vulnerability.

Some of these programmes have economic empowerment components, such as conditional cash transfers, or the provision of a goat or chicken, which have proven successful in increasing the age of marriage.

Safe space session in Zambia, funded by the UK Department for International Development. Credit Jessica Lea | DFID

SUPPORTING YOUNG PEOPLE TO BE AGENTS OF CHANGE

Supporting young people to be agents of change can be an effective and empowering process in and of itself. Many organisations work with young people so they can advocate for change as well as helping to inform the design of programmes that directly benefit their peers.

Youth groups, encouraging dialogue between youth and community leaders, and building the capacity of young people are all ways of supporting young people to be champions of change in their own communities.

MOBILISE FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES

Many families and communities see child marriage as a deeply rooted practice which has been part of their culture for generations. Whether the practice is cited as cultural or religious, it is often driven by inequitable gender norms such as an emphasis on protecting a girls’ (or her family’s) honour by controlling her sexuality.

For change to happen, the values and norms which support the practice of child marriage need to shift. Working with families and the wider community to raise awareness of the harmful consequences of child marriage can change attitudes and reduce the acceptance among those who make the decision to marry girls as children.

WORKING WITH MEN AND BOYS

Working with men and boys is a critical part of our efforts to end child marriage. In many communities it is the men who hold the power and make the decisions. Interventions targeting fathers, brothers, husbands and future husbands are important in helping men and boys reflect on the status quo and see the benefits of a community which values and supports girls and women to fulfil their potential.

RELIGIOUS AND TRADITIONAL LEADERS

Religious and traditional leaders, too, have the potential to play a key role in speaking out against child marriage and changing community attitudes. In communities where religious and traditional leaders play a prominent role in decision-making or influencing the prevailing norms, targeted interventions can support them to become positive advocates for change who fully understand the implications of child marriage for girls and their families.

COMMUNITY LEVEL CHANGE

Community level change underpins all of our efforts in preventing child marriage and mitigating the harmful effects for married girls. Without change at this level, the day-to-day reality for girls all over the world will remain the same.

At the grassroots, organisations are driving change by campaigning, holding community conversations and using a variety of creative techniques such as street theatre and art to reflect on the practice of child marriage and communicate its harmful impacts for girls and their communities.

CHANGING NORMS AT SCALE

Changing norms at scale is integral to the process of change and a growing number of organisations are using mass media campaigns and other innovative methods such as radio, TV and digital media to raise awareness of girls’ rights and the impact of child marriage.

Messages that promote new norms, role models and positive deviants show positive signs of being an effective way to change attitudes and behaviours around the value of girls and women.

PROVIDE SERVICES

Addressing child marriage and supporting the needs of married girls requires us to consider the economic and structural drivers which act as a barrier to ending child marriage. The most vulnerable girls who have no access to a quality education, healthcare or child protection mechanisms, are at a much greater risk of child marriage than girls who do. Ending child marriage requires us to review the services available to girls as well as asking how they reinforce one another and how they can be strengthened.

ACCESSIBLE, HIGH QUALITY AND SAFE SCHOOLING

Increasing access to accessible, high quality and safe schooling is a critical strategy in ending child marriage and ensuring married girls have the opportunity to complete their education. Education builds knowledge, opens new opportunities and can help to shift norms around the value of girls in the community. The very act of girls attending school can reinforce to the community that girls of school-going age are still children.

Keeping girls in school is an effective way to prevent girls marrying but it is not enough. Girls need the support to make the transition into secondary school. For married girls, it is important that schools encourage and support them to continue their education in either an informal or formal setting such as being part of a safe space programme, undertaking part-time, remote or vocational learning.

HIGH QUALITY, YOUTH-FRIENDLY HEALTH SERVICES

Both unmarried and married girls need high quality, youth-friendly health services to live healthy and safe lives. Many girls in the developing world have an unmet need for sexual reproductive health care which can put them at risk of early pregnancy and contracting HIV and other STIs.

Girls need to know about their bodies as well as the types of services and healthcare available to them. Making sure health services are youth-friendly and that girls are able to access care without judgement and without male supervision is also important.

ADEQUATE CHILD PROTECTION MECHANISMS

Ensuring there are adequate child protection mechanisms in place is an important part of our efforts to end child marriage. Establishing protocols on identifying the warning signs and addressing the risks of child marriage is a key part of this work.

Child protection services need to be accessible via a number of channels, including education, healthcare providers, community workers and the police. Working with service providers to build their capacity can help to ensure that cases of child marriage in the community are responded to effectively.

ECONOMIC SECURITY

Girls and women also need to have economic security if they are to live safe, healthy and empowered lives. Introducing economic incentives such as conditional cash transfers can help encourage families to consider alternatives to child marriage by alleviating their economic hardship and reframing the daughter as a valued part of the family rather than an economic burden.

Economic empowerment schemes such as microfinance or village savings and loan schemes can help girls to support themselves and their families without having to be married. Furthermore, ensuring girls have the opportunity to become financially literate and have the ability to open and easily access a bank account (without male supervision) can help them save in a secure way and become financially independent.

ESTABLISH AND IMPLEMENT LAWS AND POLICIES

Laws and policies play an essential part in preventing child marriage. Many countries lack robust legal and policy frameworks which can help to prevent the practice and support married girls. A strong legal and policy system can provide an important backdrop for improvements in services, changes in social norms and girls’ empowerment.

However for change to be truly transformative, governments must show strong political leadership by making the issue of national importance and providing adequate financial resourcing across ministries to tackle the issue holistically.

STRENGTHENING, IMPLEMENTING AND RESOURCING LAWS AND POLICIES

Strengthening, implementing and resourcing laws and policies which prevent child marriage is an important step towards recognising and upholding girls’ rights. While most countries legislate for a minimum legal age of marriage, the age of marriage is often higher for men than it is for women and many countries continue to have a legal age of marriage lower than in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Gender discrimination and loopholes in the law continue to be rife especially when it comes to issues around parental consent, the right to own and inherit property, separation and divorce and access to professional services and support.

Furthermore, many countries have a pluralistic legal system meaning customary law often contradicts and overrides national law making enforcement difficult.

#mmlcop

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