For over a century, people have been fighting for basic human and civil rights. When the Europeans took over the US, it shifted the course of history. New government systems had formed which we now call our legal system that consists of Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branch. Society (heterosexual middle class men) started questioning who has these rights which created gaps, prejudice, and violence between people of color and gendered. Over the course of the semester, we discussed social contract by Carole Pateman, feminist waves (second wave) by Alma Garcia, and Queer Feminism by Dean Spades. In the article, “The Sexual Contract, by Carole Pateman discusses the social contract that affects the legal system and how society treats each …show more content…
For example, “Chicana movement is to end sexist oppression within a broader social protest movement”. Chicana feminists tried to merge with white feminists but their voices were not being heard and white feminists were speaking for themselves. Chicanos were encouraging Chicanas to discontinue their feminist movement and believed that they should focus on fighting for cultural survival. This lead to a double jeopardy because not only they had to fight racism and sexism. Chicana feminism argued gender and racism as multiple form of oppression and didn’t want to put one above another. Additionally, Chicana feminists started fighting beyond gender rights, they fought for “farm workers, prisoner, welfare, undocumented, etc.”. Chicana feminists recognized multiple issues that needed to be addressed. White feminists were focused as middle class movement but Chicanas were working class movement. Chicana feminists were beginning to address women of color in poverty, education, health care, immigration, etc. Many women of color feminist group recognized that they need to form a coalitional movement to address issues that affected people of color and women. This affects today’s society because there is still discrimination of people of color. We see it in the social media where there’s different treatment in presenting news to the …show more content…
For example, “Transgender face huge mostly unaddressed discrimination in education, employment, healthcare, and public benefit”. Transgender children end up in foster care or homeless. They can’t go to adult homeless shelter because they get turned down due to their identity. Youth face harassment and violence in schools that leads them to dropping out and difficult for them to pursue higher education because how society reacts around them. They face discrimination in work places because of their transition. It’s difficult for them to reach out for resources because they face discrimination or there’s not enough resources to help them find someone who will. Secondly, “During the Stonewall rebellion, sexual and gender outsiders were tired of being abused by cops, arrested for cross-dressing, beaten, raped for going to clubs/bar.” People of color and gendered outsiders were tired of being targets. They didn’t want cops to be abusing their powers and wanted legal protections. Transgender people faced discrimination where it makes it harder for them to get jobs, welfare, SSI, disability, etc. This relates back to the long battle for same sex marriage where recently it’s legal in the
Thesis: McGuire argues that the Civil Rights movement was not led just by the strong male leaders presented to society such as Martin Luther King Jr., but is "also rooted in African-American women 's long struggle against sexual violence (xx)." McGuire argues for the "retelling and reinterpreting (xx)" of the Civil Rights movement because of the resistance of the women presented in her text.
Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.
In 1964, Linda Brown along with the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) challenged the Separate but Equal doctrine, and won (Askew). Discriminatory laws that lasted for 99 years, starting with the Black Codes, moving to the Louisiana Separate Car Act and Plessy v. Ferguson, to everyday laws, finally became overturned. They permanently hindered a large group of people as seen by literacy rates, household income, and household ownership, but those numbers became more equal as time went on. Unfortunately, due to humanities extreme ignorance, we don’t see these issues recurring today. People discriminate against homosexuals, for example, and they don’t get equal rights. People must look to the past and use the knowledge of their mistakes to never make those same mistakes again.
Even though CHI-50 was intended to be an introduction to Chicana/o Culture and was not comprehensive, the major factors that best define this culture are values, norms, symbols, and communication forms. All these major factors were covered in depth, including the cultural productions such as the manifests in art, poetry, and music. In my opinion, we could have delve deeper and made more connections between the factors. As I learned more of Chicana/o Culture, I felt that religion took a major part in establishing and defining the Chicana/o Culture we know now. Religion was intimately tied with many of the major factors, since this is what most of the Chicanos grow up experiencing.
Sonia Romero was born in 1980 in Los Angeles and is the granddaughter of the founders of the Craft and Folk Art museum in Los Angeles and daughter of two artists, Nancy and Frank Romero. Her artistic upbringing influenced her to pursue a career in art. Romero attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and earned her Bachelor in Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design, with the emphasis in printmaking. She believes her printmaking artworks can mass communicate the prevalent social and political issues in society. In fact, Sonia Romero is a Chicana artist known for her printmaking, mixed media linocut prints, and public art work. She uses her artistic skills to depict the diversity of Los Angeles, exhibit female empowerment, and embrace the Chicanx identity. Although, many artist use their art to express their creativity
Today, especially with the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, it is easy to believe that the fight for queer rights is something of the past, something that America as a whole moved beyond because we have achieved these rights. For example, the conclusion to Stonewall Uprising creates a sort of historical separation that allows anyone and everyone to believe that the United States and all the people within it have moved past homophobia, transphobia, and queerphobia. However, this is absolutely not a reality for many queer and trans people today, especially poor and/or incarcerated queer and trans people of color. The conclusion to Sarah Lamble’s “Retelling Racialized Violence, Remaking White Innocence” brings to light the issues affecting
In the weekly readings for week five we see two readings that talk about the connections between women’s suffrage and black women’s identities. In Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, we see the ways that black women’s identities were marginalized either through their sex or by their race. These identities were oppressed through social groups, laws, and voting rights. Discontented Black Feminists talks about the journey black feminists took to combat the sexism as well as the racism such as forming independent social clubs, sororities, in addition to appealing to the government through courts and petitions. These women formed an independent branch of feminism in which began to prioritize not one identity over another, but to look at each identity as a whole. This paved the way for future feminists to introduce the concept of intersectionality.
Sex and gender inequality is one of the many issues handled in this book. This has always been a social problem in America and other nations. Sex and gender are different terms, where sex refers to the biological difference between men and women while gender refers to the differences between females and males that the society constructs between the two. These inequalities therefore, are society-created where men and women are treated differently not because of what they can do but who they are. The author dedication to portrayal of America as a society that disregarded their rights is therefore, in an attempt to create a society with gender equity and equality where a woman and man will be treated equally in work stations and other public places. The physical characteristics of women and their position as child bearers gave the men a convenience to use, exploit people who were their sex mates, companions and guardians of their children.
A Cultural Revolution swept through the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. This revolution brought about change and affected nearly everyone—whether they supported the Cultural Revolution or opposed it. This time period in United States history consisted of radical movements and vicissitudes as cultural revolutionaries struggled for equality of all people of both genders and all races. When people think of this period, the civil rights movement and the fight for desegregation in America comes to mind. Although the struggle for racial equality is an important and unforgettable part of American history, there was another fight against inequality that many people overlook. This important part of our nation’s history was the fight for Equal Rights Amendment, also known as the ERA. Even though advocates for the ERA amendment strongly pushed for its passage during the sixties and seventies, the amendment was actually written in 1923, by Alice Paul, the founder of the National Women’s Party. (http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/) The Equal Rights Amendment pushes to outlaw discrimination based on gender. The ERA seeks equality in the specific areas of voting, employment, and education, as well as equality throughout society. Men have traditionally been considered superior, and women were expected to acknowledge their superiority and respect it. As the ERA states, women want to be recognized as equals and treated accordingly. However, the Equal Rights Amendment does not only protect and defend the rights of women; it also has a positive effect on men. According to a History Matters article on the Era, “The ERA will increase everyone’s freedom of choice within our society—no longer will a person suffer legal limitations or bear extr...
For a long time, feminism has failed to include the issues of Latina women. When the feminist movement began, it focused on the issues of one specific group: white, American, middle-class women; therefore, it excluded Latinas, and women of color in general. Latina women realized that they needed to stand up for themselves because if they did not do it, then no one would. Mainstream feminists were not acknowledging their issues; thus, it pushed the need for Latina feminism. Without Latina feminism, Latina issues would not have came to light and would be ignored by many, even non-Latina women. Even though women were fighting for their rights, they seemed to lack the inclusion of all women of any color, ethnicity, race, and class.
Knapp, Peter, Jane C. Kronick, R. William Marks, and Miriam G. Vosburgh. The Assault on Equality. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1996.
An analysis of freedom would be incomplete if it failed to scrutinize the laws of a society that are meant to enhance and promote freedom and equality. Such analyses were undertaken by Catharine MacKinnon (Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination) and Michael Warner (The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life). Their works highlight the patterns of dominance over certain groups (namely women and homosexuals) exercised within the legal structures of society presiding over everything from the military to jobs and marriage. Both authors challenge their readers to think in a way that defies convention, and perhaps become equipped to help make the world a better, freer place.
For decades, women have struggled to be free from oppressive social constructions. In the United States, women’s movements formed to seek the equality of men and women under the law. In more recent years, the struggle for equality of men and women has evolved into the struggle for equality between men and women; in other words, the struggle became for women to be as equal as men. Though theses movements have been successful, they have left men and women in our society with negative unintended consequences. The recent phenomenon for the equality between men and women has led to a gender-neutral society. Thi...
Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism introduces ideas by Becky Thompson that contradict the “traditional” teachings of the Second Wave of feminism. She points out that the version of Second Wave feminism that gets told centers around white, middle class, US based women and the central problem being focused on and rallied against is sexism. This history of the Second Wave does not take into consideration feminist movements happening in other countries. Nor does it take into consideration the feminist activism that women of color were behind, that centered not only on sexism, but also racism, and classism as central problems as well. This is where the rise of multiracial feminism is put to the foreground and a different perspective of the Second Wave is shown.
Among the many subjects covered in this book are the three classes of oppression: gender, race and class in addition to the ways in which they intersect. As well as the importance of the movement being all-inclusive, advocating the idea that feminism is in fact for everybody. The author also touches upon education, parenting and violence. She begins her book with her key argument, stating that feminist theory and the movement are mainly led by high class white women who disregarded the circumstances of underprivileged non-white women.