Analysis Of The Article ' Notes On A Politics Of Location ' By Adrienne De Beauvoir

After earning a doctorate, Castro was hired by a small men’s college in rural Indiana to teach feminism theory and women 's literature to thirty-five men. She was prepared and ready for the disagreements, the drop outs and the failures that couldn’t open up their minds on feminism. But she values those voices, the questions and hostility because "they taught me how to make feminism 's insights relevant to people outside a closed, snug room of agreement" (Castro, 98). She had learned how to create feminism theory, critical race theory and observation about class privilege relevant, exciting and even needful to people who had no material reason to care. She learned diplomacy.

Gender, Lindemann argues, is primarily normative; it yields prescriptions for how one ought to behave, and it does so through a variety of channels. Importantly, gender operates simultaneously alongside other power-relations in order to yield what is a fairly complex final power distribution. Lindemann indentifies the feminist project as one that attempts to �understand, criticize, and correct how gender operates within our moral beliefs and practices.� The domain of the feminist ethicist, as Lindemann understands it, is the domain of power relations � both legitimate and illegitimate. In order to properly understand the domain, the feminist ethicist is firstly concerned with arriving at a proper description of how power differences are at work in our lives. Following this, she is able to make normative claims in light of the descriptive

This essay will critically analyze the various forms of oppression that are set out through Audrey Lorde’s concept of the “mythical norm” as discussed by Barbara Perry. Through the “mythical norm”, it can be seen that oppressions exists through the forms of racism and sexism which are exhibited through many scholarly texts and articles. Racism can be seen as a means of privilege and power that is given to individuals who coincide with the criteria of societies norm. In this case, these individuals consist of white, heterosexual, male beings who unknowingly oppress their racialized counterparts. Oppression can also be seen through the form of sexism. Sexism looks at the injustice and inequality of male dominance over female, which results to men being more privileged and advantaged in society over women who are disadvantaged. Therefore, privilege and power is obtained by those who coincide with the concept of the “mythical norm”, leaving minority groups who do not coincide with this conception oppressed through the forms of racism and sexism.

Gender inequality is an issue that has been recurring throughout the United States, and the problem has peaked public interest again with the inauguration of our current president. Possibly as a response, Zootopia is a US based children’s movie that is an uplifting story of an underdog female character who sets her mind to accomplish a tall task, and ends up saving the city. Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism” is a section of Foucault’s book that explains the distribution of power in a disciplined society while Deborah Tannen’s “Wears Jumpsuit. Sensible Shoes. Uses Husband’s Last Name” is an assertive article that explains the unjust judgement bestowed upon all women. Using Foucault’s and Tannen’s ideas we can uncover underlying meanings of

In a patriarchal society such as colonial Latin America, women were considered second class citizens. No matter their class or ethnicity, all women experienced the social and cultural limitations that are subjected to them by this patriarchal society. Women had limited access to education, women are used to satisfy men’s personal desires and legal systems neglected women’s court rights while heavily advocating men’s. However, not all women are subjected to the same limitations because of the difference in one’s economic status and ethnic identity. Nonetheless, women still found a way to carve out a space for themselves in attempt to overcome these regulations set by a patriarchal society.

Whiteness and racism comes from the oppression, colonization and systems of dominance over black people and their feelings. In this case, an intersectional feminist analysis matters because women who are able bodied, cis-gendered, privileged and white are only being considered whereas bell hooks argue that men, women and trans people who oppressed should be fought for. And Peggy McIntosh adds onto this but a white woman who addresses and recognizes her privilege to help other white individuals understand what they have and blacks do not.

Roderick Ferguson’s article, “Nightmares of the Heteronormative,” details the ways that the categories of home and domesticity are constructed in a manner made to be accessible by people of color, using the queer of color critique. Similarly, Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins” coins intersectionality to explore the ways that sexism and racism intersect to produce the doubly marginalized experience of being a woman of color.

The reality is that there are overlaps in our circles, the Universe does not just revolve around one location or ethnicity. Our perspective has its limitations, to combat this, we must raise issues from more than one perspective and location instead of just our own. Rich offers a solution to overcome "centeredness" by learning to ask the right questions or at least care enough to ask questions to minority groups instead of using overarching assumptions and broad categories to fit people into (Notes 15). "If we have learned anything in these years of late twentieth-century feminism, it's that 'always' blots out what we really need to know: When, where, and under what conditions had the statement been true" (214). Asking these questions will help ease the tension between individual "centeredness" and a collective movement, by allowing people to come to the realization that all of us are made up in different kinds of ways and are shaped by different

Andrea Smith in the “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” argues how women who are victimized by white supremacy should not be joined a union based on their oppression because they are oppressed differently. She describes the previous framework having five races, which are Native women, Black women, Arab/Muslim women, Latinas and Asian women all mix into one group of women of color. She proposes viewing oppression of women of color through a model known as the “Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” The three pillars are divided into Slavery/ Capitalism, Genocide/Capitalism, and Orientalism/War.

…offers up particular notions of agency in which white working class and middle class men are allowed to see themselves as oppressed and lacking because their masculinity has been compromised by and subordinated to those social and economic spheres and needs that constitute the realm of the feminine.

In the Feminist Theory, bell hooks provide vivid examples and assertions on how mainstream feminism exclude the issues of women of color. Mainstream feminism in America pertains to the ideals of “white, middle-class privileged woman” as they “reinforce white supremacy by negating the issue of race and class amongst woman of color” (hooks, 2000, pg. ). Due to not fulfilling the attempt to gain equality, as they may claim to do, it also can be an organization that displays “narcissism, insensitivity, sentimentality, and self-indulgence” (hooks, 2000, pg. 3). As mainstream feminism shuns the needs and interests of African-American women, it allows current social issues and inequalities to persist.

During the early 1900s till now, women have been discriminated against and have been battling for equal rights in the United States. In 1960s America, the feminist movement was growing rapidly, bringing out influential women and protesters who were starting to get noticed by the majority of the population. One of those influential women, author Adrienne Rich, published an essay that talks about how women are treated differently. In the essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as a Re-vision”, Rich argues that a stereotypical and prejudiced male society represses women. She demonstrates these views through the use of literary history, her personal experience towards women’s discrimination, and the potential women have to

We are always trying to figure out where we are in this world, or how we got where we are today. Obviously you have no choice of parents or where your born and these are two major contributing factors of who am I today. Being born white and a male society has immediately granted social advantages or white privileges. But, how privileged was I really? Being born in a highly populated city to first generations Americans without high school diplomas. I did have some advantages and I realized them growing up around my non-white friends. But compared to other white people I didn’t see my self privileged in many ways.

In “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” Sandra Bartky utilizes Michel Foucault’s concepts about power to help explain femininity. Throughout the article, she details how society forces women to fit within the confines of this construct and how it affects them.

For centuries and even today, gender inequality and racial prejudice continue to exist. Throughout time these concepts have overlapped and intertwined, each other creating complex interactions and a negative influence upon society. In the 1980s, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw through her article, named Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, introduced the term “Intersectionality.” Intersectionality, is the theory of how different types of discriminations interact thus, goes hand in hand with Judith Butler, in her article titled “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” which expresses the term “gender acts” and helps decipher a probable cause of the many discriminations faced in contemporary society. Since both gender inequality and racial inequality share a common thread, I believe that what intersectionality represents will help understand Judith Butler’s view on gender classification and the dynamic it’s caused on our social and political formation.