Brutality And Femininity

When my roommate was in elementary school, the boys in her grade would not let her play sports with her. The reason they gave her was that she was a girl, and sports were not for girls. She was told that she was not strong enough to play, and that sports were a boy thing. They then told her to go play house or kiss tag. When they said that, she proceeded to beat the boys up, making them look like the ones who weren’t strong. While violence is not the way to prove someone wrong, this story has a point. Taylor wanted to play basketball, but she was told she couldn’t because she was a girl. This might seem like innocent children making assumptions, but this is where it begins. These children will grow into adults that watch movies like Pixel, where the woman who is objectified is literally turned into an object, watch television shows like Two and a Half Men, which glorifies the manipulation and sexual conquest of women, and read books like Lolita and take it seriously. This idea, while developed in other places as well, is created through the media.

Imagine finding out that your entire life was a lie, and that every single thing you knew about your identity and your family was completely false! Armand Aubigny, one of the main characters in Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin, experiences this exact dilemma throughout this short story. Desiree’s Baby is a story about a young man and woman, who fall in love, but Desiree, who does not know her birth parents, is considered nameless. When she and Armand have a child, they are both very surprised because the child’s skin color is not white as expected. It is obvious that the child is biracial, and immediately, Desiree is blamed for the color of the child’s skin because of her uncertain background. The truth, however, is that it is Armand who has

In his article, “Children of Interracial Parents Face Special Difficulties”, Frank A. Jones argues that biracial children, especially black males, face difficulties due to their parents raising them based on white parenting standards without considering the way modern society will treat them. Jones describes how biracial children think they are different, which builds up the fear of getting judged and leads to racism. Frank emphasizes the need of not just love and affection in raising a child or more specifically a biracial child but “guidance, discipline, self-perception, and survival perspective” and also the importance of education being a must and not an option. Biracial

Instead laws are changed to make adopting mixed-race children easier. In Sandra Lapierre's situation she adopted Justin, who is different colored skin than her and the laws of Multi-Ethnic Placement Act(MEPA) was enacted in Congress in 1994. This law states that no court can delay or deny the rights of adopting mixed-race children. Some people enjoy this law because they are able to adopt children without complications, while others do not approve of this law, especially in Rhode Island. The courts in Rhode Island have been trying to fight the courts because they believe different races should be adopted by the same race parents and not have mixed-race adoption. The courts and other people believe mixed-race adoption has a bad effect on the children because they are not surrounded by the same race. Well Sandra on the other hand states, “To me, the one issue is, racism comes from people being scared of someone different, so I try to eliminate it in my home.” ;she also comes out and says, “The courts taught my children that race matters.”. With both these statements you can see that race does not matter to her and she is trying to spread the word about that, so other people will want to adopt mixed-race children. Sandra promoting mixed-race adoption and not downgrading the idea it also gives the children a better life and out of the adoption homes. Minority children tend to stay in foster care longer than white children, in America; on average out 110,000 who need permanent homes 56 percent are black and 9 percent are hispanic. Other ideas to get these minority children out of foster care is matching-race, but that is difficult and hard to come by sometimes. These matching-race also help the children better understand their identity and background of their culture or skin color per say. In the book, The Bean Trees, Taylor does not really face struggle

Understanding this will help one realize how they are. In the article, ‘Speaking in Tongues,’ Obama mentions a girl name Joyce from college who was part Italian, part French and part Native American and states her struggle with people trying to label her. “I’m not Black… I’m multiracial… Why should I have to choose between them? …They’re the ones who are telling me I can’t be who I am.” (Smith, 2008) In this quote, Joyce tells that she is multiracial, meaning she is accepting all roots. When she says that people are trying to tell her she can’t be who she is, she is not agreeing to make others comfortable. However there are also people that do not want to accept their roots, specifically their genetics. In the previous article, ‘DNA rewrites history for African-Americans,’ Henry Louis Gates Jr. did not want to embrace the fact that he was 50% white and 50% black. ““I’ll never see my family tree in quite the same way,” Gates says on the PBS show program, “I have the blues. Can I still have the blues?”” (Willing, 2006) After discovering his true heritage, Gates did not want to accept his ‘new’ identity, but instead rejects it, unlike Joyce. When he denies his identity it only hurts him because he does not recognize his entire

A baby cannot control what it looks like. It has no jurisdiction over whether it is born male or female. Suppose the baby is lucky enough to be born male. Once the baby grows, he cannot control the color of his hair, whether he has a cleft chin, dimples, or moles. Most importantly, a man cannot control the color of his own skin. Why must mankind criticize these uncontrollable factors? Who is to say one race is superior to the next, and that man is superior to woman? Hillary Jordan’s novel Mudbound has a total of 423 pages. The author envelops hardships such as racism and sexism during the 1940s that are seen as commonalities into the novel. The novel focuses on the perspectives of two different families: the McAllens’ and the Jacksons’. Both

In Chapter Four, Painted Faces and Long Hair Jack shows barbarism when he brutality when he kills the pig however the full decent is not yet complete. He killed the pig with no sense of sensitivity and also didn’t act with caution or maturity when describing the scenario with the other boys. Throughout the novel we see that the boys are gradually losing their sense of humanity. At the beginning, the boys were respectful school boys that had a sense of values and principles. They showed maturity when selecting a leader, lighting an alert fire, and deciding against killing a pig in the early stages of this novel.

In making this decision, she was faced with the harsh reality that many non white mothers struggle with; finding a multicultural school that would be accepting of her child (Mystal 2014). All of a sudden, Cramblett was confronted with wondering if the schools would have resources that promoted positive black identity development, so her daughter would not grow up feeling like an outsider (Harman 2010:184). As a white person, this is something Cramblett would never have had to be concerned with in her own life. White people live with the privilege that they can bring a new baby into their family, their town, and their schools without worrying that their child will face discrimination based on their racialized appearance. Cramblett was therefore unable to recognize the everyday struggles of racialized minorities, until she was put in the position of having to make these decisions with the safety and well being of a non white person in mind. This is clearly illustrated by the shock and emotional distress Cramblett describes at the idea of bringing her child into a predominantly white environment, clearly indicating the blinding nature of her privilege (Mystal

The topic of the event I attended refers to the hermeneutic argument against trans racialism the speaker was Professor Tina Botts from the philosophy department. The beginning of the event was a brief introduction of the speaker, Professor Botts she is a practiced attorney, teaches feminism, attended the University of Memphis to obtain her Ph.D and has published two books. Dr. Botts introduced the racial of identity, is arguing if transracial is real. She starts with background context tracing back to child slavery how it was created to perpetuate plantation Capitalism. The ideology behind blackness show white plantation owners viewed as inferiority therefore hereditary thus to justify child slavery and therefore gaining profit of the unpaid labor. The point Botts was trying to convey from this is that blackness is hereditary afterwards she

The artists and creators of violence in various forms of media have the ability to shape how people perceive violence as an art. While most people that art is used as a form of aestheticism, often the creators attempt to send a message through their work. Maggie Nelson explains in her work, “Great to Watch,” that the art of cruelty aestheticizes violence in order to invoke a feeling of guilt as they watch others suffering. People use violence as an art of expression to create a moral or idea of through their story. Nelson points out that violence is complex and she demonstrates this with her mentioning of Abu Ghraib which she implies that she wishes violence was true and simple. She also mentions that the reason violence is used to send messages is because people often find that being bad and committing malice acts is an easy way of life. She explains that people find that the dark side and dark emotions take over and being good is difficult. She explains that there is a pleasure and desire through violence. Nelson reflects on the idea that people admire the idea of violence and its’ explicitness and its’ ability to show that not everything is as perfect as seems. In her quote, “The moral of this dichotomoy is that distraction by banal obviates a necessary focus on the all-too-real-calamitous”, she explains that the beauty of violence that people create in their stories shows that the duality of people when dealing with moral issues, shows that people have both a dark and

A young Chinese-American girl in the 1950’s would try to break out of her parents' cultural norms and prove to her parents that their thought process is invalid, and doesn’t fit inside the parent’s patriarchal cultural mindset. The young Chinese-American girl we follow throughout the story is, Maxine Hong Kingston, and she believes that women aren’t just to be married off and truly do have a life of their own. The Woman Warrior is a book written by Maxine Hong Kingston wrote a book based on her own childhood events. As she breaks through these stereotypes, as she breaks these stereotypes she learns through both Chinese cultural stories and family stories told by her mother and father. Maxine would express throughout the story, the subtle word choice that her mother would use to incline how Maxine should be lucky to be born and have a good life.

The population of the United States of America has been one of mixed race since its very beginning. Boatload upon boatload of enslaved Africans provided a labor force which would fuel the American South’s economy for many years, until national abolition and the subsequent civil rights movement created a primarily biracial population of blacks and whites. The US has come a long way since those days, and today every child

Should race be an excuse to break up a loving and devoted family? In “Desiree’s Baby,” it describes how a family lost its connection due to not knowing where they came from. Race is the main that cause that divided the family up. They had a beautiful baby boy and the husband in the story hated him when he realized he was black. The mother was so in love with her child that she didn’t even notice the color of the baby’s skin until she saw another child who was black next to her baby.

‘Will it be believed, a hundred years hence that such a state of things existed.’ (Lawson, 1891) These are the words of Louisa Lawson speaking out about the criminal abuse inflicted onto women within their own homes. Sadly, over one hundred years on, violence perpetuated onto women unfortunately continues to exist; causing for women and children in our advanced society to continue living in fear within their own homes. For some, this violence may ultimately lead to their death.

Maxine Hong Kingston uses her memoire The Woman Warrior as a way to bring to life many talk stories she heard while growing up in a Chinese immigrant home. The Woman Warrior is a complex piece of writing that is able to weave fantasy and reality into one singular unit. Throughout the book Kingston explores the various obstacles that Chinese women faced in their life, whether it be as an immigrant in America or as a young women still in China. Each woman in the book had their own unique experience when it came to being a Chinese woman and Kingston does a great job bringing all of the experiences together to explain the complex roles these women played.