Work Cited:
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Women's Reproductive Rights
Patriarchy and Women's Reproductive Rights
The political cartoon illustrates the issue of women’s reproductive rights, specifically in the United States. The U.S. must embrace the right of a woman to choose and have access to medical care they deem appropriate. Whether it’s something as neutral as contraceptives and prevention surgeries, to one of the most difficult decisions in a woman life: abortion, safe and reasonably affordable health care must be provided. The alternative in a dire situation includes dangerous back alley operations. A clear-headed society must absolutely prefer the most life saving and death preventing operations instead. However the U.S. has broken away from the pack of rational society and governing. Instead, it is using the system of patriarchy to encircle and ravenously attack the human right of access to appropriate health care.
The political cartoon has three prominent women’s reproductive rights opponents, who are unsurprisingly male, appearing on a pregnant woman’s ultrasound. The very men on the ultrasound are those who actively propose and enact laws to restrict women’s rights. In doing so, they are forcing women, who potentially may seek to terminate their pregnancy because of a dire situation, to resort to unnecessarily risky surgeries. After Texas reduced the number of clinics with the ability to preform abortion from 22 to 6, researches have already found accounts “of women taking herbs or other substances, or intentionally getting punched in the stomach or beaten up -- the same kinds of things they did before abortion was legal."[1] There are other safer alternatives than this, but even clinics that do not preform abortions at all are being severely defunded.
Although the systematic erosion of women’s reproductive rights is clearly egregious at its most basic form, looking at in a lens where we analyze the patriarchal gears behind it all reveals a deeper issue. Patriarchy says that the three politicians (referenced earlier) individually do not directly oppress women and their right to appropriate health care. Albeit very influential, they are still mere cogs in the system that is the Patriarchy. Patriarchy is enforced “Through a process of socialization,” which teaches us how to “participate in social life – from families, schools, religion, and the mass media, through the example of parents, peers, coaches, teachers, and public figures.”[2] The socialization process surrounds us and identifies who we are in the world in relation to others. Patriarchy directs this relation to oppressing women and allowing men to have disproportional power.
This very patriarchy is what allows men to control and place restrictions on women’s human right to appropriate health care.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Migrant Workers in the United Arab Emirates
Oppressed Labor
The United Arab Emirates is funding a more than $20 billion cultural hub. The U.A.E. is using migrant workers of mostly South Asian origin in their workforce (around 42.5% of the workforce are migrants from South Asia[1]). According to The Guardian, migrant workers are operating in prison conditions. In the article Migrants building UAE cultural hub 'working in prison conditions', worker’s have restricted freedoms and are subjected to inhumane policies and living conditions that degrade their rights as humans. One may ask why the migrant workers allow themselves to be exploited and continue to live in inhumane conditions, but that line of questioning assumes that the workers, who come from impoverished backgrounds and from regions with little options for sustainable income, have a feasible choice not to.
 |
| Construction workers at the Burj Dubai |
However, why don’t the migrant workers just get up and leave the squalid condition where “bathrooms [are] shared by 20 men without proper sanitation, sewage outside the main entrance, and makeshift food markets that looked like refuse dumps…” It makes sense that the workers would leave after realizing how bad the condition are; however, many of the workers were in “serious debt as a result of paying illegal recruitment fees to gain work on the island.” Through this debt, the U.A.E. is able to keep the workers in control and is able to keep a constant workforce, which fulfills Erik, Olin, and Wrights first criteria for class exploitation: that, “The material welfare of one group of people causally depends on the material deprivations of another.”[4] Without the migrant workers, the U.A.E. would be without a reliable workforce. It needs to keep the workers in debt to keep them working on their precious cultural hub.
[1] "Daily Commercial News - UAE workforce includes large number of workers from India, conference told". Dcnonl.com. 2008-06-26. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
[2] Batty, David. "Migrants Building UAE Cultural Hub 'working in Prison Conditions'" The Gaurdian. The Gaurdian, 4 Apr. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
[3] Marx, Classes in Capitalism and Pre-Capitalism, pg. 37
[4] Erik, Olin, Wright, Class Counts, pg. 58
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Rights of LGBT Community and Patriarchy
Travesti and Patriarchy
The right to express one’s gender and/or sexuality freely, comfortably, and without repercussion (as long as one’s sexuality is geared towards consenting adults) is a fundamental human right. However, the LGBTQ community’s rights are some of the least protected around the world. There are countless incidents of discrimination and outright horrendous treatment of people because they identify in a way that does not fit the traditional binary categories of male or female. Travesti, written by Don Kulick, presents detailed accounts of a group of, what Kulick refers to them as, transgender prostitutes in Brazil. Through the accounts of the lives, the reader learns about how sexuality based discrimination is a big issue that has deep roots in patriarchy and our incorrect notions of sexuality and gender.
 |
| self-describe travesti that was murdered |
The book focuses on the life of a group of people with male genitals who strongly identify as males. These males also just so happen to identify as females. However, their conception of womanhood is through such a heavily patriarchal lens that they use to express how they are better at “being a woman” than those whom society considers women; they call themselves travestis. These travestis are “ … forced into prostitution because they cannot gain employment in any other sector.”[1] Like many other countries, Brazil does not have laws protecting against discrimination against individuals on “… the basis of appearance or sexual orientation.” Once one factors in patriarchy’s opposition to gender non-conformity, it is evident that the travestis are not welcome in society. In fact, “policemen are a major source of violence against travestis.” (Pg. 31) To make matters worse, those who committed violent acts against travestis are not punished because society sees the travestis as “… asking for it, and no one should expect courts to unduly penalize a man just because he shoots travestis in the face.” Essentially, travestis are treated like disposable sex objects and have no real protections under the law.
To understand how patriarchy allows for such a blatant violation of human rights, one must remain cognizant of the deeply imbedded Patriarchy. Although, to even get to the step of Patriarchy, one must recognize that gender is something we are socialized into and actively participate and mold to achieve rather than just purely ascribed. This construction of gender starts with “assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth.”[2] From then on it continues as a social institution with a process of “… creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities.” Society legitimizes this by continually reinforcing the Patriarchal ideals; however, “gender as a social construction does not flow automatically from genitalia…” Others do not understand that. Instead of trying to get a better grasp on the dimensions of gender/sexuality, people fear it and push it away. Patriarchy allows people to get away with violently ostracizing and assaulting gender non-conformists.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)