Samalama726's Blog

Blog #16: Gender Politics, Food and Cyberspace

Samantha — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:53:03 +0000

When the word cyberspace comes to mind, I think of the negative aspects of technology. Now how can the internet be negative? The Internet has opened up this world to so many possibilities and has made many everyday tasks simpler than ever. The negative part about it is that people abuse it and can get away with illegal things like pornography and harassment. In this section it did not specifically talk about pornography or harassment, however, it did talk about how women are trafficked as sex workers with the help of the internet. Specifically Filipinas. Filipinas are women from the Philipines, in case you didn’t know, and because they are trafficked for sex, these women have created an image that does not exactly describe all filipinas and it’s not fair. This image consist of the normal attributes any american sex worker would have like skinny, small body type. In addition, the image consists of innocence as well. I guess the men receiving the pleasure and sex from these women want them to appear innocent and pure, as it is a turn on for them which is completely sickening if i might add.

In the other part of this section, organic foods and farming is addressed. An interesting point most people will never know is that some organic foods are not as healthy as they claim to be by the time they get to where they are being sold. Why you may ask? Because a lot of organic foods are foreign and come from countries around the world so they go through so many different areas that they lose their “organic-ness” for lack of a better term. The shipping across the world of organic food can almost relate to the trafficking of women for sex because by the time the women get back to where they started, they are nothing like they were in the beginning and they lose a little bit of themselves as they give it to each man who pays for their pleasure. Something to think about.

Blog #16: Imprisoning Women

Samantha — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:17:03 +0000

I never knew in my entire life that if a prisoner has a serious medical condition or problem where he/she needs medical assistance asap or they will die, that they are rejected medical care because they are in prison. That just does not make any sense to me. For example, in the beginning the author describes a woman who lost her legs due to a circulatory problem, sits in her wheelchair in the hot sun and the workers there just walk passed her rather than move her to an area that is more cool because she cannot move herself. That is just cruel. Even in the article when it got into other incarcerated women’s situations about HIV/AIDS, I could not believe the lack of help and care the prisons give to women who really need it, or else they could die. Going back to that same woman in the wheel chair, she even asked to be released because she had a disease and she knew she was going to die, so she wanted to die at home, but she was denied. I mean, yeah these woman obviously did something horrible to get in the position they are in, however, if they are in need of seriously medical help, then why not give it to them? The statistics were interesting because I never thought the disease rate was so high. Between 25% and 30% of imprisoned women were tested positive for HIV/AIDS and nearly 18% of inmates were exposed to tuberculosis. Maybe the workers aren’t aware of the fact that these diseases can KILL YOU! These situations in prisons would make me make sure that I do nothing wrong with the law because if I would ever have to be put in these types of positions, I would just rather die.

Blog #15: Work and Women

Samantha — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:30:10 +0000

So for many years now, all the way back to the early 1900s, sex discrimination in the workforce has been present. I honestly think it is never going to go away, but then again maybe that is just how it has to be in society. Anyway, dealing with sex discrimination, in Mexico many women work in factories called Maquiladoras. About 70% of workers in these factories are women, so that poses as a good thing in a way because women are actually working and not being refused work because of gender. However, each women before hired needs to be tested for pregnancy. This seems logical because if a woman is pregnant it makes no sense to hire her if she is just going to go on maternity leave and not be working for about a year. What really bothered me about reading was that the leaders of the factories, obviously men, said they could not have a pregnant woman working for them because they were too expensive. Now I automatically thought that it would be he opposite because if a woman is pregnant eventually she wont be in work so she wouldn’t get paid as much, but that is not the case. There is a small story in this reading about how a woman waited until she was pregnant to apply for a job just so that she could collect the maternity benefits that social security would not provide for her baby. That actually is a smart idea if you think about it. The bad thing about this new rule is that for a woman who was pregnant, she had asked for a transfer in jobs because the one she was working consisted of too much heavy lifting. You would think the manager would have some decency and allow her to move to a different job for the time being, but he didn’t and she ended up losing the fetus. That company made her get her tubes tied so that there would be no more problems. I mean come on that’s not even fair! Does a woman have no rights anymore?

Blog #14: Displacements and Relocations

Samantha — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:03:55 +0000

What I found to be very interesting in the reading was the Vietnamese Journal written by Mimi Nguyen. It is so real. I mean it shouldn’t be anything else, but i could honestly feel what she was feeling based on how she wrote each journal entry. For example, she brings up a few times the questions that get asked to all people who migrate and those questions are: “Why are you here?” and “When are you going back?” I guess migrants ask themselves those questions a lot because they never will really understand the true answers to them. Mimi lives in a white working-class town outside of Minneapolis. I’ve never been to Minnesota myself, but I could only imagine the lack of diversity there. She even states it in one of her entries how her family is the only non-white family and they are always looked down upon because they are, in her words, “bizarre, foreign, and refugee.” Just from how she wrote the journal entries, Mimi seems miserable in the U.S, but I don’t think she regrets being migrated there. I mean of course she had no choice because she was only 1 year old, however, she doesn’t make an effort to say that she really wants to go back Vietnam. I also find it interesting that she lives on a military base I believe. I just find it ironic how she lived in an area of war and when she moves to the U.S she is still surrounded with that feeling of war because she will never forget. It sucks to constantly be surrounded by such feelings especially for her. I mean it’s bad enough that she is not accepted in America for who she is, but if she ever tried to go back to Vietnam now, she wouldn’t be accepted there either.

Blog # 13: Gender Aspects of Travel and Tourism

Samantha — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:51:06 +0000

Never would I have thought of traveling as a sign of manhood. In the reading I found myself making faces at what I was reading because I have never heard of traveling as a man thing. Cynthia Enloe made it seem as though women were not supposed to travel. But Why? I mean, it makes sense that women were seen to stay home, because that is what we are taught about history, but women not being allowed to travel? That’s weird. Come to think of it, back then I don’t even think traveling across the world to different countries was big as it is now, unless it was for the military. Today families go on vacation all the time, sometimes more than once in a year, and being that flying is the safest way to travel, more and more people just do it. Tourism is so huge nowadays. What if a single mother wants to take her kids on vacation to California or to see family in another state? Is she considered wrong because she doesn’t have a man at her side to protect her? This goes back to the central theme of man vs. women and their relationship for one another. The man is the protector and the woman stays home and takes care of the family. If a woman has children and is without a husband, I think she can take care of herself. It only makes sense because if she wanted a man, then she would have one. The saying in the reading, “good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere”, is actually catchy, but it’s not right to say. Granted this reading is not recent, however, at the time it was written I would still think that these beliefs of being away from home meant risks for a woman’s safety would be gone.

Blog #12: Playing Unfair

Samantha — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:02:23 +0000

What is the perfect body image? It’s long sleek hair, skinny body, that perfect tan and “was just at the beach” glow, long legs, etc etc. Almost every person, if not all, living in America has thought about or wished that they could change something about the way that they look based on the images they see in the media. Now I do not think the “perfect body” even exists so we are all basically wasting our time trying. In order to look such a way extreme circumstances must occur like plastic surgery for one example. Plastic surgery is not smart! unless of course it is needed to protect one’s health or reconstruct an injury or something like that. I wish people wouldn’t worry so much about how their features. I know if anyone reads this they are probably saying, “well i know she cares how she looks.” and yes I make sure i look decent when I go out, but I would never get surgery done on my body to make myself look better. That in itself is just crazy. Also another section really bothered me about how the actual laborers in the factories who take their entire day out to work get paid close to nothing in one day, whereas here in the USA, we get paid more per hour. What kind of work do we Americans do that could ever compare to their work? NOTHING. Those workers in the factories have no other choice but to work there so you would think they would pay them a more accepting amount than 13 cents. All in all, life isn’t fair, nobody has the perfect body and not everyone can get paid fully for the amount of work that they do.

Blog #11: Storytelling and Social Injustice

Samantha — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:40:21 +0000

Okay my article was talking about the Republican party and being that politics are not my thing I did not really get anything out of it. What I did pick up throughout the article was that there was a group of individuals that put on performances about the Republican Party, but they were against it. It was almost as if they were making fun on the party as a whole. However, a main theme that I got out of this was going against the government and the law. I say this because as a result of all three performances put on by this group, the cops arrived and arrested at least one person. In the first performance this group of people dressed up like elephants because the symbol for the republican party is the elephant and they answered questions from people on the street. In the second performance they took their shirts off their backs and in the third they rented boats to go on the lake and they held up signs and shouted out points as they passed the republican party convention of some kind. I am not exactly sure why they chose to do such things, but when they did it, they questioned and hesitated before they went through with it because they knew they could get arrested. However, i the end, they went ahead and did all of them and even though some got arrested, they did not care because they were sticking up for what they thought needed to be done. This theme is present in just about all topics we discuss because there will always be people who disagree and sometimes some people just need to get it out there in the open regardless of the consequences. It takes a lot to go against the law and risk it all, but it shows in your character if you go through with it.

BLog #10: Media Representations of Gender

Samantha — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:39:21 +0000

I just want to start out by saying that children should not have do deal with stereotypes and things of that nature. It is a shame that in children’s books, women are not given full credit and what people fail to realize is how children’s books actually do change kids perceptions of themselves and others. The stories may seem fictional, but are they really? By illustrating such situations in children’s books, the children are exposed to what is not the “real world” and then by the time they get old enough to understand what the “real world” is, they’re confused and disappointed. In the article it states that children begin to act like adults at the age of 5 and identify their gender identities. That is just shocking in itself because at age 5 most kids are in kindergarten, just learning to read and write. How could they possibly be acting like adults and know about gender identities? It is all because of the picture books they read. The picture books display kids in them and the children reading those books end up wanting to be just like them and go through the same situations they do because that is what they know. Another issue is how females and minorities are almost always absent from children’s picture books; however, some segregated boarding schools started to change their curriculum and started choosing children’s books that involved kids of different races so that the children reading them would feel more connected. I think that’s a smart approach because it is true that when kids are young, they believe their lives will end up like fairy tales, but everyone knows that fairy tales are not real. The article even mentioned how in the early 70s young girls were seen as passive, stepmothers were evil, and only beautiful girls were associated with happy endings. Obviously that is not all true, however, children grow up thinking they will live like what they see and read in the books.

Blog #9: Masculinities

Samantha — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:54:54 +0000

My article on the Militia Movement seemed extremely biased in places because is defined itself with the words, “white men” and “men”. The entire concept of the militias confuses me, however, trying to beat the government seems like something that has been going on for decades. For example, riots, and protests are exactly what fighting back against the government means. Maybe it is not as drastic as using weapons and such as my article discussed, but in all aspects of history, fighting against the government is normal. Such militias are mainly from Montana and states from that area, along with the fact that they are christian. With that being said, I do no feel as though this article can be used in all situations mainly because Montana is a rural area and other places like New York experience different situations. Maybe some would say the situations in urban areas are worse because there are more people and more societal issues. Then again, there are others that might say that the people who live on farms and such have it worse because they are away from resources and have to rely on maintaining crops whereas, urban families can go to markets. Basically, all areas in the country experience different things and fighting back against the government occurs in all of them. These militias are just some and are not like others. Yes these militias are white christians, however, based on where they started, there wouldn’t really be any other people in them. The militia movement may be over according to history books, but it is still happening everyday in the world.

Blog #8: Communities, Nations, Feminist Activism

Samantha — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:32:00 +0000

Back to the nineteenth century, women have been fighting for their rights as individuals in the U.S. In history class, you really only hear about the United States feminists groups and what American women did to gain their rights; however, what many do not know is that feminists groups have been around all over the world and I believe in the reading, The World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840, is what sparked the U.S women’s movement. It is interesting to know that the women of America became inspired by the hardships that European women struggled with and then they just decided to come together. At this moment in time, between wars, it was the perfect time for women to fight back because they showed how much they could be like men with the protesting and demanding and such. The women of the nineteenth century were probably the strongest women of all time just because of this movement. After that one group emerged in London, the amount of international women’s groups started to emerge and come about everywhere. Knowing all of this makes me proud to be a women because now I know that nobody can refuse me anything “just because”, and it makes me more confident to stand up for what is right because I know that at some point in time, hundreds of thousands of women all came together and won and did it for us, for the future women to come. I also want to add that this is a continuation to the first reading in a way because in the first reading, it regards how “the exclusion of women”, when the rights of state citizenship were being created, was on purpose. Why