THE CONTROL OF WOMEN:
The fear of women having power over their own bodies. The idea that our bodies belong to the male gender, to the government, our religion, our husbands. That our bodies are not our own but something to be owned. Something to be for the male pleasure. For the male reproductive rights and not for the female.
The female = male property, male dominance.
The female < male
The female ≥ domesticated animals/pets
That is what the female stands for in the Western world. The worse part of this all, are the women who believe this as well. Women who are so engrained in a patriarchal society and are willing to fight for the rights of other women to be taken away.
In the wake of the Presidential election, my fear of being a woman has only intensified. My supervisor who is an Italian American said that he doesn’t care about color, it is all same to him, but it’s a touchy subject because it doesn’t affect him and he would rather have an asshole in the white house then a "liar". I think he has yet to realize that Trump is also a liar in different ways. Ad probably isn't going to help him get the office job he has been wanting for so long. After this comment, I ranted to my best friend who said, the issue with this country is that no one cares about sexual assault or women's rights, including women. That’s why many would vote for Trump despite the things he says about women. "The reduction of sexuality to a dirty joke and of people to objects is the real obscenity of the culture( Kilbourne P.124)." See, I think the worry here for women is the fact that people have showed little care for sexual assault victims and women's rights in general. It is so obvious with the way the media portrays women and the way our new president even puts down women, that even many women don’t value themselves as they ought because they are not taught to do so.
I know that this is the reason why so many people had an issue with a female president. The fear of change that so many don’t quite understand can be good change for our country. Most of all, so many don’t understand the impact that this not only had on our country but on the World. It is fear inducing to believe that we can have a women elected as president in an oppressed society.
Today and every other day since the election, " Reproductive freedom is on my mind. How could it not be? I'm a woman of reproductive age and depending on where I live, my reproductive choices are limited." (Gay P. 267) It is as though Roxanne Gay foreshadowed my thoughts. I find it so absurd that this country values freedom, but is so quick to stop any sort of freedom from being granted to those who are oppressed or protecting those who do exercise their freedom from those who wish to oppress it. Frankly, I do not understand what America's values are, except for being a giant contradiction to its Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Now I get that these pieces of writings were written by white men for white men, but maybe that’s the issue with them. They aren't written for the colored or the women. And frankly, I wish their was a way to create a new document that’s written by the colored and the whites, women, and men, together because then maybe, they would actually be some progress in this country that doesn’t take 50 years to get too.
I found this beautiful website called National organization for men against sexism and boy was I so absorbed by this article on abortion, called Abortion The Ultimate Insult To Male Authority. After reading this I thought, how crazy is it, that somehow mankind celebrates in being the super animals who can create civilized societies and choose between right and wrong and not act like those within the animal kingdom, yet we still fucking act like we are, when it comes to sex, and babies, and giving half the population of the world, actual free, societal, and civilized rights.
I sat at work on a very slow day and I had a male co-worker ask why women try so hard. He asked because he was very concerned that his 13-year-old-sister was speaking about how a friend had a very big penis. He didn't quite understand why that was. So we spoke about body image and the media and the effects it can have on young children's minds who don’t quite understand sex and sex appeal and what it really means to be a male or female or just a person in society. I thought for a moment he understood what I was trying to explain. As lunch time came, we sat in the lunch room and he yelled in spanish to one of the girls who gained some weight stop eating so much or you are going to get fat. I pointed out that comments such as those contribute to the insecurity of females, even as a joke.
I am not to sure if he understood that, since he kept saying it was just a joke. The reason I mention this is because it reminded of a quote from one of our readings. Kilbourne wrote " How do we resist these destructive messages and images? The first step, as always, is to become as conscious of them as possible, to deconstruct them (Kilbourne P.131)". The fear is that no one is opening their eyes and deconstructing our society. Not just images in the media, but what is truly wrong with our country and the way our people portray women, colored people, the LGBTQ community, and Muslims. And those who are deconstructing the society are often ignored and not given the special attention they deserve. This boy at work didn't quite understand the harm his joke can make on a woman, and I hope that pointing it out somehow showed him that issue.
The quote below I think sums up how we (the women who do believe in our rights) feel after the wake of the election.
" It is a small miracle women do not have short memories about our rights that have always shamefully, been alienable" (Gay P.279).
Roxanne Gay, Alienable Rights of Women
Jean Kilbourne, The More You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size
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