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           The prison system in the United States is one of the most problematic systems that we have in place. It may be seen as a place to right your wrongs but in reality, it is a place that oppresses you even more and usually sets you up for failure in the future (not always the case but most times it is). One main example of the prison system oppressing already oppressed people is stated in Women Behind Bars, where the author states that “Not everyone who commits crimes goes to prison. White collar embezzlers, middle-class shoplifters, young lawbreakers whose parents are ‘substantial citizens’, those who can afford bail and good lawyers...” (pg. 4). I think this statement is still very prevalent today. I think we still see this issue today because it is easier to put someone who is from the lower class in prison because they can’t afford a way out usually. This sets up an individual for further problems because when they leave prison, they have to state they are a criminal when applying for jobs, so it would make it harder to get a job thus making it hard to obtain a steady income for themselves and/or their family thus making them remain in a lower income household. Another way the prison system has oppressed people was by opening the Center for Violent Women at Worcester State Hospital (Against the ‘Prison/Psychiatric State’pgs. 26-27). This was and still is an issue today because adding the word “violent” in the title of the institution gives it many negative connotations. It gives a negative view because if you had left this institution and tried to get some of work that required you to say where you had gone, it would give your possible future employer that you are a violent person. I think that adding these unnecessary adjectives into the titles of institutions is just another way for society to see you as less of a human.

Sources:

“Introduction.” Women Behind Bars, Resources for Community Change, 1975, pp. 4–6.

Thuma, Emily. “Against the ‘Prison/Psychiatric State’: Anti-Violence Feminisms and the Politics of Confinement in the 1970s.”

Oral History Review

           I feel that this unit is one of the most relevant ones today due to today’s political climate. In the S.T.A.R. Manifesto, they list that they no longer want job discrimination, harassment on the streets, health care discrimination, and they want an understanding government. I think all these issues are prevalent today. I think the most prevalent issue is the government intervening in negative ways to the LGBTQ+ community (mainly transgender people). One of those issues being essentially no protection for them in the military and now I feel that those few protections on the streets will be gone as well. Another issue that was brought up in Queens in Exile, The Forgotten Ones, Sylvia Riveria states how she had to work the street in order to make a living for herself. I feel that may transgender women have had to do this and are punished for their work which is beyond unfair treatment. I simply cannot get over the fact that the government will oppress these women and when they start making money for themselves, so they can survive but then are arrested for their efforts to survive and then they are treated horribly when they are in jail by the officers as well as fellow inmates. I feel that we need to keep demanding rights for the LGBTQ+ community. For example, voting for someone who believes in the same things you believe in, calling your local representatives and telling them the problems you say or face every day, participating in marches/demonstrations, organize a march/demonstration, etc. There are so many things that need to be done and I think the most important way is to use your voice and/or your privilege so you can live in a better society where everyone is equal.

Sources:

Riveria, Sylvia. “Queens in Exile, The Forgotten Ones.” Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle, Untorelli Press, 2006, pp. 40–55.

For my manifesto I wanted to focus on the environment. Mainly I wanted to focus on the changes the environment is going through currently and how we can try and fix the damage that is being done. My audience for this manifesto is this current generation because according to WWF "We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it." (CNN,Cable News Network). That fact is a very scary one and one that I want to change. The goal of this manifesto is to inform others about their abuse on the environment and how it is negatively impacting the Earth. I think this is important to write about because all of our issues politically, personally, socially, etc. won’t matter if we don’t have a healthy Earth to live on. I also think it’s important because future generations will be born into a very different world than we will remember, and I do not find that fair at all to them. I think that this manifesto should be written in a problem-solution style. I want to write it like this because it gives the reader a problem that they may do and a solution to that problem. I want this manifesto to help readers better understand what they are putting in the environment and I want them to know that only they can change what they do to the Earth.

Sources:

This unit has really taught and informed me more about the Chicana Feminist Movement/Thought. I never really hear much about Chicana feminism in the media today. I really enjoyed reading the manifesto, Chicana Feminism, by Anna Nieto-Gomez. She brought up a bunch of great points but one that really stuck with me was, “...if you’re a Chicana you’re on the other side. They say you can’t stand on both sides-which is a bunch of bull,” (pg.259 Chicana Feminism). I really liked this quote because multiple people can relate to it even if they are not Chicana. Just because you are one thing (i.e. Chicana), it does not mean that you are only supporting that side of you. You can support multiple groups regardless of what you are labeled by society. For example, I am a white female so therefore I should only be worried with issues that directly affect me but that is just simply not the reality. I think as a society we tend to believe this idea sometimes and just forget that the majority of us actually support other groups/problems, even problems that do not affect us at all. Another interesting piece from this unit was The Development of Chicana Feminist Discourse, I found this reading to be very informative on Chicana Feminism. The reading basically talked about the formation and the history of Chicana Feminism. For example, I learned that the movement started because of the sexism involved in the Chicano movement. Overall, I found this unit to be one of the most eye-opening ones that we have done as well as beyond informative.

Sources:

Nieto-Gomez, Anna. Chicana Feminism.

                         One of the readings that I really enjoyed from this unit was the interview of Demita Frazier. I liked this piece because Frazier really helped me better understand what being a black woman was like in the mid 1960s. For example, she talked about how she went to the Nicholas Senn but was eventually kicked out because she was protesting against the Vietnam War (How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collectivepgs. 111-112). I thought about this situation and instantly knew that if a white woman had done this eh would simply have gotten a slap on the wrist and would be asked not to do it again. This of course is not the only example when a black woman will receive a harsh punishment for standing up against something compared to a white woman. Another example was in the chapter, The Politics of Black Feminist Thought, Collins talks about how class, racism, and sexism are all factors that are pushing black women into poverty. The real question now is how does this all relate to today’s black women? Sadly, all of these systems of oppression are still fighting to push down black women. One main problem today that brings down black women is how social media portrays black women. I constantly see light-skinned women receiving more praise than darker skinned women (to clarify there is nothing wrong with being light-skinned). This is an issue because these women are being oppressed for the shade of their skin. It is also an issue because it brings down the thousands of pre-teen/teenage darker skinned girls who use social media. But there are plenty of women trying to reduce this negative stigma on social media as well as in person. To name a few women: Rihanna, Lizzo, Leslie Jones, Tracee Ellis Ross, etc.

Sources:

“Demita Frazier.” How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Haymarket Books, 2017, pp. 111–143.

This unit focused on reproductive justice. At the beginning of this unit I had always assumed that reproductive justice was gaining the right to an abortion but in reality, there are so many other issues that fell under reproductive justice that I had not been taught. I had never really thought the reproductive justice was the right to have or not have a child. I now view reproductive justice in this light thanks to this class. I wanted to focus on the less talked about side of reproductive justice, sterilization: the right to be or not to be sterilized. This unit talked a lot sterilization, more importantly the unwanted sterilization on Puerto Rican women. The U.S. government will claim that they sterilize these women for “population control” (Family Panning MJ Romano). While population control may seem reasonable to some people, the reality is that they are forcing these women to be sterilized. In other words, these women have no say on if they want or don’t want to be sterilized which I feel goes against human rights.

           I think another interesting point made in this unit is how some groups just avoided other reproductive issues and only focused on problems that they faced. For example, the Redstockings (Chapter 1: ‘Let’s Hear It from the Real Experts’ Feminism and the Early Abortion Rights Movement).  The Redstockings only focused on the right to have an abortion, not the right to have kids. I personally feel that you cannot just seek out for one issue when there are plenty of other issues that women face in the reproductive justice area. I feel that because these women only focused on one issue it was a catalyst for many other “feminist” groups to do the same thing. For example, white feminism is a problem today because they only focus on problem that white women face. I do not think these women understand the privilege they have because they are white, and they lack the idea that women of color, lower class women, transwomen, etc. face much more difficult problems than they do. I would even go as far to say that they are not even true feminists because feminism’s basic definition is the “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) and these women only focus on white women’s problems which just goes against the definition because they are excluding a large population of women.

Sources:

Romano, MJ. “Family Planning.” CS221, Family Planning , 23 Oct. 2008, stanford.edu/group/womenscourage/cgi-bin/blogs/familyplanning/2008/10/23/forced-sterilization-in-puerto-rico/.

“Chapter 1: ‘Let’s Hear It from the Real Experts’ Feminism and the Early Abortion Rights Movement.” Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, by Jennifer Nelson, New York University Press, 2003, pp. 21–38.

When I first read the SCUM ManifestoI immediately thought that it had to be a satirical piece of writing. I thought that there was no way someone wrote this and whole heartedly meant it. After reading the piece I went to look up Valerie Solonas, so I would better understand her viewpoint and if she actually wrote this and meant it. After some quick research I found out that she did believe in the SCUM Manifesto. After learning this I wanted to better understand where she was coming from and how this piece can compare to today’s society. I found that this piece was a fundamental stepping stone for radical feminism. This piece helped radical feminists embrace their rage and use it as a weapon against the systems oppressing them (Remembering 1968: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto for the Society for Cutting up Men). I feel like this rage we see from radical feminism still exists today in multiple activist groups. My main example would be the women’s march that happened in reaction to Donald Trump being inaugurated. This march happened nationwide and it was full of people who were angry that the United States new president was such a hateful man towards minorities. I feel that the women’s march is a good example of using anger to protest because there were so many people who turned up at Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, etc. to show that there is a large population that is against the president and that no one is alone in this fight. As of today we see multiple marches across the globe. I feel that these marches are a good way to express your anger towards something in a healthy manner.

Solonas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto. AIM and Phoenix Press, 1983.

Women for decades have not had many rights while in the workplace. One of the first documented rights was “Resolutions of the First International Congress for Working Women”, this document helped women (and children) gain rights that made them more equal to their male counterparts. While this document (and many more) help women gain equal rights in the workplace, there are still many companies that do not follow this guidelines and abuse their power. One of these major companies is Amazon.

In recent news Amazon has been making headlines about its workers going on strike. Amazon workers are going on strike because they have been working in terrible conditions. Some workers are injured on the job and Amazon has tried to hide this from the media. But what’s worse is that there have been some workers who have died on the job and Amazon still tried to hide it from the media (As Amazon Hits $1 Trillion in Value, Its Warehouse Workers Denounce “Slavery” Conditions). Light has started to shed on this abuse of power by Amazon. In fact, Amazon was put on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s “Dirty Dozen” list. But this abuse of power has just hit headlines in 2017. Which means it was about five years before people started talking about these poor working conditions.

So while there are companies that have great working conditions, there is a sad reality that some of the world’s biggest companies abuse their power and put their workers at risk. They allow the lives of their workers so they can continue making money at record speeds. Amazon is not the only company that does this. Some companies that abuse their power are: Target, Microsoft, Walmart, Apple, and Sears, just to name a few big name companies.

Sources

“10 Companies That Treat Their Employees Even Worse Than Amazon.” Listverse, Listverse, 24 Aug. 2015, listverse.com/2015/08/24/10-companies-that-treat-their-employees-even-worse-than-amazon/.

“As Amazon Hits $1 Trillion in Value, Its Warehouse Workers Denounce ‘Slavery’ Conditions.” Democracy Now!, www.democracynow.org/2018/9/5/as_amazon_hits_1t_in_value.

In the reading, “Female, Black, and Able: Representations of Sojourner Truth and Theories of Embodiment” by Meredith Minister, she talks about Sojourner Truth and her body. More specifically she talks about her disability in her hand. Truth has been known to use her body as a way to “go against social norms,” (Female, Black, and Able: Representations of Sojourner Truth and Theories of Embodiment). Truth did not touch on the topic of her hand because she felt that it would take away from her true goal, equality of races and sexes. She most likely felt that people would discredit her because she wasn’t seen as “normal” in that era.

This stigma against physical disabilities also continues to be true in mental disabilities. In the survey, “Stigma Against Mental Health” conducted by Y M Lai, C P H Hong, and C Y I Chee, they found that there was a major stigma on people with mental health disorders rather than people with cardiac disorders. The results of this survey concluded that people who have a mental health problem feel that they are treated differently by others which could make the reader assume that people are more likely to discredit someone with a mental health disorder over someone with a cardiac problem since cardiac problems are deemed as more “normal” to have.

These two sources relate to current day events because there are thousands of people who have a disability, whether it be physical, emotional, mental, physical, etc. While there are have been celebrities and political figures trying to end a stigma on disabilities, there is still a large population of people who keep up the stigma and discredit people with disabilities. A recent study found that many social media accounts display a negative stigma on disabilities. More specifically posts about mental disabilities that are posted on social media are shown to be false while posts about diabetes or cardiac problems have more truth (Approaches to Reducing Stigma). The big takeaway from all of this is that while we do try to reduce the stigma on disabilities, we still have to fight against people who are throwing false information out there.  

#GWS340

Sources:

Committee on the Science of Changing Behavioral Health Social Norms. “Approaches to Reducing Stigma.” Advances in Pediatrics., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 3 Aug. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK384914/.

Minister, Meredith. “Female, Black, and Able: Representations of Sojourner Truth and Theories of Embodiment.” Disability Studies Quarterly, dsq-sds.org/article/view/3030/3057.