Women are Savages in the Absence of Dresses

     I recently watched two movies about women breaking out into the open world on their own and saw two completely different visions of women and freedom. It is in the first film, Girls of the Road, that women seem to convert to savagery and faction without the presence of men. It is in the second that we see a world without adventure is not a world worth living in. I was hoping to have a humorous post about how women are portrayed as stupid and senseless, living from slum to slum because no one is there to take care of them. I direly hoped that after watching Roman Holiday I would have my opportunity at ridicule. After all, I believe ridicule to be something that I am very good at.

     Girls of the Road does not offer one the ability to look fondly at how the female experience adapts to harsh situations. The film details female drifters along the roadway. In the depression era economy, it was difficult for a woman to keep a job, a character in the film even said that a woman couldn't even beg for one. So how did these women cope with life on the road? Well they became gamblers who carry clubs and wrestle in the mud of course. When first seeing the scene where the women are carrying large sticks around a hobo camp to protect themselves, I could only image what adversities they must have seen to revert back to such a primitive state. Yet, some of the women had only been on the road for a short while, and were quick to take part in riots, fights with the police, and flight from safe travel. An argument quickly turned into a wrestiling match that took place in a mud pit of all places. The story was originally told from a male perspective, but in this instance it was adapted to feature women. It was written and adapted by a man. I could not help but think of Honey West, the heroine from many detective novels who in the course of solving crimes was frequently caught in states of undress. This is what I was hoping to do originally: I wanted to lampoon the personification of women in cinema in this post. However, Roman Holiday gave me pause.

     Roman Holiday is quite honest with itself. It is a story that is fictional, but not over the top; assertive, but not pushy and all that. This film gives a princess of an unnamed fiefdom the freedom to walk about the city outside of the protection of her family and guards. It is only by the kindness of a passerby that she is not apprehended by the police. This passerby happens to be a journalist who finds out her identity, and poses as someone who would want nothing more than to make her small dreams come true. The struggle of greed and trust finalizes in a scene where he chooses to pay money for the lies he has told, and keep the princess' secret holiday a secret. It sounds a bit cliché, but its honesty comes from its portrayal of humanity rather than the credibility of the plot. Women as masters of their own domain is a large part of this course, and I think this film did a wonderful job of showing just that. A woman was given the opportunity to be free, and that freedom was put into jeopardy due to a man. I was able to see that although money was at a man's door, humanity came through. That no one's dignity is worth a paycheck.
     This post was a bit serious, so here is a picture of a bear riding a shark. Enjoy.

On Candidness

     Perhaps it is best to say that when presenting one's self, you should put your best foot forward. On the battlefield, Mary Seacole became an angel for many men. It was in her presentation of herself to the crown that she has garnered some attention from royalty and now she shares a place in the minds of many as a healer for the sake of healing. She truly was a strong and courageous woman. Why is it then, that Mary Seacole does not have her name burned into the collective mind of students everywhere? Why is it that Florence Nightengale holds all of the nursing cards? I believe because she had the upper hand when the war was over, and her story was not as pedestrian. Not to say that anything about Mrs. Seacole was pedestrian, but she was a more human figure. You cannot think of Seacole without thinking of her mixed heritage, sleeping on boat docks, and possibly about having an illegitimate child. For the purposes of being a wholly rounded person, I applaud her for living a life of both merit and strife. It is when you speak of Florence--she and I are on a first name basis--that less is conjured up.

     Florence in my mind is a white woman draped in white, who rides side-saddle to the frontlines and tends to wounded men with surgical cleanliness. That's it. I know nothing more about the woman, despite being on a first name basis. I do not like to show my ignorance often, but I think that is what draws me to my thoughts about the differences between the two. In order to give herself authority to speak on the subject of war, Mrs. Seacole had to promote herself. It was in promoting herself that her story is revealed. The Many Adventures uses the word diarrhea more times than I would care to count. Mary Seacole is now associated with diarrhea. Great. It is that that endures her however, she creates a closeness with her patients that I could not imagine Florence creating. That motherly touch, the sexless nurse in the mud pulling a bullet out of your leg with what she could carry on horseback, that makes her different.

     It is in presentation that doing dioramas about nurses in wars tends to lean toward the white woman. Not out of sheer, bleeding edge racism, but because it is easier to portray someone that has a storied history about her. Especially if that history wasn't written by her. If Mrs. Seacole had not produced her work, would we be speaking about her today? Her life is truly a triumph of grit and skill, but how many other great women have existed without the ability to promote themselves? I guess Mrs. Seacole is complicated, so complicated that a diorama wouldn't do her justice. Rich white women, however, are easy.

http://beatonna.livejournal.com/93271.html

Not an Enviable Position

     I think that I have done "enough" when it comes to studying identity and gender. Currently I am finding it difficult in my own life to balance what I have learned about myself, what I have learned about gender, and the reality of the world. I often encourage young women to stand outside of what they believe to be the walls that cage them, because those walls were put there by someone that was not acting in their best intentions. My coursework in gender, sexuality, homophobia, and education have led me to believe that there are thing that we construct ourselves, and things that we follow simply out of habit or laziness. I would like to think that some readings I have recently done about women and travelling is mostly the former. The reading were written by women, for women, but they still had this twinge of male-ness about them. I couldn't help but feel that the writer had a very large man behind her. I don't think it is appropriate for me to feel sympathy, because I should look at things in a less personal way.

     Being a woman on the road is something that can be seen as a truly American form of freedom. Although I feel suspect about some of the intentions behind the writings, I do feel that America is the safest place for any woman to strike out on her own. It is that mobility has become a part of who we have become as a people. We have this vast mass of land, and perhaps some of that old-west rushing headlong into the unknown is still with us. Originally this was a male-oriented sort of thing, that a man would strike out on his own and claim land, a lady, and liberty. Women venturing out into that same unknown has different meanings. Perhaps the cautious nature behind these readings is the beginning of something that will be legitimately an American woman's trait. The Women's Association houses and having male accompaniment for much of the journey is just the first step out of the household that many hold dear, and many dearly wish to loose.

What to do about opressive behavior in the classroom

In reading Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan Johnson, the over-arching theme for me has been that there exist subtle yet pervasive exercises of power that exploit the sense of weakness that comes from being a minority. In the final chapter of Johnson's book, he proposes a series of choices that people can make to frame society in such a way that difference does not create an inherent relationship of power. Changing the patterns of exclusion, rejection, privilege, harassment, discrimination, and violence is only possible through the gradual acceptance of an entire culture. He provides solutions to help better create this world first by framing two myths so that we may observe and discount them in real life.

The first myth, “it's always been this way, and it always will,” makes the point that white privilege is a somewhat recent phenomenon. From a historical prospective, over hundreds of thousands of years, the white male dominated system is still young, and could even be in its dying days. In order for us to come to what we recognize as equality for black and white men in this country, we first had to go through four hundred years of slavery, more than a decade of social turmoil, and three amendments to the Constitution. We can pick and choose moments in time, but in order to see society change, we must have a higher level of scrutiny, and view the progress that is made between the points in time. Social systems are fluid, and while they may seem rigid and inflexible, this could be largely the effect of oppression limiting collective memory. Gay men and women today view their struggle as a fool's errand in some places because recent memory serves to support one definition of marriage. This struggle surely went through the minds of black men returning from Europe, riddled with the memories of lost friends and close scrapes during the war, only to have their voting rights held from them. To imagine a world where heteronormativity is considered a faux pas is difficult, because we have not been exposed to that world. The world is big, and changing it will take time, so how do we value our time when we know that we may not live to see change?

The second myth is “Ghandi's paradox,” or the “myth of no effect.” From an individual's point of view, the enormity of changing the entire world, or even a single person is enough to draw a feeling of powerlessness. The system can change, and we must let go the feeling of entitlement that comes from seeing the fruits of your labors. The individual must understand that they may be just a leaf on the tree, but every leaf is needed to produce the sweetest fruit. You must be able to grow, and wilt, knowing that you may never see the product that you have worked so hard for. The myth of no effect blurs the effect that we can have on the world by placing into our minds that we do not have power because we may belong to such a small group. Change can come from small minorities simply by challenging what the many think is right. Johnson uses the example of a racist or sexist joke. The “seamless response to the joke affirms the normalcy and unproblematic nature” of its content (Johnson 313). By joining into the laughter, tacit approval is given. Silence should not be taken as a lack of power exertion, but a move to not lend power to the racist or sexist normalcy.

So what should we do? There is no simple answer, we must not assume there is. At the very least, as Johnson suggests, we can pay attention. We can be surveyors of our own social justice by knowing when a relationship of power is being created to subordinate a minority, and we can question why, and most importantly, we can stand against it. It takes work to know what you are talking about, but it is another stage to social justice to have the ability to speak with conviction and with reason. Johnson also suggests that we learn to listen. Learn to be curious before critical, and to take yourself seriously. The reaction to deflect and deny any sense of privilege is something that takes time to shake off. The author himself states in the final pages of the book that he fights it at times. The most difficult of his suggested means of doing something to combat the oppression of difference is to take small risks. It is not necessary to picket a corporation as the only means of getting something done. Since the world exists both as a group of individuals and as a complex social system, you can tackle both by “stepping off the path of least resistance” and calling attention to how the world is organized, and why power is divided the way it is (143). You must find ways to interrupt the tacit approval of oppressive behaviors.

An individual's actions may not seem like much, but when you seek change, it is necessary to stir the pot however you can. The gay and lesbian rights movement parallels the civil rights era. The ability to argue that man can only be born in one fashion harkens back to the black man being considered anything other than completely equal to the white man. When we think about all man being created equal, we must also consider that their sexual proclivity and lifestyle should bear no burden to the right to equal protection and equal rights. Advocating for women's suffrage did not make you a woman, but in some youth circles, advocating for gay rights makes you “gay.” The first reaction of a teenage boy to different lifestyles does not necessarily measure how he feels about it, but it can measure the difference between his, and his parent's generations. In an educational setting, the classroom is used to dispense what can be considered the correct and incorrect way to view the world. Personal belief does play a major role, but educating about various peoples as if they stand among you as equals does not promote their lifestyle. To acknowledge that there are differences is the first step to discussing the differences in power.

Discussion questions:

1. What are some things that are taught in the classroom today that were not taught when you attended school?
2. How do some curricula promote oppressive thought?