“As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”
I think my main takeaway here was learning about an organization of Black lesbian women who work together to try and put an end to racist, classist, and sexist oppression. They talk about how they can face this among the Black community as well as outside of the Black community. This really connects for me into the other major text.
Audre Lorde’s “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
“These accusations, coming from the very women to whom we look for deep and real understanding, have served to keep many Black lesbians in hiding, caught between the racism of white women and the homophobia of their sisters.” (Pg 121-122)
From reading the Combahee River Collective to reading this, the idea that Black lesbian women face discrimination from their own peers really hit hard. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to feel racism from white people, then white women, on top of homophobia from potentially Black men as well as Black women. It solidifies the notion of intersectionality to me.
Ijeoma Oluo- So You Want to Talk About Race
“Everything is Whiteness” (24:07)
I found Oluo’s introduction and beginning speech extremely powerful. At Target, we had to receive training on how to treat POC customers. So when she mentioned in the beginning about clerks following her around the store, it made me remember that training. I feel like it was valuable training too. Because like Oluo says, it’s Black people who have the possibility of conversations ending badly, not white people (~21:29).
Nina Simone- “Four Women”
I honestly just felt the emotion behind the song. It encapsulates the different hardships Black women have went through from slavery to sexual assault, the exact things mentioned in the three major readings. Simone’s voice was alluring yet powerful. I’ve never heard this song before, but I’m glad I have.
Key Words: lesbianism, sexism, homophobia.
Question for the class: How can we improve our efforts to listen to those facing discrimination?
*I know you encourage us putting images and making these posts colorful, but how impacted I was by Oluo’s quote of everything being whiteness, I’ve decided to leave this post completely blank of color. Because unfortunately, everything is white*
Many of us seem to be familiar with the notions of sex, gender, and sexuality, and how those three connect in our own lives. But this weeks readings said “Hold up there! Do you really think you know everything?” The answer is no…no we don’t. Or at least, I don’t. So I’ll do my best to explore some of the topics from the readings this week, and how they all basically say everything is made up by society.
“The Prism of Gender” by Katherine Valentine
“What seemed so obvious-two opposite sexes- turns out to be a gross oversimplification” (Valentine, 6)
When I think of Prism, I immediately think of that banger album by Katy Perry. I don’t think any of the songs have to do with gender, but you all should still give it a listen. But that’s not the point here. In her article “The Prism of Gender”, Catherine Valentine explores the notion of two sexes/ two genders, and how the Western world is quite obsessed with fitting everyone in these neat little boxes. However, it’s not really that well organized. One of the best examples of this that she uses is the ever present idea of something called “pink and blue syndrome” in which things in our world from clothing to school supplies seems to be color coded for girls and boys (Valentine, 4). It’s something I think about a lot working in retail. I am constantly asked “Well do you have this in a boys color?” or “She’s a girl, I don’t think she’ll like Mario”. Its extremely frustrating to deal with when I personally don’t believe that material things can be gendered, much less something as basic as colors.
And when Catherine moved on to explain this idea of sex not even really being biologically just two sexes, with the mention of intersex among other genetic things, I was thrown for a loop. She states “Joan H. Fujimora (2006) examined recent research on sex genes and concluded that “there is no single pathway through which sex is genetically determined”” (6). I mean, I knew that there were more than 2 genders. But the idea of more than two sexes and those two sexes not even really being that different? That was a lot for me. I hope we can discuss this concept more during the semester.
Besides realizing that nothing fits in binaries, Catherine poses one question towards the end of her article that I want to pose to all of you. On page 7 when discussing how one never really changes their gender in different situations, she says “Could you leave gender at the office? What would that look like, and what would it take to make it happen?” (7) Is there every a situation where you felt like you had to “leave your gender at the office”? Is it possible? One situation that I can possibly think of is someone who might be trans and express it in their day to day life, but perhaps not to their family. Maybe they sort of discard their preferred gender at the door. I know I have had a friend do this before, and it broke my heart. Do you think that example is relevant in this situation? Or would you consider that not the same?
Theorizing Difference From Multiracial Feminism by Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill
This article was extremely long and to be honest, a bit dense for me. I kind of struggled with the major concepts here and hope that my classmates might be able to fill me in on some things. Nevertheless, I will still do my best to lay out what I gathered from the reading.
It seems like one of the obvious major themes in this reading is race and how that directly plays into gender. There is a lot of discussion on how ones place in society is not based just on gender, but on many factors like race, class, and sexuality. Zinn and Dill work hard to outline the major concepts of multiracial feminism is, what it does, and how it can help. They state that “multiracial feminism brings together understandings drawn from the lived experiences of diverse and continuously changing groups of women” (Zinn and Dill, 328). It’s important that we as a society not only look at the struggles of women, but that we look at the struggles of women from different racial backgrounds, class backgrounds, etc. We need to hear these experiences in order to better understand our fellow women and how we can help make things better for everyone.
One thing I found really interesting from this reading was when Zinn and Dill quoted Maria C. Lugones who, I believe, basically said that when the differences among women are removed, there’s really no essential woman (323). That over all there is no sort of truth about what makes a woman a woman. Please correct me if I am wrong in my understanding of that, but if I am right, then I agree entirely. It doesn’t matter where we come from or how different we are. There doesn’t seem to be anything innate that ties all women together as women. It kind of links back to Valentine and how there’s not really some sort of consensus on sex.
Final Thoughts?
I felt like both readings were quite challenging. The song, although I didn’t talk about it much, touched on the idea of androgyny and people dressing and acting however they want despite their so called sex. Overall, the articles were thought-provoking. I’m excited to see what everyone else thought about the readings and hope that I can gain more understanding through others’ posts. Because after all, the only way you learn is by listening and reading.
-Adriana Green
side note: my question for the class is in bold and italics towards the middle of my blog post. I also am not sure I can really think of a piece of media that these ideas remind me of unless you count that really good Katy Perry album. And maybe Demi Lovato.
