Eye of the Beholder

There is definitely a common theme that links all of these authors together and I think that what stood out to me and what these pieces reminded me of is the old saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think that if you keep that in the back of your head while reading these pieces that old saying really makes a lot of since. The truth is that what is beautiful changes through time and space. What may be considered attractive in one culture could be considered freakish in the next, and what is considered beautiful in one point in time is ugly in another. One particular example that I can think of is that being fair skinned and slightly heavy was attractive because it meant that you had enough money to eat and that you were not out laboring in the fields, now the ideal is to be very low body fat and to have a dark tan even in the winter. The article Citizen Profane states “Today the socioeconomically advantaged are the only ones with enough free time from the ravages of labor and enough money to invest in personal trainers and pricey gym memberships to be able to cultivate the corps de jour. Maybe it is that we associate the ideal body type with the wealthy or famous. Often times we see movie stars who are either as skinny as a twig or look like they are sculpted from stone.
The other article that I found particularly interesting was black and brown bodies under the knife. I thought that this clearly demonstrated the idea of intersectionality. These women are changing their bodies to look more Caucasian. I liked the one part where the girls mom told her to be proud of her heritage when she herself was using lipstick to make her lips look not as big. I think that these women being African American feel that they are pressured by society and that they need to conform to look like the majority being whites. The article says that “ the paradox here is that the procedures that black and Latino women are choosing change their features in patterned ways that mimic white or Anglo faces.” This has been a very big topic of debate one that I actually had heard before this class, I think that it is an important issue and it is very interesting to study why these women may feel pressure to change their physical features to look “ more white”.

Final Paper

For my final project I would like to explore human trafficking and the ways in which women are exploited and victims to these crimes. I would like to concentrate more towards human trafficking in the U.S. and to determine how big of a problem this is in our country. I am hoping to find a lot of information to support my theory that human trafficking is a large problem in the United States because I know that it is a problem on the international level. To find information to use as support in my paper I will use the Miami and Eastern Kentucky University’s library website to find scholarly peer reviewed journal articles. I know that if I can find several articles supporting my theory that I will have enough evidence to clearly display that human trafficking is an issue in the United States.
My purpose is to decide whether or not human trafficking is an issue that needs to be dealt with in the United States. I want to get the facts about this issue and to decide if it is a major problem or not and then to spread the word to others so that they will also be aware. I think that this is an issue that I usually do not think about as happening in this country I usually think of third world countries as the places where this type of crime is committed. I really want to do more research to find out more about this topic. My genre will be a research paper to point out the facts and determine if there is an issue that should be dealt with.
Through doing a quick search I found one peer reviewed journal article that I thought was particularly interesting. Smuggling and Trafficking in Human Beings: All Roads Lead to America by Sheldon Zhange. This piece wasn’t exactly what I was looking for because it does not focus exactly on Americans as the victims of human traffickers but more the victims of human trafficking coming to America. This article also talks about how human smuggling has become a factor to enable and accelerate illegal immigration which has become a major issue particularly in the local government recently.
I think that with some more digging I can find more about these issues and how they relate to the people in the United States and I am satisfied with the articles that I have found so far. I am excited to do more research to see what more I can turn up on this topic.

Maquiladoras

The readings focus on the way people in these Mexican shops known as maquiladoras are exploited. In these shops about 70 percent of the workforce are women who are often treated unfairly, discriminated against and paid extremely low wages. “Keeping cost down is precisely the reason companies insist on the test.” ( IWS 465 ) This quote which refers to women who are given pregnancy tests as a requirement to be eligible to be hired at one of these factories I thought showed a very good point about how women are discriminated against and that the goal of these companies is simply to make a profit without any regard for the health or safety of the workers they employ. It is important to take an intersectional approach when studying this phenomena of maquiladoras to understand exactly how the U.S. companies exploit these people especially when and basically use them as slave labor to keep cost low and profits high. These women are often faced with extreme poverty and often have little choice besides taking these jobs in order to simply survive and make enough to pay for food and some second hand clothing. And instead of spending the money they make in factories in their local towns many travel to the U.S. to purchase things for cheaper which further hinders the local economies where these people are residing.

“Mothers who work on the assembly lines often have no choice but to leave their children at home to look after themselves, and they often turn to drugs and gang violence as they get older.” ( IWS 467 ) Since many mothers with children are forced to work in factories at these low paying jobs to try to help out an provide for their families children are often left to fend for themselves leading to a cycle of poverty and gang violence. These women also often times fall victim to sexual harassment in the work place where there are little regulations to protect them. Because of the lack of opportunities many of the Mexican people are faced with as it is apparent in these stories many are migrating to the United States in hopes for a better life away from these maquiladoras. At least in the United States they will be able to find jobs where minimum wage as not been surpressed like it said it had been in this story. Also the work environments will be much safer without being exposed to hazardous chemicals which the people are not only exposed to at work but the vegetables they rely on for food are irrigated with water polluted by the factories. It is important to understand the many different risk factors that the women who work in these factories face that is why an intersectional approach is necessary.

Breakin a Cycle

The story about Malawi focused much attention on the HIV/ AIDS epidemic that is occurring there right now. Although the story did show what a huge impact this disease had on so many people there and even gave some figures I thought that it only began to scratch the surface as to showing how huge of a problem this is. A particular issue within this epidemic that I saw as a great tragedy was the amount of AIDS orphans. Because so many adults are infected with AIDS when they end up dying from the disease they end up leaving an entire family of orphans like what happened in the story where the oldest one may end up caring for younger siblings. Estimates are that there are nearly 600,000 children living in Malawi who have been orphaned by AIDS. I believe that education about the prevention of AIDS to these younger people will probably be the only way to save them from this cycle of death. If the people are not educated about how AIDS is transmitted then it will continue to be rampant among society and things will never get any better. Poverty in Malawi is another huge problem that adds fuel to the fire and makes it even more difficult to solve complex societal issues such as an AIDS epidemic. With poverty there is a huge lack of healthcare, food, and education. Breaking this cycle of AIDS and poverty I think are definitely connected and its going to take small steps in the right direction to eventually conquer this huge problem.
Another tragedy in the Malawi story was when the girl transmitted HIV to her infant child. “She’s almost a year old Miriam tells me the local hospital has said Sunshine is too young to be tested.” I think this quote shows many of the problems that the people in Malawi face. First is education, you would think that a place like a hospital would give you factual information when in fact the infant was old enough to be tested but Miriam was simply lied to. Two is the inadequate health care, with better health care Sunshine could have been born by a mother having AIDS but be totally free of AIDS herself with the right procedures. This also shows the poverty people in Malawi face because she is driven on a bicycle to deliver her baby which does not give her the time needed to receive proper medical care that she and the baby needed. In the end Sunshine will probably end up as an AIDS orphan just as many others in Malawi are before her own life is taken by the disease.

Something Deeper

George Cuvier who was Napoleon’s scientist studied Sarah Baartman and used her to support his claim that there was a superior race being whites and that blacks were inferior. Cuvier did this by focusing on Baartmans unusual physical characteristics to support his claim that blacks were “ oversexed and inferior.”( Davie page 1) Cuvier’s focus on Baartman’s physical difference does nothing to prove that one race is superior to another. What probably caused her physical differences were her inherited genes. In the piece social construction of race it states that “greater genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled Black and White than between the populations.” (IWS 52) This fact shows that Cuvier’s claim that all blacks are genetically inferior to whites is completely wrong when in fact Cuvier himself could have more similarities biologically to a person of a different race than a person of his own race. The fact is that our race is socially constructed not a result of biological similarities or differences. This story along with this quote reminded me of what we studied in one of my criminal justice classes “ Along the way various minds tried to fashion practical human typologies along the following physical axis skin color, hair texture, facial angle, jaw size …” (IWS 52-53) In one of my criminal justice classes we learned that early criminologists believe that they could take measurements of a person’s head and decide whether or not they would be susceptible to committing crime. I thought that this was another good example of how scientists sometimes try to use biology to explain things that are socially constructed such as crime or as in the case of Baartman race.
Often we see scientists looking for a magic gene or a certain cause of something with the case of Baartman it was race. Race is something more complex than biological differences. It is something that we as humans construct and cannot be contained into a scientific laboratory to be studied. I think that race was first tried to be explained by the use of biology or genetics because it allowed for a simpler way of thinking it is easy to see and explain differences when they are concrete and can be laid out in front of you and studied. Race is one of those things that simply is not that way. Many more factors than just one biological difference comes into play when determining race. The idea of social construct was one that was difficult for me to grasp when I was first introduced to it but now that I have a good understanding I see how it relates to many things that cannot be studied down to an exact science such as race, gender, or crime.

“Intersex status is considered to be so incompatible with emotional health that misrepresentation, concealment of facts, and outright lying ( both to parents and to the intersex person )are unabashedly advocated in professional and medical literature.” The piece goes on to say the opposite is actually the truth and that it is because the suppression of the true facts is what later causes severe emotional damage for the family and intersexual person. The piece also states that living as an intersexual person does not harm a person at all physically. It seems that the procedures are definitely doing more harm than they are good to the person who is undergoing them and also to the family who would be the first to decide for the infant to undergo these “corrective procedures. The questions that I would have for this is what other options do these families have for the infants and what will be the best choice for the person who is going to be effected their entire life?
“Immigrant women are also so vulnerable to spousal violence because so many of them depend on their husbands for information regarding their legal status.’’ I liked this article a lot because it brought attention not only to spousal abuse but showed that there are underlying problems which often times prevent women from seeking the help that they actually need. My question is how do we convince women who are in an abusive relationship to seek help when they may fear that if they leave the abuser they will lose everything they have and their life may end up being worse?

Feinberg complicates the dominant ideology that gender and sex should line up throughout this entire piece. She describes herself as a “masculine female” which this itself complicates the idea of what most people would think of a female being. In this piece she shares a story about herself which shows why transliberation is a matter of life and death. While she is in the hospital extremely sick with an illness that is life threatening she faces such prejudice from the doctor that she is told to get out of the hospital and to never come back. This extreme case of prejudice used against her shows why transliberation is actually a matter of life and death for the people who are transgendered. In the piece she says “ The doctor’s prejudices directed at me during a moment of catastrophic illness could have killed me. The death certificate would have read: Endocarditis. By all rights it should have read : Bigotry. I think that this extreme case that was actually experienced by the author shows us exactly why transliberation is an issue of life and death for the people who are transgendered.

Feinberg works to complicate the social constructionist theory of what gender is. She states that simply telling the questioner what sex she was born simply does not do them justice. She feels that it is important to challenge the idea that we must be either or, categories that have been socially constructed. She says “ the problem is they are try to understand my gender expression by determining my sex.” The people are trying to determine her physical sex to understand her gender identification which does not really work in her situation. The problem is that we are all socialized to believe that we must be either or, pink or blue. Feinberg believes that this is not the case and does her best to complicate this idea. I like how she points out the fact that are biological sex is “supposed” to influence our social direction, and that those who are cross gendered shatter the inflexibility of these social norms. I really liked one point she made towards the end of the piece that was “How can we reach a point where we can appreciate each other’s differences not just tolerate them? I think that is ideally what transliberation is working towards. Not simply are they just tolerated but appreciated. If we could accomplish this goal many people could learn more about who they are as a person by looking and understanding others. We could go beyond the limits that society constrains us to and accomplish more than what we have done today. From looking at the past there have been great improvement but we can do more.