This text highlights the complexity of identity and challenges the normalcy of binary systems. It also shares the importance of being aware of our own biases and prejudices. One concept I would like to highlight from the text is on Class. When the text states, “Contrary to the fact that white women as a group are the largest recipients of welfare.” It unveils the misleading narrative that Black people and P.O.C are the main groups that utilize government assistant. This adverse narrative paints minorities as weak, incapable, lazy, and inferior and it also keeps us in a state of oppression. In the literary element “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ignites awareness of social ignorance to other cultural values and moral obligation that differs from our own. It also places importance on one’s individual truth and story, most importantly it challenges us to start the narrative of a story with “secondly”. This is to imply that there is more to the story than what has been told and manipulated in favor of the storyteller.
Another concept I would like to highlight is the sex/gender/sexuality system notion. When the text states, “Because “mothering” is not seen as work, but as a woman’s “natural” behavior, she is not compensated in a way that reflects how difficult the work is.” It raises the awareness of the socially imposed relationship between women and motherhood. In the literary work, “Reason, Gender and Moral Theory”, Virginia Held dismantles the male perspective in philosophy when she states, “Women have been seen as emotional rather than rational beings, and thus is incapable of full moral personhood”. Held reveals the misogynistic views of philosophers and stoicism. She captures how women throughout history/philosophy were often portrayed as weak and incapable of being logical due to their “sentimental nature”. I challenge this theory because it is declared and dismisses the complexities of womanhood. There are plenty of women who may not want to have children and are not compelled to become mothers or wives. There isn’t just one concept/ single story female gender/womanhood nor there a just one way of expressing it.
The third concept is Transgender and intersex. This has enlightened my understanding of boundaries placed on the human body. This concept reminded me of the literary work “Monster Culture” by Jefferey Jerome Cohen. Throughout the text, Cohen incorporates the monster’s desire to be interpreted and understood without placing it in a class that fits the status quo.
