Kat Gawin 

Prof. Hollis Glaser

GWS 100

Discussion 10

There are variations in feminist movements. Black feminism involved this particular way because a group of people with fundamental needs was omitted. The Black women didn’t have a representation showing THEIR problems. Like the issues didn’t exist, and a basic common sense would not know how much struggle black woman is going through! Besides being pushed aside, Black women were inspired by national liberation and significant changes in recent history. They supported black men’s struggle for justice, but they didn’t get that much help back. Today we know more about that personal pain, and we must retell the history.

•  This quote””We might use our position at the bottom to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

 Shows that If we help the most oppressed and move the standards higher for a more civil understanding of who we are, we will also help this group and everyone above. If the person who experiences the most significant discomfort succeeds, their kids will do better. Someone’s future will change and their future. If one group would never free, the new generations would not move forward. The Combahee River Collective shows how black a white women did not understand women. Angela Davis points out of important role black women represented in the history of feminism. She points out complicated sexual identity combined with their racial identity that effective the political lives of so many. There must be so many stories expressing injustice we can only imagine! We can only talk about history if we include everyone! 

• What does the Combahee River pool mean by “identity politics”? How do you see this operation in Paris is Burning?=

I loved the movie “Paris is Burning”!! It shows the strength of identity, how people couldn’t express themselves before, and how they perceive themself. The gender-based social structure is described inside a community life, psychology, and specific behavior creates identity -self-expression. The characters talk about their feelings and the reality they must live or hide. The movie is stunning and personal. It’s very authentic. The film portrays a balloon culture and an underground LGBT community that must hide to perform. People cound express themself in a fascist world where rules don’t apply to them. The ballroom world is the only place they can be who they are because outside, nothing is accepted!

• What do race and gender have to do with capitalism?

Capitalism explores people for profit. The easiest way to make a lot of money is to use the weak people that depend on the little income they produce. Women must fit in small, physically paid jobs because they have the emotional responsibility to care for children, so they must take any job they can. Women also have smaller self-esteem and often accept jobs with smaller incomes. Capitalism also explores people of color- slavery is the clearest example. If people have no benefits and good working conditions that let them grow and build a safe future, they are being explored.

What do you understand the liberated woman to be?

A liberated woman is a woman that feels naturally to make her own decisions and independently choose what she prefers in life. An independent woman can have kids or don’t have or don’t have them for a career. AN independent woman can decide about rules at home and responsibilities; she is equally with her partner ( men or a woman) building her family the way she thinks is good and safe. A liberal woman fights for her happiness and has any types of  friends she wants, risks new jobs,choses her life based of what she thinks is good, and makes decisions she wnats. 

How might the liberated woman be important for women’s liberation?

The liberated woman builds a new society and a new structure showing that the old rules aren’t the only ones. She can be an example for kids or an abused woman or gay people. She is showing new possibilities, and she is walking proof that a new, revised structure is a stronger part of the world. 

How do these pieces show that “the personal is political”?

When reading the articles” The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” and “The Politics of Housework,” we can clearly see how one’s personal decision affects the whole population. OWmans body and desires are controlled, her perception of work and family and her role in society. When one man wants a woman at home to cook and clean, he puts his sand grain in a desert of people like him. When men have the privilege to decide about women’s bodies, they control abortion rights and limit women’s freedom. Whoman must be personal and change the law around the-they should create, write, protest and more! When men have control at home, women cant decide and realize him without seeing more possibilities. Her children might be raised this way as well if they don’t have opportunities to see more. So we need to teach our kids to study, travel and help them understand what possibilities they have so they can improve the word 

Reading about the fire in the New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that was a pretext to fight to open people’s eyes was shocking. One hundred forty-eight women died in that catastrophic event! You don’t need to stretch your imagination to see them dying, screaming, choking, and running, crying in agony! We also read that it was COMMON to close people who work hours a day, many days a week, so they won’t steal! Next time I will walk by Washington Place and Greene Str. I will make sure to stop for a moment. The caste system in India is so common to talk about. Those facts of workers living for the most negligible pay are our shared knowledge and something we know exists. It is slavery, and I will never get anything from G.A.P. again! The cast stem is a power abuse, like patriarchy, religion, and many other ways. The one who profits and feels strangers build a structure, and we know that wrong can sound right sometimes, like when I Listen to Natanianhu’s speeches!he women who collaborated to make the change happen are soldiers and great people. Voice is a powerful tool. History should be retold again and again, and now we know more about non-white women who suffered tremendously but also fought bravely and were not giving up. On the other hand, there is a balance. Video of women in the suffrage movement when I heard and read about Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a person I had never heard of before. Her stoic dedication and intelligence bring a feeling of hope. Understanding problems we may not think about via a personal story is empowering. We should know that Afro-American women had a different battleground in history. The Equal Rights Amendment still needs to be put in the Law – such a simple request! We now understand how vital that Amendment is; perhaps we could help. 

Since we have a free assignment this week, I want to briefly share that I had the pleasure to read about the A.I.R. gallery, which is the first all-female artist’s gallery in the United States, opened in 1972 in New York In DUMBO. It is still open, exciting, and it’s a place to go to see what is happening. Searching on their website, I saw someone I kind of knew. Judith Bernstein, born in 1942, is an American feminist artist whose large charcoal drawings of phallic-looking screws in the 1970s represented women’s anger and oppression. Her “penis-screw” signature became a metaphor for women’s degradation and a wide array of social injustices and opposition to the Vietnam War. Ana Mendieta (1948 – 1985) was a Cuban-American artist who came to the United. States in 1961 at the age of 13 and came to prominence in 1973 while studying French and art at Iowa University, where in a performance piece Mendieta restaged a rape scene and spread chicken’s blood on her body to represent violence and Ana Mendieta (1948 – 1985) a Cuban-American artist who came to the United States in 1961 at the age of 13. She made a performance piece where Mendieta restaged a rape scene and spread chicken’s blood on her body to represent violence!!!She used feminine symbols and symbols and spiritual conceptualization to reflect personal experiences. In 1978, Ana Mendieta joined the Artists In Residence at A.I.R. Gallery in New York.Mendieta called herself an “Earth body artist” who expressed her ideas using various organic materials like flowers, moss, blood, soil, gunpowder, water, and fire. She died in a fall from a window in her New York apartment. She was 36. I found this gallery very interesting, and I plan to go there and suggest everyone go too! 

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