This week’s readings and video has helped inform more about how abortion is seen in society today and how it has been a decision in the hands of white men in power other than women. Of course, there are people who are supporters and anti-supports on this topic. Why take away the right for a woman to abort. I have mixed emotions about this topic because I’m in between being a supporter and not one. Banning abortion would be a huge change and for a woman, she will feel like she has taken away something from her rights for her to do. Most people have abortions because of financial instability, relationship problems, and unwillingness to be a single mother. As in the article, “Telemedicine Abortion Provider Rebecca Gomperts Gets Abortions Pills into the hands of those who need them: it’s a privilege”, as the dutch physician says, “Because if you prevent abortion, you can keep people poor,” then Rebecca Gomperts says, “And when you keep people poor, you can control them.” I honestly agree with Rebecca Gomperts. 

Abortion should be available for all because women have all rights to do what they want with their bodies without having anyone stop them. If they chose to abort then they have all the rights. 

I chose this painting, Self-love a painting by Mia Adams which was uploaded on July 16th, 2019. This painting has a caption that says, “The greatest love of all is the one you have for yourself because it can’t love yourself, it’s impossible to love anyone else”. I chose this painting because in today’s society there are a lot of females who are dealing with how to love themselves. Meaning that a lot of females nowadays tend to get plastic surgery anywhere on their body. Either it’s getting bigger boobs or ass just to try to get the male’s attention or that when they see other women who have all this plastic surgery they feel some way about their body. Every female should love her own body and not have people telling her that her body is ugly. So many females have died doing plastic surgery on their bodies just so their bodies can look good or in some cases please their husbands or boyfriend. This activates me in a way that if I know someone who is dealing with not being able to love themselves I will do my best to help them love themselves. Or are body shaming themselves I will help in guiding them that they don’t need to go get surgery and make their body good. They should appreciate and love themselves and their body. We all come in different sizes and body shapes. You don’t always have to impress anyone but yourself.

This week’s reading helped expand my understanding of identity politics, as I read The Power of Identity Politics, Garza goes in-depth on what identity politics are. The very first thing she mentions was to understand why identity politics is important is to define power. She does raise identity politics conflicts, pointing out the challenges entailed by standing in solidarity with other discriminated groups. As read Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina, Willams expands on learning how to embrace every aspect of your own identity. She mentioned how she had her very first race crisis that when that happened she was already aware of her skin color but the overwhelming implications it held. I assume when she was at that race crisis, not a lot of people her skin type was represented and now that she lives in texas her identity was unique in that she didn’t see many dark-skinned girls… overall what Williams made me understand is that embrace every aspect of your identity. At the very she says, “Also, I’m human. No one can take that from me.” I totally agree with her on this. We are humans and yeah we can come out in different shades but overall embrace our own identity.

The following 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.” I would say that the meaning behind this quote is that black women are victims of oppression in any form. Could be addressing racism in the white women’s movement and the non-hierarchical distribution of power within this group of people. If black women were free, everyone would be free because that would mean all systems of oppression have been destroyed. 

The Combahee River collective mean by “identity politics” is how politics is shaped by people’s identity, in the reading says. “We believe that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression” as well “we realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us”. I can kind of see this operating in Paris is burning in how we see how members of the subculture use positive means of expression rather than violence, although they are ironically targets of discriminatory violence. See the discrimination against colored and trans people. The people in the film are almost being shown as objects. Overall showing how the characters deal with issues such as aids, racism, poverty, violence, and homophobia. 

Race and gender have to do with capitalism in that in some way capitalism is divided up into different social classes. Capitalism is an example of being unfair and classifying people into different categories. That being said, certain races and genders are disadvantaged and do not have the same rights as others. since racial and gender discrimination are all linked to capitalism there would be no capitalism without some type of oppression.

The reading “politics of housework” by pat Mainardi, points out how housework was seen by feminism as a theoretical problem. Women throughout the world performed many more hours of housework than men do. Mainardi shows that women and men have been brainwashed to believe that housework is women’s work. The other reading “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” by Anne Koedt, defines frigity by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Women who complained about this problem were diagnosed as failing to adjust their role as a woman.

Liberated women might be important for women’s liberation because women who are liberated have exercised freedoms that focused more on their individual wants and needs other than on the group mentality that defined the women’s liberation. According to the text it says, “Women’s liberation isn’t really a political movement.” Meaning: The revolution is coming too close to home. Also Meaning: I am only interested in how I am oppressed, not how I oppress others. Therefore the war, the draft, and the university are political. Women’s liberation is not”(pg3). From my own understanding, a liberation woman is to be a feminist who pushes for more equality for women. A liberated woman who has freed herself of the structures and labels that society has placed upon women. Then we have women liberated who have a lot of sex and that fits in the household chores. 

These two readings show that “the personal is political” because “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” shows how personal the female orgasm is and how personal circumstances of housework in the other reading relate to this societal issue. It shows that some women who aren’t sexually attractive to men end up getting mentally abused or being called all types of names just so that they can be sexually attractive to men.

Suffrage, labor rights, and the equal rights amendment are related that the three tie in with each other. All three deal with people fighting for their rights and what they believe is right. Suffrage was the struggle for the right of women to vote and run for office. This reform movement aimed at expanding these rights to women without any limitation or degree such as poverty ownership, payment of tax, etc. The equal rights amendment was to provide legal equality and prohibit discrimination based on gender. Labor rights grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers.

Labor rights are also gender justice because women weren’t getting paid as much as men. There is uneven access to education where women still have less access to education than men. One of the causes of gender inequality in employment is the division of jobs. That men are more capable of handling certain jobs that women can not handle. According to the reading, “Virginia Just Became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Here’s What to know about the history of the ERA” mentioned that, “Working women at the time were focused on gaining workplace protections for women and children, and some were concerned that an Equal Rights Amendment would endanger laws that made factories safer and limited of the number of houses women could work” (pg2). In this case, women and children were demanding better workplace protection because some of the workplaces were not safe for women and children to work in.

In today’s society, I would say I do see that on construction sites the majority of the people working there are men. Knowing that a majority of women want to join and work at a construction site because they know that they got the skills to be able to work there but there is always this thing where they feel like construction is just for men and not for women to work in. As well in supermarkets, you can see that the only people who take over as cashiers are women. I have heard that women are supposed to just work as cashiers. It’s just this thing in today’s society that the positions in a job do go with what your identity is. If you’re female or male you are told that you would fit for this job because you’re female or male. There is also another issue in today’s society about abortion. This abortion ban, I think this is a really big problem in today’s world where a woman can’t do anything they won’t feel like they have the freedom its like they are taken away something that women depend on. If a woman decides to abort her child it’s her choice.

In today’s world, we are still dealing with gun violence. Even so many mass shootings in schools. Shooting in churches, in the streets, and inside churches. There are demands for all these mass shootings to stop. Enough is enough, how many more innocent lives are we going to keep losing if there is no stop to it. I wanted to bring this topic up because recently in New York there has been so much going on, especially around my neighborhood. It was on April 15th this year early in the morning as people were heading to work. I was shocked to hear that there was a Brooklyn subway shooting in Sunset Park. I don’t live close to sunset park but I take the R train that passes by there to visit my friends or family members. Back when I was in high school the train I took passed and stopped on 36th st. I wouldn’t think shooting on that stop would happen. Very scary to see and to see how people were terrified and so much going on there. Ever since that happened people feared taking the subway because of what happened in that Brooklyn NY subway shooting. Then there was an incident that happened at Barclays center where a young teenage boy was shot in the head. You just never know once you leave your home you have to take precautions when going out and never know whether we come back or not. There’s so much crime in New York right now that it’s just so sad and some of it gets us angry because it’s like why are these people doing this. They should be kicked out of this state or put away. Hope in the future this issue of gun violence gets resolved.

I would say that activism is about changing society for the better by causing political, social, economic, or environmental reform through the activities of individuals or groups of individuals. In the reading it mentions, “Clearly, activism has always relied on the voices, visions, and energy of individuals to inspire and drive social change. We have seen that many of the movements that shaped the world we live in today were begun by people acting alone. Often hardly old enough to vote, they prepared to take a stand for what they believed in”. (Pg11). The stand that people take can either be small or big. In this case, an example of big-scale activism would be the Black Lives Matter or Me too, or Arab Spring. These were issues people thought to make a change, that people took a stand for what they believed. A lot of these cases of activism organized peaceful protests. If the protest was violent things would turn out really bad. There are many forms of activism like environmental activism, citizen activism, internet activism, student activism, economic activism, and many more. “One of the unique qualities young people can bring to activism is an ability to be heard. Fresh voices have a distinct ability to break through discourse, and spin and entrended agendas. They can reach the heart of issues and make people engage with old conversations in new ways”(pg18). All is what it is when it comes to activism.

The film I watch is called Girl connected. It’s a film that looks at five exemplary teenage girls from emerging world countries that become inspired by their challenges to help throw off misogynistic social pressures and stereotypes. As I watched the film the girls in the film would describe poverty, privation, and hunger. The use of condoms and responsibility for protected sex is discussed in this film. In Bangladesh, girls travel to villages to help spread awareness among girls themselves that they don’t have to marry early, even if their parents force it. It was suggested that girls as young as 12 are forced to marry in countries where families are too poor to take care of their children.

Some ways I have engaged in activism when I was spreading awareness to others about an issue in today’s society. To hope people can learn more and for those who have known Ideas to let them be aware of what is going on and that we must take action. I engaged in activism when I went marching in the streets with friends and just a group of people that I didn’t know but together we marched on the day when people marched for Black Lives Matter. When the word of Black Lives Matter, there was a lot of evidence on the internet like on all social media platforms like twitter, facebook, Instagram, and many other platforms showed how black people were being handled by police, there was something about it that was just not right.