The Color of Labor: Critiquing Neo-Slavery in North American Households

The fact that privilege runs the Western world is no secret. For centuries, Western cultures have manifested privilege for one individual over another in order to create hierarchical power structures of domination in order to establish a “pecking order” and keep everyone in their respective places. While we have examined this issue in depth in regards to gender specifically, we sometimes fail to completely acknowledge the intersections of class and race in the formulation of this power structure. Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the further one gets away from the cultural ideal—White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and male—the less privilege one has, increasing the danger in one’s identity.

In this week’s readings, we focused specifically on asymmetrical divisions of labor in both intersexed and same-sexed relationships. We established that, in instances where men and women are interacting, the more menial, repetitive, less-desirable tasks are informally assigned to women. Comparatively, in instances where women alone are working together, work is divided based on race and class; women who happen to be white and upper-class glean the privilege to shirk their menial, repetitive, less-desirable tasks on to marginalized, lower-class women. We saw this specifically in Carvajal’s article, where immigrant women are often promised a salary of (on average) less than $200 dollars per week in the United States to perform housework in middle- and upper-class homes (if they actually are paid at all). If a Third World woman finds that she is not receiving her wages, she may choose to take her employer to court, though these efforts typically to little avail.

While it may not be specifically overt in the Westerner’s psyche, race plays a much higher role in labor divisions than we may attribute to it. As the advertisements for housekeepers illustrate, one of the main qualifications a housekeeper can have is not her education, her experience, or even her citizenship status: it is her race. Indeed, the ads read more like advertisements for slave trade than for housekeeping, emphasizing the “natural” abilities of Indonesian, Philippine, or Lankan women to clean your home, aided with the company’s “strict, professional training,” of course. The ads even go as far as to charge different rates per ethnicity, illustrating power race plays as the true qualifier in the most desirable (read: ideologically subordinate) housekeeper. It also recalls the commodification of people seen in slave trading, particularly in the promise for “unlimited replacements” should your original housekeeper be “defective” in some way.

While it may be horrifying to realize that Western culture, even post-slavery, still finds ways in which to exercise oppression of one population over another, the power structure that allows it is certainly nothing new or unfamiliar. What we find in the Third World housekeeper phenomenon is nothing short of the same system enacting itself on different people; since men are (presumably) no longer in the picture (unless it is their pocketbooks from which the housekeeper’s paycheck comes from, if it does at all), middle- to upper-class white women step into the role of unchallenged privilege, becoming ceremonial men while they objectify and take advantage of Third World women with the same tasks by which they once found themselves oppressed. In this sense, women who may perceive themselves as dissolving the glass ceiling in the workplace are likely perpetuating patriarchy by oppressing her Third World sisters in ways that are dehumanizing, unfair, and shameful.

So, what is to be done? There are organizations that advocate for the rights of Third World women, but this often is not enough; staunch supporters of immigration laws and nationalist tendencies are unlikely to support such organizations, much less fund them. Though it is certain that the awareness of such organizations needs to be expanded, we must first make more apparent the awareness for a need for such an organization. Silenced Third World women must be given a voice, and in order to do this, it must fall upon First World individuals—men and women alike—to recognize and advocate for change in their plight. We can call ourselves “feminist” all day long, but until we ourselves recognize the ways in which we perpetuate patriarchy, regardless of how painful this recognition may be, socially-condoned slavery based on gender, class, and race will continue to plague and silence Third World women.

Nurturing Nature: Finding the Unnatural in Media Essentialism

As the proverb goes, it was very unlikely that a fish discovered water. So too does culture often possess this illusive characteristic for those who are engulfed in its definitions. One of the most evident ways in which culture exerts its power is through the stories and scripts it creates to explain its constructions. By naturalizing cultural constructions, it is clear that oppressive forces—patriarchy and asymmetrical treatment of the sexes in advertisement included—take a paramount position within society, justifying the created and unnatural ways in which culture categorizes and privileges groups.

This point is particularly evident in the continually hypersexual nature of media and advertising and the message it sends about the genders. Steinem’s article illustrates the strong manipulation gender plays in choosing advertisement campaigns; with her experiences with Ms. Magazine, Steinem describes the difficulties the magazine had with securing companies to advertise their products in a feminist-oriented magazine when many of their campaigns featured traditionally misogynist themes. Of course, the feminist orientation of Ms. proves that there is nothing inherent in the nature of women in comparison to the advertisers it was courting. The advertisers clearly played up traditional women’s roles and associations in order to sell their product, but the issues with Ms. arise when it is made apparent that these roles and associations can and should be challenged.

A similar point is made in Rushkoff’s discussion of the blossoming of his masculinity with porn. Rushkoff describes the ways in which porn laid out the “appropriate” ways to view women and sex: as objects. More importantly, Rushkoff found himself initially unable to buy in to the sexual script that Playboy and other “skin mags” presented to him, and when he finally does, he finds himself categorizing individual women based on a few qualities rather than considering the women as whole human beings. Later in the piece, Rushkoff illuminates the many limitations in the masculine script skin mags offer to men, establishing them as entirely constructed despite their presentation as “natural,” and, indeed, coming-of-age “tools” for being a man.

Though the naturalization of constructed gender is particularly prevalent in these articles, implications of this phenomenon exist in other readings for this week and in certainly in the media at large. The biggest issue with this naturalization, of course, is that, like the fish, we are not always able to discern the “fiction” of culture from the “reality” of what actually is natural. For example, women may be (on average) smaller than men, but this “essential” characteristic not only does not account for women with larger builds, but also creates a picture of the ideal woman as impossibly small and fragile (marking larger women far from the cultural ideal of beauty), creating a dichotomy of preference—and from that, behavior—derived from what our culture defines as “natural.”

While this dichotomy may seem relatively innocent, the danger in naturalizing the categories culture creates is that individuals who fight back against the “system” not only have to stand up to cultural norms, but what is considered natural as well; indeed, it is often perceived that they are fighting against nature—and all that “nature” entails, including God—itself. Recalling the “Wussy Boy for Pussy Power” article reinforces this, along with Rushkoff’s discomfort and befuddlement about why his sexuality at age 11, which was perfectly natural in his eyes, was put under fire by his classmates who had already been enculturated to Playboy and company.

One of the most proactive steps we can take in defeating this construction-turned-nature phenomenon is to be able to decipher between the two. Construction is just what it sounds like: an unnatural, created definition. Nature and essentialism, however, should be treated with a bit more caution. While we can easily point out things about people that appear to be “natural,” we first must consider why we think this way (i.e. do we have underlying motivation for defining ideal beauty for women as impossibly small?) and avoid assigning value to the “natural” qualities we find in individuals. Taking this to the world of media will help to reveal the fallacy inherent in the essentialism provided by advertisements, television, art, film, and so fourth, creating a sharper “gendered eye” with which to take on the patriarchal world.

(Whose) Family Matters(?): Challenging the Cultural Ideals for the Sake of Reality

Family is an element of the human experience that everyone has a connection to; cross-culturally, “family” in some form or another has remained one of the “great universals” the world over. As such a strong element of culture, family has stood as a long-contentious, often politicized issue as individual families attempt to contend with the high standards established by dominant culture. Though the Western model of “ideal family” is only emulated through twelve percent of American families, the cost of deviating from the ideal remains high; mothers and fathers are considered unfit, relationships—both between parents and children and spouses (hetero-and homosexual)—are strained, and far-too-long-lasting prejudices stand in the way of functioning “dysfunctional” families. As is found in this week’s readings, the ideal of “family” cannot be considered “ideal” any longer; these readings help to expose the enrichment redefining “family” provides for North American culture, providing mothers, fathers, and children with far greater agency in defining their own ideal “family.”

In considering this week’s readings, a very clear-cut definition of the North American ideal family is made apparent. Just as we find individuals losing agency of their bodies in considering embodiment, “family” is taken away from the individual unit and measured up against impossible standards. Parents—mothers especially—must always desire their children, fathers provide for the family financially while mothers provide emotionally, parents shall be unconditionally in love and married, and all members of the nuclear family must live under one roof. Oh yea, and families are always white (apparently).

Of course, this ideal is rarely realized, and this is often for the better. There are mothers who do not feel comfortable “mothering” their children. There are fathers who don’t want to bear the financial burden alone and who would much rather spend time at home, just as there are mothers who find themselves emotionally drained after balancing the first and second shifts. Men and women of all ethnicities make responsible, loving, and attentive parents whether or not they are emotionally involved with the other parent. Furthermore, “family” doesn’t always have to include children just as it doesn’t have to exclude individuals who have been rejected by other family members (as was the case for Sharon Kowalksi and her lover, Karen Thompson). In this sense, “family” is not always something that one is “stuck” with, but something with which one has agency to change, challenge, and define.

Perhaps most crucially, examining family reveals the ways in which the classism, sexism, and racism inherent in the ideal image of family not only still “reigns supreme,” but hurts more than women alone. It is clear that North American society clings to the “Leave it to Beaver” definition of family, denying millions of North Americans for whom the reality makes it no further than their television screens. Even in contemporary television sitcoms that fiercely satire everything that the squeaky-clean “Leave it to Beaver” held most dear—“The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” included—feature white families with a breadwinner and homemaker, the ideal 2.4 (or whatever the statistic is these days…) children, and hours of ridiculous antics that end in familial bliss (neatly within a 30-minute time slot). Likewise, television sitcoms that have attempted to feature “ethnic” families have scarcely deviated from the Androcentric ideal; “Family Matters” of the early 1990’s featured a black family in suburban Chicago that focused on familial problem solving that would have made June proud. Similarly, the more recent “George Lopez” features the Hispanic comedian traversing fatherhood with wit, humor, and a daily dose of genre-demanding wisdom. Though shows like “Desperate Housewives” sometimes work to break the mold by featuring (gasp!) middle-aged, good-looking divorcees, many primetime television programs are a far-cry away from the reality of “family.”

Though it seems that television reflects a society that no longer exists, it can only be a matter of time before art begins to imitate life. As the definition of ideal family becomes more fluid and transitory to one’s personal proclamation by acknowledging the existence of less-than-“ideal” (though completely functional, caring) families, the collapse of long-standing oppressors such as racism, sexism, and classism (and their culturally-installed reinforcements) are certain to at least weaken, if not perish entirely.

Release the Vaginas! (and the breasts, and the love handles, and the thights, and the...)

Throughout my exploration of Women and Gender Studies as an academic pursuit, there is one definite rule that I've learned: nothing about gender is cut and dry. It is easy to say that women are objectified and oppressed; the average North American female is likely able to find at least one instance of personal experience with both objectification and oppression. While these moments should be hardly denigrated, exposing oneself to the ways in which women are objectified and oppressed around the world and within North America's own backyard expose the many horrific instances of sex-based abuse and silencing. Reflecting upon last week's focus on embodiment allows us to better understand the ways in which the female body is degraded and silenced, expanding this week's discussion of gendered abuses and attacks against the females of the world.
And there are, indeed, multiple ways in which this attack manifests itself. Ranging from the constraining lingerie that shapes "unruly" female bodies of discussion last week to the systemic control of women's reproductive organs via culturally-sanctioned prostitution and federally-sanctioned sterilization, it seems that patriarchy is forever battling against the agency of the female body. However, the battle extends from the inactive (though perfectly sculpted) female body to the body daring enough to act on its own accord, whether it be through deciding when to be sexually active to when it will begin the cycle of sexual reproduction.
As we discovered this week, the sex industry provides an economy to countries usually rivaled only by the illegal narcotics trade, spurring governments to remain relatively silent about child prostitution and the sales of daughters to brothels for economic gain. While this trade spurs the national economy, it reduces thousands of female bodies to the individual property of hundreds of thousands of individuals on any given night, be it the girls' pimps or "clients." The girls' bodies become capital that they have no control over, forcing them to completely disengage from their bodies on an emotional level at some point.
In this sense, the systemic sterilization and federal control of reproduction functions in much of the same way; women are no longer complete "masters" of their own reproductive organs and what they produce when. Instead, the very little agency women claim over their bodies is shaped by socioeconomic constraints that leave them with little choice (or no choice, in the case of Chinese women subjected to the One Child policy) at all. Just as examining ideal body types produces one¾namely white, thin, amply busted¾prototype for the female body, socialized understandings of "good" fertile women and "bad" fertile women produces one option for women who do not want to be viewed as parasites on society or, worse yet, offenders of national policy. In this sense, the womb and its functions are literally criminalized and, as the image illustrates above, is in need of restraint.
In considering how one goes about untying the bonds of the female body, it may be useful to think about how society goes about defining the female body; is it fundamentally a tool of the state, a potential producer of potential criminals, or a vital part of someone's identity (and something for them and them alone to exercise agency over and with)? Consciousness of embodiment is certainly the first step in releasing the female body from all of its constraints: political, social, commercial, and far beyond.

Reclaiming the Body AND Soul

There are very few things we can do without our bodies. Consider, for a moment, the very act of getting up in the morning; you need your fingers, hands, and arms to silence the alarm, you need your legs to push you off the mattress and away from the floor, you need your eyes to (squintingly) find the lightswitch, breakfast, and clothing. In considering this, it’s bewildering to think about the ways in which North American culture completely condones the shrinking and diminishing of the female body and the ease with which women accept and feed into this shrinking and diminishing. In this week’s readings, we examined the female body as it fluctuates and shrinks at cultural whims in the form of beauty standards.

And the shrinking body is ever-prevalent. We read many testimonials from women who have battled the bulge and the binge who have stood bravely upon the precipice of diminishing one’s body for the sake of “satisfying” the soul. This powerful “tug of war” manifests itself on many bodies and advertises itself on the fronts of magazines, films, commericals, and throughout the estimated other thousands of advertisements we absorb daily. An additional attack against the female form is prevalent throughout our scholarship (in biology textbooks, sperm are forever “active” and “penetrating,” while the ovum are “passive”), causing little wonder as to why North American culture would create ideal images of the body that match the weakened, passive characterization we have so fervently placed on femininity itself. In this sense, the body and the things that feed the body—food—are forever the enemy and should be shrunk. Of course, our readings this week exposed the dangers inherent in accepting and adopting the shrinking female body and how it stems from larger patriarchal oppression.

In thinking about this, I find it important to recognize the practice of establishing binary opposition North American culture relies upon to create structure and meaning. Bodies are always oppositional to the mind or soul, with the soul being “housed” in the body. In aligning this opposition with others, the soul is characterized with maleness and the body with femininity, falling in line perfectly with how American women perceive, create, correct, and punish their bodies. This concept is by no means foreign to various forms of cultural ideology; even within Christianity, we find the Savior abandoning his body in order for his soul (and others) to succeed in resurrection and join his Father in Heaven. The message sent is ultimately the same we find in Aristotle and North American culture at large: the (temporary, dirty, unworthy) body must defer to the needs of the (eternal, clean, worthy) soul. I feel that the image above (though grotesque, sorry) reflects this hierarchy we place on the body and soul; the body is firmly placed below the soul and, while the soul can exist separately from the body, the body cannot survive without a soul.

So how can we fix this? By recognizing the soul/body dichotomy for what it is—a socialized, unnatural cultural construction—we can begin to correct and diminish the dichotomy and reconnect the body and soul, not as one thing that houses the other, but complimentary elements of the human experience.

Breaking the Cycle

There is little doubt that violence occupies a great deal of the North American’s consciousness. We are a culture that simultaneously adores and abhors violence, packing movie theatres during epic superhero and adventure movies and telling and retelling the stories of our wars and battles as a nation. Violence has become almost second nature in the media, in our politics, and our social stratification. In light of this, it is little wonder that violence has enjoyed a long and comfortable presence in how North Americans interact with each other, particularly in our most personal relationships. In our readings for this week, the unfortunate reality of violence in North American society, particularly in conjunction with constructions of patriarchy, were highlighted, revealing the epidemic of violence so deeply infecting our cultural conscious.

Though there were many voices and viewpoints highlighted in the readings for this week, there seems to be an overarching theme: violence and masculinity are intertwined. This does not exclude women from entering the realms of physical violence, however. As illustrated in Enloe’s article examining the situation in Abu Ghraib, women, when placed in a realm where only social constructions of masculinity are valued—namely the Armed Forces, particularly overseas—are just as likely to adopt behaviors toward captives that are otherwise illegal, both within the United States Constitution and otherwise. But, as Enloe poignantly indicates, the issue with Abu Ghraib wasn’t so much the fact that violent, humiliating actions had been taken against Iraqi soldiers by American military personnel as much as the fact that these personnel were women.

This public outrage reflects the gendering North American culture does to violence. The female officers who so cruelly humiliated the Iraqi prisoners were committing a great social faux pas, taking part in activities typically relegated to men. This concept is reflected in other articles as well, where women have often been victims of violence at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends, and other significant males in their lives. Nonetheless, female batterers (though they do exist), are far outnumbered by their male counterparts, and all have bought into the concept of masculinity’s association with violence, which ultimately translates into domination and control.

The association of masculinity with domination and control is often reinforced by social structure as well. Many of the personal accounts of women who have left their abusers note that there were few outlets for them to turn to. While it must be noted that some of these accounts were outdated (mid 1980’s) and that women’s shelters are now (thankfully) available to many women who would have had no other way out, the very necessity of battered women’s shelters reveals that the association and reinforcement of masculinity, power, domination, and control is far from erased from the North American consciousness.

Amidst all of the accounts of violence, there did exist one moment of empowerment and suggestion at hope. In her poem, Mitsuye Yamada describes a very painful and dangerous process: leaving her home, and her abusive husband, behind. She describes the “club” her husband used to beat her: a statue of a Japanese geisha with sharply curved hemlines on her kimono. Against all expectation, Yamada connects with the “woman” whom her husband uses to beat her. She talks with the statue, forming something of a friendship with the inanimate object her husband uses to brutalize her. Yet, it seems that Yamada connects with this statue because she, too, is a woman being abused with each of Yamada’s husband’s blows. Finally, Yamada packs the statuette tenderly into her bag amongst her other belongings, simultaneously reclaiming the statue—and her independence—as her own and disarming her husband. She acknowledges the grip violence has taken on their relationship and abandons that violence, taking her porcelain sister with her. I feel like this is a process that all victims of abuse must eventually face and complete, regardless of its manifestation. While it doubtlessly takes a great deal of strength and courage, recognizing and putting a stop to the violence in one’s own life is the first step to eradicating the violence in society at large.

Going from Lavender to Purple and Beyond

Borders: boundaries that we create between ourselves and others. Fences. Lines we draw to divide us (or me) from them. There is little doubt that American philosophy is filled with borders; we draw them all the time. In this sense, it may be surprising that one of the social philosophies that touts, among many other things, equal rights between men and women is also rife with borders that become very difficult to manipulate without being able to see beyond them. Feminism is, in this case, a “cause” with limited spectrum, and only by including other perspectives from the marginalized positions that white, middle-upper class, “academic” feminism create can we begin to tear down the theoretical walls that marginalize those who don’t fit the “typical” feminist bill.

These theoretical walls become all too apparent when considering the readings for this week. Reading these testimonials revealed the individuals who, as bell hooks often notes, “advocate feminism” or identify themselves as “feminist”; there were women of different classes, backgrounds, races, and sexual orientation who gave testimonials and definitions of their feminism along side a self-described “wussy boy” who cares a great deal about “pussy power.” The main point? There’s enough feminism to go around, and embracing voices outside the “typical” (read: white, “educated,” privileged) feminist perspective greatly enriches the social ideology.

One of the most striking elements of the “ethnic” approaches to feminism was that of Womanism, particularly in light of Alice Walker’s description of the term. Indeed, “white” feminism can tend to be a little “pastel” in its consideration of exactly whose rights women ought to be fighting for and whose viewpoint ought to be considered “legitimate” in regards to feminism. Womanism, on the other hand, considers the many issues involved in pursuing equal rights—for everyone; not just white women, but everyone. No longer segregated by personal cause, Womanism attempts the struggle of combating both racism and sexism, deepening the lavender to a regal purple. Third World and Mujerista feminisms take this a step further, emphasizing differences in class and race that are often unacknowledged and often not even considered part of “serious” feminism. It is clear that these types of feminisms literally widen the “color” spectrum of feminist consciousness, changing the focus from “me” to “we.”

Despite the flak I’ve tossed at “white academic” feminism, my first encounters with different “schools” of feminist thought were, ironically, in college classes peopled by white women. I was aware of racism, classism, and other rampant sorts of discrimination, but was completely unaware of the feminisms that identified them. Since then, I feel that I understand feminism in terms of Walker’s analogy of purple to Womanism and lavender to feminism; she has, in a sense, helped me to see the different “colors” of causes that effect the way that women, men, and intersexed individuals shape their own roles and the roles of others in society. Setting up borders between gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and other “social dividers” only succeeds in subsequently bordering those individuals who speak from “bordered” perspectives, effectively silencing them in a sea of lavender. Bringing these perspectives together in a larger color spectrum allows—please forgive the over-used image—a rainbow of voices, testimonies, struggles, and causes. In this sense, I feel that the multi-colored eye pictured above has become my expanded awareness concerning feminisms, allowing me to literally see beyond my own lavender identity and begin to understand, appreciate, and advocate other perspectives within the spectrum.