1. Almas Sayeed's conflict of ideas about marriage and how a woman should live reminds me of my relationship with my mom. It's not the same, of course. Our conflicting ideas are about completely different topics than those of Sayeed and her dad's. I disagree with my mom's ideas about topics such as feminity, sex, and other topics. Many times I feel torn between what I believe and what my mom tells me to believe. Sometimes I find my mom's ideas completely unreasonable. For example. my mom told me that I shouldn't kiss someone who was my boyfriend at the time. To me, this seems outrageous and ridiculous, but to her, this idea is perfectly reasonable. Another example is her view on the LGBTQ community. Whenever I bring up one of my gay or bisexual friends, my mom asks, "Is he still gay?" or "Is she still bisexual?". I always get annoyed. She is so judgmental toward the LGBTQ community in general. So after putting up with her attitude about the community for years, I finally said to her, "Mom, I have to educate you," and I preceded to talk to her about acceptance and other topics related to the LGBTQ community.
2. Sayeed briefly discusses belly dancing and tells of the way in which belly dancing was used as a way to objectify women. I found this intriguing because my sister is a belly dancer, and I never thought much of it. However, she sent me a video of a performance she had a few days ago, and after watching it, I could understand how the dance could be used to objectify women. To me, the dance seemed like a tease. There is this mysterious female figure unveilling herself for the crowd and putting herself and her body on display. However, I never really thoguht about all the cultural implications of the dance before I read this essay. Even the unveiling, although my sister probably did not mean it as any type of symbolism, could have a tremendous amount of implications.
3. The stories about the women in the brother in Ladies Only by Tanmeet Sethi were eye opening. The women were not in a brothel necessarily because they wanted to be there. They didn't purposely choose to live a life of prostitution; they didn't have many other options. I think people judge women in brothels very quickly, but now, I'll think twice because you never know why they're there.
4. I found Sethi's discussion of the burka so powerful. The fact that something that is seen as a sign of oppression can be transformed into a sign of power is really fascinating. I never thought of the burka as a tool women can use to empower themselves, but Sethi's talk about how some women want to be more than their face and body makes perfect sense.
5. I really identified with Rebecca Hurdis in her essay. Although we're different races, we are both women of color, and some of the experiences she describes are similar to my own. Specifically, I connected with her discussion of acceptance. She was surrounded by people different from her, and she wanted to be accepted but could never really feel fully accepted. That's how I feel sometimes. Since I was 11, I've been one of the only black individuals in my class. My culture was different from my other classmates, and my background was different. I felt so uncomfortable. I never felt fully accepted. Also, I found that people would try to invalidate my blackness by saying I'm an oreo, black on the outside white on the inside simply because of the way I talk. This really bothered my because I didn't see myself that way. Like Hurdis, I struggled with my identity to. I had to reconcile being a black girl in a predominantly white atmosphere. It was like living in two completely different worlds: the white world by day and the black world by night. I really didn't know how to handle it. Although I don't struggle with my Identity anymore, it was a long journey.
6. Hurdis talks about feminism being thought of as a "white woman's thing". I never thought of feminism in that way, but I guess that could be attributed to the fact that I was not well-versed in feminist literature and ideology. Therefore, I never realized that women of color were being ignored, dismissed, and missing from the movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment