Week 13

I am a feminist.  I was raised by strong, outspoken women.  But none of them would ever call themselves feminists because to them feminism means hating men and not bathing and refusing to wear make up and having an overall aggressive and defensive demeanor.  While they themselves hold feminist values and ideals, they are in the seemingly large group of people who misclassify the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s as feminism.  

Feminism is the belief that all sexes deserve equal rights and treatment.  In 1960s America the feminist movement was a second wave of the equal rights agenda of the nineteenth century feminists.  Led by predominately white middle-class women as in the previous century, feminism in 1960s America sought equal opportunities and treatment in employment and education.  The women’s liberation movement emerged out of this feminism.

Women’s liberation focused on the patriarchy as a force dominating and oppressing women.  Liberation meant becoming aware of this oppression and making an effort to throw it off.  They were very direct in their tactics.  They discarded and burned “instruments of oppression” such as bras, girdles, tweezers, and high-heels.  They threw stink bombs into the Miss American pageant in 1968 and crowned a sheep as their Miss America.  While their beliefs were well intentioned and not off base, their tactics were somewhat violent and ineffective in moving the general public.

The widespread misconception that my own family has about feminism is a huge problem facing feminism today.  While a lot of feminists today hold the same beliefs as the women’s liberationists did, many of them do not use the same tactics as a way of getting their message across.  Feminists today are typically less violent in their protests and tend not to attack other women for their own choices.  I think that feminism today has evolved and become much more inclusive and open to the wide of array of experiences that each individual woman has.  So it is upsetting to me when people get so caught up in the old view of feminism as violent and extreme and hateful as people viewed it in the 1960s.  A lot of people need to open their minds and look at feminism for what it truly is: compassionate, loving, and beautiful.

Week Twelve

I never would have thought to look at the early 20^th century Communist movements as related to the French Revolution.  However, they share some similar features.  They both arose out of the idea that new and better worlds could be built by human actions and human ideas.  They both sought a society in the modern and new future instead of the nostalgic and traditional past.  In the French Revolution and the Communist Revolutions the peasants, who had little to no money, overthrew the wealthy aristocrats.  However the Communist Revolutions differed from the French in that they were led by highly organized parties and each person involved shared the belief in Marxist ideology (1038-1039). 

In Russia, the Communist Revolution grew out of World War I.  The Russian people especially those in the lower classes suffered greatly during the war.  As a result they became restless, actively opposing the tsar, and eventually forcing him to abdicate the throne in February of 1917.  This opened the doors to social upheaval: vast numbers of soldiers deserted the military, workers organized and seized control of factories, and peasants took landlords estates and redistributed the land among themselves.  Non-Russian nationalities demanded independence.  Social unrest in conjunction with a weak provisional government opened the door for a new, organized group to take control of Russia (1039).

The organization that succeeded was the Bolsheviks, a small socialist party.  Led by the charismatic Lenin, the group believed that Russia was not only ready for a socialist revolution, but would spark similar revolutions all over Europe.  The Bolsheviks promised to bring an end to the war, give land to the peasants, grant workers control of factories, and guaranteed independence to non-Russian nationalities.  Based on the reception of these promises, the Bolsheviks rose to power in October of 1917.  They still faced resistance from Russian tsarists, landlords, unaffiliated socialists, as well as external troops from capitalist nations who wanted to crush communism.  In the process of these civil wars, the Bolsheviks regimented the economy, took grain from peasants, and crushed rebellions with bloody force.  Claiming to defend Russia from imperialists, they recruited many lower-class men into their Red Army.  While they were met with opposition and became more authoritarian, the Bolsheviks gained full control of Russia in 1921 and established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1040-1041).

Week 10

I found the article “Haiti and the distortion of its Vodou religion” written by Millery Polyné and Elizabeth McAlister extremely interesting.  It focuses on the misrepresentation of Vodou in American media as a black magic cult called voodoo.  Polyné explains how this misrepresentation and misunderstanding by most people has affected his sense of self as a Haitian-American.

In the Cultural Anthropology class I took last semester we read a book called Mama Lola, which is a study of Vodou through the life of a priestess living New York.  The class discussed the background of the religion as well as its beliefs and practices.  We also talked about how the reality of Vodou differs so much from the sensationalized, media constructed voodoo.  However, because Mama Lola was so comfortable in herself and strong in her beliefs we never talked about how it must feel to be a Haitian American who is confronted constantly by misrepresentation of his or her culture in the media.  So it is interesting to read Polyné’s article and hear his perspective of Vodou.  When he saw the movie that depicted Haitians as evil magicians, he was extremely uncomfortable.  While he did not know much about Vodou, he knew that the depiction in the movie was false and defamatory to Haitian culture and people.  It was disturbing for Polymé to see such an ignorant representation of practitioners of Vodou and, by association, all Haitians, including himself.  To constantly be confronted by false beliefs about his culture and excessive judgement of Vodou as superstitious and despicable, Polyné was led to question the validity of the religion and what it means to be Haitian.

Voudu is a rich, complex system of beliefs and practices that focuses of reciprocity, community, and equality, not the evil sorcery that American media makes it out to be.  It is shameful that true depictions of the religion are not being presented for everyone to encounter.

Week Seven

The Industrial Revolution marked a huge turning point in not only the history of mankind, but of the planet Earth.  Prior to the Revolution, global population grew from approximately 375 million people in 1400 to 1 billion in 1800 (828).  As the number of people using them grew, wood and charcoal supplies became fewer and costs rose.  With these main sources of energy becoming scarcer, an energy crisis emerged.  The Industrial Revolution came in part as a response to this energy crisis as nonrenewable fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, became the new main source of energy (828).

The excessive extraction of these nonrenewable materials from the earth drastically changed the landscape in many areas of the world and has left an impact on the planet that has lasted to today.  Strayer writes of environmental impact on London during the Industrial Revolution, “Sewers and industrial waste emptied into the rivers, turning them into poisonous cesspools…. Smoke from the coal-fired industries and domestic use polluted the air in urban areas and sharply increased the incidence of respiratory illness” (828).  While environmental conditions have become better as scientific knowledge and priorities on preserving the environment have grown, the impact that the Industrial Revolution had on the earth is still prevalent today.  Because of this, many historians agree that the Industrial Revolution marks a new era in the history of humankind and of the planet.  Scientists call this era the Anthropocene, or “the age of man,” in which human activity began to leave a lasting mark on the atmospheric, ecological, and geological history of the earth (829).

Week Six

The feminist movement emerged as a result of the Atlantic revolutions, during and after which many people, based on enlightenment ideas, began to question and challenge traditional ways of thinking.  Shortly after the French Revolution, playwright and journalist Olympe de Gouges wrote Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen in which she attempted to apply to women the rights of man laid out in the French Declaration of 1789 (813, 817).  While numerous women in France at the time agreed with Gouges and attempted to participate in events promoting equality, they were unsuccessful in their efforts because most men disagreed, believing instead that women were meant to focus on marriage and motherhood rather than politics (805, 818).

Other women followed Gouges example in arguing for equality of the sexes and the rights of women.  One such woman was Elizabeth Cady Stanton who led the feminist movement in America during the nineteenth century (818).  In 1848, Stanton took a leading role at the first organized women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York.  During the conference she wrote a statement in which she reworded the Declaration of Independence to read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal” (806).  Almost fifty years later Stanton addressed the U.S. congressional committee, urging them to amend the constitution to allow women the right to vote.  Stanton’s main argument in the address is that women are individual people who must live their own lives.  She states that women have not only the right, but also the obligation to rule over themselves and make their own choices and that as individuals who are living just the same as men, women should not be sheltered from life.  Stanton believed that men do not, cannot and will never understand what it is to be a woman so men should dictate the lives and decisions of women.

“Seeing then that the responsibilities of life rests equally on man and women, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity.  The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is a mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer…Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he cannot bear her burden….” (819).