Quest to the top, Blog post #4

When we think about the history of black people, it usually resumes to black men fighting white men to win their freedom. Few people actually know the role that the women played in that fight, and what the true meaning of it was. But fortunately Manning Marable's "The black Male: Searching Beyond Stereotypes" enlightens us. What seemed to be a mere fight for freedom had in fact a much more symbolic meaning than that, (for black people and white women alike). It was a fight against the white male supremacy. And the inner goal of that fight was to climb to the top of that social stratification (that Judith Lorber's "Night to His Day" was alluding to) where white men are first, followed by white women, then black men, and finally black women. (That quest for the top position has been with us since. The last famous one I can think of: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton for the post of US President. The Black guy and the white chick competing for the top position being held, until then, by exclusively white males).  Manning Marable lets us understand that most of the white women at that time were satisfied with their submissive situation, never questioning the judgement of the man in the family: "... the majority of white females viewed Black men through the eyes of their fathers and husbands" (18), which of course implies that they treated Black men like cattle. But the other part of white women wasn't so resigned and were ready to question the white male authority, which led to an alliance between white women and black men "in the battle against sexual and racial discrimination" (18-19) (which was in fact a battle against the white male supremacy. Removing "the king" from his throne was the main goal). That idea is supported, in Marable's reading, by the fact that as soon as the Fifteenth Amendment passed white women turned against Black men. They saw in that ascension of the Black men the potential danger of being outrun in that quest for the top position. As Marable says "it symbolized the political advancement of the Black male over white middle-class women" (19).  The Black men would have been better off doing an alliance with Black women, but as Manning Marable shows us, black women didn't win the favors of their husbands and sons. By sleeping (willingly or not) with white males or by being the "Matriachs" (20) of their families, Black women "psychologically castrated" (20) Black men. And yet, if it wasn't for the bravoure of some of them, such as Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks (or others that History has unfortunately forgotten) who inspired some influential balck men, the Black community wouldn't have accomplished what they've accomplished. As Manning Marable says: "Together..... they can achieve far more than they can ever accomplish alone" (23)

WORK CITED

Marable, Manning. "The Black Male: Searching Beyond Stereotypes". Men's lives, 5th ed. S Kimmel and Michael A. Messner, Ed. New York: Allyn & Bacon,  2001, 17-23, Print.

1st Draft photo analysis

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vu43gBoGED0u43D7MEUXDcJ_ruZ_R_fquvP8ik05gDs/edit?hl=en&authkey=CJfLgpMP

"The Male Myth"

One of the ideas introduced by Theroux in "The Male Myth" is that the essence of masculinity resides in the fact that men enjoy being among themselves. There is clearly no room for women in that picture. For this reason, "maliness" goes against nature. According to his own word "... that is also why there is no maliness without inadequacy- because it denies men the natural friendship of women." He supports his idea by taking the example of athletes, and more specifically team-athletes such as basket ball players. This is a good example of what "maliness" can be because basket ball players (like any other player in a team sport) do stay between themselves and enjoy it. When, for instance, they win the play-offs and cry, do you think they will give a call to their spouses, mothers, daughters or whatever women they might have in their entourage? No, they "celebrate" between themselves. Eventually, way down the road, when the emotions have passed, they will think to the opposite sex to celebrate in a totally different way. In that way women are taken as sexual objects used to satisfy a sexual need rather than sharing an emotion, which corroborates with Theroux's idea when he says "It is very hard to imagine any concept of maliness that does not belittle women..".  Another example that he takes to support his idea is the "Boy Scouts", saying that society is trying to put you in that quest for "maliness" from a very young age, either by sending you to the "Boy Scouts" or to "boy's camp". Of course as the name suggests there is no diversity involved. No questions about the opposite gender must be ask. These environments are meant so as to make you think 'boy', eat 'boy', sleep 'boy' and enjoy it! According to Theroux that is the anteroom of "the marines", another group of manly men. The only hitch I might find to that example is that now we have women in the marines corps , since WWII, so it doesn't perfectly fit Theroux's idea of masculinity ("celebrating the exclusive company of men, while denying the natural friendship of women"). Basically, Theroux gives us an image of masculinity that goes against what the majority of people thinks. Where everyone would see strength in masculinity, he simply sees weakness.

Construction of Gender.... it might find its root way before any social interactions...

Once again, I'm going to have to open the debate between what's biologically acquired and what's socially acquired. I'm pretty sure that after reading Judith Lorber's "Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender",  everybody is convinced that the construction of gender is rather social than inborn. So am I. It appears to me that genderism is a giant role playing that everyone is trained to do since age 3. Of course if the training goes well we should be playing the same role for the rest of our lives. Now you might be asking yourself why the training wouldn't go well? Well...., that's where your biological features come into action. Let's say that from birth, you are meant to be a specific gender and your body or brain knows it? It might seem a silly idea, but what brought me to think about that is the case of that (as it is said in Judith Lorber's reading) "... baby boy whose penis was destroyed in the course of a botched circumcision...". That case appears in Judith Lorber's AND Fausto-Sterling's readings. In Judith Lorber's, it clearly says that the construction of gender was "achieved". The use of that word implies it was successful, and I think it might have been. He succeeded to pull out a good "acting performance" throughout his female life. However in Fausto-Sterling's we learn that that same boy, changed into a girl, (in his thirties at the time of the interview) "... never accepted his female identity, and as a teenager demanded to learn his whole medical history and decided to continue life as a male...". So what's perturbing me here is, without knowing anything about his medical history and his brief life as a male, without his parents telling him anything or treating him differently, what was it in his biological man body that gave his "true gender" away? What was it in his subconscious that said: "Hey, wake up! You were born a male, you're not supposed to act, dress or talk like that! " Gender is for sure an ongoing process constructed through your social life, but there might be somewhere deep inside your body something that tells you which way you should be leaning to as a possessor of that type of sex marker.

Analysis of a picture

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YGE9NjaZ6GwVPCMbPtFpJGn-XyQX1ESvagDdOduEQYE/edit?hl=en&authkey=COyotdoM

Homosexual body hosting heterosexual mind or Heterosexual body hosting homosexual mind?

While I was reading Fausto-Sterling's excerpt "How to build a man?", one statement she made caught my attention and raised my curiosity. She said: ".... a child raised as a female (even if biologically male) who prefers male lovers is psychologically heterosexual, although genetically she is not." For me that statement implies two really different and major concepts depending on the way you think about it. The first one is that you can be born gay or lesbian, and thus, this is something natural, which might have its answer in the human genome. (So we should probably review our definition of masculinity). This concept is not new, and has been a polemical subject for the past decades, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it. However, I just would like to highlight one opinion that we can have from Fausto-Sterling's statement: the way a child is raised, (or his/her socialization) does not play any role in his/her sexual orientation. The other opinion that we can have is, it is because he is raised as a female that he prefers male lovers (as John Money implies it). In that case there is no such thing as being born homosexual. Depending on the way you choose to raise a child you can affect or even totally change his/her sexual orientation. That is a big concept. What does that say about all the homosexuals out there? That their parents didn't raise them in a proper way? That, as it is something that was probably force onto them as they were raised, they can "straighten" their sexual orientation by having a proper socialization and become "normal"? Or even more, as parents, not only will you have the choice of the education you want to give to your child, but you will also have the choice of his/her sexual orientation? The only thing I'm positive about after reading that text is no matter what concept you choose to support the notion of normality, as well as the notion of what it means to be masculine will evolve as Science evolves.