Week of 10/20: A Person's Value Is Not Measured by Gender

This week, we looked at (and read in the Socolow reading) a number of examples where Latin American men completely dehumanize women. According to the men of the day, a woman could not learn, could not run a family, could not be a leader in any circumstance, and ultimately, could not make any decisions on her own! As is mentioned above, such an attitude brings women down to a level that is completely below that of men. While men and women have been created differently from each other, this fact absolutely does not justify the idea of male supremacy. A male is not better than a female because he has certain biological characteristics. A female may not be as strong as a male, and therefore cannot perform the same tasks as a male. She, however, is not any less of a human because of that! We therefore should always treat men and women with equal respect. And, unlike Latin American men, we need to give men and women equal opportunity to exercise their respective talents.

Comments

  1. Ella CarrOctober 21, 2021 at 12:34 PM

    Hi Seth, I agree with you, I do not think any persons value should be determined by their born physical characteristics. I think your title should be "A Person's Value Should Not be Measured by Gender" because often people are judged and valued based on their gender. We see this clearly through the Socolow reading as you mentioned. We also see this in Sor Juana's writing as she critiques mens judgement of women in the poem we read and her letter defending her right to study. We also see this in the memoir we finished for this week: Erauso had to change their clothes and gender identity to escape the life they were doomed to as a women.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Médar SerrataOctober 26, 2021 at 6:52 PM

    Thank you, Seth, for your post. I could not agree with you more that biological difference should not be the basis for unequal opportunities. But, as Ella states in her reply, this is not the reality in which Sor Juana and Erauso lived, and it is not the reality in which most women live today. I look forward to continuing our conversation on this topic in class.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week of 4/8: Issues with U.S. Foreign Policy

Talking this week about the human rights abuses in El Salvador was obviously a disturbing topic, but it was also, in a strange way, fascinating. I did not know much about U.S. foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s, but our discussions opened my eyes to the number of unnecessary conflicts the U.S. involves itself in. Undoubtedly, the U.S. government, in most of these situations, did not foresee the harm that its presence was to cause - rather, its intention was to help. Therefore, it is not to be criticized as if it was intentionally murdering innocent civilians. On the other hand, though, while it was not the cause of civilian deaths, the government is still fully responsible for those deaths. As we all can agree, the way the government deflected that responsibility and never apologized to the families involved is appalling. This shows that the government needs to be held accountable to its citizens for its actions, and it needs to thoroughly count the cost before involving itself in n...
Read more

Week of 4/21: Helping Others in Need

This week, we discussed the film Even the Rain. One thing that stood out to me from the film was how obsessed the Americans were with making money from their own documentary - so much that they completely ignored the fact that the Bolivians were dying for lack of water. The filmmakers did not care if people died of thirst, so long as their film was produced. At first, I did not make a connection to our society today, but as I thought more, I realized how many people in our communities do not have enough to live on, while we are content to live our lives and make money while ignoring the poverty around us. We (myself included) often do a poor job of helping the underprivileged in society. But if we do not take action, we are no better than the American filmmakers in Even the Rain . We all should actively look for ways to help those in need, whether that is supporting a local mission, fighting for legislation that will help address poverty issues, or contributing in some other way. As th...
Read more

Week of 3/31: Double Meanings in Poetry

This week, we dove deep into poetry and tried to analyze the intent and the message of different poems. As the discussion progressed, we were able to come up with several plausible explanations as to what each of the poems meant (thanks to Lillie). This struck me as interesting, because when the poem was written, its author probably had only one meaning in mind. We could be interpreting the poem in a way that the poet him/herself never even thought of. It is extremely interesting to me that we can look at a poem and simply create our own story around the way we interpret it, and then connect our narrative to history and argue why our interpretation of the poem "works". Ultimately, this is the beauty of poetry, and of creative writing in general - it can take on many different perspectives based on the "lens" through which it is interpreted.
Read more