Lead Post for 4/1: Taken with a grain of salt.

I was strongly disappointed by the Crenshaw article. She set out to explore "the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color" but spent the entire article confirming stereotypes of domestic violence, berating white policy makers and institutions that fail to help women of color because they are simply ill-equip to handle them (page 1). I learned nothing new and felt defensive throughout the entire article. In the example of a shelter not helping a woman because she did not speak English, Crenshaw condemn the shelter for not taking care of the woman. If the shelter itself would not be able to help her, why should it be responsible to do so? The shelter should be able to contact other shelters that may be better able to assist her, but the shelter itself is not at fault. This is a constant theme I am seeing in a lot of humanitarian aid work; if an individual organization knows it cannot assist a specific population so does not try, it should not be reprimanded. Instead, the system that exists to oppress the population and the lack of support for that specific population should be addressed. It does no good to attack do-gooders for not being do-everything-gooders.

The Steinem article was equally infuriating. (I guess I'm feeling sassy tonight.) I do not think that those few anecdotal pieces of violence denote a real sample of the reasons for "teen" and/or white murders. Each of those convicts are clearly facing more serious issues than being too supreme. I see how they take their place in social hierarchy as legitimatizing their actions, but I do not think it is the root of their issues. I think these people were clearly messed up from the start and used their social location to push their own agenda's forward. When Steinem discusses changing the gender of the teen murders to female, she points to a very basic notion that an "unmarked" status is male. Changing their gender will mark them and bring a conversation of gender to the table but this point does not further her argument. While I feel guilty disagreeing with a woman like Steinem, I have to say that she lost me with this article. Here is a picture of her as a playboy bunny!

Although, the article about G.I. sexual abuse confirms Steinem's argument about men asserting there supremacy. In most of the cases discussed, the men were of a higher or equal office in the military than the women they harassed. I also found it interesting that men were less likely to report an incident, which relates to the point I made last class that sexual harassment can, and does, go both ways. Again, the officer who stalked Captain White was a serial aggressor who could then, maybe, be discounted in the same way I discounted the murders Steinem discusses. Committing such a series of attacks leaves me to believe that these people have serious issues with their supremacy status and are not the common byproduct of our current cultural norms. While I do not think they should be disregarded all together, I do not think they proved adequate evidence for claims like Steinem tries to make. The film also added an interesting light to the story but my feelings remain the same.

The Living and Fighting Alongside Men article was the only article I really agreed with. Granted it was the only one with a positive message, but I felt it was more true than the others. I was intrigued that all of the women proved themselves through their performance and did not expect to be treated differently because they were women. They did perform better than some men, one officer said he had relived men but never women from their posts, which confirms the old notion that for women to be equal to men they must be better than men. Overall the women seemed to be accepted into the armed forces because they acted as if they were already welcome.