Power and Identity Groups

JD
05/20/2012
TSOCWF404
Group Memberships

Target Group Membership

By the dominant paradigm of society, I am classified as “woman”. As a woman, I share membership in a marginalized group. The corollary agent/dominant group of women in this paradigm is men. Identifying with a marginalized group (women), I experience a spectrum of oppressive experiences. These range from feelings of devaluation, discrimination, and lack of/limited political voice. Living in this society as a woman, my life consists of a myriad of experiences which are both personal and political. In both spheres, I am deemed powerless. In the interpersonal spaces of my life, I am taught to remain in the home, to do as I am told, and to be submissive to males. In political spaces of society, all notions are echoed and the latter is structurally maneuvered. Contending upon the bases of the ideas that render me inferior in the personal sphere, tenets of the political sphere hold that my worth is defined by my physical appearance and sexual allure and that I am irrational, thereby incapable of holding positions of power in society. By splitting the domestic and market spheres of labor, work which is historically associated with women and primarily delegated to and carried out by women—house cleaning, cooking, childcare—is trivialized and women are in turn, devalued. In both political and interpersonal spheres, which are linked in inextricable ways, I am held to double standards. I am commanded from childhood to my current living day by cultural ideologies that I must be fit but not fat, sexy but not promiscuous, and perfect but not plastic. Double standards such as these set unattainable social expectations on women in society, ensuring that major social battles women come to face with are always lose-lose. It is in this guaranteed failure that women remain subordinated and men remain privileged. Powerlessness is a sensation of no new nature to me, for I experience it on a day-to-day basis. When I walk down the streets, I am honked at, hollered at, harassed, and followed out of sexual interest. I am powerless to stop such occurrences and can do little to nothing to avoid such scenarios from reoccurring because the objectification of women is not only condoned (on both an institutional and individual level), it is normalized because it is commonplace. I have contemplated the paths of action open to me in these circumstances—ignore or confront—but the former only allows for the persistence of such behavior and the latter only enhances my risk of being in danger; the reality that I am without a potentially helpful solution is an obnoxious reminder of my oppression as a woman. To add, in political debates of whether or not to legalize abortion, my power over the private aspects of my life is trampled upon and personal rights put on the ballot for voting. Related to powerlessness is the experience of invisibility as a woman. With limited political voice, the concerns and interests of women are less likely to appear on the political agenda. In the case where such issues do receive significant political attention, they are more often than not, negotiated by men in power. In legislature, women have historically been excluded and while this has changed, women remain a stark minority. The invisibility of women is established in the very culture and structure of patriarchy. This system of male privilege dictates that women’s primary responsibility is to serve men, be that in menial or sexual terms. Patriarchy dichotomizes labor by sex and it manipulates concepts about ‘sexual differences’ in order to isolate and silence women and justify inequitable distribution of power between women and men. In the media, women are visible (majorly so) either in roles of sexual appeal or in roles where their importance is defined by their relationship to a man. In both sorts of media portrayal, women are most often cast with the primary objective being to hold the male gaze. Because their main relevance is their body and their intellect and personalities are fundamentally disregarded, women are invisible even when they saturate the media. Invisibility is not only being absent from view; it is also—and this is becoming increasingly true—being portrayed to the public eye as nothing important or of value beyond superficial appeal. A stark example of women being defined in relation to men is the change of the pronoun of address to a woman depending on her marital status: “Miss” for single, “Mrs.” for married, and “Ms.” for divorced. In juxtaposition with these extraneous female-related terms is a single word which applies to all men regardless of marital status: “Mr.” This imbalance is not only technically obvious, it demonstrates the pervasion of the notion that men are the generic gender and women merely the subgroup. Discrimination, marginalization, and exploitation are all experiences which target groups face. As a woman, I have been discriminated against within my own family and outside of the home. In the former context, I have been taught that as a female, I have no right to speak up or speak out and that I am to do as I am told. In the latter context, my rights to privacy have been violated and I must fight in order to gain personal authority over my body and my decisions (e.g. abortion rights). In the social institution of sports, I am discriminated against on the basis of a faulty logic, which is that women are innately weaker than men. This ideology transpires in arguments beyond physical strength—it pervades political ethos which deems women emotionally and socially incapable of achieving the same essential success that men can achieve. As a woman, I have been marginalized both culturally and politically. In the cultural structure of society (i.e. patriarchy), women are taught and expected to be submissive to the male will and even when this expectation isn’t explicitly asserted, the male-dominant nature of such a cultural structure ensures that women remain subordinate to men. As a child and to this day, I am taught that men are far more capable than women and are thereby the ideal leaders of a family, company, and country. In the political realm of society, female legislators are a minority and the concerns of women are generally addressed mainly through the lenses of males. As a woman, I have been exploited on a number of levels. At a personal level, I am exploited when I encounter strange men who regard me as an object of pleasure which they, “because they are men,” have the inherent right to gaze at, touch, and grab. At an institutional level, I am exploited when my fellow target group members are utilized in the media as tools to sell items and ideas to the general public because this implies that I am worth only as much as my body can sell. Women’s bodies and body parts are captured in sexually provocative ways or in manners that demonstrate their valueless nature in relation to men; the dignity of my being as woman is reduced to nothing in the mainstream culture because of this manipulation of female bodies for superficial gain and pleasure. Women have historically fought for just treatment and equal rights in America and the gains have been profound and plentiful. The suffrage movement is one significant example of resistance, empowerment, and gain of rights for women. Also born out of years of indignation is the movement of feminism, which strives to bring attention to the relationship between the personal and the political, empower and uplift women as well as other oppressed groups, and challenge normative and hegemonic ideologies which stratify society based on master statuses (such as gender/sex, class, race, ‘ability’, and sexual orientation). I have personally asserted myself in an attempt to resist oppression, educate others, and empower myself and other women by petitioning against policy that infringes upon the rights of both women and marginalized groups and speaking up and pointing to the sociopolitical implications of things ranging from everyday, “normal” interactions with other individuals and greater institutional oppressive practices. One particular scenario where I personally resisted what I perceived as a narrative of oppression (the male door-opening ritual) was when my male friend opened a door for me and I jokingly declined to walk through the door and opened another for myself. After this happened, I proceeded to tell my friend how I viewed this commonplace act of courtesy as a symbol of female inferiority which is the cornerstone of patriarchy and oppression of women. While this act is superficially ‘harmless’ and done with no intention of offending the woman whose door is being held opened for her, I explained to my friend that it is this micro-level scenario that comprises the larger structure of oppression of women. All of the aforementioned experiences affect my daily lifestyle because I have to shift my lifestyle in order to negotiate my identity as a woman in a patriarchal society. Getting dressed, I do so with the consciousness of how far I have to walk to get to my car and where I’ll be walking, if I’m doing any walking, because certain clothing colors and styles are more likely to attract attention and harassment from strange males. Although my personal style is generally modest and comfortable, I have noticed that when I am wearing jeans versus when I am wearing sweatpants attracts different reactions from passersby (particularly males). When I am walking down the streets, I change the way that I walk and my facial expression in order to convey my disinterest in interacting with strangers and to avoid any scenario of sexual harassment. As a result of this conscious change of lifestyle, my sense of identity as a woman is strong; I sense that ‘woman’ is the primary facet of my multi-dimensioned identity and I sense that women are restricted, devalued, and objectified on a number of levels in society. Also as a consequence of this effortful shift in my day-to-day behavior, my sense of identity as a person is less graspable; I struggle to find a space within my being where I can transcend socialized norms and regulatory policies and I struggle to reconcile my double consciousness. With every circumstance, there is joy and there is struggle. The gifts of sharing membership in a target group, particularly the group of women, are drive and diligence—both needed in every context in order to succeed—, solidarity among fellow women—with whom I can relate, bond, and combat social injustice—, and a more acute awareness of the various oppressions that exist in society. The struggles, which in many ways undergird the joys in being a woman, of identifying with this target group are that it is hard to disregard that I am human underneath being a ‘female’ human, it is rare that I am defined by my character and ability and not by my sex or in relation to man, and I must grapple with the unjust distribution of power and privilege between women and men in my everyday life.

Agent Group Membership
By the traditional worldview, I am classified as “able-bodied.” The corollary target group as perceived through the lens of this paradigm is “disabled.” (These categories are troublesome to me, even as I utter them, because each implies that a person’s ‘ability’ is their primary identity and that ‘ability’ can be defined in a binary, mutually exclusive manner.) As an able-bodied person, I feel little to nothing onerous in my everyday experiences because the world I live in is dominantly tailored by and caters to able-bodied people. In American society, able-bodied people hold a variety of forms of power: interpersonal, social, and institutional. These forms of power are all intertwined, for an able-bodied person accompanying a friend with a disability is more likely to be the person who is addressed or spoken to in public rather than the individual with a disability, and the individual with a disability is likely to be reliant on their able-bodied friend in many circumstances because social norms and able-centric architecture make society ill-equipped to appropriately interact with and accommodate people with disabilities. The power disparity between able-bodied people and persons with disabilities is structural and is reinforced by parents, educators, and politicians who devalue the dignity and capabilities of people with disabilities by teaching and creating policy on the basis of medical models and able-centric ethos which stigmatize, ostracize, and disparage people with disabilities. Educational institutions explicitly and implicitly marginalize people with disabilities by physically segregating students with disabilities and students who are able-bodied, formulating curriculums and academic activities without taking into account the needs of students with disabilities, and by including little to no positive and empowering literature written by or about people with disabilities. The healthcare system of America also perpetuates ableism by prioritizing profit over the needs of people with disabilities, defining ‘disability’ as a dysfunction to be ‘fixed,’ and through privatization of healthcare insurance which affects all people, but impacts people with disabilities more so because they are at an increased risk of poor health and death. The government plays a large role in the marginalization of people with disabilities because it mainly operates upon the philosophy that people with disabilities must be helped instead of empowered and it fails to accommodate citizens with disabilities through the development of universally-friendly technology and ‘enabling’ architecture. Both the media and in the institution of sports, the dichotomizing nature in which ‘ability’ is defined is stark—able-bodied people are predominantly considered to be ‘normal,’ ‘beautiful,’ and ‘strong’ while people with disabilities are deemed ‘abnormal,’ ‘ugly,’ and ‘weak.’ As a member of the agent group, able-bodied, I am privileged in that I generally don’t have to worry about how to get from place to place, whether I will have the means necessary to complete everything from menial tasks to life goals, and where I can buy goods and clothing that are suitable for and meet my needs. These are but a few of the plethora of privileges I inherit from being able-bodied in current society and it is the able-centric culture of America that normalizes and standardizes ableism, so much so that people with disabilities are not only ostracized but are deprived of tangible necessities and basic human rights. Even in the language of mainstream dialogue, the devaluation and marginalization of people with disabilities is reinforced; we utter allegories and epithets associated with disability such as “crippled” and “retarded” to describe, respectively, any phenomenon which dooms something or someone and any individual or circumstance whom or which is stupid or displeasing. With membership in an agent group, my lifestyle is affected insofar that it is supported and accommodated with little need for far-reaching adaptations. My lifestyle as is related to my ‘ability’ is majorly unconstrained by social structures, public policy, and societal norms and I am less likely to have to strive ‘above and beyond’ in order to prove my capability and worth to peers and the general public; these are the benefits of being able-bodied. On the other hand, there are deterring consequences of identifying with generally any agent group which include: guilt and an initially-directionless obligation to reform societal structures. I share the latter as a significant consequence of occupying a privileged identity category because often times, new consciousness makes one feel overwhelmed and can initially leave one at a loss as to where to begin building meaningful change. With grace, humility, open-mindedness, and a passion for an all-encompassing social justice, members of dominant groups can dismantle the power structures that hold them up by allying with members of marginalized groups who are oppressed by the same structures and collectively, all citizens can reshape ideologies and institutions that stratify society.

Disappointed in myself. I've fallen deep and it's been hopeless trying to claw my way up out of this dark ditch.

Got to see my kids today, was nice :) I needed it so much.

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True Words: Grieves

I think there’s a lot of repetition in hip-hop, and some of the best songs ever are just two bar loops. Because it’s an undeniable feeling. But I think sometimes people feel like that’s all they have to do. I feel like there’s a lot of lazy production. I get a lot of beats from a lot of different people that are just lazy. Just a two bar loop and some shitty drums and then bam, “I make beats.” But it’s like, really? You make beats? Alright, we make music. The swells, the changes, the drops, the pauses, the reverses – that’s human emotion in music. Don’t you want your music to move you to feel? I think that’s important. And we do those two bar loops, too, but if the song deserves change and variation then we provide that.