Professional
Question 1
With reference to both of the articles by Bannerji and Kelly, show how the sexual stereotypes and the hypersexualization of women and women of color mark the harassment of women in the workplace and on university campuses?
Response 1
According to Bannerji and Kelly, women suffered from harassment in public areas such as workplace and school campus. The harassers are known men and just strangers, and not a single case of harassment is reported to the police authority . The harassment is influenced by the sexual stereotypes and hyper-sexualization of women of different race or women of color. The discrimination held by the oppressor is characterized to the harassment cases. There are clear distinctions between discrimination against women of different races or women of color regarding the victims . Bannerji pointed out the simultaneity, formative, and dynamic interaction among sexism, racism, and class. Racial sexism signifies the sexual stereotype and hyper-sexualization that women suffered. After a thorough analysis, specifically at the workplace, it is considered as a coherent social and cultural environment. The known social relations, practices, cultural norms, and expectations are organized and dominated at the workplace.
The workplace is the same to a society; the social and cultural processes, practices, and values are presented in the school campuses. The socio-structural and historical respects of sexism or racism existed at the workplace and school campuses as in the society. The sexual division of labor or gender roles of women approved the locations of bodies and the physical functions as described by the society. In sexual stereotypes, the female body should be in private place like home, and the male in public place like workplace. The sexual stereotyping of women and men has a deep impact on our society. Due to the advances made to establish equality between the sexes, society reflected fewer attitudes that support discrimination and inequality between women and men. However, though people are liberated in their beliefs and attitudes, many of their actions are still influenced by sex stereotyping and misconceptions about men and women that passed down through the generations. In spite of their stated values, a surprising number of people today relate to each other based on a sexual stereotype. Women are confined to the social and biological reproduction while men are entitled to economic and intellectual production.
When women attempt to work, they suffer sexism and they are expected to work in a traditional feminine subject. Things get worse when women from a particular race or women of color attempt to work. They suffer sexism and racism, as well as prejudice of their class. For example, black women are expected to be subordinate apart from being inferior to men and they should never fill the professional social space. If women misbehave in the social subject assigned to them, the sexual stereotype tries to bring back the norm of gender, and norm of race in the case of black women. There are differences in ways of sexual harassment between white women and women of color. The white women mainly undergo direct personal body contact or sexual solicitations that are pornographic instead of brutal; their bodies are wanted by men. In the contrary, the white men consider the natural role of black women as producing and laboring. Black women are regarded as degrading servant, and they are animalized and objectified.
A tone of racist sexual violence is clear. Elements of rape and public humiliation structured their hyper-sexualization. Briefly, women of different races or with particular race or color are both discriminated in terms of their gender. Black women suffer from racism and prejudice of social class that led to more degrading ways of sexual harassment in the public subjects when transgressing the assigned role in comparison with white women.
Question 2
Crenshaw argues that it is often the inter-sectionality of pre-existing vulnerabilities to create yet another diversion of disempowerment for women of color . What are these preexisting vulnerabilities and how do they influence women who are experiencing domestic violence?
Response 2
It is investigated how race and gender interconnected in shaping structural, political, and representational aspects of violence against women of color or with specific race. Women of color have multiple grounds of identity; the gender, class oppression, and racially discriminatory process. These practices inflicted them the things like poverty, less of education, and job skills. Women of color have such pre-existing vulnerabilities that made them disempowered when another burden such as a political policy as imposed. Crenshaw took immigrant women of color as an example to show pre-existing vulnerabilities which is harbored by them. Immigrant women of color who suffered from domestic violence got permanent resident status without her partner’s consent according to law. However, their pre-existing vulnerabilities prevent them from meeting the criteria. Women of color are the most marginalized both socially and economically. Therefore, they have limited access to the resources needed to gather evidence. In addition, culture barrier barred them from reporting or escaping battering situations. Such cultural complications deprived women of their ability to have their privacy and live independently.
Another structural problem is related to language barriers, which makes communication especially difficult and report of domestic violent hard. Some shelters may refuse the victims who are not proficient in the native language. These pre-existing vulnerabilities are extended to the general women of color who are undergoing domestic violence. Their vulnerabilities are obtained from race-based priorities and culture, and their communities try to avoid domestic violence from gaining full public recognition. Influenced either politically or culturally, the communities fear that reports of domestic violence would strengthen the previously strong stereotypes about race differences.
Culture plays the part in women of colors suppressions. There is unfriendly public interventions happened. The police force or authority is often hostile that has a combination with other diverse assaults on the racially subordinated women, and made the women not report the incident because of fear. The gendered identity of women in color are obscured in anti-racist discourses, a race identities found as hard as protected by either of the discourses. With the multiple of layers of women of color found it hard to be protected by the discourses. Women of color are group of people whom need the inter-sectionality of both feminist and anti-racist discourses. Each of them has limitations in addressing women of colors about their problems. The pre-existing vulnerabilities are attributed to combination of factors; gender, class oppression, and racially discriminatory practice, race-based priorities, and culture all inflicted on women of color on their vulnerabilities to protest in domestic violence. The lack of resources, education, and skills often disagree with their access to the outside world that is subject to their dependency on their violent husbands. The social and cultural barrier and language exclusion destroy their hope to escape from domestic violence.
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Reference
Bannerji, H. (1995). In the Matter of X: Building Race into Sexual Harassment. In Thinking
Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism, and Anti-Racism , 121-159.
Crenshaw, K. (2011). Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from Violence Against
Women of Color. In W. Kolmar, & F. Bartkowski (Ed.), Feminist Theory: A Reader (3rd ed., pp. 482-491). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Kelly, L. (1988). It’s happened to so many women: Sexual Violence as a Continuum. In
Surviving Sexual Violence , 74-96.
Levan, A. (2011). WOMN 2406 EL 10. Violence Against Women , 1-172.
