Over the past few weeks the class has covered many topics
that have to do with women being abused and constantly put down in our society.
One article that stuck out to me was the “Why Aren’t We Shocked” article. In the
article the author shows many examples of how women are seen as an object, in
today’s society, rather than an actual human being. His examples were very good
and definitely opened my eyes to many of the problems that are truly going on
in our society.
Bob talks about social media being a
big outlet for the objectivism of women, he showed examples of the Clinique
commercial simulating a climatic shot of a porno, the stories we see on the
news of women being separated and killed in a school shooting, and plenty of other
examples of woman being dehumanized. While I was reading those examples I was
astonished, I didn’t know if it was really true or not, so now I went through
the internet to see if I could find more examples of women being dehumanized,
and the results were endless. I came across many articles, but this article was
the most mind-blowing one for me: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/to-be-a-woman-in-pakistan-six-stories-of-abuse-shame-and-survival/255585/.
The article showed that Pakistan was the third most dangerous country for women in the world, and gave some facts about how it was so dangerous for women. The article said that 90% of Pakistani women suffered from domestic abuse and more than 1,000 women and girls are killed in “honor killings” yearly. That is an extremely high rate of domestic abuse! I then wondered how so many women could be in this terrible situation, and as I read on I found out. The article went on to say that the women’s literacy rate in Pakistan is 36%, so many women don’t even have the ability to know their rights or even do anything about the abusive relationships, so they just deal with it. Just like Taina Bien-Aime said in the “Why Aren’t We Shocked” article “Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible”. From what I understand, Part of being a human being is having rights, but if you don’t know you’re rights how can you defend you’re self? This is one of the conclusions I came to for the cause of the objectivism against women and this has helped me better understand why NGO’s (Non-governmental organizations) are so important to the betterment of our earth.
The article showed that Pakistan was the third most dangerous country for women in the world, and gave some facts about how it was so dangerous for women. The article said that 90% of Pakistani women suffered from domestic abuse and more than 1,000 women and girls are killed in “honor killings” yearly. That is an extremely high rate of domestic abuse! I then wondered how so many women could be in this terrible situation, and as I read on I found out. The article went on to say that the women’s literacy rate in Pakistan is 36%, so many women don’t even have the ability to know their rights or even do anything about the abusive relationships, so they just deal with it. Just like Taina Bien-Aime said in the “Why Aren’t We Shocked” article “Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible”. From what I understand, Part of being a human being is having rights, but if you don’t know you’re rights how can you defend you’re self? This is one of the conclusions I came to for the cause of the objectivism against women and this has helped me better understand why NGO’s (Non-governmental organizations) are so important to the betterment of our earth.
Ironically, I was shocked by the "Why aren't we shocked" article too. I couldn't believe how oblivious we can be when it comes to the way our media represents these tragedies in our society. Women become these invisible victims and if it continues there will never be a resolution to the problem. Terrible cases of dehumanizing women are happening every day and they are not even being recognized as crimes against women and therefore no social awareness of the gender issues that still exist in our world today. I think people are under the impression that these issues have been settled already, and our media is supporting this illusion when it is completely false. The article you brought up is perfect proof of this, it may not be about the U.S. but there are still horrible situations for women here. Look at the porn industry, most of these video that are available at the click of a mouse show women as objects comprised of only body parts. There is also a serious problem with sex slave trade in our own back yards. I know I was shocked this past weekend when I went home to my small town and found out there was a massage parlor under investigation in Findlay, OH which isn't very far from me, and was never considered a "big, dangerous" city. There are several other cases like this in Ohio that I have heard about in the past few years. So many people view these sex trades happening only in foreign countries and American tourists making bad choices there are just victims, when in reality they are starting right here. It's happening everywhere and unless we open up eyes and admit that there are some serious problems with the way women are objectified and represented, it will continue to happen.
ReplyDelete