Post Colonial Feminism

This week in class we learned about Post Colonial Feminism. This has opened a new way for me to look at non-white and non-western women. Until this discussion I looked past how there is a set generalization put on these women. This is called the danger of a single story. Chimamanda Adichie is a writer and she helps explain how when we only hear a single story about another person we tend to have a misunderstanding of a culture. Adichie is from Nigeria and when she moved to the United States she talks about the expectations put on her for being a Nigeria woman. An example she gives is when her American roommate asked if she could listen to her tribal music and she goes onto say that she put on a Mariah Carey album. These are the dangers we face believing a single story we hear. Adichie also brings up John Locke's writing about Africa being negative and therefore opening up this whole view on Africa for many people to be negative. The way to avoid these dangers is to realize that one single story does not define a culture. In this class on the first week we learned the most important topic that has personally helped guide me to better understand Gender and Communications and that was gender expectations. This is putting expectations on everything in society to be a certain. For a girl to dress a certain way and act a certain. It goes the same way with cultures and colonial feminism because we put expectations on these women to act how we have read about their culture. Last semester I took a cultural anthropology class and it talked about ethnocentrism which is the belief that your own culture has a superiority on all other cultures. The only way to relieve this ethnocentrism was to go visit the culture and live their life through their eyes instead of just reading about it from an article or someone else's point of view. That is what Adichie is asking us to do in her writings and speeches, is to not be close minded to just one story and realize that their are many stories that make up a culture.

violence in relationships

For my blog this week I chose to write about violence in relationships. This is a subject I am familiar with in my own life. My sister married a guy that had domestic violence in his past and told her that it was the previous women's fault as to why they got hit and choked out. He then ended up doing the same to her and spraining her trachea. Violence in relationships is very dynamic because the infamous question that always gets asked is why did they go back to them? The book breaks it down into 4 stages. The first stage is where tension builds and the abusive partner than blames the other for problems or not being supportive. This stage is the emotional abuse of using language and threats. Than the second stage occurs and this you can relate to chinobyl because it is an explosion of anger resulting in physical violence. Than comes the third stage where the abuser becomes very remorseful and apologizes. The abused person than sees and remembers the good side of the abuser and accepts the apology. Than comes the fourth stage and this is called the honeymoon stage where the abuser over compensates the sweetness and the couple feels as if they are back to normal. Than the stages keep repeating themselves. Abusers are in a way sociopaths because they know exactly what to say and do to keep getting thier partner to come back to them. Most men with domestic violence problems have a long history of abusing more than one girl. It becomes a disease or desire to have that much dominance over another person.

Gender Bias

As an observer in my own college classes I have found that my philosophy teacher views women from the typical stereotypes society puts on women. For an example he was talking about his wife in a prior class and was telling a story and justified it with that is because women are more emotional. In my Gender and Communications class I have been opened up to a whole new view on how to look at gender bias without generalization. Sit and reflect and I bet you can think of men that tend to be more emotional than girls. If the world keeps viewing gender with expectations on it than our society will keep growing up to fill those expectations instead of keeping thier own originality.
As we have learned in class a big part of non profit organizations is educating the community about issues important to the organization. The organization that I am volunteering with is The Whitehouse Project. A lot of what this organization does is networking through the internet about events. One event that shows they care about the community is volunteering at the plan parenthood for pro choice. Another example is how they empower women. I have enjoyed learning in my Gender and Communications class how women do not always have to be the passive ones and can go as far as men. My organization focuses on women being equally successful in getting government jobs. An example of my organization empowing women is thier facebook page when they state that women could make 210,000 in additional income if equal pay were the norm. Just being a part of that organization and reading about the things that they do weekly to motivate women has been a pleasure and refreshing for me as a young women.