Dancing Around Objectification
This article shows the types of reactions that people have in society, by comparing two different types of dancers and how people view them differently. The texts compare the views of both a white and black dancer, and it is quite obvious that people have different opinions about them. The white dancer woman is described in a negative light, as it seems that they are the ones being objectified by men. The white woman is a symbol for the opportunities that men can have in the United States, with the white woman being the center point of the desires of both white and black men. On the other hand, the Harlem dancer is praised as being a person of reform and is appealing to the audience. However, the dancer must also play the role of maintaining such interest in her audience. Despite how different it may seem, both types of woman have roles to play in terms of how the audience would view them. However race plays a major factor, and it shows that there is still racial inequality based on how the people viewed the dancers of different ethnicities.
Intersectionality 101
The post describes how one’s identity plays a role in how people view others, based on one’s social or cultural backgrounds. The idea is that different types of identities are linked together, which is the cause for inequality and leads to the oppression of certain groups. Certain categories of people are often viewed by a negative light, but there are examples in which one can be discriminated for multiple reasons. Like the example of black women, where they are criticized based on both their race and their gender. Often, the minority groups are the ones who get discriminated against as people see them as troublesome. Another point provided is the idea of the “standpoint theory”, which meant that an individual’s perspective of certain social groups is mostly based on past experiences. The events that occur in their life has major influences on the lenses that people use, which may or may not lead to hate towards certain groups.
The Urgency of Intersectionality
The idea of this presentation, focuses on the overlap between different forms of discrimination are often not recognized and adressed towards the public. The main topic, was on the challenges that black women face when it comes to adressing discrim ination. It is seen, that it is mostly unfair for these women as they are put into two different categories, and they get treated worst because of it. people don’t sympathize with them when they try to declare that there was some form of discrimination, as they saw it as unfair that these women can play both the race and gender card. People are also not more aware towards these issues, for example in the case of police violence gianst African Americans, the men are more recognizable than women. Intersectionality, the crossing between two forms of discrimination, is a cause for people not being able to see the issues that are caused by this unification.
Bechdel Test
The purpose of this test is to determine the amount of woman representation that is shown in a form of media. It shows the correlation between the number of men and woman are being shown and ensures that the work has the requirement of portraying a woman. However, a woman is still being portrayed in a negative manner such as being a villain or in a way that is sexual. The premise of the test is so that the features of women are highlighted, such as their relationships and types of conversations with another woman, all without the influence of men. The test makes sure that woman features are shown without men, in order to somewhat show aspects of women that shows signs of nondiscrimination. The purpose of this test is to make viewers be more aware of the sexual inequality in works of fiction, so that future works can focus on getting rid of this form of discrimination.
Response
All of these articles discussed how one’s lense can be affected by intersectionality, and in this case mostly about women. It is interesting to me how people show little to no sympathy to those who happen to be part of two different social groups, and yet get punished for it just because they are part of both. Discrimination also seems to be more prominent in women as well, and to make matters worse the women who are also part other groups get treated even worse.