Dancing Around Objectification
“Dancing Around Objectification” by Victoria Merlino discusses the differences between seemingly similar characters in two different stories. Claude McKay’s The Harlem Dancer and Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man both feature female dancers. Although both face admiration and degradation, the trait that greatly separates them is their skin color, which determines how they are treated in their respective stories. The lady in The Harlem Dancer is black while the dancer in The Invisible Man is white. McKay’s dancer is gawked upon by everyone, her self-possession is taken away almost instantly. She swiftly becomes nothing but and idealized object to her audience. However, Ellison’s white dancer, performing in front of black teens, manages to take away the self-possession of her audience instead. She becomes something they can never have. They feel fear. Ellison’s white dancer comes with rules and restrictions while McKay’s dancer is available to anyone.
Intersectionality 101
This text is basically a summarization of what intersectionality is all about. It discusses how discrimination isn’t always split into separate categories but are usually linked together and can create different perceptions. Intersectionality explains how some groups of people have been viewed as “troublesome” since their experiences don’t always match with the generalized perceptions of other groups. The text also brings up the Standpoint Theory, which is the idea that a person’s perceptions are influenced by their own unique living experiences. An example is brought up about how two Hispanic women may have similar perspectives in regard to race and sex, but if one woman is in a higher economic status, their standpoints will not be completely identical.
The Urgency of Intersectionality
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Ted Talk clearly displays the importance of understanding intersectionality. Crenshaw starts off by listing a few names of black police brutality victims to see how much of her audience knew about them. Most of the audience had heard the names before. She then lists a second group, and most of the audience has never heard of them. She points out the first group was all male, while the others were female. It indicates the fact that black female victims of police brutality receive far less attention than males. Crenshaw goes into further discussion of how black women face discrimination against both their skin color and their sex.
Bechdel Test
The Bechdel Test is a way for evaluating a work of fiction’s portrayal of women. It requires that a story contain at least two women who discuss anything other than men. The test is named after a cartoonist named after Alison Bechdel since it first appeared in one of her comic strips. The point of the test is to call attention to gender equality in fiction. Apparently, only half of all films pass the test.
Response
All these posts have really clarified the meaning of intersectionality for me. I never really thought about how a person’s identity is dependent on all their qualities and how they can all affect people. The TED Talk was especially interesting to me once it discussed how black women can face discrimination both for being black and being a woman. That connects back to how there are several lenses to use while evaluating anything. Intersectionality is an interesting and important concept, why isn’t more widespread?