991251742
ESL118/006
May/04/2016
Pieces from Dine Women’s Life In the article, “There is No Word for Feminism in My language” written by Laura Tohe, introduce the dine women culture to the world. Before reading the article, Indian American or Native American’s culture was either about gambling or living deserted away from civilization, but I was wrong. Unlike my first thoughts about Tohe’s culture, dine women felt proud, strong and honor in their society that make it unnecessary for a term such as feminism to be in their language. The term Feminism leads to the women right movement to be equally with men socially, politically, and economically in the western world. Why there is no word for feminism in Tohe’s language? There are many elements
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It is not surprising why these white women are fighting for their rights to be equal to men if their culture discourages their role as women. On the other hand, the dine culture is making celebrations for those young girls who have just grown up. Tohe said about her experience becoming an adult “When Changing Woman reached puberty she underwent a four-day coming-of-age ceremony that is still practiced among traditional families… The initiate participates in an event that celebrates her transformation from girl to woman.”(2). They celebrate this changing as a whole tribe to help young girls understand how to deal with all the new changes that happening to them. They support each other through this process to value each member of the tribe or as Tohe said, “Throughout this ceremony, my body was acknowledged, celebrated, and made ready for the role of a mature woman. Reaching puberty was not a shameful, dirty, and dreadful experience. Celebrating puberty with the Kinaalda ceremony ushers the young woman into a society that values her.”(3). Within the dine culture, the ceremony that celebrates the transformation from a girl to a woman is called Kinaalda. The second element for the absence of the word feminism in the dine culture is the culture education when reaching
In the text “Seeing Red: American Indian Women Speaking about their Religious and Cultural Perspectives” by Inés Talamantez, the author discusses the role of ceremonies and ancestral spirituality in various Native American cultures, and elaborates on the injustices native women face because of their oppressors.
Good intentions do not beget positive results. Indeed what may seem to be good from one perspective may be seen as the complete opposite from another. Case in point: Western Feminism. To prove my point I will analyze the work of Ruth Frances Woodsmall, Women and the New East, written in 1960 as a feminist work, from a post-modern feminist perspective, and using works from Coco Fusco (English Broken Here) and Trinh Minh-ha (Women Native Other).
Feminism and Indigenous women activism is two separate topics although they sound very similar. In indigenous women’s eyes feminism is bashing men, although Indigenous women respect their men and do not want to be a part of a women’s culture who bring their men down. Feminism is defined as “The advocacy of women 's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.” In theory feminism sounds delightful despite the approaches most feminists use such as wrong-full speaking of the opposite gender. Supposedly, feminism is not needed as a result of Indigenous women being treated with respect prior to colonization. Thus, any Native woman who calls herself a feminist is often condemned as being “white”. This essay argues that Indigenous women may
Within the earliest of civilizations of India, pre-pubescent girls were offered to men as wives, which ultimately lead to the destruction of women’s domestic independence. As said in Document 1, “because girls married before they could finish their education, they were not qualified to perform ritual sacrifices. Furthermore, wives’ legal rights eroded.” Likewise, Indian women became politically subordinate to men. However, by modern standards, women’s social
Feminism can simply be defined as a range of movements and ideologies in which share a common ground in terms of defining, establishing and achieving equal opportunities to that of males, in regards to economic, cultural and social rights. It is a critique of male supremacy with efforts in changing this to end the social oppression of women. (Hooks, 2000)
The reason why women are scarcely mentioned throughout the history textbooks are because women are conformed in their status of the private sphere. Women are related to “nature” considering their roles in society such as child bearers and housewives. Culture is considered as a sustaining force that transcends nature to create and control a new interest. Because of this “nature” status put on women, they are considered inferior to men. However, this is not the case for everyone and not all society understands culture and nature like westerners do. Some consider what women and men do rather than the symbolic attributes that are placed on them.
Boles, Janet K. and Diane Long Hoeveler. Historical dictionary of feminism. New York: Scarecrow Press, 2004. Print.
In the past few decades, our culture started to look at equal rights between men and women, such as the wage gap and social difference, but there are still some cultures left out of the conversation. There Is No Word For Feminism In My Language, is written by Laura Tohe, a Dine woman who graduated from the University of New Mexico with a PHD and who is also an author. Tohe discusses her cultures’ views on women and their place in society, as in todays American culture, it is male dominated and clearly it doesn 't have to be that way. As Tohe discusses, it is much more than equality and other traditional feminist ideals and rather it is a deeper systematic belief in both cultures. Tohe composed this text to compare and contrast Dine values to American values by using her personal experience to show her credibility.
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
Arianna Stassinopoulos wrote in the 1973 book The Female Woman: "It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes" (Microsoft Bookshelf). In her statement we see a cultural feminist response to the dominant liberal feminism of the 1970s.
In order to achieve these goals, Indian feminist writers have exerted their energies to deconstruct the past, reconstruct a more meaningful present. They have unravelled the thick tapestries of male hegemony and analysed the reasons for the persistent reproduction of conscious and unconscious presumptions about women and they have knitted up a woman’s tradition.
Feminism is a perspective that views gender as one of the most important bases of the structure and organization of the social world. Feminists argue that in most known societies this structure has granted women lower status and value, more limited access to valuable resources, and less autonomy and opportunity to make choices over their lives than it has granted men. (Sapiro 441)
There are constant struggles between gender, identity, commodification, and class. Among the men and women in many African tribes that still exist today, there are divergences, which will always remain intact because of the culture and the way in which they are taught to treat each other. Chinua Achebe wrote the novel, Things Fall Apart, which is a great piece of African literature that deals with the Igbo culture, history, and the taking over of African lands by British colonization. The ongoing gender conflict is a prominent theme in Things Fall Apart presenting the clash between men and women of the African Igbo society. Throughout history, from the beginning of time to today, women have frequently been viewed as inferior, men’s possessions whose sole purpose was to satisfy the men’s needs. Maybe it's because men are physically stronger than women and have always had the ability to control them that way. In Things Fall Apart, the Igbo women were perceived as being weak. They received little or no respect in the Igbo society and were harshly abused. The recurring theme of gender conflicts helps drive the novel Things Fall Apart by showing how important women are to the men, yet they do not receive the treatment they deserve.
Nyasha’s perspective of the oppressive reality in which her family and country heavily rely on comes to light after she is immersed into Western culture. Nyasha grows up receiving an English education, consequently acquiring western manners and lifestyles that distance her from her native culture. During her time in England, she observes that women are treated as equals and are offered the same opportunity to pursue education and independence. In contrast to the Shona society where women are inferior to men as they live their lives serving men. As a result, she becomes intolerant to men’s overbearing claims of authority and rebels. Since the traditional African culture revolves around patriarchal domination, which “shares an ideological foundation with racism and other forms of group oppression… there is [also] no hope that it can be eradicated while these systems remain intact.” (Haslange, Tuana , and O'Connor) making it much more difficult for Nyasha’s attempts of rebellion to succeed.
Cultural feminism was first coined by Brooke Williams in 1975 during the end of the Second Wave of Feminism, but was at first called radical feminism and then separated to be called cultural feminism (Echols 35). The two became separated because radical feminist stressed patriarchy and lack of female rights, while cultural feminism embraces the differences of men and women (Echols 36). According to Alice Echols, cultural feminism can be achieved within patriarchal societies because they focus on male behavior and away from biology and the stricter of male supremacy like radical feminism does (page 36). Cultural feminist try to improve human relationships in the world by making an effort to develop a better value system without thinking that characterizes are biological and unchanging (Mantilla 4). By acknowledging that women’s characteristics are superior to some of men’s characteristics, then we as a society can hold responsibly to women being emulated of their values and characteristics. Cultural feminism focuses on the ideology of female nature or the core that is assigned by feminist to revalidate the female’s attributes that make females attributes undervalued (Alcoff 3). A goal of cultural feminist is to try to create and maintain healthy relationships and environments that are free of masculinity values (Alcoff 3). Alcoff says that people think being a woman is a bad thing. This is a result of the Feminist theory, as defined as by Webster Dictionary is “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes and the organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests”