Critical Analysis
Gloria Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social political activist. She was a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement in the late 1960s (Wikipedia). She is also a part of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC). Additionally, she is also the co-founder of Ms. magazine as well. In 2014, Steinem wrote an article for Ms. magazine titled “Our Revolution Has Just Begun.” In this article, she elaborates on the idea that sexism and racism correlate together in the post-feminist and post-racist age and in the women’s movement, specifically with women of color. In the first paragraph, I will talk about how people are still fighting for not only women’s right but human rights today. Then I will explain how
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the women’s movement is significant for all women of color. “If it took more than a century for black men and all women to gain legal identity as citizens instead of chattel, it’s likely to take at least a century to gain a legal and social equality as everything from workers to candidates to parents” (Steinem 27).
This quote states that people today are still fighting for their rights to be seen as equals to one another. One piece of evidence that Steinem provides to her readers is that women still have to push for equal pay in the system. The unequal pay between genders allowed men to call their greed for money an “economic stimulus” and the fact that a women in the “superior” racial group makes more money than the women in the “inferior” group who are often exploited to produce cheap labor, both produces an imbalance in the economic system. The most effective way to bring up the American economy and get rid of both sexism and racism is to grant equal pay for both men and women and colored and non colored people. This is not the end of racism and sexism, we are still fighting for our …show more content…
rights. It’s important to realize that the Women’s Movement is not just for white-middle class women, but for all women of color. “Black women have always been at the heart of feminist activism,” Fessler quoted Steinem in her article published on the Quartz titled “Gloria Steinem says black women have always been more feminist than white women.” Black women are more likely to support feminism than white women, because black women are oppressed by both their race and gender which proves that this is not the post-racist or post-feminist age. One piece of evidence that proves Steinem’s point is the #MeToo Movement created by a black activist Tarana Burke in 2006 (Fessler). Another piece of evidence that supports Steinem’s point is the Supreme Court case Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson. Michelle Vinson, a black woman, filled to the court a sexual harassment incident in the workplace. The Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment was a violation of the Civil Rights Act, which was a huge step in the Women’s Movement (Justia Law, 2018). Steinem’s purpose of her article, “Our Revolution Has Just Begun” is to point out that if we want to uproot sexism, then we have to uproot racism as well, because in our society they both go hand in hand.
Steinem states that it took years to gain a social identity and it will take years to gain physical and social equality for all. She also expresses that black women are more likely to support feminism, because they have more rights to fight for. There are many ways to fight for our rights. For example we can create equal pay for everyone, give women the human right to bear a child, end domestic violence, and to recognize the #MeToo Movement. Equality for all isn’t fully here, these problems are still showing up in today’s society. The only way to fix these problems is to give everyone the human right that is given in the Constitution. All these actions can create an ideology for people to realize that there needs to be a change and that they can be the change. This is not only the Women’s Movement it is the Human
Movement.
"You're a human being, not an animal. You have the right to be loved" (262). "Son of the Revolution" by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro was a book that showed how inhumane many of the aspects of Chinese life were during the Cultural Revolution. The book followed Liang Heng through many of his childhood memories to his departure from China in his twenties. The book applied a real face to the important movements during the Cultural Revolution, the effects that "the cult of Mao" had on society and Heng, and the way the period affected Heng's personal family life.
Dye drew together the essays of esteemed scholars, such as Ellen Carol DuBois, Barbara Sicherman, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, to shed light on the intersectionality between race, gender, and social class at the turn of the 20th Century. While many believe that it was a period of widespread activism and reform, these scholars support the idea that the Progressive Era was more of a conservative than liberal movement, in that it failed to challenge stereotypes about the female’s role in society and created a limited public sphere for women. While the women’s suffrage movement provided more opportunities for white middle-class women, it failed to lessen, or even worsened, the marginalization of immigrant and minority women. Many white-middle class women sympathized with European and Jewish immigrants and were willing to overlook socioeconomic class, but few supported the cause of colored women for labor and education
In the article “Wonder Woman” Gloria Steinem expresses that the making of female super-heroes empowers females by reducing the fixed theme of a Caucasian male saving an inferior female. She displays this by showing how inferior women were before in male super-hero comic books, compares what it was like personally reading female super-hero comics to male super-hero comics as a child, the fight with other women to have the original Wonder Woman published in Ms. Magazine and how even males were changed by the making of Wonder Woman.
These documents touch on important topics that a lot of Americans have a hard time understanding. Both The Civil Rights movement and Feminist Movement connect to mainstream liberalism, share parallel goals or differences, progressed in the 1970s, and still have an influence on American’s views to this day. Equal rights among all, is still something America is struggling with after about 50 years. There is no denying though, that the movements during the 60’s and 70’s molded the lives of future generations in the way that American’s view each other as human beings.
In “In Living Color: Race and American Culture”, Michael Omi claims that racism still takes place in America’s contemporary society. According to Omi, media and popular culture shape a segregating ideology by giving a stereotypical representation of black people to the public, thus generating discrimination between races (Omi 115:166). In “Bad Feminist: Take One”, Roxane Gay discusses the different roles that feminism plays in our society. She argues that although some feminist authors and groups try to create a specific image of the feminist approach, there is no definition that fully describe feminism and no behaviors that can make someone a good feminist or a bad feminist (Gay 304:306). Both authors argue
There are countless examples of women standing up for themselves, protesting injustices, and empowering others. The idea also works the other way and influences behavior of people threatened by the idea of feminism. These people refer to themselves as either anti-feminists or meninists. A prime example of feminism in the real world is the protests at the early release of the Stanford rapist. This man raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and was sentenced to six months in jail. He served three of those months and is now on probation for a year. This is a classic example of how the justice system tends to blame the victim while favoring the attacker. Over one hundred women’s rights protestors gathered hours after his release demanding for the judge to be recalled. Because these women were calling for political reform, they would be considered liberal
After many years of battling for equality among the sexes, people today have no idea of the trails that women went through so that women of future generations could have the same privileges and treatment as men. Several generations have come since the women’s rights movement and the women of these generations have different opportunities in family life, religion, government, employment, and education that women fought for. The Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people that questioned why human lives, especially those of women, were unfairly confined. Many women, like Sojourner Truth and Fanny Fern, worked consciously to create a better world by bringing awareness to these inequalities. Sojourner Truth, prominent slave and advocate
Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a well-recognized woman in the United States. Her great contribution as Secretary of State impacted people’s lives. One of many remarkable speeches Clinton gave was the “The Women Rights Speech” at the 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session, where she used strong words and emotions to appeal to the audience. Even though the speech talked about women's rights, she wanted everyone, including men and children, to listen and take action. Her use of ethos, logos and pathos throughout the speech helped people understand women live in a world where they suffer discrimination, and she proposes solutions to solve the issue.
Hillary R. Clinton once said that “There cannot be true democracy unless Women’s voices are heard” (conference in Vienna, Austria 1997). That very brilliant quote relates to a very strong woman by the name of Maya Angelou. Angelou is “America’s most visible black female autobiographer and speakers” (scholar Joanne M. Braxton). She is known for her speeches, poems, and books, but what stood out to me the most was her 1993 inauguration speech when Bill Clinton was sworn into the White House. Ironically, in her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” Maya Angelou uses clear rhetoric, prehistoric metaphoric images, and inspirational concepts to alert her audience to treat the world differently.
There were many women who fought for female equality, and many who didn’t care, but eventually the feminists won the vote. Women today are still fighting for equality in the home, in the workplace, and in society as a whole, which seems like it may take centuries of more slow progress to achieve.
Gloria Steinem, a renowned feminist activist and co-founder of the women’s rights publication Ms. Magazine, gives a commencement speech at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, on May 31, 1970. Steinem’s speech “Living The Revolution” is delivered to the graduating class of Vassar College, founded in 1865 as a liberal arts college for women and then became coeducational a year before the speech was delivered in 1969. The intent of this speech is to inform the listeners and to shed light on the fact that women are not treated equally to their white male counterparts, though society has been convinced otherwise and to argue that it is crucial for all minorities, and even white males, to be relieved of their “stereotypical” duties in order for balance to exist. Steinem executes her speech’s purpose by dividing it up into four parts to explain the four different “myths” put against women while using a few rhetorical strategies and logical, ethical, and emotional appeals.
During her early life, Hillary Clinton learned that a huge problem across the globe was gender inequality. Women and men were not equal. Men were making more money than women for the same jobs. She believed she could change this. On September 5, 1995 Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. Clinton uses powerful rhetoric in order to create an air of sympathy for women among her audience. She is hoping to make the world become more aware of the inequalities women face daily while also making them feel ashamed for their previous actions of discriminating women, which would cause them to change their ways. She uses her speech “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” to create awareness of the discrimination
Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism introduces ideas by Becky Thompson that contradict the “traditional” teachings of the Second Wave of feminism. She points out that the version of Second Wave feminism that gets told centers around white, middle class, US based women and the central problem being focused on and rallied against is sexism. This history of the Second Wave does not take into consideration feminist movements happening in other countries. Nor does it take into consideration the feminist activism that women of color were behind, that centered not only on sexism, but also racism, and classism as central problems as well. This is where the rise of multiracial feminism is put to the foreground and
For gender equality to make any progress, both men and women need to have input on the solution (Watson). American Journalist, and feminist, Gloria Steinem stated that, “Women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it” (“Gloria Steinem”). To balance a scale, one needs to have an equal amount of weight on both sides, and the same goes for trying to achieve gender equality. So far, gender equality has been a gigantic game of tug-of-war and it has not moved the situation forward at all.