Living in this generation as African American Lesbian women has proven to be more difficult as the years go by. We have heard so many horrifying stories about how African American women were treated during the slavery period. Who would have thought that things would be even worse as an African American Lesbian? As decades passed circumstances were to have improved but unfortunately, segregation is still being enforced in this new era.
It is very unfortunate that we still live in a society that does not accept people for who they are. I believe that people are people no matter what. It doesn’t matter to me whether a person is blue, green or purple; straight, gay/lesbian or otherwise I treat them like people regardless. This society has
People in this era are so stuck in the slavery days and days where people couldn’t be who they are that they can’t see past the revolution that has occurred while they were still in the time warp. The right to freedom of opinion and expression are a hot topic with lesbian women. They feel as if their opinions and input doesn’t matter because they have chosen to be with someone of the same sex. Unfortunately, we are still working to ensure respect and human rights obligations today.
By collaborating with the Equal Opportunity Commission, we can ensure that even the African American Lesbian women have a voice and are heard, just as others. We would put more focus on ensuring that we as a country allow them to voice their opinions and we actually listen and consider what they are saying.
The equal pay act of 1963 required employers to compensate male and female worker equally for performing the same job. This act focused on heterosexual males and females but did not include lesbian females. Lesbians who are working in the corporate world are not being compensated, even though the act was supposed to negate this type of discrimination. Now we have women being discriminated against in the workplace because they are
Lambda Legal has placed workplace equality as one of its top goals for the organization, as there is no specific federal statute banning discrimination. Although there some states and local governments have enacted policies that protect employees from discrimination in the workplace, based on race, gender, sex, religion, discrimination based on sexuality is left to individual interpretation of the policy. Along with workplace equality, Lambda Legal also advocates for fair courts, healthcare fairness, teens and young adults, transgender rights and individuals living with HIV while fighting against any form of structural disparities and government mistreatment and discrimination (Lambda
In Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America, the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the years since the 1970s gay liberation movement are described as a time of transformation and growth. The antigay movement, threatened, now more than ever, created numerous challenges and obstacles that are still prevalent today. Many of the important changes made associated with the movement were introduced through queer and queer allied individuals and groups involved in politics. Small victories such as the revision of the anti discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation”, new propositions regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, were met in turn with growing animosity and resistance from individuals and groups opposed to liberal and
In the book The Underground Railroad, we learn of a woman named Ethel Wells a Christian educator who shows some signs of being a lesbian. In Ethel’s time (the 1800’s) it was considered disgusting when you love someone who is not of the opposite sex. If one woman was found with another woman in sexual relations you were either stoned, put into an asylum, or punished by death (Wikipedia). Ethel shows her first sign of being a lesbian when she was little. Ethel would play with her friend Jasmine and they would play husband and wife kissing and quarreling as she saw her mother and father do. Once Ethel turned eight her father banned Ethel from playing with Jasmin saying, “so as not to pervert the natural state of relations between the races”(263).
In certain countries such as the U.S, people discriminate against others to a certain extent based off their gender, race, and sexuality. Butler states that “to be a body is to be given over to others even as a body is “one own,” which we must claim right of autonomy” (242). Gays and Lesbians have to be exposed to the world because some of them try to hide their identity of who they truly are because they are afraid of how others are going to look at them. There are some who just let their sexuality out in the open because they feel comfortable with whom they are as human beings and they don’t feel any different than the next person. The gender or sexuality of a human being doesn’t matter because our bodies’ will never be autonomous because it is affected by others around us. This is where humans are vulnerability to violence and aggression. In countries across the globe, violence and attack are drawn towards tran...
In our world there has and will always have social issues that our society that is damaging our people. One of the proponent issue is in our world is Homophobia. As Homophobia is defined has people that dislike of or is prejudice against homosexual people. Recently our society has started to be more accepting with the LGBTQ community. Homophobia has really affected all people in very negative ways regardless of their sexual orientation. As homophobia is based on someone disliking or being prejudice to another person targeted to people that are homosexual. There are many people that want to fight against homophobia and help protect and support the LGBTQ community. The different sexual orientations of all individuals they have the right to be who they identity them selves as. As homophobia not only affects the LGBTQ community but affects every sexual orientation, seeing that much hate and prejudice toward people it is just sad and disturbing that people still hate on something they have no control over.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed soon after the milestone March on Washington. In the largest march ever held in the United States, people of all races and colors gathered together to show legislature that racism would no longer be acceptable in society. Title VII, the section which deals with discrimination in the workforce is one small part of the larger piece of legislation. Title VII, of the Civil Rights Act, quickly became the most important arbiter of rights under the new law (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2001). The workforce has drastically changed since the passage of the act. Women and minorities are engaged in employment now more than ever. With the passage of Title VII, the door was opened to prohibiting job discrimination and creating fairness in employment (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2001). Soon after, protection against discrimination based on age and disability was provided.
In the essay by Judith Butler, Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy, she describes the social norms of society slowly changing and designing new social norms of society by the awareness of Gays, Lesbians, and Transgender preference people. She is also describing the struggles of everyday life for gays, lesbians, and transgender people. Butler states a question that makes a good point for this way of thought, “what makes for a livable world?”(Page 240). This question is asked to understand what a livable life is first. A livable life is life that is accepted by society. If society does not accept certain individuals because of the choices they choose to make or the way they are brought up, then society chooses to stay ignorant and uneducated on these types of situations. Individuals who are not accepted by society receive less treatment than that of some who is accepted by society. This does not only extend to gays, lesbians, and transgender, but extends to people who are less fortunate than others. People judge people. This is human life. People are influenced by other people and want they have. The media is a big part of what people strive to be like or accomplish. People watch th...
The Stonewall riots opened the doors to the rise and fall of numerous different homosexual actions groups. The differences in the groups were like night and day and the theories behind them changed with the times. In the 1990’s a group made its debut by coming out strong and forceful. Their handbook stated, “We need you. Because we are not waiting for the rapture. We are the apocalypse.” This became part of a dyke manifesto. A manifesto that changed lesbian views, a manifesto that brought with it a ‘fierce lesbian movement’, it brought confrontation to lesbian politics. They proudly announce their slogan “We are the Lesbian Avengers and We Recruit!”
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is an important act the needs to be enforced so the employer will not discriminate based on gender. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 “prohibits sex-based wage discrimination between men a...
In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to end racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations In 1965, congress returned suffrage to black southerners, by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Foner 926). In the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional (Foner 951). Because of the civil rights movement in the sixties, minorities gained more rights than they had prior to the 1960s. While the 1960s were a time of advancement for minorities, it was also a time of advancement for women. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, which outlawed discrimination in the workplace based on a person’s gender (Foner 944).
Grant, Jaime M., Ph.D., Lisa A. Mottet, J.D., Justin Tanis, D.Min., Jack Harrison, Jody L. Herman, Ph.D., and Mara Keisling. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Rep. National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011. Web. 22 May 2014.
We live in a world where a 21st century woman can vote, work full time, and raise a family on her own terms. Woman can choose when to have children, if they want to achieve a higher education, and obtain jobs that women in the 60’s only dreamt about. Most of these accomplishments were brought on by the Women’s Movement of the 1960’s. They brought up conventional thoughts and ideas that changed the course of history. However, in their quest for women’s rights and equality amongst men, there were some that were left out of the mass movement. Lesbians of the 1960’s were considered to be social pariahs by the Woman’s Movement of the 1960’s and not to be connected with. By being the outcasts, Lesbians created and founded their own movement that focused on not only Women’s Rights, but Gay Women’s rights as well. This movement was just as controversial if not more as the Women’s Movement of the time, but made just as big of an impact.
By positing the lesbian as ‘excess’ in the patriarchal system we may fail to note the identities that function as ‘excess’ within our own newly created lesbian community.
In the chapter “The Lesbian”, Beauvoir says that lesbian woman will be cursed, but she also says, “Like all human behavior, this will involve playacting, imbalance, failure, or lies, or, on the other hand, it will be the source of fruitful experiences, depending on whether it is lived in bad faith, laziness, and inauthenticity, or in lucidity, generosity, and freedom.” In this quote from the chapter we see that Beauvoir believes that if a lesbian can be open about her sexuality and satisfied with the way society treats them, then they can have a happy and enjoyable life like the rest of humanity. In the first two waves it was difficult for women to be completely open about their sexuality, but with the progress made throughout the years we know see that it is possible through none other than Ellen
As the years have passed, homosexuality has become a very controversial topic. The fact that day by day they fight for equality just to be happy, I think it is an injustice that many people refuse to give them the rights they deserve.
The treatment of the LGBT community in American Society is a social injustice. What most people think is that they just want to be able to marry one another and be happy but that’s not it. They want to be treated like humans and not some weird creatures that no one has ever seen before. They want to be accepted for who them are and not what people want them to be and they deserve the right to be who they are just the same as any other human being. After all the discrimination they have endured they should be allowed to be who they are and be accepted as equals just like people of different skin color did in the times of segregation. We have a long way to go as a country but being the greatest country in the world in the eyes of many great America will make big steps to make things fair.