Gloria Steinem: "Supremacy Crimes"
This reading was a short article which was published in Peace Work Magazine. In it, Gloria Steinem looks a little bit more carefully at the roots of most violent hate crimes. These include the terror of serial killers, the trend of school shootings and the like. One of her main arguments is that people are unaware, or perhaps consciously avoiding, that the reality is that these "troubled" people are usually white, middle-class, heterosexual men. Steinem points out that this statistic is true for most hate crimes, including the "impersonal, resentment-driven, mass killings."
She interestingly makes the assertion that these crimes are rooted in a superiority complex. She states that many of these crimes, which offer the offender not economic or "rational" gains, are carried out just because they believe, "I am superior because I can kill." I think this is a very interesting point, and it also makes me wonder if the reverse is true. I agree that these people may get pleasure out of feeling superior because of their killings, but i also wonder if they can justify their crimes with the assertion "BECAUSE I am superior, I CAN kill." I am sure Steinem considered this option and just lumped it with her original phrase, but i think there is a slight nuance between the two. To Steinem, it is the "addiction to the drug of supremacy" which is the deepest, most ignored root of these crimes.
Steinem points out that most of these "senseless" hate crimes are not committed to better the offenders position in the world. She compares this to the majority of African-American, lower class, or homosexual crimes by asserting that crimes of the latter variety usually bring about (or try to bring about) some sort of personal gain. While I want to agree with this theory, I was slightly annoyed by her phrasing. I thought it sounded like she was condoning these crimes more so than she was just illuminating her readers on the differences.
She goes on to postulate how people would have reacted if certain variables were changed in the crimes she discussed. While I thought this was an interesting tactic, because most of it was pure speculation, I didn't find it to be a very sound argument.
To conclude her article, Steinem makes an excellent point. She continued her theme of supremacy and domination and proposed that if we, as a community, were able to make great strides in eliminating the veil supremacy then perhaps these crimes could be eradicated." I will leave you with one of her closing remarks: "Just as we as a society have begun to raise our daughters more like sons - more like whole people- we must begin to raise our sons more like daughters - that is, to value empathy as well as hierarchy; to measure success by other people's welfare as well as their own."
Cynthia Enloe: "Whom Do You Take Seriously"
For Thursday's class we also read the chapter entitled "Whom Do You Take Seriously" from Cynthia Enloe's The Curious Feminist. In this passage, she discusses silencing which occurs not only within the classroom (as I had previously encountered the term), but also in the world as a whole. She begins by proposing two important questions, the first: "whose voices are heard in the public realm" and the second: "whose voices are heard in a manner that ensures that those speakers' experiences and ideas will be taken seriously." She then discusses why some voices may be unheard. Whether it be because one would rather listen or because she wouldn't want to subject her opinions to criticism or if she doesn't expect her voice to be validated alongside the voices of men.
Enloe then discusses Hannah Arendt, a famed 20th century intellectual who focused mostly on public and political spheres and the role society plays within them. Arendt stresses the importance of public speech among citizens (including women!) in order to have a healthy and thriving political atmosphere. However, Enloe isn't totally on board with Arendts dichotomy between what is public speech and what is private speech. As Enloe points out, areas which are typically reserved for the private realm are usually those which pertain to women. This means that by not speaking about them in public, the issues are never fully heard or responded to.
One such area which is generally reserved for the Private realm is violence against women. Enloe praises the work of women in Asia to talk publicly about women's issues, including violence. By maintaining this dichotomy, Enloe points out the inherent "trivialization" which occurs to women's issued. She later discusses how the role of "respectability" plays in as well.
For women to speak publicly, they may shed the "respectability" that has been attributed to their character. In essence, this is a way to ensure that women, who are concerned with their reputation, won't risk being denigrated to a lower stature by speaking out by "[challenging] the authority of the gender-policing concept." The notion of "respectability" also comes into play when Enloe mentions the result of women speaking about the violence which happened to them. By undergoing, and later speaking about, an experience, women can be seen as "less pure" and thereby less respectable.
Enloe does a good job of highlighting this "marginalization" of the female voice. To conclude her passage, she calls women to think about these facts and implores them to ponder the questions which she proposed. She concludes by saying that it is her hope, that by "redirecting and reinforming participatory movements in the Asia-Pacific and in North America ... [are] actions that will ensure that democratization is less superficial, more authentic."
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