Tuesday, February 19, 2008

can a society thrive without a hierarchy???

Reading "sexuality" made me annoyed and feel hopeless. I experienced annoyance due to the fact that i am fed up with gender inequality and the sexualized hierarchy women are subjected to. Why is it that some males find it necessary to dominate and dehumanize females simply because of differences in our biological makeups? is it because they are subconsciously afraid of the power they know women possess and feel it is their duty to dim our lights through "restriction, repression, and danger?"
The issues MacKinnon addressed can be tied to slavery and race relations in the U.S. The basic ideological axes that MacKinnon refers, allowed/not-allowed, can used to describe the enslavement of Native and African Americans and the way in which the so-called "inferior" races are deprived and dominated. Masculinity is having it; femininity is not having it the same way in which White is viewed as having it and "other" is seen as not having it. They way MacKinnon describes women as "coping with objectification through trying to meet the male standard, and measure their self-worth by the degree to which they succed" can also be used to describe how African Americans cope with racism and prejudice. Are hierachies necesary? Can a society run without the construction of the haves and the have nots? or is the domination of one race or gender an extension of Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest? and is this the only way a society can be run?

1 comment:

acn said...

Are hierachies necesary? Can a society run without the construction of the haves and the have nots? or is the domination of one race or gender an extension of Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest? and is this the only way a society can be run?

personally, I don't believe that our society, this American one and others that are modeled the same way, can not run without hierarchies. It is what this country was founded on: people telling other people what to do. to try to reconstruct this would mean that everything collapses. now as much as I would like to see equality, I don't think it will happen anywhere near the United States of America. at least not any time soon.