1. How does the division of people begin? Where does the division of power come from? Who decides what race and what gender is more dominant? Where did oppression come from?

I’ve spent hours asking myself these questions and wondering where oppression comes from. I often look at a mothers role in society as one of the hardest roles, without a woman to bear children how else would anyone get here. A man ultimately comes from a woman so what and who gave them the right to oppress woman. But perhaps this idea is what is setting woman behind. This idea that they are the “bearer or meaning and not the makers of meaning” a quote imposed by Laura Mulvey. She brought up this idea that it is not the woman makes the child who he or she is. It isn’t from the woman in which the child inherits its mindset perhaps if the child is innovated…but its from the mother that they get their nurturing. As if the mother is a temporary caretaker. This idea of motherhood gets diminished.

I ran into a book called, Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale by Maria Mies. Maria Miles is a German Professor who is responsible for writing very many books about feminism and different woman inequalities from the past and the present. She currently teaches at a University in Germany but she has visited and got different perspectives from America, Germany and India where. she spent a lot of her time. This book is so significant because she analyzes the origins of woman’s oppression by dating back to the earliest civilizations where society merely relied on hunting and gathering.

According to Maria Mies theory; Men were labeled as “hunters” and given deadly weapons to kill off animals and ultimately bring them back home. When brought home, woman were labeled as “gatherers”, their role was to collect the food that the men hunted and to cook it and have it freshly served when the man came home. Except….her idea of where this oppression came from did not directly come from the different roles that each person held in society, it came from what they did during the role. When men hunted and killed animals they saw themselves as being more dominant that the animal given they had the power to destroy a life with their aggressiveness and weapons. They viewed animals as the supplies of food to meet their needs and the ability to breed and make more animals to meet their need. These two factors were also jobs of the gatherer, or the woman, who had to cook dinner to meet the mans need and had to have children once again for a man. So overtime, this ideology that woman are merely harmless animals made men believe that they had this power over a woman.

Most woman could not become hunters because of the intense workout that was required to do it, this included running for miles and dodging and different difficult physical activities. Woman often got pregnant because men were uneducated on the different ways in modern day in which we have the ability to not have kids after every time of intercourse. Because the woman were always getting pregnant, with pregnancy it was hard for them to get involved in physical activity, therefore they were obligated to doing the more submissive jobs. Although we have new ways to have protected sex and to avoid running into this problem, most ideologies don’t change and become embedded in people and these ideologies are passed down for generations. Even as things evolve, someone can still carry these different assumptions or perspectives on life. Some people also like to live in this ignorance because it is what they are comfortable with and they don’t want to have to change. I don’t always blame them because I know that there are topics that I am not 100 percent confident in my knowledge in those area but I haven’t taken the time to get to know more.

Reflecting off of Maria Mies views, it’s evident that her thesis would be that the roles of men as the hunter and their domanince over animals and the comparison of woman to animals is the reason that oppression began, is quite the argument. In my opinion I believe that these early roles set modern Day roles, but I don’t believe that this should have led to oppression directly. I believe that the competitiveness that was developed in a man is the reason oppression began, this idea of always being in control. The idea of getting comfortable being in control and not willing to look at a different point of view. I believe that our general problem in modern day society continues to date back to history and previous beliefs.

Inequalities in fact, have gotten worse in modern day society, the saddest part about it is that people are not even realizing how bad it is getting.

The Rich get richer and the Poor get poorer

Inequality in America is on the rise. Income gains since the 1980s have been concentrated at the top. The top 10 percent today take home 30 percent of all income, and control over three-quarters of all wealth. In other words, the people in the world that are making the upmost amount of money and keeping even more. People that make up only 10 percent of the world are in control of 3X their population of income. With this being said, overtime as this amount slowly starts to rise, this 10 percent of people will eventually be in charge of all of the worlds income! Leaving the bottom 90% in a static position with little to nothing left. We have returned to the level of income inequality that marked the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s. This was a terrible time in society and to see the newly advanced world returning to it is scary.

Argument: The mentality that ANYONE can get successful with hard work, allows us to ignore the fact that it is difficult for most people.

Evidence from the International Social Survey Programme suggests that people increasingly think their society is a meritocracy – that success in school and business simply reflects hard work and talent. This belief is held most dearly by Americans, but citizens across the world are growing more convinced.

Now while this statement has some truth behind it, because I do believe that if you work hard you have a higher chance of being successful versus if you as a person in your situation did not work hard then yes you may not be as successful. BUT…there are still levels to what we define as success. In the image above it gives a clear depiction of what happens in society, some people have the opportunity to become rich and successful because they were born into a rich and successful family, suggesting that their ancestors who came before them, somewhere along their line had to work hard. They then have the upper hand because they never had to work hard since their successors did. Versus, someone who was born in a horrible environment with bad education, limited resources, no mentors or friends and family who care, and surrounded with nothing but drug dealers then they are more accustomed to end up in the street or in the poorer range of people.

Now we ask…WHO or WHAT shapes these beliefs?

Most people who don’t treat others like equals, do so because of how they were brought up. Perhaps someone lives in an environment where they aren’t used to different people and their parents or mentors never encouraged them or even educated them about other people, a few big ones in this category we can point out is race or ethnicity or sexuality.

People in more socioeconomically and racially diverse environments are more likely to appreciate how life outcomes are shaped by structural factors such as race and wealth – that is, the ways in which a person’s family wealth, gender or skin color may impact their chances of getting into college or finding employment. They would be more understanding because they are surrounded by these very factors and these very people and most likely have seen an act of hatred against someone simply because they are different.

In high school, I took an African American studies class and we were learning about this topic and initially I was naive. My father was born and raised in Jamaica and moved to the U.S. in the middle of high school. He faced so many obstacles I mean, you could only imagine? stepping into a new environment in the middle of high school in a rough public high school. My grandma worked as a janitor and at a gift shop so my dad was the man of the house, taking care of his two younger brothers. He worked two jobs while paying his was through a 2 year community college. My father now works for Homeland security and is one of the smartest hardest workers I know. Seeing what he has been through and how hard he had to work is what left me in this bubble believing that anyone could be successful. While I may view my dad as successful, we still struggle and there were times when I did not always know where or when the next meal would come. But, I do feel as though if the tables were shaped in his favor, and he was born rich then he could’ve started college much earlier and gone to a better school and he could’ve been CEO of his department, so Yes, I do believe environment and what you were born with influences how successful you will be.

#METOO

Tarana Burke is depicted in the image above. Tarana Burke is a social activist, strong relentless black woman, wife and community organizer, she began using the phrase “Me Too” in 2006, on the Myspace social network as part of a grassroots campaign to promote “empowerment through empathy” among women of color who have experienced sexual abuse, particularly within underprivileged communities. She targeted a lot of underprivileged communities because often those are the groups of people we ignore and the media seems to neglect because they don’t have the finances or stability to be heard. Tarana Burke, who is creating a documentary titled Me Too, has said she was inspired to use the phrase after being unable to respond to a 13-year-old girl who confided to her that she had been sexually assaulted. Burke later wished she had simply told the girl, “me too”. At the time it was extremely hard for her because to be reminded of the situation caused her fear but eventually she realized it was time to speak up.

On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano encouraged spreading the hashtag #MeToo, as part of an awareness campaign in order to reveal the ubiquity of sexual abuse and harassment. Milano tweeted: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” Milano later acknowledged earlier use of the phrase by Burke, writing on Twitter, “I was just made aware of an earlier #MeToo movement, and the origin story is equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring”. Milano announced in an interview with Rolling Stone that she and 300 other women in the film industry are now supporting another movement called Time’s Up, an initiative that aims to help fight sexual violence and harassment in the workplace through lobbying and providing funding for victims to get legal help if they cannot afford it. Her goal is to raise awareness to women around the world on the number of women who have been sexually harassed. Her courageousness as a notable public figure shocked the world and was a stepping stone to inspire young woman who have either experienced or support it to get involved in the movement.

The original purpose of “Me Too” as used by Tarana Burke in 2006, was to empower women through empathy, especially young and vulnerable women. In October 2017, Alyssa Milano encouraged using the phrase as a hashtag to help reveal the extent of problems with sexual harassment and assault by showing how many people have experienced these events themselves.

After millions of people started using the phrase, and it spread to dozens of other languages, the purpose changed and expanded, as a result, it has come to mean different things to different people. Some people see it as a way of unifying woman in not only the oppression against sexual assault. In modern day society woman face so much oppression everyday and are not at all treated as an equal so the me too movement allowed them to see that they were not alone and never will be, theres other people out there who are going through the same experiences as them and now they finally had their voice. Tarana Burke accepts the title of the leader and creator of the movement but has stated she considers herself a worker of something much bigger. Burke has stated that this movement has grown to include both men and women of all colors and ages, as it continues to support marginalized people in marginalized communities. There have also been movements by men aimed at changing the culture through personal reflection and future action, including #IDidThat, #IHave, and #IWill.

Burke stated in an interview that the conversation has expanded, and now in addition to empathy there is also a focus on determining the best ways to hold perpetrators responsible and to stop the cycle. This idea that other woman could feel empathy made this even more remarkable. But justice was not always found, as we know sexual assault still exists, there was recently a documentary made about the musician R. Kelly that listed a lot of black woman who have been sexual assaulted by him and have yet to receive justice. Its sad that it took for an entire documentary to be created in order for the judicial system to really look into these allegations. It is even more sad that some of the children who he is doing this to do not even know that what he’s doing is wrong.

I believe that the MeToo movement is necessary in unifying woman who have similar struggles. Often times, it is easy to feel alone when you have been through a detrimental situation but the MeToo movement unites woman to have someone to talk to to rot them know they are not alone.