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.

#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.

The “Gender Wage Gap”

According to the Census taken, when examining the issue of the gender wage gap it showed that for every dollar a man earned every woman earned between 77 and 79 cent. While these numbers are only slightly uneven, they do a terrible job in showing the actual Gender Wage Gap. These numbers just show every U.S. working citizen as well as how much they get paid but it does not compare men and women that work the same job within work place. In other words this number does not compare a man who works as a doctor with a woman who works as a doctor, instead it represents the general population.

This Gender Wage Gap has yet to be properly addressed or dealt with…in 2014, President Barak Obama aimed to address the Gender Wage Gap with the Paycheck Fairness Act.

While it appears that woman are choosing to pursue less competitive jobs and jobs that pay less we have to evaluate why they chose these jobs. Just think if you knew… that if you are a woman and you worked just as hard as a man maybe even ten times harder to get that job as a doctor and you are getting paid less than someone else…would you even go through all the hard work of getting this dream job? If we do pursue these jobs as a woman we chose to settle, woman deserve equality. More and more women are speaking up demanding equal rights, oppression takes place in many different shapes and forms and this happens to be a way that we deal with modern day oppression.

With the many movements that took place towards fighting for equal pay, we have developed the Equal Pay Day in support of the Equal Rights Movement, equal pay day is April 2, 2019. The date is significant because it represents how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. This day was established in 1996 and it can change depending on when we see changes in the gender wage gap.

I haven’t allowed this gender wage gap to effect my goals of becoming a doctor because I believe the United States does a well job in promoting equality, so I hope that this oppression will be exposed and they will change the pay system.