å Monday, March 6th, 2017

According to Parisi and Peterson, heterosexuality should be used in the discussion of human rights, instead of the argument of how it suppresses others. The latter is used in feminist theories, who seek to represent minority groups and consider heterosexuality the majority. However, there is validity in Parisi and Peterson’s argument. If one can ponder on it for a second without considering the oppression, heterosexuality is the basis for life, and understanding its links to humans will also explain the social issues and human rights one desires.

As stated in many discussions, heterosexuality is the more promoted sexual preference because of its biological benefits of reproduction (Parisi and Peterson, 132.) Thinking on it without bias or judgement, the only way for humans to reproduce properly is to engage in vaginal intercourse, between a man and woman. This biological benefit is the reason for many’s preference for heterosexuality. Thanks to this preference, society is more engaged in male domination, because it is the male, whose sperm infiltrates the woman’s egg, produces the action that will create the future child (Parisi and Peterson, 138.) Patriarchist societies and thoughts originate from this sole fact, which is the reason for women rights issue: since males are the ones who release the needed substance to create a child, they feel entitled and in power over women.

Breeding heterosexually has also led to a gender division in lifestyles. From politics to household work, heterosexuality has led to the very basis of human living. Males and females are delegated roles and have expectations for their birth given gender or sex. Due to this, humans are instantly shaped from infants into a specific gender role and expected to follow this (Parisi and Peterson, 139.) When people deviate from their culture’s standard for gender, they typically face the harshest punishments. This, for feminists and others, is a major violation in human rights and social issues, but can be explained from this heterosexual fact. An example is the marginalization of women’s rights for three generations: because women are expected to be nurturers and caregivers, their “want” for more freedom is looked upon as greedy and socially unacceptable, considering the actions deviate from the norm (Parisi and Peterson, 142.)

Feminists have every right to combat the theories behind heterosexuality and why it hurts many alternative lifestyles. However, it should be explained with heterosexuality as well. The biggest concern for many is why these other outlooks are considered repulsive and people violate it. If you can look at the beginning of mankind, heterosexuality explains it easily. To many, heterosexuality is the only way to go, because it has far more benefits for society than the individualism behind the LGBT community, who cannot produce more members of that culture. This is the reason behind human rights violation, and it should be explained so both sides of the aisle become educated.

In V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi’s article, Are women human? It’s not an academic question, they bring forth the question of whether or not women are considered to be human. In addition, they bring get forth the argument that when thinking about human rights, we must consider the fact that all the rights created and included are mainly androgentric. The very fact that the first concept of any kind of human rights to be created was called the rights of man is a perfect first example to help back up their argument.

Now, taking a look at Peterson and Parisi’s article, they start off by giving, what I believe to be, a very powerful sentence, “… women suffer more violations of human rights than any other group in the world, both in times of war and through traditional practices excused by culture”(Bahar 1996, 107: 132). Womens humans rights are the most violated out of any other ethnic or religious group that can be thought of.

Having that in mind, Peterson and Parisi bring about another argument which is that heterosexism is a more precise way to look at the relationship between gender differences and human rights. They state that heterosexism is now institutionalized and defined as the only “normal” form of sexual identity and orientation. They also state that with heterosexism, women are capable of taking on more masculine traitso and males could do the same. However, the typical male attributes and stereotypes such as “reason, agency and dependency” are considered more the norm and are more widely taken up than the female attributes and stereotypes (132). Thoseven attributes and stereotypes being the complete opposite of men which are “affect, non agency, and dependence” (132). The fact that men are held to a higher standard physically, mentally and emotionally is what has set them and their “stereotypical attributes” as the norm, generalizing it which is preventing the equality between men and women. However, this leaves out room for any other forms of sexual identity and orientations, such as homosexuals, Transgender people, etc.

Although, while the main distinction remains between men and women, it’s mainly all a man’s world. Women were always subordinate to men, and this argument of heterosexism is just another way to come to more or less the same conclusion. Even though women are supposedly made to be included in these basic human rights, they’re really not it’s just to make them feel like they are.

Though I haven’t studied it extensively, what I have learned about gender (and its construction) comes from Judith Butler. Peterson and Parisi quote her early on, explaining that institutionalized heterosexism symbiotically creates and supports ideas of masculinity and femininity (and that masculine traits are exclusive to the male sex, and visa versa) and dictates the creation of gender through these ideas. Leaving any other configurations (transgendered or homosexual persons) outside of mainstream (normative) society. Heterosexism also normalizes the nuclear family, disguising the contract of marriage as a natural life progression outside of the political realm, and obscuring female (female sex, not female gender) agency. When human rights supports this socialized system, it is to support this founding block of the subjugation of women, and it supports this system by respecting what certain definitions of “private” and “family” and declaring human rights in the public realm.

To put it most simply, what I think Peterson and Parisi are arguing, when they say that we need to examine heterosexism to really explore gendered differences in human rights , is that the previous conversation has existed only within a box of heterosexism. Theorists have been examining sexism and other gendered differences without seeing gender as a construct. That is to say, without taking a step back to see the larger picture, and recognizing that many ideas and concepts that have been taken for granted as a natural way of being are in fact social constructs, and that we cannot unpack an issue like sexism without first unpacking why it is that we apply a gender to sex, and attempt to keep sex within a set of rules (i.e., a person of male sex is sexually attracted to women). Sex is so integral to the way that we think of “humans” (it is typically the first category we use when dividing groups), that is impossible to think of what human rights are, and who they serve without examining sex. But a thorough examination of how we examine sex requires breaking through our assumptions, the ideas we’ve assigned to sex. Those ideas happen to be heterosexism (though it could have happened other ways, similar to the current idea of what human rights are could have gone several different ways).

Peterson and Parisi take their argument a step further, as they move through different areas of theory (from political to social science) and examine how the works from each of these fields interacted to create this system. They are able to take feminist critiques of human rights and push them a step further. From a focus on androcentrism, deliberating the ways in which human rights have favored men, to heterosexism, we begin to look not just at the sexism in human rights, but the rules and structures that have put that sexism in place, and kept it there, rules that govern our society.

Human rights are in fact androcentric”, I found this quote very interesting because is basically saying that society or rather say, this world develops pretty much thinking that man was and still are the only focus point or centered. Human rights were made to only benefic man, it’s obvious because someone who was a male wrote those rights. Women were never included or protected by those human rights because they weren’t consider as being human beings. Man, created the ideology of being superior and dominant. Moreover, V. Spike and Laura Paris identify the meaning of heterosexism which, according to Spike and Paris it refers to as being the only one normal aspect of sexual identity, sexual relationships, and social relationships. Spike and Paris demonstrate the differences of man having their own right to do what they want and women having the right to do what they want. Heterosexist collectivities means women weren’t free to constitute groups in their own will or rights because they are mystifying within heterosexist groups. This another example of unfairness and inequality. In order for women to create a group, someone from the opposite sex needs to know and be in charge first. “Self-determination has meant the expression of men’s” (p.142), this is another example of women being discriminated by man. Women are being excluded because making laws is a job for man and still dominant by men. In class, we talked about who to blame for this issue, and we all agree that both gender, man and women are to blame. Its man fault to create an unrealistic ideology of thinking they are better, superior, and dominant. Its women fault to let all man think is this way and not stop it as soon as it happened. Private sphere of the home was the job of a women and public sphere of the workplace and government was a man job. All this issue is still happening, of course, at another level with time women have proof how capable they are. Women are excluded from the public sphere, which focus on human rights discourse and denials women equal rights. It’s extremely outrageous the experience women went through and until this day are. It shouldn’t be this way now because it’s very clear that women have the same capacity a man can have when it comes to making laws institutions, government, or politics. Slowly, but shortly things are and will change.

In their essay, “Are women human? It’s not an academic question”, Peterson and Parisi examine how human rights protect, or rather fail to protect, women by looking at human rights through the lens of heterosexism rather than androcentrism. Before we can examine their argument, it is beneficial to define both androcentrism and heterosexism. Androcentrism quite simply refers to rights as being centered on men and masculine characterisitics. Hetersexism, meanwhile, refers to normalizing the notion that heterosexuality is the only acceptable form of relationships and basis for families. Now that we understand the terms, we can take a closer look at the authors’ argument.

Peterson and Parisi contend that human rights should be examined through the lens of heterosexism not only because heterosexism institutionalizes ideas of masculinity and femininity based on the socially constructed idea of gender, but it also renounces all but heterosexual couplings as the acceptable base for families and groups. The latter normalizes discrimination against non-heterosexual sexual identities and the former any gender outside of the two acceptable masculine and feminine gender identities. In addition to discrimination, analyzing human rights through heterosexism helps to explain how human rights fails to protect women while also hindering women from identifying with one another across groups based on culture, ethnicity, race, and class. Peterson and Parisi identify a number of ways in which this is done through the three generations of human rights, but we will examine the two overarching themes: the sepeartion of the public and private sphere and the role of group identity.

Peterson and Parisi assert that the socially constructed notion of binary gender identities is tied to heterosexualism which is in turn linked to the notion of the sovereign state and is then connected to human rights. At the same time, heterosexism enforces the separation of the public and private sphere. While the state is tasked with protecting against human rights violations, it focused almost solely on the public sphere. By keeping the public and private separated, the state fails to protect women where she is most vulnerable to violence and rights violations – in the private sphere. While there is minimal protection in the private sphere, there is plenty of regulation.

Heterosexism is connected to group reproduction, continuing the group, whether based on race, religion, ethnicity and so on. This subverts the personhood of women for two reasons – placing the identity of the group over the identity of the woman as an individual and by placing political control over women’s bodies. The former not only fails to recognize a woman as an individual but it also places the identity of the group in a higher place of importance than the identity as a women, which in turn hinders women identifying with women outside of their group. This then works to normalize inequality both within the groups (by gender) but also amongst the groups (by race, religion, etc). The latter removes agency away from women by taking away their ability to make their own decisions as it relates to their body and moving that decision making to either the state or their male partners.

Although written twenty years ago and while there have many gains in rights for the LGBTQ community, Peterson and Parisi make an incredibly compelling argument. The concepts they discuss surrounding gender identity, heterosexism, and group identity are so institutionalized it takes a dense twenty pages to just scratch the surface. We must understand how these ingrained cultural norms affect not only rights but our inability to organize across racial, ethnic, religious, and class lines.

Heterosexism clearly influenced the distinctions between man and woman. This discrimination prohibited any fair ideas about equal rights for men and women. Heterosexism prejudice was in favor of men in power. Often time this bias ideology affected most people without them even aware of what has happened. For instance, my mother always advised me to wear a skirt, close your legs and wear nail polish. Universally most people beliefs were developed from religion, culture and tradition. Unfortunately, many traditional practices were set up to benefit men. Heterosexism has influenced the conditions within society. Many people find it very difficult to remove themselves from lifestyles they are so deeply ingrained. As stated by V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi, ” What has not been generally recognized [was] the bias that often underlies studies of both sex roles male dominance-an assumption that we know what ‘men’ and ‘women’ are, an assumption that male and female are predominantly natural objects rather than predominantly cultural constructions (pg.133). In my view, heterosexism has been intricately entangled within our lives. This integration makes it difficult to remove ourselves from situations. For example, some women may be in a verbally abusive marriage yet culturally she may be influenced not to leave the situation.
This idea about gender equality forces one to question the influence of culture, religion and tradition. Most people want to retain their deeply root ideas yet they understand male and female are natural objects rather than predominantly cultural constructs. As stated above. We are appeared to be tied to the unfair attitudes that religion, culture and tradition has established. Still today, we have the same problems with gender inequality. As stated in the New York Times, ” to be a woman in the United States is to feel unequal, despite great strides in gender equality, according to a wide-ranging poll about gender in postelection America released Tuesday. It’s catcalls on the street, disrespect at work and unbalanced responsibilities at home. For girls, it’s being taught, more than boys, to aspire to marriage, and for women, its watching positions of power go to men”. We closely examine how the same behaviors towards woman affects the decision we make.
Multiple factors have impacted distinct attitudes toward women. In the same way, gender difference was based on stereotypes human rights was influenced by the same set of conditions. Women were not acknowledged. Both gender inequality and human rights displayed how women were not equally accepted. Not only was heterosexism oppressive but human rights was oppressive too. Theories developed to devalue women occurred within two separate in distinct circumstances. Firstly, gender inequality existence at the same time human rights was not woman’s rights. As stated, ” we explored how [different] categories were made in historical time, and how that making normalized gendered identities and heterosexist practices that underpin existing human rights. In other words, discriminatory practices were integrated into the human rights scene. Presently we have one injustice after another injustice. For example, the Presidential election would have taken a turn around the corner. Had the single most qualified candidate been a man.

In society , for gender identity to become easier to understand, certain kinds of identities cannot exist.  The human rights sparks conversation and a reproduction of A naturalization of heterosexism and the family including gender inequalites within the family. Parish argues that we should interrogate the connection of “human rights” in connection to heterosexual rather than focusing on the androcentrism of human rights discourse .  heterosexism became a naturalization in society .  A woman in a heterosexist home is treated unjustly , a heterosexist home is privileged by males and the males interest seem to over power a females interests.  This then denies or represses all other sexual orientations and gender identifications .  In heterosexism groups that are ran under patriarchal conditions involves a gendered class , race division of power and labor that institutionalizes inequalities within a heterosexist group.

Heterosexist principles of group reproduction , relegated women to reproductive roles.  Women are not treated as human in relation to economic, social and cultural practices.  According to the first generation of rights , women were always living under the conditions of patriarchy .  Man has always been a domination.  “Quite simply , it is therefore men’s bodies , experiences and perspectives that are reflected in human rights law.” (Pg. 143)   The masculinist state institutionalizes and sustains gender hierarchy which denies women equal human rights, both directly and indirectly. (Pg. 144)  Heterosexist families and masculine markets make the assumption that makes are the breadwinners, which continues to show the inequalities within a heterosexist household . Cultures that favors males , the preference for sons resulted into the abortion of females fetuses .  Worldwide , male privilege continues to let men make all the decision makings and have a special yet unjustly dominance over the female population.

what has not been generally recognized is the bias that often underlies studies of both sex roles and male dominance.  An assumption that we know what men and women are , an assumption that male and female are predominantly natural objects rather than predominantly cultural constructions. ( pg. 133) As we can see from the reading there is always an underlining truth when it comes to both sexes of male and female and that truth is the inequalites of both sexes . This domination that men has over a woman continues to take trend and be a part of our culture . Woman does not have the same rights as men , even when they are in a heterosexist relationship . A  woman in a heterosexist home is treated unjustly and a heterosexist home is privledge by males and a males interests while repressing the interests of women .