fBryant has 10 post(s)

The conduction of Merry’s research along with her assistants in the article “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: Implementing Women’s Human Rights to Protection from Violence” points out that women are placed in a domain where personal feelings of the law (executed by mainly men) are interfering with how women should be fully protected by their rights. It should not be a matter of the law having conditions, whether the victim should or not be defended, and as well the aggressor whether persecuted to full extent of the law or place it as a slap on the wrist.

The author terminated a close attention in how the representatives executing the law, view women, specifically in the situation as described as battered women, as being good victims and bad victims. Such informal titles used to categorize women across the board, clearly enables those who are applying the rules of the government to view the people in need of the law with a bias and subjectively. The method of which battered women have been victimized has established a number of individuals to collectively band in an effort to better support women of whom been victims of domestic violence. The activist not only place their supportive effort in educating them of what their legal right is as a woman, but also contribute in promoting enhancing skills where the couples can mutually find a common ground and acquire a preferred safe relationship.

Needless to say, the matter of the state, community and family members, interfere over-proportionately in private circumstantial affairs of couples’ relationship. A detriment set onto women, that if by having a situation that could lead them to a bad experience for enabling their right to defend themselves under the supposedly fair judicial law, then such act of pinpointing the problem becomes to women a much greater concern. That’s why it is important the emphasizes of such community outreach programs that can provided support in dire situations for women who have become victims of domestic violence. Not only should such programs that aide women in times of violent moments be viewed as supplemental establishments, but as necessary means of combating the privatized enclosed torture that women are encountering on a day by day basis. That the publicization of domestic violence towards women, be there in bringing out the issue at which women who also attribute in such cases in being unwilling participants by their male partner, lead to a transparency of awareness for all women and not selectively held as a mockery for women to just bear with it.

The author Lila Abu-Lughod, in her essay “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others”, she brings the reader to ponder upon how one’s own culture has an impact of misinterpretation that could mislead the judgement of perception of understanding another style of living from another origin of the world. That the western lifestyle should not be a fixated form of solution, especially advertised as a form of salvation to those who have their own personal beliefs and activities based on the personal own culture.

The fact of the matter is that countries that offer the militaristic armament do not necessarily provoke a change to coincide to the feelings of those who are rescued. That it should not be of any kind of astonishment to the “rescuers” to live under their own cultural relativism that of which identifies them of the ownership of their past history and customs, whether religiously or by traditions.

For instance, one of the misconceptions of misinterpreting the veil is that for certain ethnic groups, depending on the region, its veil represents a level of respectability and at the same time portrays women in conducting themselves as humble of the simple life (Abu-Lughod 785). I think that it is clear before anything, the history of foreign cultures, that of which are in part unknown fully to us, have a major role of how “superpower” countries want or think that their culture is the right way of living life, and that one must desert the old customs of which were implanted from the beginning. Leaving to think, back to the question that resonates during the last class session of whether there should be emancipation of religion for the greater cause of political reform? Needless to say, it is definitely not something that women who have usage of the veil will leave from one day to the other.

Interestingly enough, the veil for the western eyes or culture would seem to be viewed as a base for oppression as supposed to when those who have lived under the veil identify to it as what the author calls it a “mobile home”. By viewing the other point of view of the carrier that must place the veil, we can consider that by she may feel safe, privatized under the veil and not letting men, to some degree, pass beyond the veil in any shape or form because it is hers to own. Perhaps it is something that she may feel honored in doing, or just, it is part of her identity to the culture of which she lives in. Not far from it, the author relates of how our manners, dress codes, and other attributes of culture diversity can encounter to disagree, often causing tension that displays each distinctive cultural habit. If such misinterpretations of language and manner on the table can happen, one can only come to the conclusion that for nations, it is the same when they meet.

The reading of “Nongovernmental Organizations’ Role in the Buildup and Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325” brings into light Resolution 1325, which was passed on October 31, 2000.  A resolution decision that was place by the United Nations to tackle upon specific matters of importance that consisted on the preservation from injury of children (girls) and women during an ambient usage of mass weaponry; along with safety from the characterized negativity portrayed in times of conflict carried on by force of weapons, there also was an insistence in seeking cessation of violence and a deep urgency in requiring precautions taken during struggles of aggression.

Prior to the Resolution 1325, there weren’t positions given to women who could be taken into account for arranging terms of protection during periods of time where hostility and struggle was at its highest.  Despite of not having a formal female representation sounding out the points of trouble during difficult combative conditions of which worried many women, the opportunity did not cease from hearing revealing instances of whom women endured particular wicked behavior.

From voices of women whom shared their affected hardships vocally, emerged a collective perception from the NGO’s to bring into existence a set of detailed writings of which suggested to have a safe plan of action that would protect women and girls locally and nationally and internationally as well. Not only that, but to also have women engaged in cooperating in the makings of an arrangement that could end hostility, setting forth a state of tranquility, and sitting in meetings where they can assemble to dialogue the guards against guerrilla warfare.

The intentions of NGO’s effort in producing a result that meant a safeguard for women during the agonizing occasions of carnage, agitated the means of communications to publicize diligently in order for all NGO’s to work collaboratively in achieving the goal. It’s as if for once, after several ground proofing personal presences having expressed their accounts of the cruel condemned actions, that not-for-profit organizations have transformed it to be more obvious and a manifestation of which should be reckoned upon.

Once the independent institutions began to role the issues at hand, the following year of October 31, 2001, the openness of allowing women in being part of written agreements was a persistent movement. It allowed women to even further attain a voice in coming up with strategies for future events that pertained about aftermaths of unfortunate conflicts where females were the subjects of cruel inhumanity.

In Gilmore’s essay “Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism”, the author leads us from the start of whether the massive incarcerations are reasonable in acting upon or weather the actions taken have “purpose” behind the naked eye in being beneficial.

She uses the State of California as a model of which people of color have been the greatest population to be imprisoned, roughly two thirds of them. With such high numbers as it continues to increment, there is a consideration of being utilized as an economic factor uprising the financial growth of the state. She suggests that some of the reasons for a high percentage of imprisonment has to do with societies way of departing from the normalized behavior conducted within society in which also has to do in relation with the high usage of drugs (Gilmore 172). The people who suffer, these injurious actions are for the most part from poor local populations, as much as these areas are affected, the confinement of out of order persons does provide accomplishment for a safety space.

Yet even with the “presumable” violence going on in society, there still was the fact that racism promoted an inflicting punishment, particularly towards blacks. Not to mention that an operation of production was on its way, a pecuniary gain known as carceral Keynesianism (Gilmore 174). It so happens that statistics show an unidentical treatment from white prisoners to colored ones. When all these components, that are negative, part take in the large-scale community of the state, they become factors that arise financial improvement. Under such indispensable circumstances, forms an extreme organizational system to which clears up serious questions solved.

In spite of prisons having some form of surplus where it hopes to maintain a tendency of economic growth, it does not serve well in being relied as a basis of producing again. This comes to cause an ascent in the number of persons who are unemployed, becoming a deeper agency of elevated levels for people who were engaged in particular fields or activities for themselves and their loved ones (Gilmore 178). It starts influencing more over to specific groups of agricultural businesses whose making of goods diminishes. At the same time that this is happening the area of ground comes into undergoing devaluation. No true method of solving came forth into view where we can say that the government was going to find the solution in dealing with the excessive amounts.

The book Caliban and the Witch written by Silvia Federici draws us to a broad arguable notion of viewing women transitioning in time, from the servitude of kings, nobles and lords to a system based on property for profit. At the same time, Federici, in her chapter “The Accumulation of Labor and Degradation of Women: Constructing ‘Difference’ in the ‘Transition to Capitalism’”, further takes us in viewing the irregularities of physical work buildup demanded during systematical economic shifts. The force requirement and expectation of women’s role during various past time periods, which actions partaken by women were not optional.

Such actions taken by women in past centuries, from feudalism to capitalism, has brought the author to an appeal in viewing the start of capitalism, known as “Primitive accumulation”, to not only being exclusively examined by men (Marx included), but by also allowing women such as the author to input her insightful lens on how historical events portrayed have a concealed form of exploitation. Point out from the differences of women’s role in society and the creation of goods by working: in how women would have to be working as sex slaves and forcing them to produce working descendants; no equal financial earnings to men and tolerating them; becoming the new machine of body to birth children.

Federici by analyzing Marx’s work in regards of the birth and development of capitalism addresses the audience by pointing out Marx’s suggestion of not involving women in the role they played when it comes to the evolution of capitalism. Needless to say, the author places women at the center of it by placing them as a powerful workforce who unfortunately meet their destruction by being labeled as “witches”. The evolution of capitalism, from a starting point to its gradual development, starts becoming barbarous towards women, to the degree that it designs a thralldom necessity with the work force to meet those economic needs of surviving. The hidden agenda of capitalism, creates a divide between men and women.

Capitalism projects itself in Europe and the Americas by slave trade, enslaving farmers, having enclosures, witch hunting women, physical abuses, imprisonments of people who stole goods and to those who falsified their inadequacy to work. Slavery between Europe and the Americas even when if it was meant to be diminished, took a change that benefited private owners. Those included in the slavery were Native Americans and Africans.

At the initiation of the essay “Are Woman human? It’s not an academic question”, V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi, commence by briefing us of how the idea of “human” does not fulfill in itself to cover both men and women, but that its focal point has always been for the benefit of men. As supposed to viewing women as part of a “humans”, they are placed as second class citizens. Needless to say, they investigate of how “human” (gender binary) rights behaves when in regards of the concept of heterosexism(6).

The true nature of heterosexism as mentioned by the writer, is to set a sexual identity that is established by men to be attracted by opposite biological physical appearances. Not only is it a physical difference but that as such, their mutual different features attract each other to sexually lead the way of reproducing and socially forming a family. That there is no other way of which generations will be forming if such opposites do not attract, a norm of tradition set in the past to be continuously practiced. When one of the identified genders, women, are set to follow through heterosexism, under the patriarchal state, they are forced to not find alternatives of forming a social reproduction. Then, when that principle of behavior, placed under a patriarchal structure, starts becoming a disturbance among the traditional norms, we begin to detect a contractual interdependence of gender identity, social relations.

What begins to change in the identification of gender and of reproduction, also develops a division from within women and men identities. The formation of women then oppresses their other gender identity group under the notion of heterosexism. Yet when such heterosexist feminists are opposed to the notion, just as men are, laws begin to limit the behavior of women sexually, reproductively, socially and financially. Limiting also the extension of family formations. Also to the degree that because of such changes that are not in conformity with the normalization of gender identity, it leaves such group of women to not be protected under “human rights”. Leading to a risk of receiving derogatory actions and by not being protected by the law. Women of such, still under the private sphere become to enter the public sphere whether by choice or not, and suffer the threat of being marginalized financially and socially. The process of a new gender identity clearly raises a new approach of theoretical framing, of which then human rights should become more relevant to all and not just the privileged.

The author Samuel Moyn in his work The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History starts us off by having an understanding that before the happenings of the America’s and France’s revolution, there were Greeks and Romans philosophers of the Stoic age who had sided to the idea of rights which humans should have, in particular for men at those times. Ideologies of such, have had an influence which have evolved to modernize such rights which then set a precedent to become effective in producing the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789. That it’s transformation from John Locke’s “natural rights” and moving ahead to the age of the Enlightenment, has caused a political action that favors to the rights of citizens, and again focusing on men all over again. From the political establishment, the social and economic status with in the local setting of the where the government is abusive towards it’s private citizens. Nonetheless, such “rights of man” only pertains to what for men is beneficial, from their happiness of life, to their liberty to act and conduct themselves as they see fit towards society and to the ownership of property. It’s true essence of the “rights of man” also partakes in the political agenda, by that I mean that the usage of “rights” was for a pollical gain, exclusively to that group, at which only change was the form of protection from the government.

With regards of the “human rights” of which Moyn describes, he infers that there was no beginning or true foundation from which this term and concept emerged. Yes, there were rights to men, individual rights, naturalistic rights, universal rights, from which previously mentioned, all sort of derived from the nature of rights. To an unfortunate extent, the idea of “human rights” was born from an atrocity being done to humanity right after World War II. With the formation of the United Nations to then setting a course to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which protects all human beings yet undoubtfully not inclusive of all but certain groups only. Needless to say, it began an action settling across the globe to view morally the actions being done across the globe towards human beings, by imposing international laws which were seen as good and bad. Thereafter, the idea of “human rights” takes a big impact in the 1970’s, to which then focused on a more in-depth avenue towards involving itself in the civil liberties.

The essayist Wendy Brown, in her essay ““The Most We Can Hope For…’ Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism,” provides arguments of the moral nature of human rights activism. Whether if it fully serves its goal to maintain an adequate response and consistency to aiding humanity at its points of struggles, of which there will be contentions violating societies rights. Furthermore, if such determinations to overcome the challenges that compromise the humanistic rights are authentic in itself, then there wouldn’t be an inclination towards a self-indulge greed of abuse against its fundament of protecting humanistic rights. For most of Brown’s essay, the Canadian author Michael Ignatieff incites us to unfold with cues of pensive approach towards how we should examine the true purpose of an initiative towards aiding those who may need their human rights to be defended, along the discussion of the insincere purpose behind outcome of those who in pretending to help the struggled, abuse it.

It is true, as Brown suggests, that human rights activism is not solely purposefully for the nature of defending the struggled. That the integral belief of human rights activism is not only a shelter towards one or some particular groups of defenseless, but a charged strike offensively breaking the traditional forms of civil societal norms throughout the globe (Brown 453). With such rigor of self-empowerment that ascends within the self-humane being, the overcome decision of taking an initiative to take upon the struggle, candidly individualizes itself into partaking a contentious approach of not only playing a one-sided role of defense. Such advance phases into breaking the presumptive limited role of human rights activism, shifting gears of a determined objective containing a reasonable principle by then not having any regard in the consequences that could lead to a misfortune (Brown 455).

The energetic perseverance of one’s self ground acceptance human rights activism, brings into mind of how its performance plays a role economically. Having on one side the contribution of goods given towards those who expect to receive it because of their dire needs and then at the same time as much that is given, how its handouts can financially promote an enhanced commercial guarantee of not dwindling (Brown 456). It may seem that the steps towards having an understanding in agreeing in an arrangement in receiving the support may have taken to acknowledge the rights of those who have been suppressed. The acts of “kindness” of the state powers may have been understood in supporting the purpose of action of the activist, not realizing that perhaps it is a form of silencing the victims of whom may have felt a victory to covertly restrict the purpose of fighting for human rights.

The introduction of “civil society” as mentioned by Carole Pateman in the book The Sexual Contract, displays a change of interpretation which men have disguised the social contract to politically and by form of law to control women. Such interpretation gives a disguise of freedom towards women in believing or trusting men. It was not always the case when much was set forth from within the realm of what is naturalistically their right. Yet, the extension of such rights, to be equally leveled at the status of men, comes with a limit even if the woman would be stamped by taking the last name of the husband. That the idea of patriarchy itself, not diminished, would transform in a “modern form of patriarchal social order” (Pateman 1).

A social civil structure placed by men, at which it is not valuable for them at that time, to then ignore without importance the quarrel between the women’s natural sphere and the public civil sphere within society. The natural sphere, also known as a private one, more in favor towards the women, within the views of society, sets women to enter in a marriage of what one could say of emotional feeling. Yes, it may seem to be the case that a woman has gained an equal place aside the husband, that the husband has given her his last name because of love. That as a loving wife who will bare to have the many children, nonetheless unknowingly, will become a hiddenly dominated, of which she will encounter from the man. Once entered at such phase, so begins the stage of what one could explain as a public civil sphere. Where it is determined of what “civilized society’s” expectations are from the wife through the eyes of men. A stroke of penmanship that places the woman to have no voice and saying except for the sole purpose of using the body at any way possible. Such assumptions then place the women to be in a contractual marriage, a sort of mandated fulfilling of a somewhat similar slave. Having unwanted sex, doing the chores, caring and baring as many as children the man says and how ever treatment the man might feel towards her, baring the maltreatment just because that’s what’s society has placed and at the same time ignores.

The fusion of women at a world that “is and is not civil society”, demonstrates how men have found a form to still possess women as possessions that can be manipulated to their own selfish desires without the consent of the women.

Good evening to all, I would like to introduce myself as Bryant Romano. I am a proud father of two beautiful children. An educator at a public middle school in Harlem whose main duties of the day consist of supporting children with special needs to overcome the challenges that they may encounter, academically, physically, socially and emotionally. This is my second continuous semester from a long break, at which such time off from academia, resulted in the achievement of my wife earning her Bachelor’s degree at City College Center for Workers Education. The main interest in taking this course has to do with fulfilling part of the electives in the academic concentration of History, Politics and Society. It was also a matter of choosing between this course or another. I’ve also taken this course as a fulfillment of knowledge that would cover the different aspects of rights that I’ve learned about. I’ve encountered the many mentioned involvements of female organizations that have supported other organizations in their goals, but never had the chance of analyzing them as a central point.

One of the legal documents of which captivated a groundwork for human rights in the present day, is of an over two-hundred-year old document known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The author Lynn Hunt, mentions in her introductory book of Inventing Human Rights, it’s valued startup debate of generalized expressions of thought. The document sounds that to have a government well founded, it must be enlightened, of having a basic understanding with society, and solemn in respecting the rights of man. (Hunt 16). Not only does it have to be fixated for the benefit of “man” as of its definition of gender, but to the humanistic angle of all types of mankind. As in present day some governments have and are working to include “every society”, from all types of races, genders, religions and socio-economical statuses. Yet, the idea of allowing such rights to be allowed or given, emerged in the past a concern of weather it would bring a more logical understanding to the population or create a disturbance in the traditional ways, moreover creating divisions. Nowadays, such points of views in division have appeared even after composing human rights for groups. Such issues even if they are “self-evident” in the basis of suffering, still need to be emphasized in volume. Such is the case of social media being that tool of which many rely on to gain information. Yet, when there is the lack of understanding the obvious, that of which is processed by the human brain as a fact, that participant lack empathy (Hunt 28). If such pair would not go side by side, which is our humanistic sense of brand of being human, then torture would not be eliminated for those who have endured in the past.