Election 2016: Power, Privilege and Voting

Articles by Soloway and NYT on Clinton's voice
10/16/16


I chose to read the two articles, one by Jill Soloway the other by Amy Chozick


In the first article, gender is shown by these so called locker room talks. Men talk behind women's backs in this locker room talk and make comments about them. Men have always had the power over the women and this is why they can brush it off and say they were talking about nothing. They can get away with this "toxic" talk because they are males. Even the greatest of men can perform locker talk because of their masculinity. Soloway says in her article, "Because it's here, in these gendered rooms, where men not only learn-but also learn to tolerate-this objectizing of women"(Soloway 3). There is the gender issue right there of male over female.


In the second article, gender is shown when Clinton feels that she needs to raise her voice to be heard. There is nothing wrong with raising your voice when speaking to a crowd but for a female, this is considered wrong because only men do that. Well, that is completely wrong. What is the issue of a woman raising her voice during a debate? The issue is that it is believed that only men do that and we women never yell and are supposed to keep our voices down. "'In today's America, when a woman is loud
it's 'shouting', when a man yells=enthusiasm'"(Joyce Karam 2).
When will it be that a woman yells, it will be considered enthusiasm too?
Here is a video(little less than a year old) that shows some percentages of
women and politics.

The U.S. is definitely a land of limitations as Kristof discussed in his article. He discussed more of people lives and beginnings but these articles can connect to the topic of limitations and gender(women)being surrounded in a land of limitations.

Another reading that I can connect gender to is Allan Johnson's piece on Power, Privilege, and Difference. I remember reading about the wheel he talked about(the diversity wheel) and was questioning how it would be if you woke up the opposite gender and how it would feel. He also asks how people would treat you. In today's society where gender is so split, you would likely be made fun of. If we did not discriminate gender, maybe it would not matter if you woke up the opposite gender!

Peggy McIntosh's piece also reflects gender. It reflects gender by the means of privilege. She states, "Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged"(McIntosh 1). That shows gender in the first sentence of her piece.

When will men and women be equal as opposed to the scale above where men are above women?