America is a special country. the success of the U.S. has been cemented by the foundations of our founding father who set forth an experiment in self government and declared independence for all. the U.S. declares equality and liberty for all human under the rule of law, cherished by the people, for the people. does this mean that the U.S. holds a special seat with the rest of the world? do american values affect the rest of the world? or do these values make people hate us even more with our western ways?
today i believe our role, thus far, has been to defend the american constitution with the common interest of protecting the people along with seeking peaceful relations with other countries. i believe america feels they have to uphold a sense of morality, social justice and promote economic growth with other countries (even though sometimes we suck at it ourselves). america's goal is to advance as much as possible and oppress other countries from surpassing us (another great american characteristic).
one subject, that is touchy for me, is womens rights. we had a brief yet intense debate among the class. womens rights within the united states is no where close to where it needs to be, however it is the leading country in the world that advocates womens independence. without the advancement and complete liberation of women, we can not expect to advance to our fullest potential. the argument said in class was "women who decide to dismiss furthur education and jump into starting a family, becoming a housewife, how do americans look at those women? how are those women viewed in our society?" although i am all for the right to choose your own destiny, i can help but feel there is a lack of knowledege with these women. if only our women and young daughter were furthur informed on the possibilities of their capabilities, i believe we would see an amazing increase in womens independence.
by dissecting the gender inequalities, men's patriarchy and the mysogynistic views that oppress women in this nation is to open our eyes to the social stratification and internal colonization that has been pinning women down for centuries. Americans have constructed womens identities around an image of what a typical women is like. these gender roles not only affect women but men as well. gender construction is formed on the basis of the roles in which you play in society, which in turn is our individual roles, or commonly known as our "identities". these gender roles assigned to women throughout history have been re-written by men and has set the tone for the underlying bigotry within this country, which is apparent and pumped into our everyday lives. this is to keep a patriarchal status quo to belittle womens abilities and maintain an attitude, behavior and intolerance towards women. this irrational fear is nothing more than than hypocritical justification and realization of social hierarchies and privledges bestowed upon men, by men. by defaulting men we are able to hide, protect and displace accountability.when men suffer, women suffer. i like to call it the internal war of testosteron. just as it is difficult for men to question their foundations on which their fragile egos lye, it is even more infuriating when a women challenges it. our society has set up and reward and punishment system through peers, media and social institutions to question what is "appropriate".
my point is if we keep on conditioning women and deny the information available to women that there is much more to a women than her womb, we can then start to make great advances and possibly solve world problems. :)
ok could go on and on.....but i wont.
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