(no subject)
So I got in a bad bike accident last sunday and ruptured all the bursa in one knee cap which is a fancy name for swell knee. To put it simply, my bag which I had stupidly slung over my arm instead of my shoulder slipped off my arm and jammed into the wheel. I almost caught myself by slowing the bike down but the momentum threw me over the handle bars and the bike over me. My neighboor brought me over "some special butter" he had made and I ate it the past few days. I've been walking around in a medicated haze till today. Yesterday I wrote this passage with the intention of working on a research paper, but this is what came about instead.
We are on the brink of something cataclysmic.
What is third world feminism? Feminism as a gendered social consciousness cannot be separated from other social constructions or the environment. The quality of life and the status of women in a society is directly influenced by the status of that society.
In looking at categories of difference we must consider the concept of “the third world.” In defining who “third world” people are, we must ask ourselves what is not “the third world,” who are the people of the other two categories? The third world in its sweeping generalization does not take into account diverse geographic locations of difference, primarily it is a word that refers to economic (and subsequent racial oppression) through colonization, imperialism and slavery. When we apply feminism to that concept, then we start to look at the inter workings of the forces that define categories of worldly difference and constructions of gender.
If we believe that feminism should address the needs of women for basic human rights, then we are looking at the entire society or community’s status. Whether it is a woman in the United States who doesn’t have health care or it is an indigenous in Venezuela who has been removed from her land, we are dealing with a climate of economic oppression at a global level. Thus, U.S. third world feminism transcends national boundaries just as U.S. imperialism does. I’ve read one statistic that 10% of the world’s population consumes 90% of the world’s resources. The United States is dependent upon petroleum from other countries to sustain a life style that is by no means sustainable environmentally. Within the United States, neo-liberalism has lead to the privatization of everything and has widened the class divide between the wealthy and poor.
Many of us will never have contact with women in other communities outside of our own or outside of the U.S. However, we have the power to create social change in our own communities and to practice self accountability in our interactions and participation in capitalism. We are on the brink of a changing of the world as we know it. We must change our way of living if we are going to address the oppression of other people, and the survival of our planet.
It’s not just about eating vegetarian and buying organic foods, have you thought about where your food comes from? How many thousands of miles will it take to travel, what was the method of farming, how many resources were consumed in the production of that food. Anarchy is not just a social concept about hierarchy, it’s about sustainability. Does the government have a plan for food distribution if we stop importing all of our produce from other countries? (But you tell yourself it would never get to a climax of crisis before something like that happened.) The reality of the state of government and our dwindling natural resources points to something much more cataclysmic than we are told.
I am in no way intending to “frighten” the reader into hopelessness or a nihilistic attitude. We may have no control over what is going on externally in our lives right now, but the truth is that we have the power to change things in our own lives. We have to observe that we also participate in consumer culture exploits female workers all over the world, and that it is our car driven society that leads to the congenital birth defects of pregnant women in Venezuela. Anarchy is a consciousness movement for people to change their lives.
We are on the brink of something cataclysmic.
What is third world feminism? Feminism as a gendered social consciousness cannot be separated from other social constructions or the environment. The quality of life and the status of women in a society is directly influenced by the status of that society.
In looking at categories of difference we must consider the concept of “the third world.” In defining who “third world” people are, we must ask ourselves what is not “the third world,” who are the people of the other two categories? The third world in its sweeping generalization does not take into account diverse geographic locations of difference, primarily it is a word that refers to economic (and subsequent racial oppression) through colonization, imperialism and slavery. When we apply feminism to that concept, then we start to look at the inter workings of the forces that define categories of worldly difference and constructions of gender.
If we believe that feminism should address the needs of women for basic human rights, then we are looking at the entire society or community’s status. Whether it is a woman in the United States who doesn’t have health care or it is an indigenous in Venezuela who has been removed from her land, we are dealing with a climate of economic oppression at a global level. Thus, U.S. third world feminism transcends national boundaries just as U.S. imperialism does. I’ve read one statistic that 10% of the world’s population consumes 90% of the world’s resources. The United States is dependent upon petroleum from other countries to sustain a life style that is by no means sustainable environmentally. Within the United States, neo-liberalism has lead to the privatization of everything and has widened the class divide between the wealthy and poor.
Many of us will never have contact with women in other communities outside of our own or outside of the U.S. However, we have the power to create social change in our own communities and to practice self accountability in our interactions and participation in capitalism. We are on the brink of a changing of the world as we know it. We must change our way of living if we are going to address the oppression of other people, and the survival of our planet.
It’s not just about eating vegetarian and buying organic foods, have you thought about where your food comes from? How many thousands of miles will it take to travel, what was the method of farming, how many resources were consumed in the production of that food. Anarchy is not just a social concept about hierarchy, it’s about sustainability. Does the government have a plan for food distribution if we stop importing all of our produce from other countries? (But you tell yourself it would never get to a climax of crisis before something like that happened.) The reality of the state of government and our dwindling natural resources points to something much more cataclysmic than we are told.
I am in no way intending to “frighten” the reader into hopelessness or a nihilistic attitude. We may have no control over what is going on externally in our lives right now, but the truth is that we have the power to change things in our own lives. We have to observe that we also participate in consumer culture exploits female workers all over the world, and that it is our car driven society that leads to the congenital birth defects of pregnant women in Venezuela. Anarchy is a consciousness movement for people to change their lives.