http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-trump-women-comment-0f8ca588-9072-11e6-bc00-1a9756d4111b-20161012-story.html
I was really interested to find out how young women who support Trump reacted to his comments about sexual assault this past week. This article provides some candid responses that I did not expect, for example, "I think it's far worse for women to say these things about a woman than a man to say these things. As a woman, you know how important it is to be heard, and if something happens against you sexually, you would expect other women to speak up and protect you.".
Wren,
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this article. I found it incredibly interesting, and it illustrated to me the different standards that both men and women can hold other women up to. Often, it's easy for feminists to pose the oppression of women, the stuffing into categories that they go through, as simply an act that men take part in. But it's important to remember that women hold each other to these sometimes unrealistic standards as well.
The most interesting part of the article for me was the quote that you referenced. It is supposed to come off as a chastising Clinton for not fulfilling her duty 'as a woman,' but to me it came across more like an excuse that we hand out to some men for their lack of empathy. Because we share this experience of womanhood, women are expected to perform some social duties for other women-- an expectation of 'sisterhood.' We often see this rhetoric shifted when we appeal to men, with the relation shifting to 'what if it was your mother, your sister, your daughter, etc.' All of these appeals are frustrating to me because your empathy and activism should not be dependent on your relationship to the women who are suffering and oppressed, whether this relationship is in 'sisterhood' or familiarity. We should care about their suffering because they are people who do not deserve what they are going through. And men and women should equally be held to this standard.