Post 4: Women's Police

Whenever there is a debate on women’s issues, one topic will always find it’s way into the conversation no matter what… a woman’s body. It is as if the body has never belonged to the woman who is supposed to own it because everyone else has taken it apart. The oldest issue, still prominent today, is the abortion and reproductive rights debate. Women were admired for, some may say jailed, by the fact that they could reproduce and bring life onto this Earth, and yet society jumped on the chance to control that as well. Numerous laws and lawsuits tell an insidious story of women being robbed of their body by being told how to use it and which women could. For instance, in the 1940’s hospital committees approved women for legal abortions at the hospital’s discretion. Jennifer Nelson describes the consequences in her book “Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement,” writing, “By bestowing access to abortion on ‘deserving’ patients, doctors could ensure that pregnant women did not become masters over their own fertility. Some physicians even required that a woman be sterilized after her hospital abortion, punishing her for her transgression—engaging in sex without wanting a child—by eliminating her right to motherhood.” (8) The fight for our bodies continues to be a political debate at the hands of white men in suits. The Guttmacher Institute reports that more abortion restrictions were implemented throughout 2011 to 2013 than in the decade prior. As women are seen making big strides in America in the workplace, the most fundamental part of our lives… our body, is being watched, debated, and caged.

Pro-choice women protesting.

The same process of policing women has spread to other aspects of our lives in a more accepted way, through media and advertising. The ‘rules’ are enforced no longer solely from the people in suits, but from our friends and family, and many times ourselves. The media is so pervasive in everyone’s lives that it is not seen as a dangerous medium, and even when it is, it is physically inescapable so the messages it sends cannot help but be internalized. This is especially true of adolescents; the prime target for many advertisements. Much of the policing begins at this stage, Jean Kilbourne explains how: “Most teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure and find it difficult to resist or even to question the dominant cultural messages perpetuated and reinforced by the media. Mass communication has made possible a kind of national peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards, as well as community values and standards” (129). Advertisements should no longer be considered a passive medium because its messages become values that can carry on through adulthood. The message becomes that women should not be taken seriously.

The obsession with taking apart women’s bodies and removing women’s agency over their own bodies has detrimental effects on other aspects of her daily life. One of the aspects greatly affected is women’s progression in the workplace. It is extremely difficult for women to be taken seriously when employers’ perception of women is so distorted. Moreover, when women are pregnant, a natural occurrence and what society deems a norm for women, they are often times no longer considered a candidate for promotions or deemed competent by her peers.

The media dangerously mixes sex and gender. Judith Butler writes, “When the relevant “culture” that “constructs” gender is understood in terms of such a law or set of laws, then it seems that gender is as determined and fixed as it was under the biology-is-destiny formulation. In such a case, not biology, but culture, becomes destiny” (11). This has been the consequence of policing over made up gender norms. The sex of human beings is no longer significant because culture will determine the gender for everyone, and how they should be treated because of it. Our biology's natural essence is trumped by rules and regulations.

Cartoon depicting how the media feeds us all we know while we
passively take it.

Media only seems to be getting worse with time. Its messages are blatant, and it is accepted because it becomes comical to poke fun at women’s issues on television and other forums speaking to the masses. The lighthearted approach to these issues has caused people to turn a blind eye to the real consequences behind the jokes. This makes it so that anyone that points out problems in the media is seen as radical, and too uptight, or even paranoid, all of which I have heard as I speak about the things I have learned in this class. The media has found a way to desensitize the public and the almost sure way to wash oneself of these effects is to learn to be media literate. Awareness is key. As Susan Bordo explains everyone ‘knows’ that advertisers use all sorts of methods to get the consumer to purchase and that the images they use are not real, but if it is not “meaningful or usable knowledge” then this ‘knowing’ is just as foolish as not knowing at all! (104) Let’s know and use that knowledge as a tool for a greater purpose.

Work's Cited

Bordo, Susan. "Hunger as Ideology." Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California, 1993. 99-105. Print.

Butler, Judith. "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire." Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1990. 1-46. Print.

Kilbourne, Jean. "The More You Add The More You Subtract: Cutting Girls Down To Side." Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. New York: Touchstone, 1999. 128-154. Print.

Nash, Elizabeth, Rachel Benson Gold, Andrea Rowan, Gwendolyn Rathbun, and Yana Vierboom. "Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: 2013 State Policy Review." State Trends for 2013 on Abortion, Family Planning, Sex Education, STIs and Pregnancy. Guttmacher Institute. Web.

Nelson, Jennifer. "Introduction: From Abortion to Reproductive Rights."Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York UP, 2003. 1-20. Print.

Srinivas, SIri. "In Their Own Words: Women Who Faced Demotions after Maternity Leave." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 6 Jan. 2015. Web.