Consumerism/Fundamentalism/Idealism

This is an excerpt from my journal for the class I'm taking on Globalization and Gender... food for thought... not so eloquently executed... but it's a budding idea :)

During lecture on Tuesday, the professor mentioned Hezbollah and the reason it was so hard to extricate that organization from the communities it inhabits being that it provides much needed services to those communities, in effect taking the place of an impotent or weak government. Having read the article from Mother Jones on gold trade in the Congo, an unsettling thought occurred to me… If an organization like Hezbollah, albeit with ideals based on fundamental Islam, can command such loyalty from the community based on its willingness to provide basic needs for the people, why couldn’t… why DOESN’T a corporation such as Anglogold Ashanti attempt to cultivate the same kind of loyalty? And what would the ramifications of successfully doing so be?

If you think about it, the cost of providing those desperately needed goods and services is minimal in a country like DRC… say they set up a school that taught the kind of ideals/information that AA wanted to put forward. They could take over the world! I know it’s a bit of a stretch to think of consumerism and fundamentalism or idealism on the same plane like this, but it already works in the US. A current example would be the coal mines in West Virginia. Even with their horrible track record for safety and the fact that coal energy is grossly polluting the environment, people in the communities where the mining companies operate fiercely defend those companies… because without them, their communities would have no resources at all. They’ve convinced the communities that their lives depend on the protection of the mining companies’ rights to conduct business there, extract resources for a profit from there.

Moderata Fonte and Veronica Franco: A comparison of class perspectives

For those who wish to read ... some of my work from a class on Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance...

Women writers of the Italian Renaissance, such as Moderata Fonte and Veronica Franco, faced a challenging environment of patriarchal domination and expectations as they attempted to practice their craft. Their goals were similar: to make their voices heard, to write about issues that were important to them, and to influence the minds of men and women in favor of the position of women in that time period. Their perspectives on the influence of men and their ideas about what were the highest forms of being vary greatly. Class plays a major role in altering the perspectives from which Fonte and Franco, who lived and wrote in Venice during the same time, viewed the world and men.

Fonte was born into an upper class family in 1555 (Stortoni and Lillie, 209). As with all women during that time, she was not allowed to go to school, but gleaned an education from her brother’s lessons. She had a hunger for knowledge and sought it any way she could. Fonte usually wrote herself into her works, likely an attempt to be heard in a time where women were meant only to be seen. Writing was a way to reveal herself and her ideas. She wrote a great deal in her youth, but was forced to give it up once she was married. Stortoni and Lillie don’t indicate that her husband disapproved of her writing. However, it can be inferred from the writings of Alberti on family life during the Italian Renaissance that her wifely duties left little time for writing.

One of the most fundamental attributes sought from an upper class woman during the Italian Renaissance was her dowry. Deals were brokered by parents, “matches” made to link together wealthy and powerful families. An unmarried woman of the upper class was likely to find her life and livelihood in jeopardy, as women were sometimes killed to keep the dowry money in the family. Marriage meant that the money was claimed, whether or not there was any affection between the partners involved.

Fonte found herself caught between two worlds, longing for the “freedom of her youth” and the need to fulfill the expectations of her station (Stortoni and Lillie, 211). On the one hand, being unmarried meant that Fonte would have ample time to write, but none of the security that a marriage and a husband provide. On the other hand, having a husband meant that she had a new set of expectations laid on her, not to mention the rearing of three children. It is indicated that Fonte was very bitter about the fact that her “household responsibilities took her away from her studies and literary endeavors” (Stortoni and Lillie, 211). For Fonte, men were always requiring something of her, either her money, her labor, or her attention. Her bitterness and angst toward men, revealed in her work “The merits of women, in which it is clearly shown how women are more worthy and perfect than men,” are largely due to her class perspective.

The prose portion at the beginning of the excerpt from “The merits of women” that Stortoni and Lillie included in their text describes marriage as “the pain.” Lucrezia says Corinna, Fonte’s persona and the focal character in the work, is “happy and most blessed” along with those who choose to follow her way of life. Virtuous acts performed with God given talents bring great joy, according to Lucrezia, and may make Corinna immortal. She is viewed as free to study religious and earthly texts, leading “a celestial life” that rejects the world of men entirely. Corinna is encouraged to write a guide for “the poor maidens” exhorting them to embrace their maidenhood and not be eager to shed it. The goal of opening women’s eyes to the evils of marriage and men is seen as serving God and the world. (Stortoni and Lillie, 215)

Corinna then sings a song. The first line, “A free heart makes its home within my breast,” indicates she is an unmarried woman. The next line, “servant to no one but myself alone,” shows that Fonte thinks of marriage as servitude. She lifts up modesty, courtesy, virtue, and chastity as her nourishment. She claims to serve God and resents being “wrapped in human veil” so unnatural and restricting (Stortoni and Lillie, 217). Her view of the world and its “perfidious ways which carelessly deceive the simple souls,” is contemptuous and indicative of her desire to prove that society has done women wrong by excluding them or disallowing them the right to pursue intellectual and philosophical passions. Her thoughts are pure and high, “trophies for [her] will, not gifts of fate,” and her fear is that the “deceitful ways” of man will repress her voice and her writing, denying her any chance for “fame and glory after death” (Stortoni and Lillie, 217).

Veronica Franco, born to a Venetian courtesan in 1546, paralleled Fonte in many respects. Living and writing in the same city at the same time, Franco and Fonte knew many of the same scholars and literary experts. Franco faced the same challenge of being a woman and desiring to be heard in the world by men and women alike. However Franco, rather than seeking to withdraw from the world of men, inserted herself into it as a means to pursuing fame and glory and a voice in the intellectual arena.

Franco’s chosen profession of courtesan can be seen as an embrace of the system in an effort to have an impact on it. Her other choice would have been a life of servitude, ignorance, and poverty. By choosing to please men, she elevated herself to a level that allowed her the freedom to exercise her ability to write and influence the happenings of the time. For Franco, men represented the doorway to the life she wanted.

Franco remarks on the injustice of society in repressing women in her “Terza Rima 24,” saying that “this does not come from any fault of ours, because though we fall short of men’s robustness, we are the same in mind and intellect.” She acknowledges the troubles of women, saying “poor female sex, you are forever troubled with evil fortune, held in base subjection and forced to live deprived of liberty!” She lifts up women as greater than men in mind and ability, claiming that their modesty holds them back.

Franco says that by being humble and submitting to men, by viewing pride as a sin, women “[reduce themselves] to vassalage.” She argues that rather than claiming modesty as a virtue with regard to feminine intellect “if she but wished to prove her value in power of mind, she could far excel the men, not merely to prove herself their equal” (Stortoni and Lillie, 207). Franco urges women to have a voice in the only arena that exists, encouraging women to participate in the world of men. Her argument is that by withdrawing from the world, “[treating] men coldly and with bitterness,” women do themselves a disservice, saying “they freely have surrendered all earthly rule, leaving it up to men” (Stortoni and Lillie, 207). Franco’s position is opposite that of Fonte’s, encouraging participation in the intellectual and political spheres of the time rather than separation from it.

By removing herself from the world of men in order to find the freedom to express herself, Fonte reveals that she is tired of the expectations placed upon women to bear children and keep house and bring the dowry. Her standpoint, based on her class, is that men always want something from her and it is better to be separate from them in order to focus on what is most important. Franco came from a line of prostitutes, not by any stretch of the imagination a part of the upper class. Her only pathway to knowledge and an audience for her writing was through the world of men. By virtue of her class, she learned to find a balance between catering to and taking advantage of the desires and expectations that men and society place on her, and so earned her freedom.

Possessing the Secret of Joy

I read Possessing the Secret of Joy, by Alice Walker, this weekend. I couldn't put it down. I was supposed to be writing a comparison paper on Italian poetry from the Renaissance. Instead I was reading a fictional account of a woman's struggle to cope with the emotional impact of female genital mutilation (FGM) or as some cultures call it "female circumcision." (FYI: I find the latter description to be too clinical to describe the ritualistic process of desexing female children)

I was mesmerized, haunted, and completely drawn into the pain of the main character. Yes, the practice is foreign to a Western white woman, and for that matter horrifying... but what amazed me was Walker's artistic weaving in of social and psychological issues to the act of FGM that come back to issues present in society today that plague even one such as myself.

FGM has taken up residence in my consciousness most recently because of my Women's Studies class I'm taking at UC Davis. I have found myself compelled to know more, to understand more, and to advocate for women where possible. What I did not expect (but I should have) was to come up against my own darkness in the process.

The next few months and the paper I hope to write about this journey should be ... interesting to say the least... enlightening, I hope... one step at a time.

Personal statement

I wrote the following as a personal narrative for my application to the Gender and Global Issues post-baccalaureate program at UC Davis. There's no competition... I'm automatically accepted... but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless.

I grew up in the Deep South, the daughter of a minister. I was taught the value of self-reliance, and that all people deserve respect and basic rights. I grew up under the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I firmly believed during those young years of my life that if I kept my head down and acted with integrity, others would treat me the same way. That philosophy seemed like the answer to the world’s troubles. If others would follow the same rule, then their lives would begin to change for the better. If I had never left my home town, I would probably still fit neatly into the mould that my upbringing created. I am sure that I push the minister’s boundaries now with my views of who deserves which rights.

Coming from these very conservative beginnings, it might seem that I am treading water in unfriendly seas. I believe I felt that way at first. However, the more I come to know people, the more their voices break into my sphere of understanding, the more I feel that we’re all bound together with an obligation to hold one another up.

In college, I met a young woman from Kenya who opened my eyes to the conflict in Sudan and the atrocities there. I saw what I had been sheltered from or oblivious to in my youth, the indiscriminate persecution of innocents. The more I became aware, the more I saw people pressed down, rights stripped, lives taken. At first I tried to reconcile this reality with the theories I had been taught growing up. Why couldn’t they just do the right thing and begin to see their lives turn right? I began to see that kind of black and white, cause and effect mentality was impossible. I realized that there are many people in the world who need someone to speak for and empower them, to give them hope and strength. I wanted to do something to make a difference.

Another theme that emerged in my life during college was feminism. Of course, this was not in its purest form, but I have always had a firm belief in self-reliance and the strength and power of women and this made an impression on people. I spent time encouraging the freshmen women on my floor during my senior year to pursue their passions and seek their self-worth in other places than the traditional gender roles lend themselves.

My life since college has been a slow emergence from the cocoon of sheltered self-centeredness. One step at a time, usually through the means I have available at the time, I have been coming out into the world with a desire to affect those around me. If at all possible, every day I reach out a hand to encourage or lift up the person next to me, no matter their gender or sexual orientation.

Last year, as a part of my job here at UC Davis, I was asked to write an article on women and wine for the university alumni magazine. I welcomed the opportunity to learn about the amazing women who are shining in this male-dominated field. As a result of that assignment, I realized that I have always had a passion for empowering women and a desire to celebrate our achievements. My goal in pursuing this certificate is to gain a solid base of theory to go with the rumblings and beliefs that stir in my spirit. I would like to write more about the power and presence of women in the world, and I feel that having a solid background in theory will help me gain perspective and credibility should my words come into question. I am hopeful that this certificate could offer me the beginning of that solid background.