Ashlee Durham

3-1-2020

ENG-3298-02

Panel Discussion Paper

            In the world that we live in today it is very easy to overlook issues that you are not personally going through. Women are taught from a young age how to act and what to do. There are gender roles in place and if you are not in those lines you are judged. Girls are supposed to like pink and boys are supposed to like blue. I personally did not realize what all women have to go through everyday around the world until I took this class. You have to understand someone’s culture to understand their beliefs. Everyone is raised different and you have to respect that. Many women are judged every day for what they wear and what they like. You should not be told how you should be; you should be able to choose who you want to be. I will be exploring some articles we went over in class and analyzing them. 

            In class we watched The World Before her by Nisha Pahuja and it made me realize how great we have it here in the United States. This shows two different sides of the women in India. One side is where these women want to make a name for themselves, so they try out for the Miss India pageant. They are judged by every aspect of their bodies in this. In this video, there is a scene where one of the contests is told by her mom that she needs Botox to look younger. All of these girls are young and taught that they are not good enough just the way they are. I can only imagine how big of a tole this pageant takes on their self-confidence. On the other side the other girls are in a camp to train them to be strong and independent. These girls are extremely young. There is a scene when they are marching through town and one girl says, “we have guns and we will kill people” and that really took me by surprise. For someone so young to say that they will kill someone with so much confidence is scary to me. One of the women who helps with the camp explains how her father hits her and he insist that she must get married even though that is not what she wants. She defends her father by saying that he chose to keep her because most girls are killed in their country and she is thankful that he let her live. It is crazy to even think that someone would kill a baby just because of the sex but then again that is their culture and I do not fully understand it. It is not socially acceptable to hit or abuse your family members, but they were just so open about it and didn’t really think anything was wrong with it. She said if I lie or do something wrong, I deserve to be punished. There are safer ways to punish your child other than hitting them. This video was very powerful and impacted my outlook on what it is like to be a woman in India.

            Another article that we read in class that stuck out to me was The Treatment of Bidi Halder by Lahiri. It is not clear what exactly is wrong with Bibi, but it is crazy how she is treated. Bibi doesn’t have anything contagious but is treat like it when one of the women gets pregnant. It states, “The medical risk is too great for an expectant mother to be in contact with a hysterical person.” Everyone has been around her all this time and they are not affected in any way but all of a sudden when someone gets pregnant it is a danger for Bibi to be around them? That is frustrating to me because she is not even treated normal, she is treated with no respect. Finally, Bibi ends up getting pregnant and doesn’t remember anything. Everyone assumes she is abused because they couldn’t believe that anyone could actually want her. Bibi does not owe anyone an explanation and shouldn’t have had assumptions made of her. 

            The last article that we read for class that I will talk about is Mapping the Margins by Crenshaw. It is sad to read about the women and her son who were turned away from the domestic violence support system because they could not speak English well. The women thought her husband was going to kill her and her son, so she fled, and she ended up not having a place to go. These women are already scared enough, and it will set back a lot of people if they don’t even have a place to stay just because they don’t speak English. The system is to worried about rules and regulations than getting these women the help they need. There needs to be resources or translators at these sites so that non-English speakers will not have a problem. They never heard from her again after they turned her away so hopefully her and her son got to safety. Our society needs to support women in every way that they can. 

            It is important for us to understand that everyone comes from a different culture so we can understand why they do the things they do. We also must consider the fact that our society is further along the way with feminism than most societies. A lot of women are shamed for what they wear and called hurtful names, and this is not acceptable and should be changed to positive comments. A lot of people that do not get the opportunity to take a class like this do not fully understand what is going on around the world. If we all speak up and get these issues addressed, it could make a big difference and make others informed. What are some ways that can help spread awareness for some of these issues discussed? Do you think anyone will be willing to change their culture since society is changing and evolving?