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Once after a family lunch my mother and I started cleaning up and doing the dishes, immediately after we started my father left the room. When I confronted him about it his answer was "that's how I was raised, while I was growing up my sisters and mother where the ones who cleaned up, it was never my job" Why do I consider this an example of oppression? First of all there is this social rule that women are supposed to be in charge of the house work, they are supposed to clean up and organize everything at home, while the husband is not responsible for anything that has to do with taking care of the home. Second it is because we are women that that is expected from us, my father being a men is no expected to clean up or do the dishes, while my mother and I just because we are women were expected by him to do it without asking for his help or be bother by the fact that he was not going to do anything. Third the double bind are clear here if a women stays at home, takes care of her family and follows this social norm society will judge her, because she is depending on her husband for financial support and is not independent enough, but if she decides she will not be in charge of the house and leaves that job to her husband or any other person society will think of her as a bad wife and mother, that doesn't care about her family's well being. Finally this idea of the perfect wife that takes care of her home while she waits for her husband to provide harms all women, because no matter what we decide we will be judge by this standard, even if we fill it or not.

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I was raised in a catholic, all-girls school, so for the teachers there it was very important that every girl followed a certain “check list” when it came to the way in which she acted in front of others. We where supposed to be ladies, respectful, wait until marriage to have sex, faithful believers in god (we even had mass once a week, and if we tried to skip it we got detention). My school’s goal was to place in all of our heads the idea of how the perfect woman should be, and we believed it, every single one of us tried to be that girl. They even had a price at the end of the year to the girl of each grade that fulfilled more this characteristics throughout the school year. Why do I see a problem here? Because I was raised to believe that the perfect woman never had sex with a man other than her husband, she dressed, talked and acted a certain way, and any women that did not follow this rules for me was a “whore” or a “slut”, my privilege, that of being raised in a private school, and a certain life style lead me to be an active participating individual in oppression against my own gender. I was unable to realice the damage I was creating and continued to judge the way other girls lived their life. It wasn’t until I got to college that I understood what I’ve been doing wrong, I was being an active participant in oppression without even realizing what I was doing.

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Whenever I’m with a kid it usually freaks me out, I’m not very good with them. When I have to baby sit the younger ones in my family it always makes me anxious because I don’t connect very well with them. never thought much of it until one day I was with my sister, and we were in this place with a little girl, and I saw how natural it came to her the taking care of this child. She literally had no problem in making her laugh, entreating her and keeping her interested in whatever they were doing. After that I started cuestionan my future motherhood skills, and wondering if I was ever going to be maternal enough and what would happen when I had kids. I’m sure this is a worry that not many men have, but why is it? According to Noddings it’s because as women we are expected to care, to have this natural instinct that makes us sensible and good with people, this is what supposedly makes all of us fitted to be mothers, because society has raised us to believe that it is natural for a women to have a motherly instinct, just by being born you are granted this beautiful gift of caring. And when you are told that a that is one of the characteristics that define a women, you worry when a moment like what happened to me happens. Because you should be good at that, you should care about the little child, and according to Noodings here is when ethical caring occurs, and we women have to make this effort to care for things that naturally do not just to avoid being judge by the resto of the world.

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According to Ruddick the mothering role in the development of her child is fundamental. And in order for this role to be fulfilled the goal of the parent must be to meet his/hers childs specific needs. Today I’m going to talk about why I feel like my mother has done a wonderfull job and has checked all the work that according to Ruddick is needed to be a "good mother". How without knowing she has done all three things that Ruddick talks about: Preservative love, Nurturance and Training. Preservative love is preserving one childs life, taking care of the kid so that it eats accordingly, develops and learns skills that will someday hep him/her survive. In the specific case of my mother the fact that I´ve been alive for 21 years despite everything shows that not only did she manage to keep me alive during my early years, feeding me, taking me to the doctor when I got sick, giving me baths, giving me a home, but she taught me how to do it on my own when I eventually grew up, she raised me to be a person that eats well, sleeps well and avoids potentially dangerous situations.  When it comes to Nurturance Ruddick says that it involves "fostering a child's growth and development, going beyond preservative love" my mother has always supported me no matter what, when I have a new interest she tries to lear about it so we can talk, if for example a new hobby I’m taking requires specific resources like paint, or a program in my computer she helps me get them and supports me 100%, not only with things I like but also she tries to show me new things so that I can open my perspective in life, one time she took all of us to a Japanese opera presentation, not the most fun but she has always been completely committed to fostering our growth and development as human beings. Finally when it comes to Training I’ve mentioned earlier in this post that she has thought me how to survive in this world, but no only that, I’ve learned from her how to make friends, to treat other people with respect no matter what they do or who they are, to try and understand other perspectives and always try to help when I see a person in need. She has given me the instructions required to survive and thrive in the social world we live in now a days.

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Week 4, Lesbian Ethics (31 August-5 September)

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Week 4, Lesbian Ethics (31 August-5 September)

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According to lesbian ethics, lesbians experiment a very specific type of oppression (not necessarily the type where they are enslaved or exploited economically) they experiment the denial of their existence. For some people lesbianism is just a fase heterosexual women experiment during their life time, it happens when a heterosexual women decides she hates men and immediately “for revenge” to the male kind starts liking women. Or even worse people believe a woman makes the choice to become a lesbian when she can’t get a man. It is in this systematic denial of their sexuality and their decisions that most lesbians experiment oppression. A perfect example of this is the TV show Faking It, the show talks about two girl-best friends that in order to become popular star faking a romantic relationship, they start acting as if they were a lesbian couple, everything gets complicated when a boy starts falling for one of them, and she likes him back too. The problem begins because the relationship could not be completely denied because it would make them loose their “social status”, so in order to finish the relationship (without people knowing it was all fake) they decide to say that it was “just a fase”, that they were trying to experiment with girls but that a they realized that they liked boys. Here we can see how even on TV the lesbian role is represented as girls just trying to have fun with other girls, but eventually every lesbian becomes heterosexual again, and people watching this type of shows will end up believing this lies. What happens when a girl that’s struggling with her sexuality sees these type of shows and believes that what she’s feeling is just something that will go away. Lesbians need a better representation on TV, roles that show what it really means to be a lesbian, and that there is nothing wrong with it, so that in the future when a girl really starts falling in love with her best friend she can understand what is going on and how to act with her feelings.

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Week 4, Heterosexualism (31 August-5 september)

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Week 4, Heterosexualism (31 August-5 september)

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For Hoagland Heterosexualism is a system where one of its members is submissive to another member of the opposite sex. Its main purpose is to control over women and subordinates groups. Men are not the only ones to blame for this system, in order for it to work all of us participate in it, by accepting that in order to live a good life we must do what a man wants, in the bedroom, with our bodies, with our careers, etc. Men just assume this role o “protectors” of women in order to mask their control over them. A perfect example of this control over women is the movie 500 Days of Summer, it talks about a man that falls in love with this women called Summer, who from the beginning tells him she’s not looking for a relationship, and that she’s focusing on herself for the moment. The guy completely ignores what she’s saying and focuses on “conquering her”, by inviting her to dates, and slowly showing her that he’s a “good guy” and that he won’t harm her so she must be with him. By doing this he is completely invalidating what she clearly states she wants, because “he knows better” as a man he should decide what she wants and she must follow his wishes, she’s just a poor woman who has no idea what she wants. He projects on to her what he hopes for a women to be, and by projecting this he completely forgets who he has in front of him and invalidates everything she has told him. By the end of the movie Summer is showed as this heart-less character that did not appreciate the guy that was interested in her, as if her inly job was to fulfill the dreams of this man and leave on the side what she really wanted. This movie clearly shows what heterosexualism is all about, that women are supposed to be subbordinates to men and put their needs last just to maintain them happy, and when a women resists this domination she’s depicted as “the evil one” or a “crazy person” for having her own mind and putting her dreams first.

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According to Hoagland power can be divided into two categories “power over” which is a matter of dominance and subordination. This is the type of power normally recognized, in heterosexual ethics power=control, in order to be an effective leader one needs to be in control over one-self and others and with this power leaders tend to mold people to their will. The other type of power is “power from within” which is the power of ability and choice, is a type of power that transforms you, giving you tools so you can move into the world how you want to, taking you own choices without depending on something external. An example of power over that happened to me was: some time ago I broke up with a boyfriend, after taking the decision Iw as hesitating if it was the right choice, and went to my (male) best friend for help, I told him the situation, why and how we broke up and the second thoughts I was having, his immediate response was: “you shouldn’t do that” “Your relationship was horrible” “listen to me, you really don’t want to go back there”. It felt like if he was saying that he knew better than me what to do with my life, and because of that I should do just as he said. This is a perfect example of power over, because my friend was using dominance so that I would bend to his will, he didn’t like my ex-boyfriend and because of that he was imposing his idea and leading me into taking a choice that was not mine but his. As a result of that if my ex-boyfriend did eventually appear again in the picture I would not be able to take a decision on my own, I dependen on my friends  perspective of my relationship, and what he wanted in order to make a decision. A way in which this situation would have been a situation in which “power from within” was used would have been if my friend instead of telling me what to do would have told me “The only one that really knows what was going on in the relationship is you, and the only one that will eventually live the aftermath of your decision is you” “do what’s best for you, based on everything that has happened with this boy”, my friend would have been encouraging me to reflect on what the relationship had been and in that way I would have been responsible on my own actions without him forcing me to his will. By taking my own choice I wouldn’t depend on something externar in order to make my own choices about my love life.

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Hoagland poses the idea that in order to separate ourselves from heterosexualism we must not work on autonomy, for her autonomy can refer to self-subordination, due to the `nomos´that refers to rule and is used in religion to the subordination to the divine law, and also it refers to self-isolation, because an autonomous being is seen as a persona that has no ties and is self-sufficient, avoiding interaction with others and not being affected by them. So Hoagland proposes a new self. She proposes Autokoenony “the self in community” with basically means a being that is capable of solitude and being with others, a person that is capable of making decision seeing oneself as part of a community, and how those decisions affect the community as well as the individual. This concept of Autokeonony poses the dilemma that one might depende on someone and that’s very different from being dependent on that particular person. If you depend on someone and that person is not capable  of keeping a commitment I can carry on without that person, but when you are dependent on someone and that someone is not able to keep a commitment I fall apart, and can’t act if it’s not with this person. A perfect example of this are romantic relationships, I used to have a friend that was completely dependent on her partner, if he was not there to help her make a decision she was not able to do it, if he couldn’t go out she decided she didn’t want to see us because he was not there. If he was mad at her her whole world would fall apart and she was not able to pay attention in school or be present with her family and friends. She was dependent on him in order to know what music to listen to, what types of movies to watch, what type of clothes to wear, where to be and even whom to be friend with. As Hoagland proposes she was not the subject of her choices, not making them and completely depending on her partner for their opinion on every aspect of her life. Falling apart or preventing to do certain things if the other person was not around or did not approve.

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Week 6, Integrating emotions and desire  (14-18 September)

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Week 6, Integrating emotions and desire  (14-18 September)

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Hoagland proposes that in order to act according to our values we need to understand that reason and emotion are linked and that we need is to integrate them given them both the same importance when making a decision. Society tends to tell people that emotions are not the ones you should trust when making a decision, because when you use your emotions you’re not in control of the situation you don’t have power over it, and according to heterosexualism power over is the only way in which you can actually be a powerful being. As a medical student this position of putting reason over feelings is very obvious when we are thought how to treat patients, doctors always tell you that you should not make decisions based on feelings when it comes to a medical situation, so you’re supposed to treat each situation only with reason and avoid to be emotionally involved with a patient no matter what happens. This paternalistic relationship that we are told to have with our patients makes us like la insensible or cold people when you’re attending someone. If we as doctors were thought to involve feelings when treating a patient we could be able to see a bigger picture, to understand why the patient needs the treatment done that day, or why they refuse a certain treatment, and in that way we could become better doctors and better humans. Treating our patients in a more integrated way and actually listening to their needs.

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According to Hoagland an important part of heterosexualism is to separate reason from emotion, this is because in order to be in control you can’t be influenced by emotion, and in heterosexualism the most important aspect is to be in complete control. When it comes to the specific case of anger something different happens, anger is used by men to intimidate and control women, but this emotion is completely accepted, men are able to be angry and express that anger however they want and that will not pose as a problem, society will accept that anger and respect it. But when it comes to women if we express our anger we are considered crazy or delusional, men don’t respect our anger and prefer to ignore it, by calling us crazy or diminish it by calling us cute. Never acknowledging our reason for the anger and never taking the time to consider that we have every right to be angry. If we get angry they immediately assume a position of control and try to make it seem as less important, as if we have no right or reason to be angry in the first place. One time I was talking to a male friend about what I’ve learned in this class, more specifically why it is so wrong for men to open doors for women, I was talking about what it really means and how men use it just to pretend they help us so they can say they are “gentlemen”, but when we actually need their help, like with cleaning the dishes, or taking care of the children they completely ignore us and never offer to help. I was actually pretty upset just thinking about examples of this false chivalry and started to become angry, not at my friend but at society and everything we have to face as women. When I stopped talking my friend started giving me his opinion and the said “can I say that? Or men are just so horrible that we can’t even express our opinion because it’s oppressive” and immediately started laughing, completely mocking what I had just said, and trying to make everyone of my arguments seem as if I where exaggerating and a crazy person for being so upset about the topic. This is a perfect example of how men treat women’s anger, they don’t respect it and prefer to make fun of it instead of taking the time to think that our reasons for being angry are more than justified, and when we actually decide to talk about what makes us angry we should be taken seriously, because we have reasons and those reasons should be respected and understood.