Take Space Emma Watson

During our last class session some of our classmates brought up, the idea of women dressing for the attention of men. Followed by the idea that also women dress for themselves. These two sentences that I have started this blog post with, are two ideas that come from the double bind that women fall into. It doesn’t matter a woman, girl, young or old, in the patriarchy we live in, she is a less important part of society. Whether she dressed for herself or to have attention, to me it has heavier implications. The idea that the woman is dressed to impress men is a notion that has come from history, although sometimes it might be the case, the woman will always fall into blame because of it. She will always be judged for it.

Through this societal impression that we have been socialized into to make women objects and not to have governing over their bodies is the main reason why they will never win. And remain in a double bind.

In a more recent light, I want to talk about Emma Watson who was recently named the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador for women. She just recently gave a speech about feminism, what it means to her, as much also how it is an issue that concerns men. Emma Watson claims that this movement for equality calls for men to also step up and fight for women’s equality. It is not just a woman’s issue. In the response of this, members of the website community 4chan have lashed out at the actress and have threatened to leak, and publish her “nudes.” It seems to me that this kind of behavior from these types of men might not all men (to keep some sense of hope in the world.) One of the troubling parts of this behavior is that when someone tries to change the status quo, or maybe just try to change the narrative on an issue, in this case concerning women’s issue. They are shut down once again by men, the ones that don’t seem to grasp their privilege as men, their privilege that they are not the ones in the face of domestic violence. The ones that take up the space as Sandra Lee Bartky mentions in “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.

Comments like these:

“It is real and going to happen this weekend. That feminist bitch Emma is going to show the world she is as much of a whore as any woman.” 

What I have written is nothing new, it might be to those men that lurk in the site 4chan that maybe we should treat women with respect and just, treat them like mere human beings.

I have mentioned above that yes, we have been socialized to feel this way, as a woman I would have never have questioned how much space I don’t take. Bartky, opens this dialogue that before this article I never paid much attention to. Since my college education I have learned a great deal of even more critical thinking about what kind of society I have been born in, what it means to be a woman and live in a patriarchal society.  In the beginning of Sandra Lee Bartky’s piece she mentions the following: “the production of docile bodies requires that an uninterrupted coercion be directed to the very processes of bodily activity, not just their result; this ‘micro physics of power” fragments and partitions the body’s time, its space, and its movement.” (pg 77) Bartky later brings the idea within Foucault’s own theory of docile bodies, that us as humans have always been conditioned to be docile. Through several examples are socially acceptable and then these behaviors are normalized.

This brings me to the idea that we are part of a society that truly emphasizes how we don’t own our bodies. As people we never were conditioned to belong to our bodies. As women, this especially applies to us; we are socialized to be held to a standard of beauty, to be docile and submissive. We are not to take space and therefore serve into our role under the man. As shown by the 4chan users in this article that I have mentioned earlier, it is not right for a women to hold a feminist view, we are not to engaged and want to be treated as a human being. The misconception of the ideas that spread about feminism is another problem of its own. It is their ignorance and privilege that brings them to that idea that woman should be in that subordinate to men. We are to hold ourselves in a manner that doesn’t disrupt the status quo and should just not do anything about it.

Men’s rights groups believe men are also discriminated against and that all men are not the same, When confronted they claim these stances. There is no need for this group to claim and only further this war on women. While there is violence against men, and the ideas of masculinity could be an addition to hyper-masculinity behavior that can lead to violence. It shouldn’t allude that they are oppressed, for recognizing men their privilege, and holding the majority role in society completely gives them the life’s advantages.

I come back to my main point; women will always find themselves in a double bind. There is not a positive outcome, women are being killed, raped, taken away our reproductive rights in the hands of male privilege. When a young woman wants to include men in this important discourse, and hopefully have progressive change in shifting and gaining equality of the sexes, the world treats her with disdain and is met just as fast with misogynistic comments— I should not generalize the world and all of the population, but this group of men clearly can’t see past their own privilege and cannot see how much power they hold. I don’t know who these users on 4chan might be, but I know that with that kind of attitude we will never progress. 

Women are still being attacked and belittled for being women today. Not wishing to end in this pessimistic note, I will remind myself: we need feminism today and that my friends, professors and classmates care about it and other major groups of people do care about women's issues. Not just the most misogynistic and vile part of the Internet that is 4chan.

I have attached Emma Watson's speech below.