Sevice Learning Blog #3

This week I focused more on the learning than the actual service side of this project.  I did not actually meet with my group, as our meetings are bi-weekly, and decided instead to focus on the readings for the WST 3015 class, as the issues of ecofeminism (discussed in blog #2) and violence against women are two of my macro level topics addressed in this service learning.  I believe it is imperative to mention that all three of my classes this semester – a Latin American studies class, an anthropology class focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, and this women’s studies class have all mentioned the issue of violence against women, which Lori Heise succinctly puts “[t]his is not random violence; the risk factor is being female” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 257) and matters are only more complicated when “race, class, national origin, sexual orientation, and disability” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 263) are taken into account.

Throughout this project, some of the people uninterested in this cause of ending the bloody LRA-rule in eastern Africa mention their reasoning, is “they are over there so what does that have to do with me here?”  I have a hard time understanding how people cannot connect with the justification of our cause when according to Gwyn and Kirk, quoting the United States’ Office of Violence Against Women, “20 percent of teenage girls and young women have experienced some form of dating violence, which can include physical, emotional, verbal, psychological, or sexual abuse” (261) so this is clearly not an issue that is only “over there.”  This cause is about more than simply standing united against rape; it is about the culture of violence that has oppressed women of all ages from prebirth to elderly and from all over the globe.  Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey state “[u]nderlying these incidents and experiences [of violence against women] are systemic inequalities,… culturally, economically, and politically” (257) furthering “macro-level inequalities are present in violence at the micro level (258).  As Harry Sanabria discusses the colonization of Latin America, he makes note of the “[w]idespread violence by European males against indigenous women” (150) claiming that colonization was one of the key factors in the marianismo (gender ideology that construes women as passive, self-sacrificing, and submissive to men) (Sanabria, 420), and machismo (model that associates masculinity with drinking, fearlessness, bravado behavior and sexual potency) (Sanabria, 420), mentality stereotyped of Latin American cultures.  Sanabria discusses how “[m]achismo is also often responsible for domestic violence against women” and “[m]arianismo quickly became the framework of gender relations and female personhood [leading to a] nearly universal model of behavior of Latin American women” (152).

               

Word Count: 441

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Violence Against Women." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Sanabria, Harry. The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean. Boston, MA: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2007. Print.