Fact or opinion: Is oppression group based or individual?

                Hill Collins states many important notes in his reading that caught my attention and had me thinking about if it’s really true.  In surveys, many categories are analyzed in different ways but are not classified the proper way. Therefore the results are not really clear to whom they belong to. Now, we must analyze how individual groups are clumped as one large group and are just simply classified as a whole.  Basing it on Hill Collins article, we as individuals must start by reshaping each group out there by looking at the individual issues that each has. Not everyone has the same experiences as the person issues therefore we have a hard time understanding how their oppression was to ours. We only use partial part of our reasoning since not everyone is the same. In my opinion, it is very difficult to do such a thing but it’s not impossible. We must first join as a group to reshape the issues surrounding the individual over a large group as Collins states in his reading.  He states, “We must shift our discourse away from additive analyses of oppression” and this is very true. We are adding to oppression when we base the individual as a group since that causes a greater oppression. It doesn’t lessen it.  Oppression is one of the most contradictory issues we have out there.  Our analyses of oppression that most of us use are based on a group but not the individual.  For example, we see a poor person on the streets and we automatically blame them either  for their drug or alcohol use without really analyzing what lead the person in that situation. This goes hand in hand with the oppression issue. We as individual need to stop and think about what is the real reason that person lead to oppression of being homeless.

Feminism: Have you claimed it?

In the reading “Feminism without borders”, many interesting points were brought up about feminism.  For example, it questioned many things about feminism such as who, what, and how feminism is all about. As stated in the reading, third world countries have not had the opportunity to have women evolve from housewives to independent women. As Mohanty states, women are “underdeveloped, oppressive traditions, high illiteracy, rural and urban poverty, religious fanatisim, and are overpopulated” because of the power men have over them. Men have been the household providers and are expected to own up to that expectation therefore they have no given the opportunity to claim their independence and education to women. Therefore, feminism has not gone a long way since there has not being much progress in third world countries with women.

Going into the third world feminism theme, Women have not yet had the opportunity to claim their independence because of the false representation of the entire movement. Women have been present in the movement but have being rejected in the entire process. I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that women have received an education from their husbands but not claimed their education themselves. Feminism would be more advanced in the process if they have decided to stand up for what they believe and have a radical involvement in the feminism process. Now, this is not to say that women have not involved themselves in the movement but some not all have only represented not acted upon their beliefs.