As I was thinking today I started thinking about how people are shaped into the person they are from past events and future events to come. As all these events occur, we develop scars and memories from them. Scars can be good or bad depending on the even. For example, someone could have a scar from falling doing something they love. Even though this still is unfortunate, they were doing something they loved to do like snowboarding. A bad scar could from being beaten, a surgery, or a fall from a bad experience.

From our reading “Scars” by Jarvis Jay Masters it influenced me to think even more in depth about scars and their impact on our bodies. In his reading he talks about how people have been traumatized from their childhood and it made some people in to criminals. In the reading it talked about mostly everyone in the prison had been abused and were raised in foster homes. It’s very upsetting to hear these unfortunate childhood events.  As well as people covering their scars with tattoos. They most likely covered their scars with tattoos because they were ashamed or didn’t want to see the scars to remind them of their horrible past events. Tattoos are supposed to be a memorable experience or something we just simply like so I think that’s why people use them to cover up scars.

I personally had surgery on my foot because I had to have a bunion surgery and I have a horrible scar left on my foot still and that was about 8 years ago. Also, a year ago I had my son where my body made me have a c-section which left a scar on me. My c-section scar isn’t the cutest, but I’ve grown to accept it because I love my son. The body is an amazing thing that we can never fully predict what will happen to us. I thought I was healthy and then I was in labor for over 24 hours, which led to a c-section. Labor was such a hard experience for me, but I think we forget after a while because in the end, it was all worth it. I do think c-sections should receive just as much credit as “normal” labor because I went through SO much that day. I was on oxygen and the doctor said I was going to lose the baby. This was all after 24 hours of labor. I literally received every kind of medicine to try to have my baby vaginal.  Overall, Scars will always remind us where we came from and our significant events. I think in today’s society we need to be more open with one another and love every part of ourselves. Our bodies are controlled by our minds, which is why we get so upset when seeing our scars. I wish there was a way to look at our scars and be happy.

Works Cited

“Scars” Jarvis Jay Masters. “The Body Reader” Edited by Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut

The laws and cultural norms that govern most societies around the world has typically been overwhelmingly male oriented, and for this reason, it is not uncommon to see that such societal norms are biased and predominantly favors everything male. In some cultures for instance, it is the norm that the female body is solely for procreation. Compared to the male body the female body  has historically been deemed “fleshy”,” leaky” and “primitive”, whereas the male body generally has been associated with” logic”, “rationality” and “civility”. Such a perspectives has always shaped world view of women, and have hampered their ability to contribute to societal affairs and a vast array of other social issues. In most western cultures like the United States for instance there is so much stigma associated with a woman’s quest for a leadership role this was evident in the 2016 presidential elections in which the default expectation that there are too many limitations that prevents a woman’s from successfully executing such leadership roles limited her chances for success in favor of the male candidate.

Similarly, it has well been established that in the past few decades, sexual violence and its use have been and continues to be exploited in an attempt exert control and subjugate minorities especially in the slavery and pre civil rights era. By many accounts however it goes beyond race and civil rights, and traverse the contours of gender and gender equality especially if viewed in the perspective male quest for control over the female body. With the establishment of such norms aimed at establishing control over the female embodiment, one can’t help but argue that by extension women as a whole suffered and continues to suffer from gender disparity norms especially for reasons that such norms are put in place by men with no clue of how a loss in agency might effect the female body. In many ways, the quest for such male dominance can be likened to Foucault’s description of sexual exploitation (in this case of the female body) as a way of projecting power.

In recent years however, the calls for change continues to get louder and old societal norms are increasingly being challenged by new and informed standards aimed at guaranteeing gender equality and reclamation of female embodiment. The “me too” movement for instance challenges the male domination of societal norms, and seeks to dismantle the male claim to the female body as a price possession. Because the role played by the disembodied male perspective in shaping the current view of the female body, one important question which arise is that as the winds of change continues to sweep across all major sociopolitical spheres, what role if any should men play in ensuring a more pronounced and long lasting change in gender education and equality?

Recently in the media, when the Gillette razor company unveiled a TV commercial challenging the old gender bias norms, it drew a lot of heart felt criticism and backlash from those (mostly men) who felt offended by the central theme of the commercial. The message though controversial had most communities talking, and served as a blueprint on how such issues can be dealt with moving forward. It should start with breaking the cycle of misinformation, with bold fathers stepping forth to educate their sons as they will be the fathers of tomorrow, and hold the responsibility of passing on what they have learned to their children. In other words the key to a less gender biased society starts with adequately orienting such ideologies through education on gender discrimination and female disembodiment, especially among youths be it in the classroom, at home, with friends or no social media.

The Shawshank Redemption is a film created by Frank Darabont and written by Stephen King. The plot of the movie is Andy Dufresne is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to years in prison. He struggles in the beginning in prison by ‘learning prison culture’, but with the help of his friend Red (who’s been in prison for over 20 years), he quickly learns the ins and outs of prison. Eventually these two men find solace and ‘redemption’ through decent acts. Furthermore, we see many acts of violence and rape happen within the film. 

            The book The Body Reader, provides some good insight on why prisons are so demanding and harsh to inmates. The book explains how, “the social pecking order among male prisoners is established and reinforced through acts of sexual subjugation, either consensual or coerced submission to sexual penetration” (Moore & Kosut, 95). There was a group of men in the prison called “the sisters”, they were considered deviant and people to not mess with. This label ultimately provided the ‘sisters’ with a lower self-concept and made them cause harm to other inmates, including Andy. The ‘sisters’ were abusing Andy by raping him, beating him up, and taunting him while in the prison. The way they abused Andy only confirmed and fulfilled their label of being deviant, making them well known as ‘people not to mess with’ at Shawshank. Going back to the quote from the book, you can in see how “the sisters” asserted their dominance over Andy by forceful acts of violence and rape, which in turn made them high in the hierarchy of the prison. By instilling fear in their victims, “the sisters” were able to keep their high ranking in the prison and in turn were never attacked/raped by others. 

Unfortunately, through all of this, Andy had to deal with these violent acts of aggression by himself. “The sisters” took some of his agency away from him for a good portion of the film/ his first couple of years in prison. The book provided a great example how rape culture in prison feels, “Like all forms of slavery, these situations are among the most degrading and dehumanizing experiences a person can undergo” (Moore & Kosut, 95).  

            Lastly in the film you witness a lack of effort to stop these rapes from happening. The prison guards are aware of what’s going on, but they do not seem to care enough to stop the rapes. Even though it isn’t said in the film, I feel like the prison guards do not care because they feel like the prisoners are lower than them and that they deserve it for being ‘bad people’. The book also correlated with what the film was trying to present, saying “prisons officials condone these practices, leaving inmates to fend for themselves. Inmates reported that they received no protection from correctional staff, even when they complained” (Moore & Kosut, 95). 

            Hopefully in the future, the prison culture in America will change drastically. The rapes that happen in prison, which effect almost every prisoner will have lasting effects on these individuals for the rest of their lives. Most will go on without verbally telling another person for fear of masculinity and or people not believing them. 

One time, maybe a few times, or maybe every time you enter an elevator you get a weird feeling or is it just me. Sometimes it gets so crowded in an elevator that we as people are bumping in to one another accidently and accidently.  I have a story… one time in an elevator, I was so squished between people in an elevator that I was rubbing all on top of someone because people just kept coming in like I’ve never seen before. I didn’t know if everyone else felt the same way or if it was just me. I feel as humans we like to have a more space, but at the same time we like to get to places as fast as we can, so we try to all cram together to get as many people in as we possibly can.

            Well in the elevator during this specific time, a guy was touching my hair with his beard because he was taller than me. I couldn’t even move to see what it as touching me until some other people exited the elevator to see him there still way too close to me when there was more room at this time once people exited. So I had to say something to him because he didn’t understand my gestures, which were all hinting for him to give me some space to move.

            Specifically, from reading “the body reader”, in Arthur Frank’s piece of writing states “A medical anthropology unable or unwilling to examine how culture infolds into the body (and, reciprocally, how bodily processes outfold into social space) is not very likely to get far in the conceptualization and empirical study of the sociopolitical roots of illness or the cultural sources of healing.” I really like that quote because it proves to us that we feel the need to infold our bodily fluids and motions as humans because we don’t want to be judged in a bad way. It reminded me of my time in the elevator because I didn’t know whether to say anything to the man about giving me some space.

I definitely felt very awkward and couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t move. Just like we discussed in class about out body’s being open in any type of way gives off the impression that we are “dirty” or “unmannerly”. I just would love to know how other personality types feel about the elevator situation I had experienced. Body and mind both are connected and not connected at the same time, which is so mind blowing to me. As a human I feel like sometimes if we didn’t have certain norms about how our bodies are then there wouldn’t of even been that thought in my mind in the elevator.  As well as the others in the elevator witnessing this situation… did they even find it weird? That’s what so wild about all the different types of mind’s there are in the world. The mind is such a insane part of our body that no one will ever think the same. Has anyone else had these thoughts or a situation similar?

“The body reader” Edited by Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut.