Writing Response #5

Race Interjecting with Sexuality 

-Race Play (Use of the N word), Plantation
-Nazi play
-Humiliation Play

This is very interesting. I know we have talked about this in class before but it still somewhat bothers me.
My question is: can race play only happen with a white and black partner? Can race play not take place with two people of the same race?

In my opinion, race play is not something I would want to participate in. I would not be too comfortable with having a white person calling me a nigger. I have never been called one in my life and I do not know how I would react if something like that were to happen.

To me, participating in race play means that we are still oppressed.

Being called a bitch or anything negative in the bedroom is something I can't even wrap my head around.

Is being dominated in the bedroom a preference??? Yes it is, very much so. Some people prefer it and are sexually aroused.

The historical contexts are very much important in this. I feel as though our people have came too far to go back and be called these very degrading things.

Black women being so strong for so long, wanting to be dominated in the bedroom. They feel as if they want someone else to take control for once. I'm not sure when and where it came about that black women had to be strong all the time.

Writing Response #7

Since my major is Criminal Justice, I think I want to focus on the LGBT community on the police force and in the jail. This is not a very talked about topic but it is very prevalent in today’s society.

I want to focus on what the officers go through, how they come out or if they even come out at all.

I also want to talk about the LGBT community from the prisoner’s perspective. I will talk about what they go through, how they are housed and what they experience while incarcerated.

My paper/topic relates to the theme of the class because our class focuses on gender and sexuality and I figured the LGBT Community would be a great topic to touch on since I haven't all semester. This will give you an almost inside look at how this community is treated or not treated while behind bars.

I believe my only challenge will be finding various sources of information. I've done a light search online and the internet has many articles and law pages regarding the LGBT Community but I am not too sure I will find the same in books. 

FAT SEX?!?!? How dare we??

How dare we even talk about fat sex?
What has gotten into us??? Lol.

Well as a plus size women myself, size 14 to be exact, this topic is exactly what I want to talk about.

If I can get a little personal for a second, I love to have sex. I am not ashamed of my body enough to not do it, and I am comfortable enough to take off my clothes in front of a man.

It is so typical for people to frown their face up at a sex scene like the one in the show Homeland. I mean what is wrong with a fat girl and a "average size" man having sex. Happens all the time, I'm sure. But it's just not on camera. Maybe that was the issue. Or maybe people are still not accepting of it.

As much as people try to be accepting of bigger people, they aren't. Some think we are disgusting and other think we just need to stay at home and be depressed. But I have news for them. Big girls are IN and WINNING. There are plenty of people who love and appreciate bigger women.

For Abercrombie & Fitch to not make plus size shirts for females but make them for males is very sexist if you ask me. It is basically accepting that men can be fat and out of shape but women can't. We are always expected to be pretty, clean and in shape.

It is already hard enough for a larger person to go day to day without seeing all these diet, exercise, gym and weight loss commercials. Some of us know we need to lose weight but nothing can happen until that person is ready to as well.

Contrary to popular belief, a lot of heavier people have great health and are not the ones with diseases. But yet all these "skinny" and "healthy" people are dying all over the place. Seems to me as if we aren't the only ones with "health issues".

Granted, being overweight is unhealthy because your organs have to work twice as hard to pump blood and you are putting a lot of weight on your legs, but who says everyone was meant to be a size 6? Some people look nice and healthy with a little weight on. Others tend to look sickly without weight.

In order for one to accept their body appearance, they just have to know what they want and are comfortable with. I know personally, since I have lost a little weight I am able to see more of my neck and my stomach has gone down and I can turn in the mirror and see an actual shape instead of being round at the waist. I think for me once I started seeing results with working out, it motivated me to continue on and see how far I can get.

Being sexy is all about your mindset. You cannot let another person determine if how you look is sexy or not. I also think being sexy has a lot to do with your attitude. You can be the prettiest girl with the nastiest attitude and that automatically makes you ugly.

Everyone is entitled to pleasure. You can be both the giver and receiver. My only hope is that one practices safety while participating in any sexual escapades.

I think the porn industry has only scratched the surface of showing plus size women in porn. It is going to take more than porn to get the point across through. Not everyone watches porn. These images will have to somehow make their way into mainstream Internet, TV, Magazines, etc in order to really be exposed and later, accepted.

I think the images in the readings were beautiful. I love a full figured woman. And I love it even more that she was posing with an average size man. Just goes to show she has confidence and can publicly display her body in a classy way.

As far as the word slut goes, I see it as women who just enjoy sex as much as you do. Take the word hoe for example, I take that word to mean, if people know all your sexual partners. I do believe your sex life should be as private as possible. You can't simply look at a person and tell they've had sex with multiple women/men. You only know what people allow you to know.

Those are my thoughts.

Paper Progression

So far, for my paper, all I have done was basically watch two videos, takes notes from the assigned readings.I plan on using this weekend to get more done and get into the next step which will be figuring out how to answer these questions and to put this paper into some type of order.

Part 2 - Like A Virgin

In Part 1, the author explained how different words have different meanings to different people. For example, the word "racist" can mean different things to different people. It all depends on how you apply the word to your life.

In Part 2, there's this guy who is in a bar in San Francisco. He's talking about how he is gay but wants to be with a girl. He says he's never made love to a woman before.

Towards the end, he and his friend Nick end up in a brothel. Nick gets one girl and the main character gets another. They both end up in seperate rooms. The main character explains how he went about his sexual escapades with Heather, how he performed oral sex and how throughout thr whole thing he was never turned on.

That story brings me to something I've heard a lot in my adult life. "People can't take the LGBTQ community seriously because people jump in and out the lifestyle." I'm on the fence with that. I agree to a certain extent because I believe that eventually, at a certain age, a person will know who and what they are attracted to. On the other hand, people will be people and everyone has the right to make choices and change their minds.

In society it is okay for a woman to be bisexual because it's almost every guys fantasy to see two women together. But as soon as the man starts to swing both ways, it's a problem. I guess there are double standards everywhere you look. I just think people should be able to be people and do whatever/whomever makes you happy.

Dominant Ideological Framework

Ever since the sixth grade, I have seen the movie Titanic. It has become one of my favorite white movies. I call it a white movie because I've never noticed until recently that, there are absolutely no black people in this movie. Not even in steerage. Now we all know steerage was for the people who were not rich, so usually the lower class or the poor.

In the movie Titanic, there is Jack Dawson who just so happens to win tickets aboard the Titanic through a card game. He and his friend barely made the ship. They found their rooms, explored the ship, etc. He runs into Rose who is the fiancee of Caledon Hockley. Now Caledon is this very powerful rich white man who can basically and has basically been taking care of Rose, 1. because he can and 2. because she's his fiancee. The mother is basically pressuring Rose to marry him only because her family has run out of money. But after Rose meets Jack, they become inseparable. Although Rose knows she and Jack are different, he introduces her to a new life, things she has never experienced before and he lives life on the edge. And that's what I think Rose likes most about Jack. I say all that to say, Rose was a very relate-able character to any woman of any color because sometimes its not all about what a man has and who he is, its about how he makes you feel and him being able to bring the best of out you. This movie reinforces the ideological framework we call SCWAMP, because throughout the movie we saw straight white men, who were able bodied, successful, wealthy, and property holders. The women were just in their place as a woman was supposed to be. On the side, spoke when spoken to, always had to look good, had no real source of income, etc. These types of things gave the men the ability to feel like they were superior and just reinforced how much we needed and depended on them.

The next movie I would like to bring up is another favorite movie of mine. This movie is Waiting to Exhale. This movie is one of my favorite movies of almost all time because 1. it has all black female main characters and 2. each character has something you can relate to on a personal level. 

In the article, Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, I think one of the main points in this article was that its important for the black woman to be able to relate to the characters in a movie or TV show. I find this to be true. In Waiting to Exhale, I found that these women were all portrayed very positively. They were all women who could be role models. They each either worked and were great mothers. The one thing that they each shared in the end was that they were all single. Bernadine, was newly divorced and was having a hard time dealing with it. Something that normal women can relate to. Robin was a woman who messed around with a married man, with the hopes that he would leave his wife for her. In the end, she ends up pregnant but decides to keep the child, and to not deal or put up with Russell anymore. Savannah was a successful woman in the TV industry. She lived a very comfortable life, no kids but also no man. She too, bought back an old married flame and she got her feet wet with him a little. She finally came to realize that he was no good, she did not want to end up like his wife and he was just a liar. And last but not least is Gloria. Gloria has a teenage son named Tarik, who is doing what normal teenagers do; bring home bad grades, mess around, stay out late but overall he seemed like an Okay kid, being as though he was raised by a single mother. Gloria has never had a real relationship with any other man besides her son, so when a widowed neighbor moves in across the street and they become close, she doesn't know how to accept the fact that someone other than her son could love her. In the movie, each women had shown a sense of sexiness without bearing themselves completely naked and in the end, got the respect they deserved. 

That movie has something for everyone, but mostly for women. I think this movie reinforces, somewhat, the ideological framework we call SCWAMP, because for example, while battling her divorce case with her husband, Bernadine had to deal with the fact that everything was in her husbands name. The properties, the business, etc. She just assumed, like most women that marriage is supposed to be forever and that nothing could go wrong. That's where we mess up because although you are knowingly coming into something that you both may want equally, and although you may love this person with every ounce of fiber in you, I truly believe we should be cautious and take the necessary precautions so that we don't end up high and dry.