Why I am Writing this Blog

I am writing this blog for several reasons.  First of all, I am a Women and Gender Studies major and I am taking "Intro to Women and Gender Studies" this semester.  For the class, I need to do a public engagement project, where I engage the public about an issue of my choosing under the large umbrella of women and gender.  I decided to combine that with the work I am doing in Postville.  One of the things that I am doing in Postville is meeting with or calling 10 women each week.  Each of them has an electronic shackle, which is a large tracking device strapped to their ankle.  They have this because they were arrested for working, and then were released to take care of their children, while most of their husbands were sent to jails across the country.  I will write about the things that they tell me and things that I observe.  However, to protect their privacy, I will not use any of their names.  I am also undertaking a project to archive new articles about Postville so that the church there will have a record of the media coverage of the raid and will be able to use it for education.  I will write about what I learn from this as well.  

I will also use this blog to write about issues of oppression and marginalization in our country.  Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza defines "kyriarchy", an alternative to patriarchy, as the following: "a socio-cultural, religious, and political system of elite male power, which does not just perpetrate the dehumanization of sexism, heterosexism, and gender stereotypes, but also engenders other structures of women's oppression, such as racism, poverty, colonialism, and religious exclusivism."  She is explaining that the oppression of women cannot be separated from other types of oppression that women face at the same time as sexism.  She is also saying that women cannot focus exclusively on fighting patriarchy, or the system that perpetuates male dominance and sexism, but must focus on the many ways that people are oppressed in order to work towards equal rights and respect for all people.  

Another way to think about it is that our society has defined a norm of a human, or what a valuable person is supposed to be.  This norm is a white, european, heterosexual, able-bodied, highly literate, highly educated, young, attractive, upper-middle class, English-speaking, light-skinned, non-Jew, fertile, masculine male (The Gender Question in Education: Theory, Pedagogy & Politics, Ann Diller et al.).  Almost everyone in America has at least one of these qualities.  This means that almost everyone in America oppresses other people simply by being who they are.  Personally, I fit into all of these categories except for being male.  That means that I need to think about the ways that I am privileged and recognize how these privileges cause other people to be underprivileged and disadvantaged.  I am going to examine the ways that "kyriarchy" is at work in the lives of immigrants and the role it played in the immigration raid last spring.  

I am also writing this to create awareness about an issue that is very important for our country, namely immigration policy.  There are many problems with the ways that immigrants are treated based on these policies.  I hope to show you that immigration is not just an argument between liberals and conservatives, but that it is something that affects real people.  It separates real families, forces real women to choose between being with their husbands and providing their children with a safe place to live and go to school.  It forces real people to plug themselves into the wall for two hours a day so that the government knows exactly where they are.   It is real, and it cannot be ignored.  I hope you will take my words to heart and use your voices to make those who are ignored and labeled as "the other" heard.