the queer parent

The Round House by Louise Erdrich succeeds in revealing the layered ways in which Indigenous women and folks navigate the axes of oppression. Particularly after learning about the act of violence against Geraldine and how critical it is to understand the exact point of the location where the attack took place. The location of the attack essentially determines who has jurisdiction over processing the crime, all of which allows different rights and sits within a complicated territorial line of stolen land and nation sovereignty laws. Additionally, the discussion of location and how to proceed is regularly handled by men in power, both Indigenous and white. However, it all revolves and exists within the systems of oppression facing women.

Erdrich confirms how land rights are part of the systemic oppression and state violence suffered by Indigenous women and folks daily. With this knowledge, understanding the complications surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous women becomes even more apparent. The story of Geraldine in The Round House helps understand a crucial part of how and why so many cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women go unsolved, along with how many missing and murdered Indigenous women are not afforded justice through the acknowledgment of violence. All of which contributes to the erasure of their identities and stories.

Moreover, there are currently four federal legislation acts to address the state violence that is the crisis and genocide of missing and murdered Indigenous women. In addition to the federal legislation, the following states also have state legislation to address, share data, and declare emergencies: Arizona, California, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington.

Works Cited

Goforth-Ward, Meg. “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Legislation.” Urban Indian Health Institute (blog), May 17, 2019. https://www.uihi.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls-legislation/.

“MMIW Crisis,” September 13, 2019. https://www.doi.gov/ocl/mmiw-crisis.

The Wikipedia article Masculinity has many underdeveloped sections. While it briefly touches on the social construction of gender, there is limited content to support these points. Reading the article, “‘Night to His Day’ The social construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber, would support and add depth to the Masculinity Wikipedia article. The section on the development of masculinity would benefit significantly from added content–mainly by references and citations added specifically the sub-topic title “The Social Construction of Masculinity” that address knowledge gaps and support the idea of gender as a social construction. Although there are multiple ways to be masculine in the world, the article is a bit misleading as it downplays representations of hegemonic masculinity or toxic masculinity. The article then goes on to discuss anything other than “normative” performances of gender as effiminate. For example, Lorber states, “Gendered social arrangments are justified by religion and cultural productions and backed by law, but the most powerful means of sustaining the moral hegemony of the dominant gender ideology is that the process is made invisible; any possible alternatives are virtually unthinkable” (356). Mostly, the Masculinity Wikipedia article potentially is part of the erasure of any performance of masculinity outside of hegemonic masculinity by using terms such a “normative” in juxtaposition to effeminacy. The comparison of normative masculinity and “effeminacy” masculinity, whether intentional or not, ultimately others all things outside of “normative” masculinity in the Wikipedia article and also generalizes gay men as a static identity. The language used in the article has the power to continue to uphold and participate in hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, the subsection on hegemonic masculinity contains only one citation and is labeled confusing from Wikipedia.

Works Cited

Lorber, Judith. “‘Night to His Day’ The Social Construction of Gender.” Readings For Diversity and Social Justice, edited by Maurianne Adams et al., Fourth edition, Routledge, 2018, pp. 354–59.

When the hegemonic identity or default / standard human existence and experience is white, social systems of power not only impact online spaces but also sustain and preserve white colonists’ ideals. We live in a white, heteronormative, capitalist patriarchal society. Furthermore, this is the social system of normativity that has power and social influence in several overlapping social, digital, and institutionalized spaces. However, this is not to say that social change and activist efforts are not on-going and have been on-going. However, what this does tell us is that similarly to social norms, digital norms, and online spaces are considerably influenced, occupied, and appropriated by white folks. Most specifically, in terms of feminism, hegemonic white feminism consumes and upholds digital and social power on the internet. For example, Daniels argues, “Without an explicit challenge to racism, White feminism is easily grafted onto White supremacy and becomes a useful ideology with which to argue for equality for White women within a White supremacist context” (Daniels). Mainly, without an intersectional lens, where women at all social locations have safe spaces online to create content and create social change and justice, feminism online is part of systemic racism and oppression of women who challenge social norms.

Continuing, the lateral violence in the social justice and social change areas that white heteronormative capitalist patriarchal power causes include the perpetuation of colonialism, and the erasure of Indigenous folks, people of color, and anyone who challenges social norms, as well as the appropriation of their experiences. ancestral knowledge and cultural value. Additionally, when white folks imagine solutions to social problems without an inclusive and intersectional approach to the many systems of oppression women in all social locations experience, the risk of institutionalized violence exists, along with state violence through the prison industrial complex. Without a critique of whiteness and its racial power, white feminism in digital spaces is dangerous, harmful, and rooted in white supremacy.

Works cited

Daniels, Jessie. “The Trouble With White Feminism: Whiteness, Digital Feminism, and the Intersectional Internet.” The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online, edited by Safiya Umoja Noble and Brendesha M. Tynes, vol. 105, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, pp. 41–60.

Wikipedia Project

I checked out the Wikipedia article regarding parenting practices that are relevant for counter systemic bias. I believe that parenting is an exciting topic because parents can often set a foundation or framework in which their children can view, experience, and live in the world. However, the Wikipedia project page is rather undeveloped, but there are some ideas around the first topics and articles to consider for the page.

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The intersectional Internet: race, sex, class, and culture online

Part One: Cultural Values in the Machine / Chapter One Summary

The essence of Digital Intersectionality Theory and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Brendesha Tynes, Joshua Schuschke, and Safiya Umoja Noble is to examine social media, especially twitter, regarding how hetero-patriarchal ideals can still overtake activism in social networks. A brief understanding of how race is constructed in a digital world and theory around how social media content ultimately defaults to a hegemonic framework which frequently allows space for hegemonic social norms to be upheld is a critical point to this article and argument. Tynes et al. primarily discuss the trajectory of the #BlackLivesMovement after conception and how lack of intersectional internet spaces in social media rewrote a narrative that primarily focused on Black males, despite the movement rising from the thoughts and passions of Black women.

Moreover, the #BlackLivesMatter founders encompass several different social locations, and the concept behind the movement is an attempt to create an intersectional movement for all Black people in all social locations. However, only after several submovements and social media activism was a space formed where Black women and girls of all social locations started to take back the space that is #BlackLivesMatter and be seen and heard. Furthermore, Tynes et al., cite the importance of an intersectional approach to the internet in all aspects, such as critique, lenses, practices, and activism. Social media is a unique space where social change has the opportunity to transpire quickly and, thus, sometimes be appropriated. This article acknowledges the importance of intersectionality in social media and guidelines for activists and allies to support social change in this platform without the erasure of folks and to challenge hegemonic narratives and social norms.

Noble, Safiya Umoja, and Brendesha M. Tynes, editors. The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2015.