The movie Wonder Woman is a movie that empowers women and shows the inequalities that were present in the past. 

Wonder Woman lives on Paradise Island, alongside many other women who have learned how to fight in the war. This proves that women are capable to do anything men can, since we see more often men fighting in wars. Also the timeframe of the movie is during World War 1 and at that time men were forced to join the army and women needed to stay home and take care of the children. Diana, known as Wonder Women has been thought at a young age how to fight, which lead her to ending the Great World War by killing Ares but also freeing the village of Veld and having one last peaceful and joyful night before being poisoned and passing away by the gas. This all proves that women are as strong as men when going to fight in wars. 

The First World War happened from 1914 to 1918 and in this time, women did not have rights. They were not able to assemble with men in rooms to discuss what they know on the war or to strategies how they are going to fight with their guns and advanced machinery, in order to win. Women were invisible in that field and in general, their ideas were inadmissible. For example, when Diana snuck in the room where a room full of men were discussing on the war (what had happened and what they should do), as soon as she entered the room discreetly many men either started to whisper to the person next to them or they became silent, due to shock of a female appearance. Females were not welcomed in male gatherings, there was a huge noticeable division between men and women. 

Throughout the entire film you can see how women were presented during those years. Wonder Woman’s outfit is very fitting in today’s society to wear it for Halloween or a costume party and it is not far from crop tops and short shorts that is girls wear today. However, it was very “slutty” to wear an outfit like that in public or in general. When Steve’s assistant came to help her choose an outfit she could not move in it or it was very itchy on her neck. This shows that women have come through a lot of changes over a century, we now can wear much comfier clothes and have the liberty to move. In this particular scene, Steve’s assistant says that women do not have rights and are willing/wanting to change that. 

On her Island we see women working together and that all women are welcomed, they all cared about each other’s welfare. This idea of cooperation may not seem new, however it is mostly seen that men have an easier time getting along with other men. As for women people imagine them arguing over the smallest of things or talking about other people’s business. On the Paradise Island the viewers can see that there is only harmony between each other. The only small disagreement that was present was Queen Hippolyta not wanting Diana to learn how to fight, to prevent Ares from coming to fight against them. Even then, Queen Hippolyta and her sister who trained and was the general of the army had disagreements did not scream at one another, they just exchanged a few words peacefully, without disrespecting one another. 

Wonder Woman symbolizes the values that women have in their own culture, sisterhood. It symbolizes strength and self-reliance for women and mutual support among women. As well as peacefulness and esteem for human life. There’s also a diminishment of “masculine” aggression and the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts. All in all this movie empowers women by showing one women’s strength and how one women can make a difference for many individuals. As in women should and can be incorporated in anything and everything life offers. 

In addition, I liked how Doctor Poison was a girl. This showed that some women who have great education/knowledge can be useful and become integrated with the leaders, however she did not use her intelligence for a good cause. 

They are afraid to be called sissies because that would make them weak in other words feminine, it’s one of their fears, “men fear being ridiculed as too feminine by other men”. For men violence is cool as well as being tough and having strength is their goal, therefore when a person calls them a sissie it’s as equal as calling him a faggot, because faggot does not apply to the homosexual experience, it’s a label to make them feel ashamed. That is another fear that they have, being ashamed. If they were called a sissie or a faggot they could not tell anyone about it in order to find a solution or get help to overcome the label that men give to one another. Also, they must learn not to care what others say, as in the opinion of other men about a guys masculinity should not be questioned or label from “not at all sissie” to “the biggest sissie”. 

I find it funny how women always complain that we are trained at a young age until we get married how to sit, how to act, how to talk, how to eat and the list goes on, yet men have the same struggles. They’re just better at hiding it. In the class “Sociology of Men and Masculinities” the teacher asked how do you know if a man is homosexual and some ladies responded, “a man is gay if he really cares about her, (another said), she knows he’s gay if he shows no interest in her, if he leaves her alone. The response the women gave are not logical, since not all guys need to have a sexual attraction to all girls they talk to or see. This shows that guys have a lot of expectations to fulfill as much as girls do. As for the other comment by the woman that if they do care a lot they come of as feminine but what if he is a kind, nice guy. Women also labelled men by stating that if they care too much they are feminine, as if men should not care because that is the job of a women, to care a lot of others, when in reality it is very touching when a guy asks about you and actually cares, that is a sign of interest, other than sexual attraction. 

Women are portrayed as weak helpless beings whereas men are portrayed strong and dominant, this leads to patriarchal beliefs, “Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence”. This mindset is enforced by religion too, since God created men and women were created to help him. I honestly hate the ideology that women cannot do what men can. It frustrates me that women are only seen as nurtures, who enforce what men say and follow their lead and that men only know how to be violent in the patriarchal world. I applaud to those few men brutally who grew up in this world abused, yet were able to resist the brainwashing and remain true to who they are. 

The way men can redefine masculinity is not labeling each other as “sissies” or “none sissies”, as well as showing their emotions and caring for others without being called a faggot. Also accepting that women can do things that is stereotypical of men to do as well as men can do what women do. There are supposed to be no boundaries for both women and men. As well as ignoring old beliefs and not being brainwashed is the biggest step. 

I went to the Two-Spirit: Everyone belongs in the circle speech, which was very interesting. The speaker herself is from an aboriginal group. She spoke about her tribe and how they have multiple genders, for example some individuals who are female may turn into a male and vice-versa. Each transformation or other type of gender has its own name. 

I found it very intriguing that the speaker started her speech by reciting a poem she found important to share with us to better understand the ideology of belonging within the circle, the circle of life. Many people in the audience loved her speech, it was clear and captivating by the images she had put up on her slide. Most of the people pointed out the poem she recited at the beginning. 

The key message was that many can change their gender or have another gender other than male and female. Throughout their life these people struggle to be accepted by the larger population but luckily there are places in the world that accept them, yet we still have to accept them the way they are and choose to be, therefore the concept of multiple genders should be accepted. This topic that was addressed was not the first time I had heard about it and read about it, but it is definitely the first time I gave my full attention to better understand the struggles and importance. 

I definitely recommend for people to go and listen if they have a chance to do so. It’s gives a good idea about the topic and makes us realize that we have not progressed social wise throughout our history. 

The inspirational woman I chose for my oral presentation is Jane Fonda. She is an actress who was born December 21, 1937 in New York, United States. She is now 82 years old with many awards and a voice that will be heard when she speaks. By her being an actress many will look at her as an inspiration a role model, mostly due to the fact that she has taken upon herself to speak for everyone else’s needs, as in keeping the planet, our world clean (no pollution, the need to recycle and other things). She also cares about the future generations to come. 

I see her as a very persistent woman, one that does not back down easily and I relate to her by being tenacious myself. On the eve of her birthday she, along 82 other famous people regrouped in order to fight against climate change. The reason behind 82 people is due to her turning 82. 

She has gotten arrested several Fridays in a row for protesting against climate change, which is something I would never see myself doing. I would never go to the extreme and risk of getting sent to jail. That’s one of our difference but also the reason she might not care much is due to her being a celebrity, because if she goes to jail everyone will hear about it and word/news of her going and fight for climate change would spread faster. Also she is a woman of old age, she has nothing big to loose, unlike me. 

The reason I decided to talk about her as an inspirational woman is due to the fact that she is a famous actress who actually uses her voice to spread awareness, while others only promote brands if they get payed. She does this out of the goodness of her heart. Also I had heard about her on the radio as the women who was fighting for climate change who got arrested on several Fridays. 

As I said, the reason I found her inspirational is due to her persistency and use of voice. 

For me someone who is inspirational is a person who has goals that they would like to achieve positively and while doing so many individuals would like to follow their footsteps or be like them, as in adopting good habits. 

In indigenous culture gender is not categorized. There’s no ideology of women being “inferior” and men being “superior”. Both genders have their own tasks and skills that they are trained from birth to do so. There’s an equal amount of division of tasks to do on the daily. They even accept those who put themselves under the category of “two-spirit”. They also do not have any restrictions in sexual relations before marriage unlike the Europeans. It’s safe to say that they had the society we dream to have today. 

The case that makes us similar to them is the idea of equality. The difference is that Western culture took time to realize that women can do more than just cook, clean and take care of their children and yet were the ones who were “civilized” at that time. While the indigenous people were way ahead of them; establishing ground rules to divide the amount of tasks equally between each gender. They never left women out of the picture, women had a big role in decision making as much as the men did in their culture. Indigenous people’s ideology of equality between genders was way ahead of time. Now we wish and hope that, that day will come around. 

I didn’t get struck by the way indigenous culture was formed and how they operated amongst themselves, since I have taken anthropology, which mentioned the “two-spirit” and talked a lot about other clans/tribes that are minorities.

We can learn from indigenous people about gender is that each gender has their own strengths and weaknesses. Both can help one another in order to succeed and progress, and for that to happen no one should be stepping on anyone’s toes and no one should be at the top to give orders. Yes they did have a chief, but he/she/ that family gained that status by vote or by helping everyone else. Yet they do not govern their tribe. 

One of the largest criminal industries is human trafficking and it is growing insanely fast, mostly in the US. It is another form of slavery, called “modern slavery”. (Tharanga Yakupitiyage, 2019) Men and boys are victims of labor and commercial sex trafficking, but not as much as girls and women. Women are manipulated, lured from the traffickers, which leads to female victims being controlled in a vulnerable state. A female is vulnerable when she is unprotected, in other words when she has no connection to social or family support. Immigrants, refugees and those with disabilities or trauma are the first targets traffickers seek.(American Psychological Association, 2014)

There are many types of human trafficking: sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, domestic servitude, forced marriage, forced criminality, child soldiers and organ harvesting.(Subzero & Heweet Mike, 2020) When I looked up all of these types of human trafficking that take place in our every day to day life, I only saw reports, articles that talk about women within that type of trafficking. Women are the main targets, and for once they are prioritized over men. In sexual exploitation women go into prostitution, pole/lap dancing, sex tourism, forced marriage and many more. Labour exploitation has women working in the agriculture field, manufacturing, hospitality, fishing and more, in which they are not payed enough, violated, punished and threatened to be exposed to immigrant authorities. As for domestic servitude, women are forced to work for long hours in the house, with which ties the forced marriage. Forced criminality is self explanatory, women are forced to do drug, cannabis and other illegal trades, as well as bad snatching, pick-pocketing, etc. Finally, organ harvesting is when traffickers kidnap an individual and without consent remove their organs in order to sell it. (Subzero & Heweet Mike, 2020)

Human trafficking is a topic that is unspoken and females are the main victims and targets. It is a world wide problem, 20 to 40 million people are in modern slavery, of which 71% are females. Thanks to online social media, it is growing. (Anonymous) Feminists want “protection from domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape” and human trafficking does not provide any of those. (Humanities Ohio, 2018)

References:

Tharanga, Yakupitiyage. “Fighting the World’s Largest Criminal Industry: Modern Slavery.” Inter Press Service. January 2019. https://www.google.ca/amp/www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/fighting-the-worlds-largest-criminal-industry-modern-slavery/amp/

American Psychological Association, Task Force on Trafficking of Women and Girls. (2014). Report of the Task Force on Trafficking of Women and Girls. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/advocacy/interpersonal-violence/trafficking-women-girls

Subzero & Heweet, Mike. “Types of Exploitation.” STOP THE TRAFFIK. 2020. https://www.stopthetraffik.org/about-human-trafficking/types-of-exploitation/

Anonymous. “11 Facts About Human Trafficking.” Do Something.org. https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-human-trafficking

Humanities, Ohio. “Betty Friedan: The Three Waves of Feminism.” OH Blogs and News. April, 2018. http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/

Jessica Valenti and Bell Hooks both agree that feminism is not hating men and being anti-male. They also agree that it is a movement that is spread and heard about around the world to which there has been many stereotypes sticked to it, one being that feminists are anti-male and or a lesbian. Both of them concentrate on girls being feminists and not males, yet both sexes can be feminists. They are both different as they are similar, Valenti gives the image that the individuals who are feminists seek social, political and economic equality between the sexes, whereas Hooks shows feminism a movement that will end sexist ideas, (such as females cannot play sports), sexist exploitation (taking advantage of women because they are inferior, which comes back to sexism) and oppression (treating women cruelly and controlling them, for example domesticating them and then punishing them for not having prepared a delicious dinner).

Feminism is important to them because they would like to have equality and for feminism to become a part of our daily lives, as in treating one another appropriately with respect, to not harm either men or women and have equal opportunities as well as equal pay in the same work. For me a feminist is any individual who believes that both sexes should have equal pay in the workforce, rights and freedom, and should not be treated unjustly, exploited sexually and oppressed. The definition I held before did not include the part of “being exploited sexually.” In Jessica Valenti’s article many things stuck by me; one being that feminists are stereotyped and one of the stereotypes is that feminists are ugly. I had heard that feminists are lesbians but never heard of feminists being ugly. Another thing that shocked me was that magazines, newspapers kept on talking about how “feminism is dead”. This clearly shows that it is clearly not ended, the fact that it is still a common theme and discussion topic proves that it is still very much present in our day to day life.

I did some research on Bell Hooks and Jessica Valenti and I must say that I agree more with what Valenti has to say about feminism, she describes feminism the way I believe it to be more than Hooks. Finally I love how Valenti described the feminism waves in an interview, she said that every generation could not be separated into waves rather every individual has their own way of becoming a feminist and operating it, taking initiative. I appreciated Valenti’s article much more after understanding her point of view, which is similar to mine.
-Pia Babi