Sotelo's Dometica & Domestic Workers in Thailand

       In this week’s reading, Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence, Sotelo discusses the ethics and moral ambiguity of hiring immigrant workers to do housework. She believes that the employers of domestics tend not to recognize their home as a workplace and the domestic workers as formal employees. As a result, the workers are often treated without dignity and respect. Also, Sotelo notes that the laws pertaining to domestic work are weak and the domestic workers' community remains to be one of the most disenfranchised group in the American society.

      The observations made by Sotelo were hardly a surprise for me. I lived in Thailand for 3 years where hiring full time maids are customary. The majority of maids in Thailand are from Myanmar and nearby developing countries. Thus, despite mistreatments, they are bound to the jobs because their wages are the only support available for the family back home. Though many employers do not have careers or any difficulties with doing housework, they hire maids to do the everyday chores and babysit. And because such has become so customary in Thailand, the moral ambivalence or questions of having hired help in homes is rarely discussed. Hence it appears that the cultural values dictate our perception of "domestic work" as well.

Love Cosmetics

The other day I was searching for an advertisement that had similar themes to Manet's Olympia, as I had to compare and contrast the two for a paper. I eventually came across a print ad from the 70's for Love Cosmetics' "Baby Soft" line. The image itself is of a little girl holding a white teddy bear. However, the little girl is in a seductive position and wears bright lipstick. The ad reads "because innocence is sexier than you think." This ad emphasizes the concept that women are supposed to have a dual nature: a innocent and promiscuous one. However, this dual nature is impossible to attain as both traits are polar opposites.

This ad, besides being entirely inappropriate, sheds light on the fact that women are held to impossible standards. Women are supposed to be extremely thin, but are supposed to be naturally so. Many men state that they don't want a girlfriend who only eats salad, but also want them to be skinny. There are numerous paradoxes in what men want in women (and what women think men want in women). However, women are so influenced by the media that they think men want things even if they do not, which is another reason why this advertisement by Love Cosmetics is so serious.

KICK OUT ALL ILLEGALS.....unless they are maids?????

I was extremely surprised to discover an article that stated how a Texas Republican desired to fine or even jail any citizen that hired an illegal immigrant, unless the illegal immigrant worked in a yard or house as a maid or gardener. The Republican, Debbie Riddle claimed that her idea was simply a "clumsy way to keep from stifling the economic engine." However, I view this as an incredibly disgusting double standard and a nod at the wealthy Republican Americans.

I believe that this bill exhibits how right wing legislators finally recognize the importance of illegal or undocumented workers are to our nations economy. This also exhibits another form of marginalization of the illegal immigrant who comes to America in search of better opportunities for his/her family. Instead of allowing them equal opportunities they are subjected to working in the home as maids or working on lawns as gardeners. I truly believe that this proposed law is another form of slavery and it absolutely sickens me that this sort of thinking is still present in our society. I believe that we must allow anyone with innocent morals and values to be able to have the exact same opportunities as me, event though they may have to cross a border just to enter this so called LAND OF OPPORTUNITY.

http://theweek.com/article/index/212785/texas-proposal-to-kick-out-all-illegal-immigrants-except-the-maids

Sweden: Aiming for Gender-Neutral Society

http://shine.yahoo.com/team-mom/kids-raised-gender-neutral-society-sweden-thinks-033400030.html

While essentially every country on this planet separates gender to two main groups, male and female, Sweden currently is in the transition of developing a more gender-equal society. I believe this decision can eventually lead down the path to a completely gender-neutral society. Attempts to raise gender-neutral children have arise in the recent past, such as the case of Sasha Laxton in the United Kingdom. However, the one fault of their plan was that they live in a country where the ideologies on gender roles are ingrained so deep within their society, and therefore, making it essentially impossible to raise a gender-neutral child without him/her being influenced by his/her environment (i.e. interaction with other children). But by eliminated gender stereotypes, the hopes of one day having a gender-neutral society grows substantially. Sweden has already worked on the development of their gender-equal society by attacking the issue before it even arises and focusing on changing the way they raise children. Teachers are required to address their students as "buddies" instead of "boys and girls." The gender-neutral pronoun "hen" has also been added to the country's National Encyclopedia. But with this transition arises the question, do gender stereotypes have some biological truth behind it? The writer of this article, Charlene Birkeland, believes so. She argues that within certain sports, anatomical differences between girls and boys for "the power and strength of the male anatomy would create problems in a gender neutral environment." However progressive creating a gender-equal society seems from the surface, I'm not too sure how this will play out in the long-run because I do believe males and females are anatomically built in specific ways, even in a society where males aren't told to be tough and mighty and females aren't told to be so skinny.

the Alchemy of Race and Rights

I know it's super early to post this weeks blog but it's Coachella this weekend so I just decided to post mine now. I wanted to do one more of Williams' chapter because I did not present this chapter in class and also did not use it in my long essay. so here you go...

Patricia Williams hates being a lawyer. She practices and teaches commercial law and often finds herself confronted with heart-wrenching stories. Williams is a black woman and deeply sympathizes with the plight of women and blacks in the United States. She notes increasing crime rates, drug use, police brutality, and the like pervade the country. Racism penetrates even at the highest levels of culture, as demonstrated by the "inability" of Harvard to find more qualified black women to be professors.

The goal of the Alchemy of Race and Rights is to take a critical theory approach to rights, particularly to commercial and constitutional concerns. Williams will take three principles and try to show how they interact, conflict ,and interlock: (i) autonomy, (ii) community and (iii) order. She also aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice. She wants to show how legal language often flattens complex issues and hides subtle social meanings.

Williams believes that law is inter-subjective and that it has no objective, mind-independent aspect. If we recognize that the law is inter-subjective, we can participate in its construction together. Williams's target in her book is the common conception of law as objective. This theoretical conception of the law in American jurisprudence has three features: (i) it draws bright lines between concepts to make life easier, such as between rights and needs, public and private and white and black, (ii) it

looks for non-contextual universal legal truths, (iii) and it aims to find an objective, unmediated voice to express the nature of the law.

As a woman who in her differing social roles is treated both as black and non-black, Williams sees that social identities are constructed and that social concepts are as well. We construct truth together and by getting away from the idea of objective truth, we can extend a sense of social responsibility to all individuals in constructing their social and political world. This will empower the marginalized members of society. Traditional jurisprudence looks for an uncompromising point of reference, which obscures the mechanisms of social positioning and thereby covers up the opportunities for productive group struggle. Williams acknowledges that when she makes these arguments, her students are often confused. She admits that she is as well.

Domestic Help

I was born in New Delhi, India; ever since I was born, my parents/grandparents have always had a maid who does the cooking and cleaning and a driver who is a chauffer and cleans the car. This is something that has been a part of my life since I was born, so it's not a thing that frustrates me about our society. However, in December, I went to India to visit my grandparents. After hugging and kissing them for the first 5 minutes of my arrival in our home, I went around the house to see how it had changed since the last time I had visited. I ran into a maid, she was very shy, so I did not bother her. When I returned back to my grandparents, I asked them what her name was. To my surprise, they couldn't remember her name!

At that point, I was furious. To have someone cleaning a house that one lives in, to cook the food that one eats, and not know her name, it was shocking. I confronted my grandparents, and after realizing the amount of trust they gave to a complete stranger, they not only tried to know more about her, but were more cautious. Perhaps, this is just in India, but the gap between the homeowners and the servants is huge; it's not just about not eating on the table with the family. Though, with time, these ties do get cemented, the beginnings are very harsh.

Whose side is the media on?

In lecture we have talked on multiple occasions about the Trayvon Martin case that is currently causing much debate. The way the story has been told has varied greatly, depending on where I get my information from. When I first heard it through word of mouth, it was simply: "Did you hear that a little black boy was walking home from the corner store with skittles and some white guy randomly shot him?" This sounds completely absurd, and I soon found that this was not the whole story. While people are still arguing back and forth about Trayvon trespassing and the Florida law that is preventing the shooter from being charged, I want to focus more on the media's representation of Trayvon.

When I was scrolling through my facebook newsfeed a week ago I saw a picture that someone had posted. I can't find the link back to it, but it showed the picture of Trayvon that the media was using: him smiling in a nice polo, and beside it was a picture of Trayvon, taller and seemingly older, flashing a gang sign to the camera. The caption read: "Trayvon Martin: age 13 - picture the media is using" under the first photo, and then under the second it read: "Trayvon Martin, current facebook profile picture."

Now I cannot be sure that this facebook posting is true, but it got me thinking: the image that the media gives has an extreme effect on how we view the subject. When I saw "Trayvon's current profile picture" it made me angry. I immediately changed my opinion of him, and then lost trust in the news sources that were feeding me the first picture. How can we be sure what we are given is real information? The country could be in outrage as a reaction to slandered information. This is why I will let my trust go to the courts. The Florida court will decide the issue, without the media's influence. It leads me to ask: Whose side is the media on? Well, I think the answer to that is: their own pockets. They want to sell as many newspapers, get as many viewers, or online hits as possible, and in order to do that they will often twist the truth to make a juicier story. I'm not saying that they are necessarily doing that in this case, I just think that we should be aware that there is definitely more than meets the eye in this case.

-Elle Callahan