Murphy, 1
October 27, 2018
Feminist Curiosity: A Lens of Clarity
A naive optimist would tell you that the world is in a time of positive, directional change for all major issues regarding equality. This person would genuinely believe the efforts being made to eradicate inequality are working and that these efforts are not sneakily imbedding old-fashion ideology into contemporary acts of change. This person would not understand that discrimination and fear still stream through the veins of the Westernized culture and that racism and sexism continually impact the lives of minorities every single day. People will grow up never understanding the true meaning of privilege and how it impacts the lives of every single human being. They will never have the opportunity to dissect our society and reveal the wrong doing of hundreds of years. While there is no single solution to begin the movement towards equality, feminist curiosity is a good place to start. Recently, feminism has simply been denounced to the advocacy of women’s rights and is known as a movement that has previously neglected the considerations of race and class. What many don’t know, is that feminism is a lens that illustrates the world in a way that welcomes all identities and hopes to destroy the hierarchy that is currently dismantling our society. It takes all perspectives of one’s identity with their related oppressions that allows us to see the world as is.
Feminism is only the beginning of a long journey of cleaning the filth from our history and needs to be expanded to the public knowledge. Daisy Hernández, author of A Cup of Water Under My Bed, has broadened the lines of feminism by emphasizing that one’s intersectionality shouldn’t oppress them. The definition of intersectionality throughout this essay is the study of interconnected nature of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination (Lecture 3, Femininities). This theory of intersectionality implies that people experience personalized discrimination as a result of their perceived identities. Throughout her life, Daisy Hernández grew up as a Cuban American woman, from an immigrated family and also now identifies as a bisexual. These characteristics only make up a part of who Daisy Hernández is, but have a heavy influence on how she is perceived by society. She wrote this memoir to further understand and process every little aspect of her memories to make sense of her experience growing up with all of these perceived labels. While there are many aspects, this essay will primarily focus on her experience with her parents. Daisy Hernández’ patriarchic relationship with her parents helped form her view on feminism by influencing how she first learned about the social construction of gender, which then morphs into how she explored her sexuality.
The ideology behind family in the United States follows the system of a patriarchy in that the “traditional” family is bu...
