This semester, I have learned about overall human rights, the theories of Hobbes and Locke, women’s human rights, genocide, group rights, and healthcare rights. This class challenged me to think deeper about what I personally believe and about our global problems. Because of our group research about human trafficking in Cambodia, I learned much more about women’s human rights violations than I ever would have found out. Two of the works that resonated with me this semester because of class discussions are Mackinnon’s text Rape, Genocide, and Women’s Human Rights, and excerpts from Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. These different texts caused me to think about women’s human rights overall and society today.
In Catherine …show more content…
Because of my group’s research about human trafficking in Cambodia, I learned about the atrocities that are occuring with women’s human rights. It is an immense problem, but in order to advance women’s human rights our society first needs to view and treat women as equals to men in every aspect of life. In America, the inequality is not as blatantly drastic, but most third world countries have deep cultural and religious beliefs that prevent women from gaining equality. Small steps, such as first recognizing that the atrocities that occur are specifically women’s rights violations as Catherine Mackinnon states in Rape, Genocide, and Women’s Human Rights, can lead to slowly changing our global society about views and treatment of women. As Susan Sontag asserts in Regarding the Pain of Others, we attempt to “numb” ourselves to images of suffering in order to curb fear and anxiety. However, that also “steel[s]” us against feeling compassion. Compassion is needed to take action and to not only help the victims of human trafficking and other disasters, but it is also needed to create change to prevent atrocities from occuring at