Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure Analysis

Superior Essays
Intersectionality and the Many Variations of Masculinity
1. Dorothy Allison stands as a well-known, best-selling author of Southern literature. Allison may be best known for her provocative and honest book Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. In this memoir, Allison recounts her life by emphasizing the abuse, sexual and physical, the Gibson women encountered from their male counterparts. She uses her voice in literature to stress the painful fate she was destined to have because she was born into a poor, white family. Allison specifically claims that race, class, gender, and sexuality are interconnected; furthermore, she professes that poverty in women looks dissimilar to poverty in men.
Toward the beginning of Two or Three Things I Know for
…show more content…
This piece discusses what liberation may look like for a group of lesbian-identified, working-class, women of color. They state, “We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 213). This statement is a rather straight-forward reasoning of intersectionality that is experienced in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. Furthermore, the women in this text discuss their awareness of “the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 211). An obvious trend is visible here with discrimination based off the combination of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Sexual abuse is incredibly prevalent, but it is not limited to women of one race. However, in general, different races experience sexual abuse variously. For example, the women in “A Feminist Statement” suggest that white men rape black women for “political repression,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 213). Although, Allison states that white men rape white women because they are poor and have no right to their sexualities or sexual

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Research Proposal 1. Kimberle Crenshaw’s article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” is an essay that exposes the reality of being a colored woman today. It compares the unfair treatment of colored women to the treatment of white women in various scenarios. Colored women not only face discrimination due to sexism but they also experience racism. Facing both make it a hard intersection for many colored women.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In this book, 2 women accused 9 African American teenage boys of raping them on a train. Their sentences ranged from imprisonment to the death penalty. The young men eventually won their case only after one of the women professed to selling sex to young men on the train. Ida’s main claim is that very often, white women enjoy the company of black men just as many white men enjoyed the company of young black women. However, most of the time, the “shame” that these women experience either from the surrounding community, or from society itself for their attraction forces them to make claims of rape or to leave their communities altogether.…

    • 1452 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Oppression Against Women

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Section A 2. Oppression is experienced all around the world in today’s society- not only is it experienced, but nothing is being done about it. Over time, women have been seen as the weaker sex and is to meet up to the needs of a man- both socially and politically.…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sabrina Coccia Women Images & Realities 9/22/2015 Reading Analysis #2 Although, most people assume feminism is just about being against ‘the man’, it is more than that. Usually, when individuals think of feminists, they immediately think of white feminists but what about the colored feminists. Colored women have to endure racial based problems more than white women. Colored women have to endure white supremacy oppressing them. In “No Disrespect Black Women and the Burden of Respectability” by Tamara Winfrey Harris and “Ideals and Expectations: Race, Health and Femininity” by Margaret A. Lowe, these writers talk about the ways in which ‘politics of respectability’ is forced upon and the effects on women of color especially on their bodies.…

    • 1031 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The academic journal article up for reading and discussion for this week is titled Blood Terrain: Freedwomen, Sexuality, and Violence During Reconstruction by Catherine Clinton. In this brief twenty page work, Clinton narrows her focus on the history of the Reconstruction era to the undersold experience of black freedwomen who underwent monstrous and routine sexual abuse and rape by white southerners. My initial impression of this article is that it succinctly captures the rotten history of America by explicitly exploring the experiences of sexual violence against black women during reconstruction, a history that implicitly the American public knows, or at least feels. The purpose of Clinton’s article is to convey and expose how white supremacism or racism basis has…

    • 887 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1985, a passionate group of individuals grew weary of the social system that oppressed them and founded the Austin Latina/Latino Lesbian and Gay Organization, ALLGO. This team realized that intersectionalism instigated their disadvantages in life and corrupted the very movements that were supposed to be supporting them. They saw “on one side, mainstream gay activists whose agendas ignored farm workers, police brutality, and racism; and on the other side, mainstream Latino activists whose agendas excluded homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny,” (allgo). The prolonged exclusion of and discrimination against those who were both queer and Latino is the social injustice that gave ALLGO a solid foundation.…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    New Black Womanhood Analysis

    • 2328 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Although the term had only started to be discussed in scholarly sociological circles in the early 70’s, the concept and ideas behind intersectionality, or how various categories of oppression work together, were around without a name for a very long time. In particular, it pervaded the work of black women writers from Zora Neale Hurston of the Harlem Renaissance to Nikki Giovanni and Carolyn Rodgers during the Black Nationalism and Black Arts Movements. Black women have the unique experience of being on the lower rungs of not one, but two categories of oppression: race and gender. It was within these intersections of race and gender as well as the Black Power Movement that birthed a concept called “New Black Womanhood”. Mostly used by revolutionary…

    • 2328 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crenshaw Sociology

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Crenshaw emphasizes the salience of recognizing race and gender as factors of identity that intersect to shape women of color's (WOC) experiences of violence. Outlining this concept via discussions of social structure, politics, and representation, she also points to the manner in which WOC commonly become marginalized within both anti-racist and feminist activism. Crenshaw states that WOC endure "subordination based on both race and gender" (1270). As targets of racism and sexism, they are immersed in a reality of oppression, and are frequently excluded as "primary beneficiaries" of the movements working to end these injustices (1269).…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This student watched Violence Against Women – It’s a Men’s Issue, Why We Do What We Do, and How to Speak so People Want to Listen. 2. Violence Against Women – It’s a Men’s Issue by Jackson Katz is the video of choice. 3. Katz argues that gender violence is everyone’s issue, not just one for women.…

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Cherríe Moraga’s La Güera tackles the idea of a hierarchy of privilege that is present in many aspects of the world, including, but not exclusive to, feminism. She uses her experience as a Chicana lesbian to acknowledge both the oppression that has been inflicted upon her and the oppression she has inflicted upon others. It is through acknowledging one’s own oppression that they are able to fight their own internalized bigotry. Using her ideas, we are able to unpack a bit of Junot Diaz’s Monstro and the racial implications that come with it. Through multiple texts, it becomes evident that oppression is present for countless groups across the world.…

    • 2371 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the history of activism within the LGBT+ community, there has been a common goal to promote openness and acceptance. By employing a strategy modeled after the civil rights movement, which mainly focused on assimilation into the dominant institutions as a means of acceptance, activist groups have received their fair share of criticism. In 1997, Cathy J Cohen, a Black lesbian author and social activist, published the groundbreaking article “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” a year after a controversy she introduces in the beginning of the essay. The famed Gay Men’s Health Crisis, best known for their active role in the treatment of HIV/AIDS during the AIDS crisis, came under fire after…

    • 1548 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Contrasts and Evaluations of Namaste and Butler’s Approaches to Violence against Transwomen In “Undoing Theory, The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory”, Viviane Namaste (2009) examines the impacts of feminist knowledge production on transgender lives, specifically looking at the ways in which Judith Butler’s theories frame violence against transwomen. Indeed, in doing so, Namaste astutely points out that Butler fails to recognize the complexity of this issue as she is blinded by gender primacy (2009, p. 18). However, although this conclusion is enlightening, Namaste’s own analysis of violence against transwomen is quite superficial as it largely relies predominantly on the concept of labor. Although…

    • 1543 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Starting with “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female”, author Frances M. Beal, says that, “the black woman in America can justly be described as a ‘slave of a slave’” (Beal, 385). When we think about it, black women endure a lot of suffering throughout history. Not only does the color of their skin put them in the position to receive discrimination, but also on top of that they are female, which reduces their rights to even less. Beal points out that when it comes to the white women’s movement, a majority of the women fighting for their rights come from the middle class.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Patricia Cain critiques the history/ development of feminist theory. Cain explores the lack of lesbian experiences in many different feminist legal scholarships and how it can skew the perception of a women’s reality. Feminist methods come from women listening to other women. Cain describes that as being the best way to understand other women’s experiences is by it being listened to by women’s themselves. But a limitation to that is the lack of different experiences being told and taken into consideration, more notably lesbian experiences.…

    • 205 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mercy Oduyoye

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Introduction In the following assignment I will be focusing on Mercy Amba Oduyoye themes that she emphasis several times in her books, poems and speeches. These things all rotate around African Women and the poor way they are being treated in their community and in the social contexts of our modern day world. Today I was walking on campus, Stellenbosch University and I was bombarded on the “rooiplein” with various women, short, skinny, black, white, they were all gathered in this space speaking about rape culture.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays