Scrutinizing Political contents

Before discussing political article, we need to be clear about the term ‘Politics’. Literally ‘Politics’ means a system related to government policy-making as distinguished from administration or the public affairs of a country (Longman dictionary). So, it can be clearly inferred from the definition of politics that political article should contain public issues or social problems or governmental policies regarding a problem which are in discussion of the intellects.

 By the same token, if we look into some political articles, we will see that social phenomenon like child marriage, women empowerment; mass education, female mortality and national development e.t.c are discussed in there. The structure of political article is also different from other types of writings or literary works. The language of this kind of article is straight forward and we don’t have to infer the meaning as there is no figurative language or rhetorical devices like metaphor or simile. Also, political article contains opinions, analyses, hard evidence: statistics, facts, and censuses given by the author in support of his/her argument.  

As an example, we can take the article “More than 100 million missing women” of Amartya Sen, where he talked about the reasons of lower sustainability rate of women in comparison of men and gives possible solutions to the problem.  Here he states that by birth women are more biologically resistant to disease but they succumb to death for social ignorance and for not getting proper medical care in further life (Sen 01). Then in support to his claim, he gives some statistics of Haryana (ratio of women to men is 0.86) and Kerala (ratio of women to men is 1.03) where difference in women survival rate can be noticed due to access to same basic nutrition as men in spite of being 2 states of the same country (Sen 05).

Another text named “Women’s Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh” by Mary Arends- Kuenning and Sajeda Amin speaks for importance of women education for economic development of a developing country like Bangladesh. Throughout this article they grasp two policies (as a means of economic growth of the country) for women education, explain them and analyze them. They say, according to capital approach, in Bangladesh education is important to make human capital whereas to capabilities approach, it is for women’s well being (Amin 126-127).  Then they analyze that capital approach enhancing the economy rather than women’s condition and in conclusion they suggest that women should be prepared to support themselves and it should question the gender disparity (Amin 140).

Therefore, while reading a political article we should be aware of the evidences that the author gives. We have to be open to all kind of contradict that can approach for this issue and question the policies or theories that the author is making for verifying their legitimacy. We have to think — Who are the victims of this policy? Whose interests are protected by the theory? What can be the advantage or disadvantage of it?

works cited

Arends-Kuenning,Mary and Amin,Sanjeda, “Women’s capability and right to education in Bangladesh .” International Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 15, No.1, September 2001. Print.

Sen, Amartya. “More Than 100 Million Missing Women.”Nybooks Archives. Dec,20 1990. Mar 4, 2013

 

Social View and Neglect is Detterent to Women’s Survival:100 Million Missing Women!

Indian philosopher and economist Amartya Sen, in his essay “More than 100 Million Missing Women” draws our attention to the fact that due to the social neglect a lot of women are getting lost every, gives a clear estimation of missing women who are equally important for social and national development and offers us a closer look into the reasons behind this massive lose of women.

In the second paragraph of his essay, Sen asserts lack of health care as the first cause of higher female mortality rate. He claims that, if women are given the same care as men, women tend to survive more than men (Sen 01). And what he means here is, women are deprived of proper medical care or don’t get basic nutrition that is important for their good health which pays homage with his main claim of the essay. He uses various hard evidences: statistics, censuses, facts, and surveys in the following paragraphs to support and to fortify his argument. But, a question, which always remains here is—why women are not getting proper health care?

Sen gives us the answer of this question by stating that women are biologically proven to be more resistant than men but they suffer from many diseases throughout their lives for social neglect and environmental differences (Sen 01). He gives many examples of different countries for proving the fact that environmental and social differences effects women sustainability rate. He uses the example of women outnumber men sustainability in Europe where women face less discrimination in basic nutrition although having vast discrimination in professional life in comparison to men. He says, in the European countries women tend to survive more because women are more resistant to disease and proper health care enhances their ability more and helps them to live longer. In essay—

“The longer life time enjoyed by women given similar care appears to relate to the biological advantages that women have over men in resisting disease (Sen 01)”.

Further, he talks about India where women are not provided with equal medical services or healthy diet as men. As a consequence, the nation deals with a deficit of women. In essay—

“The death rate for women is higher than for men… is related to higher rates of disease…ultimately to relative neglect of females, especially in health care and medical attention (Sen 02)”.

He also pointed out that the mortality rate differs from place to place by giving the example of Haryana and Kerala—two states of India—where Haryana has lower (0.86) portion of women but Kerala has ratio of 1.03which is quite similar to the European countries(Sen 02).

Over all, Sen successfully designs his arguments in sequence where all the paragraphs are interrelated with each other and goes back to his main claim of the essay as a whole.

works cited:

Sen, Amartya. “More than 100 Missing Women.” Nybooks Archives. Dec 20, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.

Blending Fiction with Non Fiction in ‘A Room of One’s Own’

In the inscribed piece of essay A Room of One’s Own  we can see that Woolf is very disappointed about the women’s absence from history before the 18th century. If we look into the history we will find that it is really true. And, it is a matter of sorrow that in spite of constituting almost half of the population, women had no specific role in history in that era and the historians have structured all the happenings without women except some cases in such a way that one cannot feel their existence even. Thus, some questions which initially come to mind are — Why the women are missing? Why the ancient women were not so important for the historians to talk about?

Similarly, in A Room of One’s Own Wolf also feels those questions in mind while reading the poetry of the Elizabethan era that were full of admiration for women and their beauty though in reality they were rarely mentioned. One can learn about the prominent male leaders, famous places, battles, legends of a specific region from the history but cannot know anything about the women as there is nothing about them. That’s why Wolf has taken the support of fiction in describing the status of previous women who were lost in the history. In her essay when Wolf says,

“I continued, looking about the shelves again is that nothing is known about women before eighteenth century” ( Wolf 42).

By saying this she tries to convey that she has no idea about the Elizabethan women. In addition, she gives a certain reason for using the imaginery sister of Shakespeare by saying that she doesn’t has any model in mind to work out for finding her answers of the questions about the activities of those women’s (Wolf 42).

She wants to reconsider the images based on her knowledge, which she got from reading poetry and history about women. She only knows about people’s thought about women as many intellectuals like Shakespeare have given their opinions about women. Also, she creates an image of an odd monster,”a worm winged like an eagle” for demonstrating the condition of women. Then she makes a sister of Shakespeare named Jaudith Shakespeare for supporting her claim that is like the absolute figure of her imagery monster. Like the worm, Jaudith was neglected by her parents and the society for being a woman. Conversely, like the eagle, she had potentials of playing with words and ambition for theatre. But, in spite of having as potential as her brother she was not allowed for reading, writing, acting ; forced to marriage and was probably raped by a man when she escaped from home. In fact, her final destination was death. All these visuals give us a clear image of the society of early 18th century and makes it clear why women were mentioned in poetry but not mentioned in history.

In short, Wolf has used fiction and Jaudith Shakespeare within her non fiction essay to clarify the probable reasons of women’s being absent from history and for giving us an image of the society of that era.

works cited:

Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” Fort Washington: Harvest Book.  1981.  First published 1929.

 

Why Don’t We Use ‘She’ for Boys and ‘He’ for Girls?-Gender Inequity

Why do we need to be feminist? Why we have to raise our voice against inequality and empowering women rights? Why are we still fighting for the equity in modern era thousands years after the civilization? Why in most cases men are dominant and women are subordinate to them? May be this kind of questions will seem weird to many people or probably the illiterate community or arrogant people will answer that it is natural. They will also say that it’s like a tradition that has been observing since the civilization of human. It is so pervasive that we don’t even take this issue seriously ever. However, if we ponder the issue may be we will see that discrimination among “genders” has not risen naturally. On the contrary, it is the fruit of the constantly practiced order of our society which varies from place to place and depends on how the society forms it. Though we mix the word gender with sex, these words are completely different from each other. Where sex has to do with our genitalia, gender a human crafted concept has to do with our marks and appearance that we use to distinguish between biologically different human beings (male and female). Gender doesn’t come by birth people make this like culture. A sex category becomes gender status by naming, dressing and the use of gender markers.

Sex does not play its role until puberty but all the desires and sexual feeling are shaped in advance by gender norms (Lorber 55).

As all the expectations are different for boys and girls, they use to act in that way they are expected to do. A girl/boy takes birth as human but nurture makes him/her as a man/women. They grow with the feelings of having different role in the society from their childhood, which they learn by observing their fathers and mothers following their responsibilities. They reconstruct themselves according to the expectation of the society and we call these ways of livings, skills and qualities that they develop as masculine and feminine. I called gender as a crafted tool because except the biological infirmity we can make a person of any kind by nurturing him/her in a particular way and we will be successful undoubtedly as mimicking is also a genetic quality of human beings.

In her literary work “Night of His Day” Lober say, “social statuses are carefully constructed through prescribed process of teaching, learning, emulation and enforcement (Lober 56).

 In fact, there are many evidences of changing role of gender, which we call exception and try to continue the old tradition considering it as natural process. As an example we can talk about the transsexuals (who change their genitalia through operation) and transvestites (who live like opposite genders without sex change surgery). Transvestite women fought in war in 19^th century also Billy Tipton (a woman) lived as a man musician for her entire life and adopted three children to whom she was both the mother and father (Lober 56-57).

So gender practice should be avoided in order to terminate the discrimination between men and women in the society.

works cited

Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Print.      19 Feb. 2013.

‘Plato’ Most Probably An ancient Feminist or Thinker of Women Welfare

‘Feminism’ is a really very complicated word that we use frequently now- a- days to show our awareness of women rights and equality. The main question is that what do we mean by feminism and what is our expectation from a feminist? How do we consider a person as a feminist?

Now I’m going back to my today’s issue of discussion, “Is Plato a feminist?” and I would like to draw your attention into two things. First, why in Plato’s writing there are thoughts which undermine women? Probably if we think about it without being biased and letting the definition of feminism away for some time we will get our answer by ourselves. Literature can tell us about a civilization, its ideals, and way of life, thoughts and tradition to much extent. So, through reading Plato’s Symposium and other literary works we can learn about the ancient Greek society, and we can see that in Greece at that time was a typical patriarchal society where only men were in authority and women were considered as weak and worthless creatures. There everybody believed in myths and were very conservative. As our thoughts and the way of seeing life depends on how we were brought up and how we were taught to think a case from our childhood, Plato could not ignore the influence of the society and teachings that he learned from the society.

In “Symposium” there is a word ‘manliness’ which was repeated many times and it means the male qualities. In that time all the good ( Greek people called virtuous) qualities were in possession of men as only men were allowed to go to school, acquire knowledge and prepare as better human beings. They just considered all the good qualities as manliness because they used to see those in men. So, by saying the word manliness Plato not necessarily expected women to be as men, he told that women should also acquire good qualities. Moreover, he has always differentiated between soul and body.

Nancy Vanheerst in her “Feminism and Plato” says, Plato (through Socrates) said virtue cannot change because of who carries it. (qtd. in Bar On,5).

Secondly, the theory of feminism is a very modern concept but Plato is an ancient Greek Philosopher. So, is it relevant to judge Plato with a very modern concept which didn’t exist in that time? If we look into the Smposium we can see that the philosophical figures were highly respected in the society and people used to follow their teachings. So, we can infer that Plato is trying to reveal the social life and women‘s condition through his writing. Again, as he was also a philosophical figure he could not totally go against his own society as there is a chance of having collision between him and the other philosophers. Still, he is trying to speak up for women and breaking the boundaries through his complicated frame work of writing where he illustrates thoughts of people about women and then he gives his opinion through a woman’s speech (Diotima) by a man’s voice where he praises her thoughts and abilities and rebuts almost all the early thought about love which can also be seen as a symbol of hope for changing people’s thought (indirectly Plato’s thought) about women role and status. In fact, we can consider him as an feminist of his time though it is different from today’s feminism concept.

works cited

Plato. The Symposium. Plato: The Complete Works. Ed. Cooper, John M.  Cambridge: Hacker Publishing Co. 1997.

Rising a Storm Over “What is love?” by Greek Philosophers in Symposium

‘Love’ probably a very complex word which we are saying daily thousands of time easily to many people but hardly can express the intensity or define it through words. From the ancient era to the modern world it has been a burning issue and mysterous ocean , the beauty of which remains in its depth and many scholars and philosophers are still trying to reveal the immense defintion this term love. Many philosophers have made their own definitions of love like a mouse in maze does for its survaival. In Plato’s “Symposium” we can also observe the same thing where several ancient Greek philosophers have given their own definitions love to pass the night and to perticipate in the discussion in Agathon’s house. Here Plato indirectly gives his own oint of view about love through the dialogues of the speakers.

If we see closely there were many overlaps going up and down on the definition of love and all the scholars contradicted each others’ arguments. First, we can start from where and for what love grows in mind. Pausanias said love is of two kinds and if the desire is for physical beauty and sexual relationship just like between female and male then it is not praiseworthy and isn’t love in fact. It can not be pure love and thr affection will be gone when the beauty will decrease. On the contrary I think desiring for any thing means to love that thing and people desire for something because they don’t have it or if they have they want to keep it forever. This was also pointed out through Socrates’s dialogue

“ it is to love something which is not at hand, which the lover does not have: it is to desire the preservation of what he has now in time to come”(page-483).

Now in second place, what is love’s characteristics? According to Phaedrus

“Love is one of the most ancient gods”( page-463) while Agathon said “He is the youngest of the gods”(page-478).

Then Agathon said love is beautiful. But Diotima questioned this thought through Socrates’s voice by saying that god should have all the things but love deisres for beautiful things. So how can love be a god and if a person seeks beauty as he doesn’t have it, then how can he be beautiful? She asked, “How could he be a god if he has no share in good and beautiful things?”(page-485).

“If something needs beauty and got no beauty al all, would you still say that it is beautiful?”(page-484).

Then she gives a solution that love is in between and I totally agree with her that love is beautiful when its impacts are good and bad if it brings distruction. Thirdly, where is love’s residence? As it was stated before that love is not a god and Agathon and Diotima both agreed that love stays in spirit then it can be concluded from the dialogue that love is a spiritual thing.
Lastly, who are lover? As love is a spritual thing and desire for anything is love then every creature every creatures in this univers falls in love and all o fthem are lover. In Symposium Eryximachus said, “It is simply a broader phenomenon, it occurs in human, animal kingdom and even in the world os plants.”(page-470)

works cited

Plato. The Symposium. Plato: The Complete Works. Ed. Cooper, John M.  Cambridge: Hacker Publishing Co. 1997.

My identity is in ‘I'( myself and what I have); analyses on “An Introduction” by Kamala Das

The poem ‘An Introduction’ by Kamala Das is a free verse poem containing sixty-one lines. It is a long poem and there is no stanza between the lines of the poem. It doesn’t rhyme and there is no regular rhythm in the poem. Most of the lines of the poem are long and they include sometimes full sentences along with another part of sentence; sometimes two clauses. All the lines of the poem is capitalized and there are several similes and personifications in the poem like sword in its sheath, nympho, hungry hasty of river e.t.c.

It seems that living under the cultural, national and sexual limitations for maintaining one’s identity is like a hard and first rule of society. The people or the society determines how to act and what to do as a human being and even forces to lead life in their model way. But Kamala Das who is by birth an Indian woman and writes poetry in English. In her poem “An Introduction” she talks about the obstacles and forces that a person faces if he/she goes beyond those limitations, framed by society. For example, in line (7-8) she says

“Don’t write in English, they said, English is/not your mother tongue”

which means she faces the criticism of the people for writing English poetry as it was not her mother tongue. But to her, poetry is a careful creation of writer’s own voice which expresses her thoughts and means of communication like every living creature no matter in which language it is written.

She used ‘They’ as a synecdoche of society or men. Not only as a writer but also as a woman she was forced to be confined into womanliness as an ordinary woman which can be noticed through line-36 when she says

“Be wife, they said. Be embroidered, be cook”.

However, actual identity of a person lies in him/her own individuality and what she/he possesses. Also, she says everybody in the world replies in ‘I’ to introduce them and this ‘I’ conveys their identity through line (51-52)

“Who are you, I ask each and everyone,/ the answer is, it is I. anywhere and everywhere.”

Everybody has some own qualities which only fit in him like the simile ‘sword in its sheath’ of the poem and whatever he does in life is his own responsibility and he enjoys/suffers the consequences. So, the poet asks to leave a person alone and let him/her ot live life in his/her own way.