Gender and the Political Scales

There is one element that I have noticed throughout the literature and media we've seen up to last week or so. That element entails the place and influence of politics as far a race, sexuality, and society are concerned. Especially with our own campus controversy on transgender applicants, as well at the national caucuses, these elements of identity have been heightened. But I would just like to gauge some discussion in this.

Of course, politics can play heavily into social norms and customs, to where some aspects of humanity are not "appropriate". We see this played out in the situation of Phyllis Wheatley, where her skin color, perhaps more than her sex, barred her from basic freedoms. Slavery was an accepted system, and there were freedoms that were honored in keeping slaves (seems a little ironic to me). But this was truth, and the system could not be touched. So far along that it was against the law to teach a slave to read and write in almost all cases.

I don't think that we see much of politics getting in the way of Zami, but there is that law banning homosexuality that she always refers to. In that book, it is all about social customs and understandings, and Audre Lorde is conscious of that. Even so, the two are inherently mixed to create and enforce that code. In this case it has a negative effect, but Zami shows that such a person can stand to her own emotions, and not let such a concrete institution.

These are the most attainable examples I can provide now. I would like to see if any of us can pull out some other instances were politics are mixed in with the elements of gender and race, and how society is a factor in it. The main point I want to demonstrate is that not all of the major elements of what our authors are thinking about entails personal understandings. Indeed, much of those may be influenced by outside forces.