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SOC 168 Test Three (Harriet Martineau, Perkins Gilman, etc.)
Harriet Martineau: Biography
1802-1876, British
Middle class upbringing
Women who did end up in college majored in certain things— fit into “polite” categories
Until the 1950’s, there was MRS degree, “marriage degree” for women
Women excluded from higher education and academia
When we talk about the classical canon, we have to squint our eyes to find women who were sociologists who were talked about; have documented information
Usually upper-middle class white women with social capital
Those who did journalistic work
People who got lucky
Contemporary of Comte
Co-coined term sociology
Unitarian religious background
More open, venn diagram, “I am spiritual but not religious”
Becomes deaf in adolescence
Very good student, excellent writer
Due to her family’s business failings, she begins to seek work
Not good for Victorian-era women
Stigma on class position
Choices available to her at the time were as a seamstress or a writer
She writes about the still emerging sociological principles
The goal of which is to educate the public about it (didactic novels)
She becomes well-known and makes a good living
She translates Comte’s “Positive Philosophy” — a version that he liked better than his own and so he translates it back to French and replaces the original
She wrote 1500 newspapers columns, adult fiction, children’s stories, poetry, religious pieces, literary criticism, and of course social and political analysis
The Subject Matter of Sociology?
Tocqueville: individualism and freedom
Spencer: institutional adaptation via evolutionary principles, social darwinism
Marx: exploitation and alienation
Durkheim: social facts
Weber: social action and rationalization
Martinea:, it was social life: its patterns, causes, consequences and problems.
Does society make its people happy?
Happiness, Morals, and Manners
For Martineau, examining happiness was the way to judge the fairness of human societies
But how is happiness to be measured? It has to do with how much humans are able to fulfill their human nature. Marx tells us that human happiness is attached to freely engaging in creative labor- the fulfilment of our species being.
For Martineau, are we autonomous moral and practical agents. The opposite of this is domination.
The sociological project is therefore to determine if society lets its people to freely develop morals and manners,
Morals: collective ideas of proscribed and prescribed behaviors (culture)
Manners: patterns of action and association (social structure)
How free are the people to fully engage in society? If fully free- they are happy.
Prescriptive Norms: What you should do
Proscriptive Norms: What you should not do
Pro means what you shouldn’t do in this case!
Methods
Martineau emphasized the “outsider” perspective. Everyone can be a “traveler” in society who can make informed observations about what they see.
Similar to Durkheim, there was an appreciation for the study of “things” (like to social facts) to be collected from different locations which reflected the “common mind”
Examples: Architectural remains, language from books and other sources, national music...etc.
Where can we find evidence for this? Movies, etc.
Capitalism
Marx is boogeyman
Language of efficiency
Meritocracy
Dominant groups see things differently
Other see things clearly because they must pay attention/have unique position
Martineau emphasized the “outsider” perspective. Everyone can be a “traveler” in society who can make informed observations about what they see.
Similar to Durkheim, there was an appreciation for the study of “things” (like to social facts) to be collected from different locations which reflected the “common mind”
Examples: Architectural remains, language from books and other sources, national music...etc.
Similar to Weber (“verstehen”), Martineau also appreciated interpretive sociology: focused on understanding the meanings of the social interaction for the persons involved.
A “sympathetic understanding as a strategy”
Multi-Level Comparisons
Martineau compares societies on their formal institutions (religion, law, science, polity, kinship, economy, education...etc.)
as well as their informal institutions: norms of hospitality, travel, colloquialisms, money, nature, decorum, entertainment, children’s comportment, housing, sexuality...etc.
After examining different formal and informal institutions, Martineau then analyzes society’s moral well-being.
What are a country’s cultural aspirations (morals) and how well does this align with actual behaviors (manners)?
When there is dis-alignment, we have an “anomaly.”
Difference between goals and actions
Anomalies
Morals: In the U.S. we have “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
Martineau argued that we have four anomalies (1836):
Slavery
Manner
Foundings of constitution were worried about direct democracy, mob rule, riots
Not particularly interested in allowing full-membership to American citizenship to anyone who wasn’t white, male, and property-owning
Unequal Status of Women
Pursuit of Wealth
At the expense of others…
Marx would argue that this produced modern labor movements; as people were dissatisfied
Fear of public opinion (we need to be able to sympathize with those radically different from us)
We are majorly homogeneous in this country
Autonomy or Domination
Martineau measured this by looking at what the cultural attitudes towards autonomy and domination were- the condition of the less autonomous (women, racial minorities, servants, the homeless...etc.); and the extent to which the country provides necessities for these less autonomous.
Some folks have less autonomy than others!
Feminism
The domination of women in marriage was similar to the domination of American slaves
Indulgences in both cases exist instead of justice (being allowed freedom by men/slave owners replaces authentic autonomy)
The difference is that with women, the indulgences are “large and universal” instead of “petty and capricious”
Martineau also looked at “tyranny of fashion;” violence against women, prostitution, and some intersectional analysis of gender and class in the workplace.
Reflective of men’s standards of beauty at the time…
Meritocracy
Are things going to become more efficient
Show proof of how this will work
What is the moral and what is actually happening on the ground
Perkins-Gilman: Biography 1860-1935
From the U.S.
Gilded age, bourgeoisie building massive wealth
Marx would say, “a self made man is never really self made..”
Great depression; rise of socialism
Push of capitalism
Women’s suffrage
Father left the family early on in her life.
She was a “willful” child. She did not embrace the traditional gender roles of the time.
Women were supposed to be deferential to men
“She refused to play the part of the precious and frail coquette, choosing instead to exercise vigorously and develop her physical strength.”
Vowed never to marry but did so reluctantly. Had one child.
Became very depressed and melancholy.
The absence of intellectual activity really broke her.
The “cure” at the time was bedrest, making the depression and angst even worse.
Got divorced. Let ex-husband and new wife (her good friend) raise her child. This made her a bad mother in the public eye.
Moved to California and made money by lecturing on women’s rights. Became well known in the women’s suffrage movement.
Was a Fabian socialist- collective ownership and democracy without revolution.
Believe in critique, minimalizing, ameliorating capitalism
Not looking for a revolution
Intellectual Tradition: Marxism
Gilman’s work fits well with the Marxist focus on political and economic factors that produce inequality.
The traditional family division of labor was problematic: particularly the public breadwinner – private homemaker model, which made women dependent upon men
Their inability to make money in a capitalistic world; makes them secondary; lesser
Did not have the same autonomy as men
“Kept women”
Needed permission from husbands to do anything
Like Marx’s notion that capitalism is inherently exploitative because the workers do not control the forces of production, Gilman argues that family structure is inherently exploitative since the economic compensation for women is not tied at all to her actual labor.
No matter how much work she does or does not do, her economic standing is solely determined by her husband. Her labor belongs to her husband, not to her.
Took on status of husband, identity also belongs to him
A lot of places did not have explicit laws for assault, battery, etc.
Women were very disadvantaged
Status of work is determined by how well her husband does
Economic dependence & unpaid labor
Intellectual Background: Chicago School
Symbolic Interaction & the Chicago school: differential socialization leads to (and perpetuates) gender inequality.
The S.I. perspective challenges the biological (nature/essentialism) arguments over gender differences.
These biological arguments, in part, have the product of insisting that women and men CANNOT and SHOULD NOT have overlapping activities.
Biology dictates destiny here
Gilman’s connection here is a bit contradictory…
The Social Construction of Gender
Gilman maintained that from the earliest age, young girls were encouraged, if not forced, to act, think, look, and talk differently from boys, though their interests and capabilities at that age might be identical.
Women are to present; to be beautiful
Reflected outwards through things you wear, the way you look
Men are creating and building
Aggression, strength
However, the Darwinian perspective was very strong at the end of the 19th century…
Gillman also understood that men and women are in fact different from one another at the biological level.
She used animal analogies to explain the human condition and the differences between the sexes.
Women and men have different biological principles to which they must adhere. Women, for example have more capacity for love and concern than do men
Some Unfortunate Essentialism
In addition, women are superior to men since they have more civilizing capacity to compensate for men’s destructive, combative, and warlike men.
Anachronistic by today’s terms.
Sadly, she also had some backwards opinions about race: some races blend better than other races; some are smarter than others...etc.
Think Jim Crow laws at the time…
No less problematic, Gilman also implicitly assumed she was speaking about all women when she was really referring to white women.
Theoretical Contributions: The Corset
“Put a corset, even a loose one, on a vigorous man or woman who never wore one, and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid consciousness thereof. The healthy muscles of the trunk resent the pressure, the action of the whole body is checked in the middle, the stomach is choked, the process of digestion is interfered with; and the victim says, “how can you bear such a thing?”
“But the person habitually wearing a corset does not feel these evils. They exist, assuredly, the facts are there, the body is not deceived; but the nerves have become accustomed to these disagreeable sensations, and no longer respond to them. The person “does not feel it.” In fact, the wearer becomes so used to the sensations that when they are removed,— with the corset,—there is a distinct sense of loss and discomfort.”
Anomalies between morals and manners!
Tyranny of fashion…
Thus, Gilman’s metaphor of the corset is similar to Marx’s notion of false consciousness?
We accept our own domination and take it for granted
In both cases, “the facts are there”—the inequality is there—but the person “does not feel it”; they do not see or know of it. They have internalized the pressures and constraints as her own.
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Semi-autobiographical about a woman’s descent into madness. • We see the mental breakdown from the inside out
Late 19th/early 20th century – women were expected to physically as well as intellectually be “childlike” and “fragile.”
These constraints placed on women drive healthy, independent women to insanity.
In the story, truth is the domain both of science and of men.
The protagonist in the story is at the mercy of her husband not only because he is the man, but also because he is the doctor
This dual legitimacy means that it is his—and only his— assessment of the protagonist’s health and treatment that counts.
Gilman maintains that the traditional division of labor renders women economically dependent on men and, hence, necessarily strips women of their freedom.
The woman receives both her social status and her economic viability not through her own labor, but through that of her husband. • This makes her labor not her “own,” but a property of the male.
Gilman compares the traditional position of the woman to the domesticated horse.
“The horse, in his free natural condition, is economically independent. He gets his living by his own exertions irrespective of any other creature. The horse, in his present condition of slavery, is economically dependent. He gets his living at the hands of his master; and his exertions, though strenuous, bear no direct relation to his living…The horse works, it is true; but what he gets to eat depends on the power and will of his master. His living comes through another. He is economically dependent.”
Some intersectionality of gender and class
Specifically, Gilman argues that if women were actually compensated for their work in the home, poor women with lots of children would get the most money (for they are doing the most work), while women with no children and those who do no work in the home (i.e., those who have nannies, maids, etc.) would get no compensation.
Early Feminism
For those who argue that “a woman’s place is in the home” because of her childbearing responsibilities, Gilman argues that “women’s work” is actually mostly house service (cooking, cleaning, mending, etc.), not child service (bearing children, breastfeeding, etc.). Thus, Gilman contends that the traditional division of labor is not biologically derived.
Rather than develop her own capabilities, women reduce themselves to attracting a viable life partner.
Economically, this makes sense for women, because “their profit comes through the power of sex-attraction,” not through their own talents
The problem with women’s economic dependence on men is that their energies are focused on “catching” a man rather than on being productive citizens.
Gilman saw it as a tragic waste that women were forced to spend their time and energy on grooming and “finding a man” rather than on intellectual concerns.
In denying her capabilities, she reduces herself to being, literally, the “weaker sex.”
The Sociobiological Tragedy
Women are not “underdeveloped men, but the feminine half of humanity in undeveloped form.”
Women are “oversexed,” there is too much emphasis on their sex distinction.
Rather than a healthy “survival of the fittest” in which women would be taught to be strong and productive, bourgeois women are mandated to be soft and weak, dependent, emotional, and frail
Anna Julia Cooper: Biography
Born a slave
After 1863 (Emancipation Proclamation), works a teacher at Episcopal freedman’s school for African Americans
Works her way through Oberlin
Earns BA in 1884 and honorary MA in 1887
Works as teacher and eventually principal in Washington DC.
Doctoral Degree from Sorbonne 1925 • Focus of her sociological work was on race
Ida Wells Barnett
Born to slave parents in 1862
Spent early working years as a teacher • Becomes known as a journalist
Conducts a detailed empirical study of lynching in 1883
Lives most of life in Chicago. Prominent contributor to Hull House (see Jane Addams)
Helps found: National Association of Colored Women; the National Afro-American Council; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
First Real Sociological Discussions about Race
“Together, Cooper and Wells-Barnett both consciously drew on their lived experiences as African American women to develop a “systematic consciousness of society and social relations.
They lay the foundation for a feminist sociological theory based in the interests of women of color.” (329)
They originate what will become known as standpoint theory: sociological analysis from a particular standpoint. For Cooper and Wells-Barnett, it was being African American women in Capitalist America.
Lecture Eighteen (3/6/25)
First Real Sociological Discussions about Race
“Together, Cooper and Wells-Barnett both consciously drew on their lived experiences as African American women to develop a “systematic consciousness of society and social relations.”
They lay the foundation for a feminist sociological theory based in the interests of women of color.” (329)
They originate what will become known as standpoint theory: sociological analysis from a particular standpoint. For Cooper and Wells-Barnett, it was being African American women in Capitalist America.
Methodology: Wells-Barnett
Advanced: both multi-faceted as well as qualitative AND quantitative
Statistics, interviews, secondary data analysis
For her work on lynching, uses newspaper reports (words from the oppressor) and analyzes these.
This is what we would now call “content analysis.”
Journalistic
Methodology: Cooper
Similar to Wells-Barnet in the use of the oppressor's discourse in the form of popular literature and historical records.
But Cooper was a theorist first.
She described patterns of social life and situated herself in that theoretical creation.
Born too early! Would have fit in with third wave feminists to write about unique standpoints that create our realities
Intersectionality Race and Gender: Cooper
Cooper engages in early work comparing the differences between white women and white men and African American women and African American men.
She writes about her own lived experiences
“I see two dingy little rooms with ‘For Ladies’ swinging over one and ‘For Colored People’ over the other, while wondering under which head I come”
Wasn’t for another 50 years that they rules separate is NOT equal
No equal access to the resources white people had
Intersectionality Race and Gender: Wells-Barnett
To Kill A Mockingbird
Because her work was focused on lynching, race, gender and sexuality were very powerful themes.
She challenged the rationale for the lynching of black men offered by white society: the myth that the victim raped a white woman.
Patriarchy demands that men protect the women
See black folks as “dangerous”, black women were “wild”
Mammy, jezebel, sapphire— for black women
Dainty, delicate, soft, to be protected— for white women
Not just about rape; also about the mixing of black and white
Anti-miscegenation laws, one-drop rule
Idea was that these were different races that mixed together, would create something dangerous
Seen as a biological determinant rather than a social one
Betrayal of species sanctity beyond just rape
She provided case studies of the mutual relationship between White women and Black men and White men to Black women as a normal part of social relations in the South. But the outcomes of each were quite different.
The former was so taboo a possibility that when it occurred, it was labeled rape and led to lynching.
The latter was so condoned and unreprimanded, no matter how resisted by black women, that it resulted in “the many shades of the race.”
Wells-Barnett’s Memphis newspaper was burned to the ground and her life threatened for opening up this topic in the 1890s.
Intersectionality: Race and Class
Cooper
How rural and urban race relations differed
Internal stratification within African American communities
Wells-Barnett
Social class tensions within women’s movements
Lynching was in part to restrict the class upward mobility of newly freed African Americans
Both theorists recognized the global nature of these class and race relationships. Racial domination was easy to witness as a product of the global capitalist order.
Slavery was not purely based on racism, it was also a very powerful economic system
Unpaid labor; building wealth
We still see this occasionally with prison labor, etc.
Almost always exploitative
Fire-fighter’s
Feminism
The domination of women in marriage was similar to the domination of American slaves
Indulgences in both cases exist instead of justice (being allowed freedom by men/slave owners replaces authentic autonomy)
The difference is that with women, the indulgences are “large and universal” instead of “petty and capricious”
Martineau also looked at “tyranny of fashion;” violence against women, prostitution, and some intersectional analysis of gender and class in the workplace.
Reflective of men’s standards of beauty at the time…
Meritocracy
Are things going to become more efficient
Show proof of how this will work
What is the moral and what is actually happening on the ground
Perkins-Gilman: Biography 1860-1935
From the U.S.
Gilded age, bourgeoisie building massive wealth
Marx would say, “a self made man is never really self made..”
Great depression; rise of socialism
Push of capitalism
Women’s suffrage
Father left the family early on in her life.
She was a “willful” child. She did not embrace the traditional gender roles of the time.
Women were supposed to be deferential to men
“She refused to play the part of the precious and frail coquette, choosing instead to exercise vigorously and develop her physical strength.”
Vowed never to marry but did so reluctantly. Had one child.
Became very depressed and melancholy.
The absence of intellectual activity really broke her.
The “cure” at the time was bedrest, making the depression and angst even worse.
Got divorced. Let ex-husband and new wife (her good friend) raise her child. This made her a bad mother in the public eye.
Moved to California and made money by lecturing on women’s rights. Became well known in the women’s suffrage movement.
Was a Fabian socialist- collective ownership and democracy without revolution.
Believe in critique, minimalizing, ameliorating capitalism
Not looking for a revolution
Intellectual Tradition: Marxism
Gilman’s work fits well with the Marxist focus on political and economic factors that produce inequality.
The traditional family division of labor was problematic: particularly the public breadwinner – private homemaker model, which made women dependent upon men
Their inability to make money in a capitalistic world; makes them secondary; lesser
Did not have the same autonomy as men
“Kept women”
Needed permission from husbands to do anything
Like Marx’s notion that capitalism is inherently exploitative because the workers do not control the forces of production, Gilman argues that family structure is inherently exploitative since the economic compensation for women is not tied at all to her actual labor.
No matter how much work she does or does not do, her economic standing is solely determined by her husband. Her labor belongs to her husband, not to her.
Took on status of husband, identity also belongs to him
A lot of places did not have explicit laws for assault, battery, etc.
Women were very disadvantaged
Status of work is determined by how well her husband does
Economic dependence & unpaid labor
Intellectual Background: Chicago School
Symbolic Interaction & the Chicago school: differential socialization leads to (and perpetuates) gender inequality.
The S.I. perspective challenges the biological (nature/essentialism) arguments over gender differences.
These biological arguments, in part, have the product of insisting that women and men CANNOT and SHOULD NOT have overlapping activities.
Biology dictates destiny here
Gilman’s connection here is a bit contradictory…
The Social Construction of Gender
Gilman maintained that from the earliest age, young girls were encouraged, if not forced, to act, think, look, and talk differently from boys, though their interests and capabilities at that age might be identical.
Women are to present; to be beautiful
Reflected outwards through things you wear, the way you look
Men are creating and building
Aggression, strength
However, the Darwinian perspective was very strong at the end of the 19th century…
Gillman also understood that men and women are in fact different from one another at the biological level.
She used animal analogies to explain the human condition and the differences between the sexes.
Women and men have different biological principles to which they must adhere. Women, for example have more capacity for love and concern than do men
Some Unfortunate Essentialism
In addition, women are superior to men since they have more civilizing capacity to compensate for men’s destructive, combative, and warlike men.
Anachronistic by today’s terms.
Sadly, she also had some backwards opinions about race: some races blend better than other races; some are smarter than others...etc.
Think Jim Crow laws at the time…
No less problematic, Gilman also implicitly assumed she was speaking about all women when she was really referring to white women.
Theoretical Contributions: The Corset
“Put a corset, even a loose one, on a vigorous man or woman who never wore one, and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid consciousness thereof. The healthy muscles of the trunk resent the pressure, the action of the whole body is checked in the middle, the stomach is choked, the process of digestion is interfered with; and the victim says, “how can you bear such a thing?”
“But the person habitually wearing a corset does not feel these evils. They exist, assuredly, the facts are there, the body is not deceived; but the nerves have become accustomed to these disagreeable sensations, and no longer respond to them. The person “does not feel it.” In fact, the wearer becomes so used to the sensations that when they are removed,— with the corset,—there is a distinct sense of loss and discomfort.”
Anomalies between morals and manners!
Tyranny of fashion…
Thus, Gilman’s metaphor of the corset is similar to Marx’s notion of false consciousness?
We accept our own domination and take it for granted
In both cases, “the facts are there”—the inequality is there—but the person “does not feel it”; they do not see or know of it. They have internalized the pressures and constraints as her own.
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Semi-autobiographical about a woman’s descent into madness. • We see the mental breakdown from the inside out
Late 19th/early 20th century – women were expected to physically as well as intellectually be “childlike” and “fragile.”
These constraints placed on women drive healthy, independent women to insanity.
In the story, truth is the domain both of science and of men.
The protagonist in the story is at the mercy of her husband not only because he is the man, but also because he is the doctor
This dual legitimacy means that it is his—and only his— assessment of the protagonist’s health and treatment that counts.
Gilman maintains that the traditional division of labor renders women economically dependent on men and, hence, necessarily strips women of their freedom.
The woman receives both her social status and her economic viability not through her own labor, but through that of her husband. • This makes her labor not her “own,” but a property of the male.
Gilman compares the traditional position of the woman to the domesticated horse.
“The horse, in his free natural condition, is economically independent. He gets his living by his own exertions irrespective of any other creature. The horse, in his present condition of slavery, is economically dependent. He gets his living at the hands of his master; and his exertions, though strenuous, bear no direct relation to his living…The horse works, it is true; but what he gets to eat depends on the power and will of his master. His living comes through another. He is economically dependent.”
Some intersectionality of gender and class
Specifically, Gilman argues that if women were actually compensated for their work in the home, poor women with lots of children would get the most money (for they are doing the most work), while women with no children and those who do no work in the home (i.e., those who have nannies, maids, etc.) would get no compensation.
Early Feminism
For those who argue that “a woman’s place is in the home” because of her childbearing responsibilities, Gilman argues that “women’s work” is actually mostly house service (cooking, cleaning, mending, etc.), not child service (bearing children, breastfeeding, etc.). Thus, Gilman contends that the traditional division of labor is not biologically derived.
Rather than develop her own capabilities, women reduce themselves to attracting a viable life partner.
Economically, this makes sense for women, because “their profit comes through the power of sex-attraction,” not through their own talents
The problem with women’s economic dependence on men is that their energies are focused on “catching” a man rather than on being productive citizens.
Gilman saw it as a tragic waste that women were forced to spend their time and energy on grooming and “finding a man” rather than on intellectual concerns.
In denying her capabilities, she reduces herself to being, literally, the “weaker sex.”
The Sociobiological Tragedy
Women are not “underdeveloped men, but the feminine half of humanity in undeveloped form.”
Women are “oversexed,” there is too much emphasis on their sex distinction.
Rather than a healthy “survival of the fittest” in which women would be taught to be strong and productive, bourgeois women are mandated to be soft and weak, dependent, emotional, and frail
Anna Julia Cooper: Biography
Born a slave
After 1863 (Emancipation Proclamation), works a teacher at Episcopal freedman’s school for African Americans
Works her way through Oberlin
Earns BA in 1884 and honorary MA in 1887
Works as teacher and eventually principal in Washington DC.
Doctoral Degree from Sorbonne 1925 • Focus of her sociological work was on race
Ida Wells Barnett
Born to slave parents in 1862
Spent early working years as a teacher • Becomes known as a journalist
Conducts a detailed empirical study of lynching in 1883
Lives most of life in Chicago. Prominent contributor to Hull House (see Jane Addams)
Helps found: National Association of Colored Women; the National Afro-American Council; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
First Real Sociological Discussions about Race
“Together, Cooper and Wells-Barnett both consciously drew on their lived experiences as African American women to develop a “systematic consciousness of society and social relations.
They lay the foundation for a feminist sociological theory based in the interests of women of color.” (329)
They originate what will become known as standpoint theory: sociological analysis from a particular standpoint. For Cooper and Wells-Barnett, it was being African American women in Capitalist America.
Lecture Eighteen (3/6/25)
First Real Sociological Discussions about Race
“Together, Cooper and Wells-Barnett both consciously drew on their lived experiences as African American women to develop a “systematic consciousness of society and social relations.”
They lay the foundation for a feminist sociological theory based in the interests of women of color.” (329)
They originate what will become known as standpoint theory: sociological analysis from a particular standpoint. For Cooper and Wells-Barnett, it was being African American women in Capitalist America.
Methodology: Wells-Barnett
Advanced: both multi-faceted as well as qualitative AND quantitative
Statistics, interviews, secondary data analysis
For her work on lynching, uses newspaper reports (words from the oppressor) and analyzes these.
This is what we would now call “content analysis.”
Journalistic
Methodology: Cooper
Similar to Wells-Barnet in the use of the oppressor's discourse in the form of popular literature and historical records.
But Cooper was a theorist first.
She described patterns of social life and situated herself in that theoretical creation.
Born too early! Would have fit in with third wave feminists to write about unique standpoints that create our realities
Intersectionality Race and Gender: Cooper
Cooper engages in early work comparing the differences between white women and white men and African American women and African American men.
She writes about her own lived experiences
“I see two dingy little rooms with ‘For Ladies’ swinging over one and ‘For Colored People’ over the other, while wondering under which head I come”
Wasn’t for another 50 years that they rules separate is NOT equal
No equal access to the resources white people had
Intersectionality Race and Gender: Wells-Barnett
To Kill A Mockingbird
Because her work was focused on lynching, race, gender and sexuality were very powerful themes.
She challenged the rationale for the lynching of black men offered by white society: the myth that the victim raped a white woman.
Patriarchy demands that men protect the women
See black folks as “dangerous”, black women were “wild”
Mammy, jezebel, sapphire— for black women
Dainty, delicate, soft, to be protected— for white women
Not just about rape; also about the mixing of black and white
Anti-miscegenation laws, one-drop rule
Idea was that these were different races that mixed together, would create something dangerous
Seen as a biological determinant rather than a social one
Betrayal of species sanctity beyond just rape
She provided case studies of the mutual relationship between White women and Black men and White men to Black women as a normal part of social relations in the South. But the outcomes of each were quite different.
The former was so taboo a possibility that when it occurred, it was labeled rape and led to lynching.
The latter was so condoned and unreprimanded, no matter how resisted by black women, that it resulted in “the many shades of the race.”
Wells-Barnett’s Memphis newspaper was burned to the ground and her life threatened for opening up this topic in the 1890s.
Intersectionality: Race and Class
Cooper
How rural and urban race relations differed
Internal stratification within African American communities
Wells-Barnett
Social class tensions within women’s movements
Lynching was in part to restrict the class upward mobility of newly freed African Americans
Both theorists recognized the global nature of these class and race relationships. Racial domination was easy to witness as a product of the global capitalist order.
Slavery was not purely based on racism, it was also a very powerful economic system
Unpaid labor; building wealth
We still see this occasionally with prison labor, etc.
Almost always exploitative
Fire-fighter’s
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