Elvia Diego on Blackwell

In the reading Triple Jeopardy, Blackwell discusses how it came to be that that the third-world women’s political subjectivity was built as a coalitional project. They focused on many topics such as racial and sexual politics of violence, and incarceration to name a few. One thing that stood out for me that I believe has a lot to do with women sexual violence and incarceration was a quote, “where men are not yet free, women are less free because we are further enslaved by our sex”.

We are enslaved by our sex because some men degrade women down to an object for their own pleasure. Blackwell gave a few examples on two cases where women were sexually assaulted and were incarcerated or further punished because they defended themselves. It goes to show that women in prison or outside of prison are seen as a man's sex object. Even when a woman manages to defend herself other people won't see it that way. Men tend to be seen as strong where women are seen as fragile. I feel that if a man fights back to defend  himself he is still seen as strong and might get off easy. On the other hand when a woman fights back to defend herself she will be seen as someone crazy so she will be tried to the full extent. In a society where we have law and order women are still being incarcerated even though they were targeted victims of sexual abuse/assault. So in a society where men are not free women are ten times less free than they are.  

I found a story about two women who were incarcerated for defending themselves against potential rape. Charmaine Pfender was incarcerated for ⅔ of her life along with her friend Sara Mae Richardson after they went on a date with two men who tried to take advantage of them. One man was hurt and the other was killed. Although they defended themselves they were found  guilty. These women were in danger of becoming victims of sexual assault. One of the men they went on a date with even told one of the girls that he didn’t want to keep being teased. It’s clear that these men just thought women as sex objects. This just brings me be back to women being enslaved by our sex. One other interesting thing that I found in the article was that when they were picking people to serve as members of the jury many already had made up their minds that the women were guilty. Some even perceived the two women as guilty lesbian lovers. Because clearly any woman that does not want to fulfil a man's sexual need or stop being a “tease” to men is obviously a lesbian. Regardless of the facts women will be perceived in some bad light because we can't seem to get away from being enslaved by our sex.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/2/1/weh.html

In my post I discussed how women are enslaved by their sex by being seen as sex objects which may lead to sexual assault and incarceration in self defense. My question for class is in what other shape or form are women enslaved by their sex?