Reproductive Justice

The lecture with Mia Mingus and Cara Page was an eye-opening experience. From the talk about eugenics to the media's role in placing underlying messages of intolerance for certain groups, I learned a great deal about women and the environment. I never noticed how much blame is placed upon women for environmental issues and overpopulation. We as women as givers of life so we are blamed for environmental degradation, food shortages, and water shortages. The picture of the two girls getting water from the well highlighted the media bias against minorities and the blame that they place on them for things that they are not the cause of. The girls were only getting small gourds of water but were made to look like they were over consuming the water. Like one classmate pointed out, the article forgot to mention that large companies uses millions of gallons of water to produce their goods.

Up until that lecture, I had never heard about eugenics. I was fascinated to see that the government and many groups have take steps to ensure that dominant groups procreate more than non-dominant groups. It is there way of making sure that a certain group stays in power and that other groups are marginalized. The list that we made of who should or should not be reproduced depended on several factors: race, class, ability, education, sexuality, aesthetics, and gender. The are populations that some people want to control based on the aforementioned factors. The treatment of those who are considered by society as "inferior" continues to be a reoccurring theme in this class. We have seen that women, minorities, refugees, the intersexed, and the disabled have an unfair advantage.