Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.
Society, by setting forth clear penalties for certain kinds of conduct sets its public ratification on moral judgments that this is wrong behavior and that it is deserving of punishment irrespective of whether the punishment will deter, rehabilitate or anything else. It is a way of society of defining what is wrong and what is seriously wrong.
We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such.
The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.
I think, all too often, this society has too monolithic a definition of what a black American is.
Both men and women are conceived as merely capable of response to a situation that their society has already defined for them as sexual, and so the Arapesh feel that it is necessary to chaperon betrothed couples who are too young... with their definition of sex as a response to an external situation rather than as spontaneous desire, both men and women are regarded as helpless in the face of seduction. Parents warn their sons even more than they warn their daughters against permitting themselves to get into situations in which someone can make love to them.
When alone I am not aware of my race or my sex, both in need of social contexts for definition.
I love sharing photographs and websites, I'm for all of these things. I'm for Facebook. But to say that this is sociability? We begin to define things in terms of what technology enables and technology allows.
To define a man: he must be a creature who makes me feel that I am a woman.
I was a journalist when I made 'I'm British But...' I'd seen how important the media was in terms of defining Indians - after the riots in the '80s, I was like, 'Oh my God!'
To be rapeable, a position that is social, not biological, defines what a woman is.
