the subjugator and the oppressed
TRANSCRIPT
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The Subjugator and the Oppressed
by: Erin Pembroke3/01/13
There are professions that oppress more than others, especially that of stripping andprostitution. These occupations exploit women either indirectly by their consent or
directly against their will. In these two jobs, there are two kinds of women; the oppressed
and the one that over-comes being oppressed.
To begin with, the occupation of stripping indirectly oppresses women by capital
means. When women enter an agreement with the strip-club owner and with the
customers for money, they become addicted to the amount of capital they make per night.Most jobs cannot compete with the substantial amount that strippers make, thus, some
strippers stop looking for other employment and solely rely on their profession. These
women become bound by their job and enslaved by the money.
They work hard for their money and at odd hours, just to be enslaved by their
addiction of making an ever flowing amount of cash that allows them to gain manymaterialistic objects. In other words, the strippers represent the concept of operant
conditioning by B.F. Skinner where the cash becomes the positive reinforcement to their
addiction or operant behavior. The strippers keep seeing that their actions have workedbefore and they were awarded for it by capital means and will keep stripping so long as
they are awarded by a great amount of money.
Strippers are also imprisoned by their appearances or how they appear to others; onecan witness that strippers constantly apply make-up on their faces several times in one
full day and must appear to look beautiful at every given moment on a 24-hour clock.They are afraid to publicly go natural or without make-up. They are afraid to showtheir true selves. They are afraid of their natural physical flaws and must cover them up.
They are confined by how men view them. They are tethered by the natural beauty ofother women they deem more beautiful than themselves. They are simply oppressed;
chained by beauty and appearance that they appear vain and shallow. Everything is
superficial about their appearance because in their occupation, they must learn to be
shallow and give and fit all the fantasies of every man they come in contact with or arearound.
Unlike strippers, prostitutes are different. They sell their bodies because theydesperately need the cash. They are less bound by addiction of money because the money
is their source of food and housing. A prostitute can be bound by appearance but perhaps
less than a stripper. A prostitute's goal is to appear beautiful to get their client so that theycan do their job and leave. They seldom get lost or invited to parties and other social
events that strippers go to.
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Dissimilar to strippers, prostitutes are directly and more-so shackled by men that
repress them. Most of their clients and their client's behaviors are shady. The prostitutes
can be tied to men with abusive, violent behavior or may not even know what she isgetting into until the last minute. Thus, they are oppressed from liberty and freedom of
expression as well. These men may beat, abuse, misuse and kill prostitutes. Some
prostitutes feel repressed from going to the police and others feel they cannot lead safelives.
As men use their bodies for their own gratification, these women feel that they areonly men's play toys and nothing more. Their self-worth and confidence diminishes and
they become broken. They become emotionally damaged. The more they seek money, the
more they receive men of worthless substance and rely on those men as sugar-daddies
to take care of their financial means.
Unfortunately, sometimes strippers can become prostitutes. For instance, when the
strip-clubs that the stripper works at are not doing financially well and her options
become limited, she might turn to prostitution as a second source of income. She may dothis for many reasons such as: not saving money and running out of funds, having a large
amount of debt that accumulated by her expensive materialistic tastes, and lastly, havinga child that she cannot continue to support by such means.
In elaborate continuation of this topic, there are two types of women in theseprofessions; one that becomes oppressed and the other that over-come subjugation. In
witnessing one account of each, I will now contrast these two kinds of women. The
oppressed allows factors such as addiction to making money, gaining material wealth,
appearance and men to continue to subjugate them.
They forget their real goals and get lose in the muddled illusions and details. They get
lost in what their lives at the moment provide for them, whether they are parties or foodon the table. They get lost in the operant conditioning and positive reinforcement. They
think their lives will always be like this and do not plan for the future nor make any
changes. Women in these occupations accept where they are at or get too comfortable intheir jobs.
Whereas, the once subjugated women in these professions are enslaved by several
means, becomes the subjugator of the situation and of their lives. These women may havehad a goal and never forgot their purpose. They worked to full-fill their purpose and once
it was accomplished, they simply stood up to the tyranny and left the situation. Another
instance could have been that they saved up their money before having a lack of it (andwhile being pulled into different directions or different oppressors), finally realized that
they have had enough of being restrained by several different means. Ergo, they left their
occupation and their oppressors.
They could have also coped with their subjugators (with money saved) by
continuously isolating themselves (such as staying home and not making an income or
disassociating oneself) away from all the things that chained them. Thus, their isolation
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became a negative reinforcement against their oppressors which lead to the extinction of
their behavior in relying on their subjugators for monetary means or as a way of living
and the extinction of their occupation.
The subjected stay emotionally broken in their old occupations and become severely
damaged. They repeat old patterns and behaviors. Contrary, the newly freed womanbreaks all ties and starts a new career or goes back to school. There is a new sense of
hope for his kind of woman. She can begin to repair what has been damaged when in her
previous state, if she was damaged. In contrast, the other type of woman will go on livinga dehumanized version of herself and a dehumanized life that will continue to break her.
To conclude, women in the occupations of stripping and prostitution can be held
captive by money, appearances, and men. Several may turn for help in the wrong placesand seek other sources of income. Some women may continue to be subjugated whereas
others over-come their oppressors and lead new lives. The choice is theirs whether to face
their oppressor or to continue to be the oppressed.