the mirage

Empowerment is so talked about and so hyped up in social work I'm starting to think it's overrated, at least if you are talking about gender empowerment. For one, AWARE's scope of advocacy is non-existent; all they aim to do is educated, and even then, educate cautiously for fear of transgressing the numerous out-of-bound markers that no one knows about until they do something that offends The Powers that be. They can't talk about issues of race, religion, sexuality, and especially patriarchy - as prevalent as it might be, it's the government and you are not supposed to talk about, mention, or breathe the sacred alphabets. That thought is extremely disempowering.

And besides, all the talk of educating clients on gender roles and how they can not follow what society expects of them is totally bullcrap and I don't see how it can be empowering, especially when all the government policies are aimed at promoting a certain kind of society, where the male is the breadwinner, (c.f. extendable benefits for civil servants are only for males) and the female is sadly enough, both the baby-bearer and the miscellaneous odd-job labourer. Stereotypes are propagated by policies, and when The Powers decide that they need to meet some economic objective, they change policies/modify stereotypes to further that purpose.

So in other words, the extent of gender empowerment is limited by the Powers.

Even males are disadvantaged because the burden to provide inescapably falls on them.

Ok so there are things like PAVe but that's like gender empowerment for a specific group of people i.e. those experiencing family violence. If you're not in that situation what empowerment is there? Most of it involves just the 'gaining knowledge' part but not so much the 'taking action' part.

I emailed the lecturer, but she very depresssingly said that there aren't any answers to these kind of questions. Quick somebody, anybody, please tell me that there are more possibilities to this empowerment thing that I haven't noticed.

Anyway my gender lecturer just asked us to watch this youtube video here. I think the comments on the video are more entertaining the video itself - I'm wondering if it's a microcosm of society's views on gayness, but, just check it out, if you have the staying power to watch it till the end and not get grossed out after the first 5 minutes.

There aren't any R-rated parts (at least nothing that I perceive as particularly offensive, but then again my standards are...my standards.)

Check it out then tell me what you think!