Power is the ability of a person to control or influence the choices of another. But, power can also be projected through domains and structures in individual lives. These structures consist of ideology, economy, education, and religion. Within these structures are different dimensions of categories such as, social class, gender, age, race, language, and nationality that come with power in everyday life. These structures and categories are the base of the matrix of domination. The matrix of domination is the various intersections of social inequality. From the individual to the social part in life, the matrix of domination focuses on the interconnectivity of one’s own individual oppression. It explains oppression within the dimensions through different social categorization, which are all interconnected. This concept describes how differences among people serve as oppressive measures toward individuals, and eventually change the experience of those individuals living in society. There are many ways a person may experience domination, facing problems in one challenge may overlap with one’s sociological aspects. Intersectionality is a main component within the matrix of domination. It is the view in which individuals experience oppression in varying patterns and at different levels of intensity. It also looks at the interaction of everyday structures and how social locations interact with each other. After analyzing ones individual matrix of domination, an individual may see that they are part of both a dominant group in society and a subordinate group.
Power in everyday life has two categories labeled marked and unmarked. Having a privilege in one category may result in exploitation in the other. These categories are based off of normalcy and whether or not you fall within the normal behavior and characteristics that society has established. Marked categories include your differences among society or your disadvantages. For some reason, your race, gender, age, nationality, etc. mark you as different compared to the dominant group, we call society. Because you are marked and society knows that you are different, this places you in the minority group and exploitation begins in which you are treated differently than “normal” individuals. The unmarked category is the dominant group, which includes the “normal” characteristics of an individual. This group involves the privileged and powerful people of society. These people have not been marked by society’s indifferences so they remain in the position to mark those that are different and place them in the lesser group. Dominating groups maintain the status quo so they remain powerful and in control of society’s materials and resources while the subordinate groups try to overturn the inevitable social inequality.
During my lifetime I am going to experience an infinite amount of privileges and disadvantages because of my individual dimensions. My individual dimensions include the following: gender- female, age- young adult, education- University of Maryland, race-white, able-bodied- no disabilities, nationality-US citizen, language-English, social class- professional working class, and religion- Catholic. Also, a miscellaneous dimension would include being in a sorority at college. There are going to be numerous occasions where these marked and unmarked categories are going to interconnect with each other and result in me being categorized as part of the majority or minority groups within society.
Being a female in society gives women both privileges and disadvantages. Being a female, gives women the power of intuition, nurturing, and sexuality. Women have the instinct to understand without effort and have quick and ready insight from previous knowledge. Being female gives us that natural intuition to know when something is wrong with another or to understand someone’s feelings right off the back. The power of nurturing is a personal way of moral thinking where women focus on emotional connections, and place an emphasis on the responsibility of helping others. The nurturing approach centers on emotion and attachment to relationships with others, women are such social beings and are concerned with having close connections with other people. When a moral dilemma or decision needs to be made, women are extremely concerned with maintaining these existing relationships. I feel that these nurturing and social gender characteristics of females and ways of thinking are results from early childhood experiences. For example, young girls are taught that crying is acceptable, and emotions make a woman a caring, and loving person. Men are taught to be tough because showing emotion is weakness and early on boys learn these traits through sports and “getting dirty.” Being female, gives women an extreme advantage within the power of sexuality. Being female is seen as an advantage in the sense that “we get what we want” by using our bodies and physical features. This gives women a lot of power because we know how “to work” our femininity and men are vulnerable because they have little knowledge surrounding females. In the work place these days, women have become a lot more powerful. In history, it was unusual for women to have paying jobs and associate themselves with anything out of the normal household duties. But, in the present time, women have stepped up and have a lot more opportunities in the work force because of the female gender. Today, it is acceptable for women to have jobs. More and more women are more concerned about getting stable jobs and a steady pay then having a family. In the past, women were more concerned about raising the family first without being concerned about their financial stability.
Today’s society is set up in a way that women have a more difficult time than men accruing success, thus leading to a disadvantage to women and marking us as minorities. The main reasons why women are in poverty today can be related to specific job descriptions in the work place, the gender roles set by society, and divorce. As women become the primary care givers in most cases, it is hard for women to acquire the best-paid and most secure jobs when the job requirements compete with responsibilities of being a mother. Women earn less than men because they have the difficulty of raising children and attempting to work part or full time. Therefore they have a harder time gaining advancements, seniority, and increased benefits that in the end lead to women’s risk of poverty. Society still sees childcare as a woman’s primary task because of the gender roles we have today. It is easy to assume the woman’s job in the family is to do housework and childcare, so it becomes hard to break out of this role and achieve success outside the family. When a woman subjects herself to only a stay at home mother, she limits her options in the work place and provider for the family. This becomes extremely difficult when divorce occurs and the woman has no job skills outside the home to fall back on. This is another reason that divorce affects the women more so than men. The weakness of women has been a custom in society throughout history and has been routine in the present day as well.
Me, personally being a female is both beneficial and a disadvantage. As a whole, America statistically is more populated with women. So I feel like the majority in this sense. Also, being a female puts us in a very powerful position using our sexuality. I have used my sexuality to take advantage of and manipulate situations to go my way. Women have this power over men because in general men have little knowledge concerning women so we use this weakness to our advantage as well. But, in another sense we don’t have as much power because we are seen as the primary caretakers in the family setting. A large proportion of the time I am taken advantage of because I am a more emotional person as far as the caring and nurturing personality goes. As a whole we are not as aggressive and assertive as men so people play on those emotions to get us to do what they want, which is a weakness and makes us part of the oppressive group at some points.
Being a young adult in today’s age can be both a disadvantage and privilege. Today’s societal structures are becoming more complex with the increase in price of consumer goods, gas prices, and taxes. Young adults, like me are challenged everyday with these increased prices and they will continue to defy our generation in a way that will disadvantage us for a long time to come. These societal prices are going up and will make it harder to save money from jobs that aren’t giving the right salary compared to today’s inflation rate. As the prices go up and job opportunities stay at a minimum and salaries stay the same, our generation is going to have a hard time catching up with these everyday expensive costs. Being a young adult can also have its privileges. I feel like I am part of the majority population when I am at the University of Maryland. The campus is swarming with individuals ranging in ages from 18- 25 and even older because of graduate students. I feel that being part of the majority on campus gives me many privileges I never knew I had. For example, Maryland gives young adults like me so many opportunities for jobs and internships, chances to study abroad and basically all the resources we need to become successful in life. I feel unmarked on campus because I am surrounded by individuals like myself. As a young adult, I feel that I have a lot of power to decide the course of my life while I am attending college. By staying on top of my studies and completing the required courses and assignments, I feel that I can curve my way into an amazing future. I feel that for other young adults who don’t have the chance to continue their education into college don’t have these opportunities and they are marked. They are marked because they are not the normal young adults that go to college after high school and continue on with life. These people might include girls who end up pregnant in high school and individuals who get locked into the drug and alcohol culture then decide to quit school. Speaking of pregnancy, another major power females’ have as young adults is our access to contraceptives. Back in the day, women didn’t have options and didn’t have protection to keep them from becoming pregnant. These days as young adults, females are able to visit doctors on their own without parental consent and are able to receive birth control to reduce the risk of becoming pregnant. I feel that this is a huge power women have because if we are careful about it we have the ability to decide when it is appropriate in life to become pregnant and when it is not, the power is in our hands to make these decisions ourselves.
Living as a Caucasian individual, I feel that I do not have it as tough as other races, such as Latinos and African Americans. But, at the same time, being Caucasian can give you both advantages and also subject you to discrimination and neglect. Caucasians are the majority race in America, so with that being said being Caucasian would put me into the unmarked category where I am labeled as “normal.” As a majority population, some people look at the Caucasian race as more educated as well which is an advantage being associated with the majority race. But, as a Caucasian I do feel like a minority at times. When it comes to college acceptance, it’s said that minorities do have an easier time getting accepted because universities have to maintain a quota of different races. Scholarships and grants are also given out to the vast population of minorities more than the majority of Caucasians. Being of the majority race, “I am just another white person” trying to compete against thousands of other Caucasians so, I personally do feel more competition in the social structure of education as a minority.
Being born into a US citizenship has a lot of privileges. One of which is the power to receive social security. It is the protection against social conditions such as poverty, old age, disability, and unemployment. Because I was born in the United States I have access to all the rights and freedoms that America has to offer. These rights and freedoms include the right to education, the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. Having a citizenship interconnected with these rights and freedoms give me the power as an individual to make decisions on my own and be able to do what I want as long as I don’t violate any statutes. But, being a US citizen in relevance to traveling abroad to different countries may make an individual a minority. Foreigners look at you in a different way because you are dissimilar to them making you the marked individual. Because you aren’t like the people in these different countries your differences are visible, in which you become powerless and subordinate to the rest. Some countries don’t really like Americans because they think we are greedy, materialistic, and wasteful. Because different countries have these thoughts about Americans, it puts us in a group oppressed by the majority of foreigners.
English is the majority language in America and because this is my only language I feel that I am part of the majority. A lot of foreign countries speak English because the population tends to be bilingual, which means that people can speak more than one language. Usually English is their second language which is an advantage for English speaking individuals who go into different countries. But, businesses today are requiring future employees to be able to speak more than one language. So if another female and I were competing for a job opportunity and she could speak another language in addition to English, she would be picked over me because of her diversity as a bilingual. Being able to only speak one language might not put me in the minority group but it does make me less powerful over those who can.
Individuals within the professional working class have more than a high school degree, parents tend to be educated, perform more brain labor than hard labor, and they predominantly have office jobs and professions. Being an individual of this class, I was raised with an expectation to acquire a high education and obtain a successful career in the future. My parents required me to make myself “self sufficient” so that I wouldn’t have to depend on anyone else for the rest of my life. So if I were to live the single life all my life I would be able to survive on my own with the education and career I obtain. According to history, wives were so dependent on their husbands that if they were to get divorced the wife would be left with no job or money. They would be forced to find a minimum paying job to make up for what was taken away from them during the divorce. This is why I was taught to get a higher education and good career so that if anything did happen to my significant other in the future or a member of my family, I would be able to survive on my own. Having a higher education also increases my chances of having a more successful career in the future. Having the ability to be an able-bodied individual in the professional working class gives me the power over many to achieve better things in life, such as, a higher paying job, a higher position within a business, and just overall more benefits. In addition to being able-bodied, it allows me to experience things and do what I want to the best of my ability without having limitations or anything holding me back. But, one thing about being a young adult in the business world is that we are still seen as irresponsible and inexperienced; we don’t get the same amount of respect as other employees might be receiving. Living with such high expectations from parents is seen as a disadvantage too. Being raised at such high expectations puts the pressure of always having to be the best and be the most successful, but in some cases individuals don’t have the ability to do so. They are seen as marked individuals because they can’t achieve everything everyone else can so they are placed in the subordinate group.
Being catholic in my life puts me in both a majority and minority group in society. Being Catholic is one of the most predominant religions within the United States. Being religious allows me to have a foundation and strength that I personally need to do what is necessary in life, the strength to get through the ‘good and bad’ that life has dealt. Being Catholic allows me to have a foundation in the belief of a higher power other than myself. I feel that being Catholic gives power in society because I have another figure in my life to help me out with obstacles and something to turn to when my life isn’t going exactly as planned. But, being Catholic comes with many limitations. One of which is sexual intercourse before marriage is highly prohibited within Catholic families. Also, birth control and abortions are highly frowned upon within the Catholic population. Because individuals are having sex so early on in life these days, abortions are happening in higher numbers. Within the Catholic community, these happenings of abortions are seen as shameful which clearly in the end limits a women’s freedom to her own body because they are highly shamed upon. All these limits and boundaries have set me up to believe that if I do go against these beliefs I am wrong. Personally speaking, when I do think about the things that I have done I do feel bad because I may not be following all my Catholic beliefs. I feel like a minority sometimes because the majority of Catholics follow these boundaries and live by them every day, meaning that few Catholics don’t, including me, which makes me part of the minority.
Being in a sorority has both its privileges and disadvantages placing me in both a majority and minority group. Belonging to Greek life at the University of Maryland gives me the opportunity to meet numerous amounts of people. Power forms in groups. Being part of the Greek community gives me power because we are one group with similar interests and opportunities. There is a lot of experience that people get from Greek life. We are constantly helping with charities and philanthropies designated to our sorority, we team up with fraternities to help them with their charities, and we are constantly doing community service. At the University of Maryland, I feel like I’m in the majority group being in a sorority because Greek life at Maryland is so popular and so many people are involved. But, being in Greek life also has its downfalls and disadvantages. Being in a sorority comes with stereotypes and negative attitudes. Being in Greek life also comes with expectations of who you should be and sometimes those expectations aren’t who you are. Most people think for girls to be in a sorority, they have to be beautiful, blonde, and skinny. For fraternities it is the stereotype that guys are ‘tools’, ‘meatheads,’ and think they are better than everyone else. But, these stereotypes are entirely wrong and these labels put us in the subordinate, oppressed group. These labels mark us with differences compared to the “normal” population at the University of Maryland who aren’t involved in the Greek community. The structure of the media definitely has an impact on how other individuals outside of Greek life look at us. When fraternities and sororities are being kicked off campus for hazing, it is on the front page of the Diamondback but when we are doing community service for our philanthropies we get no recognition. Because of the media sometimes we get these bad labels and stereotypes because that is the only thing people are seeing.
Structures in life can portray power as both a privilege and disadvantage. Structures and domains in my individual life have shown me that I can be part of both the majority and minority group within the same structure and categories within my matrix of domination. Looking at my dimensions of difference, I see that one of these characteristics or aspects can make me powerful in one way, while that power can be overlapped with other societal features and make me the minority within the same domain. It is clear that being who I am today has both its pitfalls and privileges and that my matrix of domination can leave me as both a marked and unmarked individual within society.
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