Comments on: An Alphabet of Feminism #5: E is for Emancipate

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:35:20 +0000

In reply to Hodge. Indeed!

By: Hodge

Hodge — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:52:11 +0000

In reply to Pet Jeffery. That's exactly what I was interested in: emancipation in the US was a formal proclamation that actually achieved pretty much nothing in real terms. We often have to look carefully at what such legal freedoms actually mean.

By: Hodge

Hodge — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:50:11 +0000

In reply to Hodge. in which sense, of course, it gives us its end-in-beginning sense of 'to enslave'.

By: Hodge

Hodge — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:49:34 +0000

In reply to Pet Jeffery.

Except in the quote I gave above, ‘a wife’s emancipating herself to another husband’.
Liberating indeed.

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:14:35 +0000

I am interested to note that, eleven days after posting, “Emancipate” has attracted comments from nobody but me.

The more I think about “Emancipate” the more I am struck by the passivity of the concept. One is emancipated by another person’s act. One can liberate oneself, but not (I think) emancipate oneself.

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 19:59:48 +0000

The “man” of “emancipate” is taken from “manus” = “hand”, not from the word “man”. But I wonder how distinct these two are in practice. I used to work in a large warehouse that had foremen and charge hands. The sense of “men” in “foremen” and “hands” in “charge hands” seems to be very much the same. A “hand” can also be a man. All of the foremen and charge hands, incidentally, actually were men, not women.

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 19:33:30 +0000

The idea of “Emancipate” seems to be of sudden release — of opening the hand to let go. And yet, in reality, attaining freedom and/or equality is a more gradual and complex process. The act of emancipation can often be more illusory than real. In a country in which women and slaves have supposedly been emancipated, women and girls are trafficked for sexual purposes.