Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

debates about sexual difference, which is manifested precisely through identity,
desire and the unconscious. If one is interested in how history is reflected in
memory, then the questions posed must relate to how the unconscious, desire
and identity have been affected by punishment, forced and violent deaths,
reification by way of selling and buying, slavery and the related forced sexuality,
which might even be referred to as permanent rape. The answers certainly do
not seem clear. In order to discover them, one should pursue and examine the
theory and policy of the body, the related discourse and the consequences for
the everyday lives of women.
Film screening
Watch and discuss a film by Peter Mullen “Magdalene Sisters”. The film presents
the method by which some 30,000 girls were so regimented and brainwashed
that they were driven to madness or hardened in their hatred toward their
captors. It happened in the institution named the Magdalene Asylum, run by
the Catholic Church in Ireland. It was meant for so-called “fallen women and
girls” that actually experienced rape or simply had pre-marital sex and became
pregnant. The film is a very good example of ideologies that are focussed upon
in this article. Students should write an essay and reflect on the film.
Conclusion
Today, the above issues are still relevant, although they are not manifested
in the same way as they were in past centuries. Thus, as a result of violence,
women are retreating to women’s shelters, their partners are threatening
them, bullying them, following them, preventing them from having contacts,
considering them to be their property and as such always available to them. In
recent decades, reports about the violent deaths of women who had summoned
up enough courage to leave their partners have been increasingly present in
Slovenian newspapers. Women are being murdered with various weapons and
in different ways, some of them in the presence of their children. Women are
subjected to trafficking and forced prostitution; they have the status of goods
being sold, smuggled and disposed of once they become useless. As regards
single mothers, it is still difficult for them to survive in traditional environments,
although they are no longer publicly prosecuted.
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