Justice And Hegemony

Throughout history, the idea of justice has been constantly thrown around and tampered with, an example with Robert Kennedy describing it as, “The glory of justice and the majesty of law are created not just by the Constitution- nor by the courts- nor by the officers of the law- nor by the lawyers- but by the men and women who constitute our society- who are the protectors of the law as they are themselves protected by the law.” This applies to modern society in the fact that justice is defined as the proper distribution of fairness among all individuals. This is exemplified through the concept of disability, disparity of gender and sexuality, and foundation of our education systems. In each case, each respective group tries to wrangle their

In other words, the majority of society is imposing the concept of injustice on women and minority groups through the means of unfair treatment and justification of those actions by attributing them to disability. As a result, the majority gains the power of authority over the inferior groups, exhibiting hegemonic ambitions (DOC 1). Hegemony can be defined as the cultural and materialistic oppression of certain groups based on their associations, which was being done to the subordinate groups. Both concepts of domination and subordination and hegemony closely intertwine into Baynton’s definition of “disability”, as both involve an oppressor group that creates roles in society for minor, submissive groups, in order to gain political and economical power over others through the label of disability. In the case of justice, both these ideas contribute the dismissal of this notion of impartiality by creating terms of inequality among every group. On a deeper scale, the cause of “disability” in minority groups can be linked back to the social construct known as racial formation: the theory that “social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings” (Omi and Winant 14). For

In the text Masculinity as Homophobia, Kimmel states that, “Women and gay men become the ‘other’ against which heterosexual men project their identities” (Kimmel 67). This quote is saying that homosexual men and women have been used as a foil for men to show and emphasize their masculinity. With these two groups becoming the prime example of what men shouldn’t be, naturally this meant that these two groups would be subjugated under subordination by the dominant male group. Because of the conceived notion of women and gay men being “other” and how they were viewed as emasculate in society, this would again play into the hands of structure and representation (Ho, Week 2, Wednesday). In the case of the “feminine” groups, they’re commonly represented as being dainty and second-rate, and are reinforced into that image by society’s standards; women are viewed as caregivers and don’t hold as much power as men and homosexual men are shown as “sissys” due to their feminine-like traits. In addition, similar to women, being queer is viewed as a disability. This can be tied back to Baynton’s text, which states, “. . . the deviations from the male norm. These flaws- irrationality, excessive emotionality, physical weakness- are in essence mental, emotional, and physical disabilities” (Baynton 81). This example explains how disability is used against women, whenever women try to advocate for social and