Timeline
- Spring 2019
Status: Completed in 2019
Description
Southerners can easily be picked out by their thick accents and their choice of rhetoric, such as “Hey, Ya’ll” and “Bless your heart.” My southern rhetoric is more than the reason why I stand out in most crowds, but is the foundation of who I am, how I think, and how I navigate the world around me. As a native of rural Alabama, I grew up in a world of etiquette, red dirt, and gender roles. The experiences I share are those of upper-middle-class, white sorority women in Alabama who were the product of the South’s cultural silencing. The pervasive gender differences made between boys and girls by southern culture and the education system, has helped the ideology of sacred womanhood live on. This ideology leads women to believe their task in life is to remain clean of sexual impurity and be subservient to men. This submissive stance has affected the way these women communicate sexual violence and in turn deal with its long-term effects. This is a glimpse at the balancing act that is being a southerner, a woman, and a survivor. This work, nor my journey, is complete, but rather a work in progress.
Team
Members
Author:
Alexandria Selman
Supervisor:
Amy Laura Hall
Related Content
Related Links
Anthropology, Gender, Sociology