Dehumanization

Dehumanization: to deprive of positive human qualities. Also known as the key to breaking down human beings to control them. As we were reading The Handmaid's Tale I was trying to come up with how this society was able to control everyone. Are human beings that easy to control? Then the answer came to me in my Global Issues class. Human beings are easiest to control once they have been broken down and dehumanized.

In my Global Issues class, we have been discussing human trafficking and forced prostitution. These modern day issues sounded very similar to The Handmaid's Tale to me and I couldn't help but make connections. Offred had everything taken away from her and had no ability to make choices of her own. Similarly to the many men, women and children that are trapped into being trafficked. They have no choice and are threatened and forced and their bodies are used and abused.

Similarly, Jasmine was extremely vulnerable during and after her journey to America, hence her horrific experiences, specifically with Half-Face. After being violated, out of anger she kills Half-Face. She then comments, "what a monstrous thing, what an infinitesimal thing is the taking of a human life"(Mukherjee, 199). With her own personal experience with violence, threats and rape, she learns how people are beaten so low to the ground that they become objects taken over by someone else. While Half-Face is playing with her right before he rapes her, Jasmine thinks, "for the first time in my life I understood what evil was about. It was about not being human"(Mukherjee, 116). She calls Half-Face a man "from an underworld of evil"(Mukherjee, 116). Her realizations all contain a common theme of dehumanization.

Watching "Killing Us Softly" in class reminded me of this again when Jean Kilbourne mentioned how women are made into objects in advertisements. Ad after ad was shown of women as a beer bottle, video game, or car. It completely objectifies women and dehumanizes them. I found it incredible that every image that we see of women has been photoshopped or touched-up in some way. All of those women are fake and it makes normal women feel inferior and try to reach for a beauty that can never be achieved. It makes me sick how women are portrayed in advertisements. They are not even real women, but they convey messages of sexuality and inferiority. I love the video I have posted below because not only is it hilarious, but it shows how ridiculous photoshop is. Photoshop is a tool that advertisements use to completely dehumanize women and I am appalled that they get away with it in today's society.