zss: rough draft

The walking of women is described as mere “performances” while men walking on the streets were just but populists “Women’s clothes and bodily confinements, the high heels tight or fragile shoes corsets and girdles, very full of narrow skirts” (Solnit, Rebecca 234). He community considered the walking of women as a game to engage in. myths are use to describe the walking of these women as being immoral. This view that women who walk the streets are particularly immoral exists up to date. It is saddening that at this age of modernization women are still classified as immoral when walking in the streets while their male counterparts are just but considered populists. Anyone will agree that walking in the wrong place and at the wrong is dangerous (Solnit, Rebecca 239). However, what we should really consider is that it is more dangerous for women than it is for men.

Women have been branded criminals just by the simple of going out for a walk while men on the streets were populists. What a double standard being applied here? Morality has therefore been compromised by these acts of discriminations. Today in most of the Arab countries discrimination against women still exists. Something that is more hurting is that women are considered as sex slaves more so those who have come from different countries.

In chapter 11 of the Wanderlust Solnit describes the various reasons why pedestrians use the streets. She notates a range of activities ranging from leisure to prostitution. In this case Solnit puts her focus on space. She goes down to discuss how guard rails turned into tight ropes, alley ways becoming places for jumping from one street to another and people climbing walls one after the other. She discusses the issue of American cities becoming segregated and interaction being controlled. Divisions have been noticed in different groups of people and that has for some time now affected the demographics of the cities (Solnit, Rebecca 173).

The cities are largely becoming suburbs in Solnit’s works. She then goes ahead to articulate that the cities had turned into soliciting dens, riots experienced, loitering and protesting. “Ladies and gentlemen of imposing social repute, heir German and Irish servant girls, arms held first in arms of their sweethearts” (Solnit, Rebecca 173). People have evidently turned on the system and are taking matters into their own hands. Solnit becomes even more concerned about the security of these cities with the evidence of all the things that are happening therein. With this kind of social disorders societies are threatened of social unrests.

Rebecca Solnit‘s return to San Francisco was somewhat an experience she did not want to forget of in her entire life having come from New Mexico. She discusses the solitary stroller and the city. To her the city had provided very ideal conditions since it contained so much than anyone could imagine (Haukenfrers, P. 34). There are a range of activities that take place in the city for example taking photographs alongside walks and clubbing. Spaces between buildings in the cities preferably known as streets enable the flow of the people to and from.

However, there is a discrepancy in describing a man walking in the streets and a woman doing the same. A man walking in the streets is referred to as a populist while a woman is just considered a common walker in the street (Graciela. P. 169). The question of why discriminate in the definitions of different genders who traverse the streets is what I would like to pose?

Though space has been created in the cities they are more beneficial to the urban rich thus discriminating the have-nots in this work. Political affiliations and ideologies subscribed to were applied in the attempt to segregate different groups from each other (Lorena, P. 16). As the poor people were confined in given spaces the rich enjoyed the freedom of walking in the periphery of the city thus creating sections where only certain groups of people could interact. The issue of restricted movement violates the right to free movement enshrined in the constitution. However, class differences seem to pose a major challenge even in the societies today. The capitalists and communists often find themselves at loggerheads because of their different ideological beliefs. How pleasant it will be if there was social justice to cater for all the people and avoid these groupings.

Metropolitans were flooded with different kinds of people ranging from the haves to the have-nots. Women who wandered in the streets were also considered as prostitutes unlike me who would freely wander and not be labeled any names but rather be referred to as populists. My question in this case will be why create streets for people to walk in if there are going to be forms of discriminations grouping them into categories?

Work Cited

Fernández Espinosa, Lorena. "Revisions de la maternidad en la literatura hispanófona actual: Meruane, Miguel, Reyes." (2018) 16-19

Haukenfrers, Norbert. "Fire, Water and Wind: God's Transformational Narrative." (2014) 26-39

Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A history of walking. Penguin, 2001.

Trajtenberg, Graciela. "Elastic Femininity: How Female Israeli Artists Appropriate a Gender-Endangered Practice." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 37.2 (2016): 167-190.