Gender mainstreaming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming is the public policy concept of assessing the implications for people of different genders of a planned policy action, including legislation and programmes. Mainstreaming offers a pluralistic approach that values the diversity among people of different genders.

The concept of gender mainstreaming was first proposed at the 1985 Third World Conference on Women and has subsequently been pushed in the United Nations development community. The idea was formally featured in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women, and was cited in the document that resulted from the conference, the Beijing Platform for Action.

Definition

Most definitions of gender mainstreaming conform to the UN Economic and Social Council formally defined concept:

Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.

There are different approaches to gender mainstreaming:

Institutional perspective: The ways in which specific organizations adopt and implement mainstreaming policies. This will often involve an analysis of how national politics intersects with international norms and practices.

Discursive perspective: Queries the ways in which mainstreaming reproduces power relations through language and issue-framing. This approach will often involve looking at documents, resolutions and peace agreements to see how they reproduce the narratives of gender in a political context.

These approaches are not necessarily competing, and can be seen as complementary.

Gender Mainstreaming Seminar 2015

The ways in which approaches are used, however, can also reflect differing feminist theories. For example, liberal feminism is strongly invoked by mainstreaming through the binary approach of gender in strict relation to the public sphere of policymaking. Poststructuralist feminism can be seen in mainstreaming thought which seeks to displace gender difference as the sole axis of difference and to highlight the diversity of policy its ramifications.

Principles

Col. Shafiqa Quraishi, Director of the Afghan National Police Gender Mainstreaming Unit, speaks at an ANP female recruiting conference covered how to recruit and train the additional 5,000 women that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has mandated be added to the police force by 2014

Prioritizing gender equality

Gender mainstreaming tries, among others, to ascertain a gender equality perspective across all policy areas. According to Jacqui True, a Professor of politics and international relations, "[e]very policy or piece of legislation should be evaluated from the perspective of whether or not it reduces or increases gender inequalities." This concept of gender equality is not limited to formal equality, it includes as well equality de facto, which is a more holistic approach to gender policy in order to tackle the interconnected causes that create an unequal relation between the sexes in all areas of life (work, politics, sexuality, culture, and violence).

Lombardo notes that "[t]here should be evidence that gender equality objective and policies of special concern for women (for example, social policy) have been prioritized in the organization among competing objectives (in terms of financial and human resources, type of measures adopted, voting systems used, and so forth)."

Incorporating gender into politics and decision making

Puechguirbal takes a discursive approach to argue that in order to successfully mainstream a gendered perspective in politics, language needs to be reevaluated and used to change the parameters of how women are perceived.

Historically, documents concerning international agreements, peacekeeping arrangements and legal resolutions have perpetuated stereotypes that disempower women. This can be seen through the use of language, even as simply as in the UN Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program's (DDR) motto: 'One man, on weapon'.

Reference of gender issues should be found in all policy areas. "There must be evidence that the mainstream political agenda has been reoriented by rethinking and rearticulating policy ends and means from a gender perspective," Lombardo says, referencing Rounaq Jahan, a political scientists, feminist leader and author. As the Beijing Platform for Action states, "women's equal participation in political life plays a pivotal role in the general process of the advancement of women."

Further, according to the Beijing Platform for Action "[w]ithout the active participation of women and the incorporation of women's perspective at all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved." Therefore, Lombardo claims that women and men should be equally represented in any decision-making institution. Charlesworth agrees and believes that every effort should be made to broaden women's participation at all levels of decision-making.

Post-conflict peace-building (PCPB)

An area of policy and decision making that will particularly benefit from gender mainstreaming is post-conflict peace-building, also known as PCPB. Various feminist research has concluded that men and women experience violent conflict differently and moreover, the current policies surrounding PCPB are insufficient in addressing the disadvantaged position of women in male-dominated power structures that are further reinforced by peace-building efforts, both from the domestic and international communities. Gender mainstreaming in PCPB would emphasize the importance of gendered considerations of particular issues that disproportionally affect women in post-conflict settings. This would mean that policy reflected an acknowledgment of the many instances of wartime sexualized violence perpetrated on women, among other issues that (primarily) women face during conflict. A major focus of the effort towards gender mainstreaming in post-conflict peace-building policy is to lessen the international community's inclination towards building a return to 'normal' for the post-conflict region. Much of feminist research has found that returning to 'normal' is of little comfort for women, who were burdened by the patriarchal systems that were in place before conflict broke out. As Handrahan notes, the international community involved in much of PCPB "tolerates high levels of violence against women in their own societies." Policy that prioritized gender in its applications and goals would seek to build a society where women are better off than they were before conflict broke out.

Shifts in institutional culture

Gender mainstreaming can be seen as a process of organizational change. Gender mainstreaming must be institutionalized through concrete steps, mechanisms, and processes in all parts of the organization. According to Lombardo, this change involves three aspects: policy process, policy mechanisms; and policy actors. She explains as follows:

"1. A shift in policy process means that the process "is reorganized so that ordinary actors know how to incorporate a gender perspective" or that gender expertise is included "as normal requirement for policy-makers" (Council of Europe 1998, 165).

2. A shift in policy mechanism involves (a) the adoption of horizontal cooperation on gender issues across all policy areas, levels, and departments; and (b) the use of appropriate policy tools and techniques to integrate the gender variable in all policies and to monitor and evaluate all policies from a gender perspective.

3. The range of policy actors participating in the policy-making process is broadened to include, apart from policy-makers and civil servants, gender experts and civil society."

Gender budgeting

Main article: Gender budgeting

Gender budgeting encompasses activities and initiatives aiming at the preparation of budgets or the analysis of policies and budgets from a gender perspective. It can also be referred to as gender-sensitive budgeting or gender-responsive budgeting. Gender budgeting does not aim at creating separate budgets for women, or only increasing spending on women’s programmes. It is rather concerned with addressing budgetary gender inequality concerns, as for instance, how gender hierarchies influence budgets, and gender-based unpaid or low paid work.

Examples

As Jacqui True says, "[m]ainstreaming was established as a global strategy for achieving gender equality, and in turn for achieving sustainable economic development in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action ratified by all United Nations member states. It is now incumbent upon nation-states and international organizations to carry out gender mainstreaming. As such, mainstreaming has achieved widespread endorsement by individual governments, regional supra-state bodies." What follows is a non-exhaustive list of examples of these endorsements.

Nicaragua

The election of 1990 in Nicaragua brought to office the first female president in the Americas. On April 25, 1990, Violeta Chamorro became the first and only woman to defeat a male incumbent presentment. This helped to change and mobilize mainstream gender structure within Nicaragua. In 1993 the existing outdated Sandinista Women's organization, the Nicaraguan Institute for Research on Women, was revitalized and renamed by the Chamorro government as the Nicaraguan Institute for Woman (INIM). This was to encourage the involvement of Nicaraguan women in the country's economic, social, cultural, and political development and to promote a change in mainstream gender constructs. More specifically, the INIM aims to institute in all sectors a system of gender-focus indicators and to achieve equal opportunity in all State body programming. In 1994, the INIM with 62 women's groups held discussions to mobilize their initiatives and form a bill of action. The discussions formed a plan, which defined patriarchy, sexism, and gender stereotypes to reduce inequality in education, employment, and violence.

Although the Nicaraguan Institute for Women claimed to "have been instrumental in mainstreaming gender equality principles and strategies into agriculture, socio-economic development, higher education, and sexual and domestic violence prevention," the United Nations General Assembly on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2007 raised several concerns, such as the backlog of important women's rights legislation in the country, the lack of studies on abortion, and the available funds of the Institute.

Taiwan

Under the influence of the UN community, the usage of the term increased in Taiwan since 2000. Local feminist organizations have different views on gender mainstreaming. Some groups considered that the Commission on Women Rights Promotion under Executive Yuan should be expanded, while other groups, including the National Alliance of Taiwan Women's Associations, considered that gender mainstreaming is not promotion of women's rights but an assessment of all policies and requires a specific organization.

Foundation of Women's Rights Promotion and Development (FWRPD) has conducted research on gender mainstreaming and gender equality development, produced gender resources kits for training and education, networked women groups and entrepreneurs, participated in international exchange in UN, APEC gender related meetings.

Vienna, Austria

In late 2006, the city council of Vienna, capital of Austria, ordered several gender mainstreaming measures for public facilities and areas. Pictograms and information display charts will feature a male silhouette holding a baby in his arms to advise passengers on the underground railway to offer seating to parents with children.

Emergency escape paths will be marked by a square table featuring a long-haired lady running in her high heel boots.

A pilot kindergarten now uses a flexible open play area instead of separate "playing corners" with toy cars and LEGO for boys or dolls and faux fireplaces for girls. In some pilot kindergartens, traditional fairy tales were rewritten, and a songbook featuring active women was created.

Infrastructure changes have included "unisex" playgrounds for city parks, which encourage young boys and girls to mix and redesigned streetlights to make parks and sidewalks safer for late night joggers.

UN Peacekeeping Operations

The United Nations began acknowledging the importance of gender mainstreaming as a tool towards achieving gender equality in the mid-1990s, as outlined in the Beijing Platform for Action and the Report from the Secretary General to the Economic and Social Council.

In October 2000, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325, a resolution that called for an enhanced female participation in the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. Peacekeeping was an area of particular concern, and the Security Council recognized "the urgent need to mainstream a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations." The Council requested "the Secretary-General, where appropriate, to include in his reporting to the Security Council, progress on gender mainstreaming throughout peacekeeping missions and all other aspects relating to women and girls." As a result, there has been an increase in female peacekeeping personnel. As of 2012, in peacekeeping operations and special political missions, 29 percent of international and 17 percent of national staff were women. If we compare these figures with the 48 percent representation of women at the UN Headquarters, the participation of women in the United Nations Peacekeeping operations still faces challenges.

European Union

The equality policy of the European Union consists of three pillars: (1) anti-discrimination, (2) affirmative action policies, and (3) gender mainstreaming.

In the 1990s the European Union officially put gender mainstreaming on their agenda, "fixing the principle in treaty articles, action programs and communications, and setting up institutional bodies and mechanisms to promote the incorporation of a gender perspective into policymaking." More specifically, gender mainstreaming was introduced in 1991 in the European Community as an element of the Third Action Programme on Equal Opportunities. Currently, the legal basis for gender mainstreaming in European law is Article 8 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). This article states the following: "In all its activities, the Union shall aim to eliminate inequalities, and to promote equality, between men and women".

What follows is a non-exhaustive overview of current gender governance initiatives in the European Union that encourages gender mainstreaming.

For instance, since 1997 gender mainstreaming has been part of the European Employment Strategy, a concept launched by the European Council. The European Employment Strategy requires governments to adopt an approach that complies with the concept of gender mainstreaming, while deciding on employment policies. Some concrete examples: new equal opportunities acts requiring mainstreaming (e.g., in France social partners are required to promote gender equality through collective bargaining); mainstreaming or gender assessment in individual ministries or areas of public services (e.g., in Finland and Sweden); and gender assessment of all new pieces of legislation. According to Jill Rubery, a Professor of comparative employment system at Manchester School of Management, so far "the experience has been mixed: though the argument that increasing women's employment is critical to the achievement of Europe's aspirations for a higher employment rate has been widely accepted, there is a much weaker and more fragile commitment to improving the quality of work available to women."

A second example is the Transnational Women's Networks. As such we can cite the European Women's Lobby (EWL) as an important women's organization at EU level that was created in 1990. About 2,500 NGOs of 30 European countries are part of the EWL. The European Women's Lobby encourages "coordination of women's civic groups on the EU stages." The EWL lobbied for increasing the involvement of women's organizations in the process of gender governance. In addition the EWL has been pushing for "an EU Strategy to promote, implement and facilitate civil society and specifically women's organizations input into the European debate as an essential part of the European social model." Another important organization is Women in Development Europe (WIDE). This network, created in 1985, consists of NGOs, women's organizations, gender experts, and activists active in development. Women in Development Europe monitors European economic and developmental policies and practices and is involved at many phases in policy-making activities as knowledge source.

Another gender governance actor is the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), established in May 2007. The EIGE has as mandate to "provide expertise, improve knowledge and raise visibility of equality between men and women".

Obviously there are many more initiatives on EU level, to name a few: Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, High Level Group on Gender Mainstreaming, Inter-Service Group on Gender Equality, Informal Group of Experts on Gender Equality in Development Cooperation, Women in Europe for our Common Future.

Criticism

Ineffective results

Maria Stratigaki, Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Policy of Panteion University, claims that the transformative effect of gender mainstreaming was minimal and its application has led to contradictory results. It opened important opportunities for specific policies in new policy areas, whereas in some other it diluted positive action. She also claims that, at least as of 2003, gender mainstreaming has failed to affect core policy areas or radically transform policy processes within the European Institutions.

Some say that gender mainstreaming has not increased women's participation in decision making. As Charlesworth notes, "[i]n the most readily measurable area, the United Nations' employment of women in professional and managerial posts, progress has been glacial. In 2004, women held 37.4 percent of these positions. The annual growth rate toward the 50 percent target [...] is predicted to be 0.4 percent. On top of this slow growth, there is a considerable hierarchy based on sex. On June 30, 2004, women held 83.3 percent of positions at the lowest professional level, P-1, but just 16.7 percent at the highest staff level, Under-Secretary-General." In a similar vein, concerning the European Union, Lombardo reports that as of 2003 women represented only 20 percent of the representatives of the head of state or government the member states, 10 percent of the representatives of national parliaments, 31.25 percent of the representatives of the European Parliament and so forth.

True claims that mainstreaming gender does not end in simply increasing the number of women within a specific institution. It is about changing social consciousness, so that the effects of a policy for both women and men are truly analyzed before they are implemented. While it is necessary for feminists to engage with mainstream institutions, the ability of gender mainstreaming to deconstruct the embedded masculinization of institutions varies depending on the characteristics of the policy, the political nature of the institution, and the depth of the institution's consultation with civil society and other members of the women's rights movement. The danger of gender mainstreaming is that large compromises can be made for small gains and can lead to what feminist and sociology professor Gail Dines calls "trickle-down feminism"—i.e., "working to increase the ranks of women in elite jobs without a strategy for wider economic and social change represents a kind of "trickle-down feminism."

Poor implementation

Charlesworth remarks that "[a]lthough it has not been difficult to encourage the adoption of the vocabulary of mainstreaming, there is little evidence of monitoring or follow-up. A consistent problem for all the organizations that adopted gender mainstreaming is the translation of the commitment into action." She continues: "A review of gender mainstreaming policies implemented under the United Nations Development Programme, World Bank, and ILO found inadequate budgeting for the gender components of projects, insufficient development of analytical skills, poor supervision of the implementation of gender components and a general lack of political commitment both within the organization and at the country level."

Hindering progress

Stratigaki claims that positive action was sidelined after the launch of gender mainstreaming as a result of the specific way gender mainstreaming was used by the opponents of gender equality. According to Stratigaki, "[a]lmost all analyses of [gender mainstreaming] agree that it is a strategy which complements but does not replace previous gender specific equality policies like equal treatment legislation and positive action." However, she states too that "in a hostile gender equality policy environments (i.e. patriarchal structures of institutional organisations or the prevalence of policy objectives contrary to gender equality etc.), [gender mainstreaming] may be conceived and applied as an alternative to positive action and used to downplay the final overall objective of gender equality.

True is of the opinion that in practice, attempts to mainstream gender within international institutions have led to the marginalization and increasing invisibility of gender in each policy area. Anne-Marie Goetz, a Clinical Professor at NYU, and Joanne Sandler, a consultant for gender equality and organizational development, argue that ironically, mainstreaming gender runs the risk of becoming everyone's responsibility, yet nobody's at the same time. Gender mainstreaming can allow those in power who are not genuinely interested in the women's movement to adopt the language of women's rights, a reflection of power politics that becomes more of a tool used to legitimize the actions of governments. Gender mainstreaming then becomes more about advising governments than advancing gender equality.

Other criticism

As differences are silenced, the kind of feminism that is likely to be mainstreamed could be a western or middle class brand of feminism. When mainstreaming decisions within international organizations are made by elites can undermine the input of local women's groups.

When gender mainstreaming policies are drafted without consulting sections of the women's movement (i.e., women's rights civil society groups), they lack ground level-expertise. Policy decisions related to gender that are made without consulting sections of the women's movement do not demonstrate a clear political willingness to addressing gender inequality. When institutions reach out to the women's rights movement, it demonstrates transparency, inclusiveness, accountability and the implementation process is more likely to be monitored with diligence. For example, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as an attempt at mainstreaming gender into development, were formed with minimal consultation with women's groups. The MDGs have led to a considerable amount of theoretically discourse about the goals but less analysis about how they will be implemented.

True highlights the tendency for gender mainstreaming to become a guise under which women are used as economic subjects. Women are framed in terms of advancing economic growth, as opposed to the inherent normative ideal for women and men to hold equal positions of power in society.

White defensiveness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_defensiveness

White defensiveness is a term to describe defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by scholar Robin DiAngelo.

White people are described within the theory as displaying substantially uneasy responses when questioned about racial dynamics (i.e. instances of possible racism)—said to be as a self-protective strategy to conceal grief, trauma, and intergenerational trauma. 

Definition

White defensiveness describes some of the perceived responses when white people are confronted with issues involving race and racism. Academics have proposed subtypes of white defensiveness, such as white denial, white diversion, and white fragility. There are also varied contexts and descriptions of what can cause the expression of this theorized defensiveness. For example, political scientists Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields have proposed that the examination of white privilege "triggers white defensiveness".

Academics, such as Robin DiAngelo, Julia Chinyere Oparah, George Yancy and Leah Gaskin Fitchue, have detailed ranges of what they define as white defensive responses in their works.

Subtypes

White denial

White denial has been identified as a defensive response by white people, in which realities of inequality are denied or downplayed. One example is the claim that racism simply does not exist. Historically, it has also taken more extreme forms such as the suggestion that slavery in the United States was a benign system or even had a civilizing effect on African Americans. Regarding white denial, the theologian Leah Gaskin Fitchue wrote in 2015:

By its very nature, denial is a defense mechanism, a distortion of reality, a delusional projection to reshape reality in a way one desires to see it. James Perkinson's study, White Theology, counters white denial in calling for a "white theology of responsibility (agreeing with Cone) that a serious engagement with history and culture must be at the heart of any American projection of integrity"...

While denial links to implicit and unconscious bias. White denial may also be driven by white guilt which suggests that acknowledgement of the existence of discrimination or racism against another group may be identity threatening for members of dominant and majority groups. 

The philosopher George Yancy has spoken of his experiences of white denial in academia and within responses to his works, such as his 2015 article Dear White America. From her 1998 research, professor Julia Chinyere Oparah proposed that when "white feminists cease to respond to challenges from black women with counter-attack and defensiveness" that anti-racism efforts can progress "beyond white denial" by "acknowledging that white feminists, as individuals, often silence, ignore or otherwise oppress black women."

Robin DiAngelo has argued that social pressure on people of color to "collude with white fragility" accommodates other forms of white defensiveness, in particular "white denial".

White diversion

White diversion is a term coined by the academic Max Harris to denote a phenomenon in which white people may obstruct dialogue or acknowledgement of race-based discrimination by redirecting or comparing the subject to other social issues. That proposed form of white defensiveness can seek to reorient blame towards people of color and indigenous peoples, rather than address the role of white people. Harris, a University of Oxford Fellow, suggests that when "racism or colonisation are raised, the conversation is derailed."

Max Harris is the author of the book titled “The New Zealand Project”. He is based in New Zealand, but his background is from the United Kingdom. He believes that to name whiteness is to name dominance as it’s often connected to backgrounds. He believes there are four types of white defensiveness and that includes denial, diversion, detriment-centring, and the demand to move on. These terms were created due to Max witnessing the Māori people of New Zealand experiencing hostility towards them in as early as the 1990’s. The term is similar to the concept of “reverse racism” as the Māori people become often portrayed negatively when any aspect of racism is raised. 

White fragility

For the book, see White Fragility.

Robin DiAngelo has theorized that as the mainstream perception of racism implies a conscious "meanness", racism's definition is the cause of practically all white defensiveness. DiAngelo, who coined the term "white fragility" in the early 2010s and later released her 2018 book White Fragility, describes "white fragility" as a range of defensive responses by white people. According to Robin DiAngelo, white people react to "racial stress" with an "outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation". DiAngelo theorized that this reaction served to "reinstate white racial equilibrium".

The term has since been analyzed in academia and described in media as a distinct range of expressions by many white people in a number of historical settings up to modern times. The term is often tied to the idea of structural racism. The Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada endorsed the concept but found DiAngelo's book flawed. The book was criticized by the American linguist John McWhorter, who argued that it "openly infantilized Black people".

The journalist Peter Baker argues that "white fragility" can be expressed by silence or shutting down; denial; accusations of reverse racism; or upset, anger, or rage at an interpersonal level. The latter individualistic form of response is not, however, to be confused with the terms "white backlash" or "white rage", which refer to exclusionary or violent group reactions by some whites to the societal progression of people of color.

History

European colonialism and slavery

Max Harris has observed the phenomenon in the politics of New Zealand. Referring to this form of white defensiveness as "Diversion", some white New Zealanders deflect attention onto the pre-Pākehā settlers era before colonization by ascribing an unrelated guilt or culpability to Māori people.

In 1800, a failed rebellion planned by the slave Gabriel Prosser caused both a drop in support for anti-slavery societies, which had been petitioning against structural racism, and an increase in white defensiveness in the Upper South. In the post-slavery United States, there has historically been frustration from African American communities at white defensiveness and its consequences causing a lack of accountability.

Study of phenomenon

Multiple studies have explored how white defensiveness, intersecting with whiteness, operates in areas of society, such as education. Cynthia Levine-Rasky's 2011 research showed how an unconscious white defensiveness is often present in traditionally-minded teaching candidates in a Canadian university.

Types of expression

Reverse racism

Cameron McCarthy argues that a form of defensiveness can be an insistence on a relativistic view of history in which white people are also the victims of historical oppression and racism. In the late 1990s, Professor Paul Orlowski observed the emergence of white defensiveness in working-class communities of British Columbia, Canada, where investigating structural racism in the province led to accusations of being "anti-white".

Terminologist barriers

Some assert that the use of technical terms from critical theory (such as "white privilege" and "white fragility") may prevent proper engagement with the social phenomena involved with structural racism. In 2019, as reported by Professor Lauren Michele Jackson, the writer Claudia Rankine abandoned attempts to document conversations with white men, due to her perception that the use of accurate terminology was actually providing somewhat of a barrier to progress and further enabling white defensiveness.

Explicit, or conscious bias

In explicit bias, the person is fully aware and understands the ramifications of their actions and intentions. These actions might look different, like deliberate acts of exclusion, verbal or physical harassment, or derogatory or exclusive language, but all are processed consciously by the acting subject. 

Implicit, or unconscious bias

Implicit bias comes from outside the person’s conscious understanding of themselves and the world, and can be in direct conflict with their expressed opinions and beliefs. Even though it may not be fully understood by the acting subject, this bias influences how people process decisions and make judgements, especially in cases where the acting subject is making a quick decision or is under duress.  

White Diversion can be an example of both conscious and unconscious bias, depending on the type and the situation. For instance, a knee jerk response may come from a place of unconscious bias, however denial and diversion are often more rooted in conscious bias. The underlying distinction comes from the acting subject’s intentions.

Thomas Jefferson and Native Americans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_Native_Americans 

Thomas Jefferson believed Native American peoples to be a noble race who were "in body and mind equal to the whiteman" and were endowed with an innate moral sense and a marked capacity for reason. Nevertheless, he believed that Native Americans were culturally and technologically inferior. Like many contemporaries, he believed that Indian lands should be taken over by white people.

Before and during his presidency, Jefferson discussed the need for respect, brotherhood, and trade with the Native Americans, and he initially believed that forcing them to adopt European-style agriculture and modes of living would allow them to quickly "progress" from "savagery" to "civilization". Beginning in 1803, Jefferson's private letters show increasing support for the idea of removal, and he suggested various ideas for removing tribes from enclaves in the East to their own new lands in lands west of the Mississippi River. Jefferson maintained that Indians had land "to spare" and, he thought, would willingly exchange it for guaranteed supplies of food and equipment. Starting in 1808, Jefferson initiated a programme of removing various Indian nations from lands east of the Mississippi River to the newly created Arkansas Territory, representing a prelude to the more formal and institutionalised policy of Indian removal to what is now Oklahoma that was passed by Congress in 1831 and implemented by Andrew Jackson.

Jefferson's view of Native Americans

Jefferson was fascinated with Indian cultures and languages. His home at Monticello was filled with Indian artifacts obtained from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He collected information on the vocabulary and grammar of Indian languages.

Acculturation and assimilation

Andrew Jackson is often credited with initiating Indian Removal, because Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1831, during his presidency, and also because of his personal involvement in the forceful removal of many Eastern Indian tribes. Congress was implementing suggestions laid out by Jefferson in a series of private letters that began in 1804, although Jefferson did not implement the plan during his own presidency. The rise of Napoleon in Europe, and rumor of a possible transfer of the Louisiana Territory from the Spanish empire to the more aggressive French, was cause for consternation amongst some people in the American republic. Jefferson advocated for the militarization of the Western border, along the Mississippi River. He felt that the best way to accomplish this was to flood the area with a large population of white settlements.

In a letter written to Benjamin Hawkins on February 18, 1803, Jefferson wrote:

I consider the business of hunting as already become insufficient to furnish clothing and subsistence to the Indians. The promotion of agriculture, therefore, and household manufacture, are essential in their preservation, and I am disposed to aid and encourage it liberally. In truth, the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people. Incorporating themselves with us as citizens of the United States, this is what the natural progress of things will, of course, bring on, and it will be better for them to be identified with us, and preserved in the occupation of their lands, than to be exposed to the many casualties which endanger them while a separate people.

Still recovering from the American Revolutionary War, the U.S. federal government was unable to risk starting a broad conflict with the powerful tribes that surrounded their borders. They were worried that this would cause a broader Indian War, in which the Indians would perhaps be joined by Britain, France or Spain. In his instructions to Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson emphasized the necessity for treating all Indian tribes in the most conciliatory manner.

Jefferson wanted to expand his borders into the Indian territories, without causing a full-blown war. Jefferson's original plan was to coerce native peoples to give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles in favor of western European culture, Christian religion, and a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. Jefferson's expectation was that by assimilating the natives into a market-based, agricultural society and stripping them of their self-sufficiency, they would become economically heavily dependent on trade with white Americans, and would thereby be willing to give up land that they would otherwise not part with, in exchange for trade goods or to resolve unpaid debts.

In an 1803 private letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:

To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.... In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.

Jefferson believed that this strategy would "...get rid of this pest, without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians".^[16] He stated that Harrison was to keep the contents of the letter "sacred" and "kept within [Harrison's] own breast, and especially how improper for the Indians to understand. For their interests and their tranquility, it is best they should see only the present age of their history."

Forced removal

In cases where Native tribes resisted assimilation, Jefferson believed that to avoid war and probable extermination they should be forcefully relocated and sent west. As Jefferson put it in a letter to Alexander von Humboldt in 1813:

"You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. We spared nothing to keep them at peace with one another. To teach them agriculture and the rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing among them separate property. In this way they would have been enabled to subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession. They would have mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach".

He told his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (who was the primary government official responsible for Indian affairs): "if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi."

Jefferson's first promotions of Indian removal were between 1776 and 1779, when he recommended forcing the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to be driven out of their ancestral homelands to lands west of the Mississippi River. Indian removal, said Jefferson, was the only way to ensure the survival of Native American peoples. His first such act as president, was to make a deal with the state of Georgia that if Georgia were to release its legal claims to discovery in lands to the west, then the U.S. military would help forcefully expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. At the time, the Cherokee had a treaty with the United States government which guaranteed them the right to their lands, which was violated in Jefferson's deal with Georgia.

It's okay to be white

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_okay_to_be_white

A sticker with the slogan publicly displayed in 2017

"It's okay to be white" (IOTBW) is an alt-right slogan which originated as part of an organized trolling campaign on the website 4chan's discussion board /pol/ in 2017. A /pol/ user described it as a proof of concept that an otherwise innocuous message could be used maliciously to spark media backlash. Posters and stickers stating "It's okay to be white" were placed in streets in the United States as well as on campuses in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The slogan has been supported by white supremacists including neo-Nazis. Media coverage of the event, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson asking "What's the correct position? That it's not okay to be white?", was seen as reacting in the way that the trolling campaign had intended.

Background

The suggestion for the use of posters with the saying originated on the message board /pol/ of 4chan, with the intent of provoking reactions. The saying was later spread by neo-Nazi groups and politically organized white supremacists, including former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and The Daily Stormer. A report by the Anti-Defamation League states that the phrase itself has a history within the white supremacist movement going back to 2001 when it was used as the title of a song by a white power music group called Aggressive Force as well as fliers with the phrase being spotted in 2005 and the slogan being used by a member of the United Klans of America.

Reactions

Discarded "It's okay to be white" cards after a Patriot Prayer protest in Portland, Oregon

Many of the flyers were torn down, and some accused the posters of being covertly racist and white nationalist, while others, like Jeff Guillory, executive director of Washington State University's Office of Equity and Diversity, argued that it was a nonthreatening statement.

Academia

The University of Regina declared the posters divisive. University President Vianne Timmons said: "Simply put, these signs have no place at our university."

A spokesman for a Waterloo Region District School Board commented: "Our schools are safe spaces. We want to see them be safe for all of our children, so to see this kind of thing emerge is a worry."

After the signs were found at Washington State University, Phil Weiler, Vice President of University Communications, said: "one could reasonably believe the intention of the signs is to set a sense of fear and intimidation on campus". Executive director of Washington State University's Office of Equity and Diversity responded to the posters by saying: "In my mind, it's a nonthreatening statement", further stating: "Sure, it's OK to be white. It's OK to be African-American. It's OK to be Latino. It's OK to be gay."

The University of Utah said: "If, indeed, these tactics are meant to silence our work in diversity and inclusion, please know we shall not be deterred." Concordia College said that their president was planning a meeting where students could discuss the matter.

Police were contacted regarding the flyers being posted at the University of California, Berkeley. A police department spokesperson said "the signs did not constitute a hate crime because they did not target a specific race and because no criminal act was committed".

In November 2017, Lucian Wintrich attempted to give a speech titled "It's OK to be White" at the University of Connecticut as an invited speaker of the school's Republican club. The speech was protested and came to an end when a protester, employed as the director of career services at Quinebaug Valley Community College, grabbed Wintrich's speech papers from the podium and Wintrich grabbed her, resulting in breach of peace charges against Wintrich. In December 2017, the charges against Wintrich were dropped, and the woman who took the papers was charged with attempted sixth-degree larceny and disorderly conduct. She stated through her attorney she took Wintrich's speech as a form of protest, describing Wintrich's "It's OK to be White" speech as hateful language.

Media

Some media sources reacted in the way the original authors on 4chan had expected.

Tucker Carlson on Fox News defended the campaign in a segment entitled "High school Fliers Create Shock and Horror". Carlson asked: "What's the correct position? That it's not okay to be white?" Newsweek writer Michael Hayden said Carlson was helping to spread neo-Nazi propaganda by defending the posters, saying the slogan is being "promoted by neo-Nazis and white supremacists." Writing for The Washington Post, Janell Ross commented on the poster campaign, saying "the white victim construct is one that experts say, not so long ago, only had traction in avowed white supremacists, segregationists, and neo-Nazi circles. But today, it animates open and anonymous public discussions of race and shapes the nation's politics." The Root compared it with the children's book It's Okay to Be Different and said "white folks have taken that beautiful sentiment and distorted it to suit their infinite need to center themselves".

The Guardian columnist Jason Wilson argued that the slogan "It's okay to be white" was devised by white supremacists in order to stoke overreaction from the left, sow confusion, embed a racist agenda in the mainstream media, and ultimately invite a backlash against anti-racist activism."

Merchandising

According to ThinkProgress, T-shirts with the slogan were put on sale at Shopify by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

In May 2019, New Zealand auction site Trade Me removed the sale of "It's okay to be white" T-shirts sold by manufacturer VJM Publishing amid public backlash. VJM Publishing Vice President Vince McLeod defended the sales on the VJM Publishing company page, stating that "It's okay to be whatever you naturally are." The controversy was widely reported worldwide and was only a couple of months after the white supremacist Christchurch mosque shootings. In wake of Trade Me banning the shirt, the seller moved to another New Zealand online marketplace, AllGoods.

Australian parliament motion

On October 15, 2018, right-wing politician Pauline Hanson proposed an "It's okay to be white" motion in the Australian Senate intended to acknowledge the "deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilization". It was supported by most senators from the governing Liberal–National Coalition, but was defeated 31–28 by opponents who called it "a racist slogan from the white supremacist movement." The following day, the motion was "recommitted", and this time rejected unanimously by senators in attendance, with its initial supporters in the Liberal–National Coalition saying they had voted for it due to an administrative error (One Nation did not attend the recommital vote).

Community response

In 2020, following a spate of such stickers appearing in Ipswich, England, local residents responded by altering the stickers to read "It's okay to be kind".

In a February 2023 poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a polling firm, often referred to by conservative media, 72% of 1,000 respondents agreed with the statement "It's okay to be White". Among the 130 black respondents, 53% agreed, while 26% disagreed, and 21% were unsure. Slate magazine suggested that some negative respondents may have been familiar with the term's links with white supremacy. The Dilbert comic strip was dropped by many newspapers after author Scott Adams, reacting on his podcast to the outcome of this poll, characterised black people as a "hate group" for not agreeing with the statement and encouraged white people to "get the hell away from" them.

The Metamorphosis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis 

Metamorphosis

Front cover of a 1916 edition
Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	Die Verwandlung
Country	Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic)
Language	German
Publisher	Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig
Publication date	1915
Translation	Metamorphosis at Wikisource

Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella written by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect (German: ungeheueres Ungeziefer, lit. "monstrous vermin") and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.

With a length of about 70 printed pages over three chapters, it is the longest of the stories Kafka considered complete and published during his lifetime. The text was first published in 1915 in the October issue of the journal Die weißen Blätter under the editorship of René Schickele. The first edition in book form appeared in December 1915 in the series Der jüngste Tag, edited by Kurt Wolff.

Plot

Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin". He initially considers the transformation to be temporary and slowly ponders the consequences of this metamorphosis. Stuck on his back and unable to get up and leave the bed, Gregor reflects on his job as a traveling salesman and cloth merchant, which he characterizes as being full of "temporary and constantly changing human relationships, which never come from the heart". He sees his employer as a despot and would quickly quit his job if he were not his family's sole breadwinner and working off his bankrupt father's debts. While trying to move, Gregor finds that his office manager, the chief clerk, has shown up to check on him, indignant about Gregor's unexcused absence. Gregor attempts to communicate with both the manager and his family, but all they can hear from behind the door is incomprehensible vocalizations. Gregor laboriously drags himself across the floor and opens the door. The clerk, upon seeing the transformed Gregor, flees the apartment. Gregor's family is horrified, and his father drives him back into his room, injuring his side by shoving him when he gets stuck in the doorway.

With Gregor's unexpected transformation, his family is deprived of financial stability. They keep Gregor locked in his room, and he begins to accept his new identity and adapt to his new body. His sister Grete is the only one willing to bring him food, which they find Gregor only likes if it is rotten. He spends much of his time crawling around on the floor, walls, and ceiling and, upon discovering Gregor's new pastime, Grete decides to remove his furniture to give him more space. She and her mother begin to empty the room of everything, except the sofa under which Gregor hides whenever anyone comes in, but he finds their actions deeply distressing in fear that he might forget his past, while he still was a human, and desperately tries to save a particularly loved portrait on the wall of a woman clad in fur. His mother loses consciousness at the sight of him clinging to the image to protect it. When Grete rushes out of the room to get some aromatic spirits, Gregor follows her and is slightly hurt when she drops a medicine bottle and it breaks. Their father returns home and angrily hurls apples at Gregor, one of which becomes lodged in a sensitive spot in his back and severely wounds him.

Gregor suffers from his injuries for the rest of his life and takes very little food. His father, mother, and sister all get jobs and increasingly begin to neglect him, and his room begins to be used for storage. For a time, his family leaves Gregor's door open in the evenings so he can listen to them talk to each other, but this happens less frequently once they rent a room in the apartment to three male tenants, since they are not told about Gregor. One day the charwoman, who briefly looks in on Gregor each day when she arrives and before she leaves, neglects to close his door fully. Attracted by Grete's violin-playing in the living room, Gregor crawls out and is spotted by the unsuspecting tenants, who complain about the apartment's unhygienic conditions and say they are leaving, will not pay anything for the time they have already stayed, and may take legal action. Grete, who has tired of taking care of Gregor and realizes the burden his existence puts on each member of the family, tells her parents they must get rid of "it" or they will all be ruined. Gregor, understanding that he is no longer wanted, laboriously makes his way back to his room and dies of starvation before sunrise. His body is discovered by the charwoman, who alerts his family and then disposes of the corpse. The relieved and optimistic father, mother, and sister all take the day off work. They travel by tram into the countryside and make plans to move to a smaller apartment to save money. During the short trip, Mr. and Mrs. Samsa realize that, despite the hardships that have brought some paleness to her face, Grete has grown up into a pretty young lady with a good figure and they think about finding her a husband.

Characters

Gregor Samsa

"Gregor Samsa" redirects here. For other uses, see Gregor Samsa (disambiguation).

Gregor is the main character of the story. He works as a traveling salesman in order to provide money for his sister and parents. He wakes up one morning finding himself transformed into an insect. After the metamorphosis, Gregor becomes unable to work and is confined to his room for most of the remainder of the story. This prompts his family to begin working once again. Gregor is depicted as isolated from society and often both misunderstands the true intentions of others and is misunderstood.

The name "Gregor Samsa" appears to derive partly from literary works Kafka had read. A character in The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, by German novelist Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934), is named Gregor Samassa. The Viennese author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose sexual imagination gave rise to the idea of masochism, is also an influence. Sacher-Masoch wrote Venus in Furs (1870), a novel whose hero assumes the name Gregor at one point. A "Venus in furs" recurs in The Metamorphosis in the picture that Gregor Samsa has hung on his bedroom wall.

Grete Samsa

Grete is Gregor's younger sister, and she becomes his caretaker after his metamorphosis. They initially have a close relationship, but this quickly fades. At first, she volunteers to feed him and clean his room, but she grows increasingly impatient with the burden and begins to leave his room in disarray out of spite. Her initial decision to take care of Gregor may have come from a desire to contribute and be useful to the family, since she becomes angry and upset when the mother cleans his room. It is made clear that Grete is disgusted by Gregor, as she always opens the window upon entering his room to keep from feeling nauseous and leaves without doing anything if Gregor is in plain sight. She plays the violin and dreams of going to the conservatory to study, a dream Gregor had intended to make happen; he had planned on making the announcement on Christmas Day. To help provide an income for the family after Gregor's transformation, she starts working as a salesgirl. Grete is also the first to suggest getting rid of Gregor, which causes Gregor to plan his own death. At the end of the story, Grete's parents realize that she has become beautiful and full-figured and decide to consider finding her a husband.

Mr Samsa

Mr Samsa is Gregor's father. After the metamorphosis, he is forced to return to work in order to support the family financially. His attitude towards his son is harsh. He regards the transformed Gregor with disgust and possibly even fear and attacks Gregor on several occasions. Even when Gregor was human, Mr Samsa regarded him mostly as a source of income for the family. Gregor's relationship with his father is modelled after Kafka's own relationship with his father. The theme of alienation becomes quite evident here.

Mrs Samsa

Mrs Samsa is Gregor's mother. She is portrayed as a submissive wife. She suffers from asthma, which is a constant source of concern for Gregor. She is initially shocked at Gregor's transformation, but she still wants to enter his room. However, it proves too much for her and gives rise to a conflict between her maternal impulse and sympathy and her fear and revulsion at Gregor's new form.

The Charwoman

The charwoman is an old widowed lady who is employed by the Samsa family after their previous maid begs to be dismissed on account of the fright she experiences owing to Gregor's new form. She is paid to take care of their household duties. Apart from Grete and her father, the charwoman is the only person who is in close contact with Gregor, and she is unafraid in her dealings with Gregor. She does not question his changed state; she seemingly accepts it as a normal part of his existence. She is the one who notices Gregor has died and disposes of his body.

Interpretation

Like most of Kafka's works, Metamorphosis tends to be given a religious (Max Brod) or psychological interpretation by most of its interpreters. It has been particularly common to read the story as an expression of Kafka's father complex, as was first done by Charles Neider in his The Frozen Sea: A Study of Franz Kafka (1948). Besides the psychological approach, interpretations focusing on sociological aspects, which see the Samsa family as a portrayal of general social circumstances, have also gained a large following.

Vladimir Nabokov rejected such interpretations, noting that they do not live up to Kafka's art. He instead chose an interpretation guided by the artistic detail, but categorically excluded any attempts at deciphering a symbolic or allegoric level of meaning. Arguing against the popular father-complex theory, he observed that it is the sister more than the father who should be considered the cruelest person in the story, since she is the one backstabbing Gregor. In Nabokov's view, the central narrative theme is the artist's struggle for existence in a society replete with philistines that destroys him step by step. Commenting on Kafka's style he writes "The transparency of his style underlines the dark richness of his fantasy world. Contrast and uniformity, style and the depicted, portrayal and fable are seamlessly intertwined".

In 1989, Nina Pelikan Straus wrote a feminist interpretation of Metamorphosis, bringing to the forefront the transformation of the main character, Gregor's sister, Grete, and foregrounding the family and, particularly, the younger sister's transformation in the story. According to Straus, critics of Metamorphosis have underplayed the fact that the story is not only about Gregor but also about his family and especially about Grete's metamorphosis since it is mainly Grete, as woman, daughter and sister, on whom the social and psychoanalytic resonances of the text depend.

In 1999, Gerhard Rieck pointed out that Gregor and his sister, Grete, form a pair, which is typical of many of Kafka's texts: it is made up of one passive, rather austere, person and another active, more libidinal, person. The appearance of figures with such almost irreconcilable personalities who form couples in Kafka's works has been evident since he wrote his short story "Description of a Struggle" (e.g. the narrator/young man and his "acquaintance"). They also appear in "The Judgment" (Georg and his friend in Russia), in all three of his novels (e.g. Robinson and Delamarche in Amerika) as well as in his short stories "A Country Doctor" (the country doctor and the groom) and "A Hunger Artist" (the hunger artist and the panther). Rieck views these pairs as parts of one single person (hence the similarity between the names Gregor and Grete) and in the final analysis as the two determining components of the author's personality. Not only in Kafka's life but also in his oeuvre does Rieck see the description of a fight between these two parts.

Reiner Stach argued in 2004 that no elucidating comments were needed to illustrate the story and that it was convincing by itself, self-contained, even absolute. He believes that there is no doubt the story would have been admitted to the canon of world literature even if we had known nothing about its author.

According to Peter-André Alt (2005), the figure of the beetle becomes a drastic expression of Gregor Samsa's deprived existence. Reduced to carrying out his professional responsibilities, anxious to guarantee his advancement and vexed with the fear of making commercial mistakes, he is the creature of a functionalistic professional life.

In 2007, Ralf Sudau took the view that particular attention should be paid to the motifs of self-abnegation and disregard for reality. Gregor's earlier behavior was characterized by self-renunciation and his pride in being able to provide a secure and leisured existence for his family. When he finds himself in a situation where he himself is in need of attention and assistance and in danger of becoming a parasite, he doesn't want to admit this new role to himself and be disappointed by the treatment he receives from his family, which is becoming more and more careless and even hostile over time. According to Sudau, Gregor is self-denyingly hiding his nauseating appearance under the sofa and gradually famishing, thus pretty much complying with the more or less blatant wish of his family. His gradual emaciation and "self-reduction" shows signs of a fatal hunger strike (which on the part of Gregor is unconscious and unsuccessful, on the part of his family not understood or ignored). Sudau also lists the names of selected interpreters of The Metamorphosis (e.g. Beicken, Sokel, Sautermeister and Schwarz). According to them, the narrative is a metaphor for the suffering resulting from leprosy, an escape into the disease or a symptom onset, an image of an existence which is defaced by the career, or a revealing staging which cracks the veneer and superficiality of everyday circumstances and exposes its cruel essence. He further notes that Kafka's representational style is on one hand characterized by an idiosyncratic interpenetration of realism and fantasy, a worldly mind, rationality, and clarity of observation, and on the other hand by folly, outlandishness, and fallacy. He also points to the grotesque and tragicomical, silent film-like elements.

Fernando Bermejo-Rubio (2012) argued that the story is often viewed unjustly as inconclusive. He derives his interpretative approach from the fact that the descriptions of Gregor and his family environment in The Metamorphosis contradict each other. Diametrically opposed versions exist of Gregor's back, his voice, of whether he is ill or already undergoing the metamorphosis, whether he is dreaming or not, which treatment he deserves, of his moral point of view (false accusations made by Grete), and whether his family is blameless or not. Bermejo-Rubio emphasizes that Kafka ordered in 1915 that there should be no illustration of Gregor. He argues that it is exactly this absence of a visual narrator that is essential for Kafka's project, for he who depicts Gregor would stylize himself as an omniscient narrator. Another reason why Kafka opposed such an illustration is that the reader should not be biased in any way before reading. That the descriptions are not compatible with each other is indicative of the fact that the opening statement is not to be trusted. If the reader isn't hoodwinked by the first sentence and still thinks of Gregor as a human being, he will view the story as conclusive and realize that Gregor is a victim of his own degeneration.

Volker Drüke (2013) believes that the crucial metamorphosis in the story is that of Grete. She is the character the title is directed at. Gregor's metamorphosis is followed by him languishing and ultimately dying. Grete, by contrast, has matured as a result of the new family circumstances and assumed responsibility. In the end – after the brother's death – the parents also notice that their daughter, "who was getting more animated all the time, [...] had recently blossomed into a pretty and shapely girl", and want to look for a partner for her. From this standpoint Grete's transition, her metamorphosis from a girl into a woman, is the subtextual theme of the story.

Translation of the opening sentence

Translators of the novel into English have given widely different texts, including of the opening sentence, which in the original is "Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt". In the first 1933 translation of the story, Willa Muir rendered it as "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect".

The phrase "ungeheuren Ungeziefer" in particular has been rendered in many different ways by translators. These include

• "gigantic insect" (Muir, 1948)
• "monstrous vermin" (Corngold, 1972, Neugroschel, 1993/1995, Freed, 1996)
• "giant bug" (Underwood, 1981)
• "monstrous insect" (Pasley, 1992)
• "enormous bug" (Appelbaum, 1996)
• "gargantuan pest" (Roberts, 2005)
• "monstrous cockroach" (Hofmann, 2007)
• "horrible vermin" (Wyllie, 2009)
• "large verminous insect" (Williams, 2011)
• "some sort of monstrous insect" (Bernofsky, 2014)
• "monstrous verminous bug" (Johnston, 2015)

In Middle High German, Ungeziefer literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice" and is sometimes used colloquially to mean "bug", with the gist of "dirty, nasty bug". It can also be translated as "vermin". English translators of The Metamorphosis have often rendered it as "insect".

What kind of bug or vermin Kafka envisaged remains a debated mystery. Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor as any specific thing, but instead was trying to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation. In his letter to his publisher of 25 October 1915, in which he discusses his concern about the cover illustration for the first edition, Kafka does use the term Insekt, though, saying "The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance."

Vladimir Nabokov, who was a lepidopterist as well as a writer and literary critic, concluded from details in the text that Gregor was not a cockroach, but a beetle with wings under his shell, and capable of flight. Nabokov left a sketch annotated "just over three feet long" on the opening page of his English teaching copy. In his accompanying lecture notes, he discusses the type of insect Gregor has been transformed into. Noting that the cleaning lady addressed Gregor as "dung beetle" (Mistkäfer), e.g., 'Come here for a bit, old dung beetle!' or 'Hey, look at the old dung beetle!'", Nabokov remarks that this was just her way of friendly addressing and that Gregor "is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle."