Analysis of Women's Rights Articles

What is a feminist? Are feminist fuzzy-hair-legged lesbian women who all hate men? Or, are they just normal everyday women who believe that women deserve to have the same treatment as men? What do feminists believe in? What type of stereotypes plague feminists? Are men and women treated equally? There are many different articles that try to answer these questions. The three articles that will be talked about in the essay tries to do exactly that.

In the article, Compromising Positions, Kathleen Collins writes about how the television, especially family television shows, portray women. She believes that even still today television shows like Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, or the home improvement shows like Merge and Mix It Up, women are still portrayed as "housewives who bustle and cluck while their hapless husbands do little more than hand out spending money (Collins, par. 1)." She believes that these shows "reinforce old prejudices regarding women's emotional ties to the home rather then challenging assumptions about which gender likes what kind of living environment and why (Collins, par. 17)."

Lisa Miya-Jervis's article, Who Wants to Marry a Feminist, takes a different approach on the subject. She talks about the different stereotypes feminists have focusing on marriage. Unlike the majority of other feminists, she believes that one could marry and still keep their own identity.

The Women's Liberation Front, written by Jo Freeman, deals with the discrimination against women. She states facts about how men are available for more benefits then women are. In her article, she uses facts about how men have a better chance to get a higher paying job, a more respectable position and are more likely to get advancements easier and more frequently.

All of the articles have the same audience, women. Each article was published in different feminist magazines however; the age target was different. For example, The Moderator, was an online magazine directed toward the older generations. Bitch, directed to the younger crowd, is a magazine dealing with the feminist response to pop which prides its self by being devoted to incisive commentary on our media-driven world. Then, Ms. Magazine markets the middle age crowds and is discussed more traditional issues. However, even though each has a common interest, educating the public on the different discriminations against women, they took a different approach to do so.