Before I go into this essay it is important to know several things about me as a person, and specifically a woman. I pride myself for being fair, strong, loyal, accepting, and generous. I avoid confrontation except when it comes to defend the people who I love the most. I have always had to be the strong one in my family. I was the calm one who always puts a positive spin on the gloomy moments. Most importantly I know that so many things are wrong with this world, and I see them every day, and I believe that it is my duty to help change the world. I know that I am meant to do something great. I am meant to do something that is going to change everything. That is what motivates me. The pieces of pop culture I have chosen have helped …show more content…
change my viewpoints of the world around me, and most importantly helped me change who I am for the better. I’ve chosen Doctor Who, V for Vendetta, and Half the Sky. I’ve learned so much from watching Doctor Who, and it is all so difficult to explain. I’ve learned about love, life, friendship, loss, and myself. It completely changed my perspective of this world and galaxy and every other galaxy and pocket universe out there. The Doctor and his companions and his infinite amount of enemies have taught me more life lessons than you could probably think possible. So many times I have been lost in the darkness, and as foolish as it sounds Doctor Who taught me to embrace my inner darkness so that I can stand in the light. Doctor Who taught me that even when everyone else is running away, that it’s up to me to do what’s right. Most importantly it taught me that I am part of an incredibly mysterious and gorgeous universe, and I am the most important person in creation, but also the most insignificant thing in the world. Doctor Who also has many different characters in the show that are ideal role models for everyone, and the two I picked to talk about address sexuality and stereotypes. The first is Captain Jack Harkness, sure his winning smile, charm, and trench coat make him the object for every Whovians’ affections, but he is so much more than just great hair. Jack has what some have referred to as a 50th century viewpoint about sex. What this means is he is completely nonjudgmental. He doesn’t care if you’re straight, gay, or anything in between. He doesn’t care what race or gender or ethnicity you are either, or what planet you are from! What his character taught me is that to not judge people on their sexual identities, and to accept them as they are. It is important to know that Jack isn’t just a crazed sex machine, he genuinely cares for everyone and loves getting to know everyone he meets. He is also very open minded and curious, and would lay down his life for anyone. The next character is River Song. She is perhaps the best female role model on television these days. Most females on TV today play the classic stereotype of the damsel in distress, or the dumb blonde, or the butch unattainable character. River Song is independent, strong, free willed, and a doctor of archeology. She is the hero, who on countless occasions saves the world and the Doctor. She is an inspiration for women around the world. She fights all the stereotypes that women must rely on a man to be successful. River Song showed me that I didn’t have to have a man by my side to achieve my dreams. Captain Jack taught me to open and accepting of everyone. My next selection is V for Vendetta. This movie is perhaps one of the most important movies ever created. The film is set in the near future Great Britain, which is ruled by the evil Chancellor Sutler under a totalitarian government. The film follows the young woman Evey Hammond, and after she is saved by the mysterious V in a Guy Fawkes mask she is pulled into his world of taking vengeance on those who have wronged him. One of the most aspects of the film is the backstory to how V was created, and why he is seeking vengeance. In this futuristic society, minorities are attacked and specifically members of the lesbian and gay community. People who were openly gay were taken in for testing to cure them of homosexuality. They were ripped from their homes, tortured, imprisoned, and tested on. V was one of the thousands taken and put into basically concentration camps, but he survived the testing and torture. He then set fire to the testing facility (and was horribly burned and unrecognizable) and escaped. After that he began plotting his revenge on the government and specifically the people who were responsible for what had been done to him and the thousands of others like him. I first saw this movie in 2005 and I would have been about ten or eleven years old, and I can honestly say that I had no idea what being homosexual was. So when I first watched the movie back then (and fell in love with it) it was my first exposure to homosexuality. Watching it now, nine years later, the movie motivates me to fight for the LGBT community and the injustice that they have always faced. At ten or eleven years old I had been used to movies like the Lion King and Pocahontas and I had never seen anything so brutal and honest. I didn’t realize it nine years ago, but today I know that this movie helped shape my viewpoints of the LGBT community. I have always been accepting of my gay, lesbian, and bisexual friends. Their sexuality was never an issue, and never any concern in my friendships. If they were good people than I got a long with them. Had I not seen V for Vendetta all those years ago I am not sure what my views would be today. Also, by seeing the hate the people and the government had for those that were members of the LGBT community, I knew that (while not as harshly or severely) the people I knew were gay would face adversity because of their sexual orientation. My little brother, my best friend, and two of my cousins are gay and I have always known that if anyone would say something to them that I would say something. I have never understood why people could treat others so terribly because of one aspect of their lives that does not even directly concern them. V for Vendetta also showed me the power that the government can have, and it is our duty as citizens to stand for what we believe in, and what we want because if we let the government do what it wants than we will lose all our power. My favorite quote from V for Vendetta is, “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should afraid of their people.” Finally, the movie and book Half the Sky changed so much of my views of the world.
Half the Sky is about the oppression of women worldwide, and before reading the book and watching the documentary I had thought “women are treated that poorly anymore.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sure, in America it isn’t as terrible as it has been in the past, but in other countries it couldn’t be worse. Women are treated like they are worth less than the dirt under a man’s’ boot. Watching the documentary ripped my heart out, and showed me the injustice and brutality that women in other countries face on a daily basis. The movie covered issues like sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, forced prostitution, and gender based violence. When you first learn and see a three year old girl that comes in after being raped and given aids I think – even though it is so early in the movie – this is when you sit back and say “Wow.” There are so many moments that just make your mouth drop. The things that women and children in other countries go through daily make you grateful to live where you live, and also – at least for me – make me think, “Why don’t more people know about this?” The hardest part for me to personally watch and grasp was female genital mutilation. It is so barbaric, and unnecessary, and the only excuse that people have to do it is that “it is tradition.” There are so many statistic and numbers thrown at the reader that make your heart break. Such as this one: “More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th
century.” Doctor Who, V for Vendetta, and Half the Sky were directly responsibly on how view the world, and most importantly my place in it. I know that things are not right. I know that so many people are treated unfairly; I want to change that.
Under any circumstance a woman is seen as being at fault. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, many male societies systematically victimize women. Forcing women to be dependent on men causes them to be victims in households and society. For example Nana says to Mariam, “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always” (Hosseini 7). The systematic victimization of women by patriarchal societies is a main theme in the novel, which is shown in the relationships between the men and women in the novel.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a story, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Although the work is short, it is one of the most interesting works in existence. Gilman uses literary techniques very well. The symbolism of The Yellow Wallpaper, can be seen and employed after some thought and make sense immediately. The views and ideals of society are often found in literary works. Whether the author is trying to show the ills of society of merely telling a story, culture is woven onto the words. The relationship between the narrator and her husband would be disagreeable to a modern woman's relationship. Today, most women crave equality with their partner. The reader never learns the name of the narrator, perhaps to give the illusion that she could be any woman. On the very fist page of The Yellow Wall-Paper, Gilman illustrates the male dominated society and relationship. It was customary for men to assume that their gender knew what, when, how, and why to do things. John, the narrator's husband, is a prominent doctor and both his and his wife's words and actions reflect the aforementioned stereotype: "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage," (9). This statement illustrates the blatant sexism of society at the time. John does not believe that his wife is sick, while she is really suffering from post-partum depression. He neglects to listen to his wife in regard to her thoughts, feelings, and health through this thought pattern. According to him, there is not anything wrong with his wife except for temporary nerve issues, which should not be serious.
The oppression of woman is evident in the everyday life of a women living in the 19th century. This oppression was not only localized to their duties at home, but it made its way into women’s health issues as well. Women of the 19th century, and even still at the turn of the century, were suffering from postpartum depression, and they were misdiagnosed because postpartum, like almost any woman's illness, was treated as illness of the womb. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, affirms that the oppression of women resulted in their injurious medical treatment, which, in the end, was the equivalent to life in prison.
The message of Half the Sky is clear; we need to invest more time, energy, and indeed, money, into empowering the world’s women instead of tearing them down. Although
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is also a wife and mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “rest cure” from her husband/neurologist doctor that requires strict bed rest and an imposed reprieve form any mental stimulation. As a result of her husband’s controlling edicts, the woman develops an obsessive attachment to the intricate details of the wallpaper on her bedroom wall. The woman’s increasingly intense obsession with the wallpaper ultimately leaves the reader with many questions about nineteenth-century male-female relationships, and perhaps even insanity.
Women were not seen in the past as they are seen now. They were seen as the weaker, less knowledgeable sex. They had to listen to their husbands and they had no say in anything. We are reminded of this when we read “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an activist for women’s rights. With this being said, I believe Gilman’s purpose for writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to show the readers women do have rights, this is a changing world, and women don’t have to listen to everything their husband or significant other tells them to do. She does this by the narrator symbolically seeing herself trapped inside the wallpaper and her eventually pulling the wallpaper off the wall and being able to feel free to do whatever she wants. In “Monumental feminism and literature’s ancestral house: Another look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” Janice Haney-Peritz, Department of English (Beaver College), states, “As a memorial, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is used to remind contemporary readers of the enduring import of the feminist struggle against patriarchical domination; while as a boundary marker, it is used to demarcate the territory appropriate to a feminist literary criticism” (114).
Women in history were subjected to an oppressed role, which men were in control. Many of these women created groups to talk about these problems such as the Seneca Falls. Women fought for equality, but some were happy with the status quo, and some simply became the change.
As a female, I wouldn’t say that I am oppressed, however, I have experienced some impartial treatment compared my male correspondent. Specifically, at work my workplace, men seem to be preferred for certain positions than me. For example, when applying for a manager position in the shoe department, preference was given to another male with fewer qualifications. I also grew up in a house with all boys, I had to take on the responsibilities that a female would around the house. I had to cook for my brothers, clean up after them and even wash their clothes at times. Other than those instances, being a female does not make me feel oppressive.
Throughout the twentieth century, American women fought for the right to vote, the right to make choices regarding their own bodies, and the right to be their own people. The disparities between men and women were often overlooked or blindly accepted, but as Gloria Steinem said, “history is herstory too.” After nearly 200 years of struggling, women made up only 10% of Congress, received wages less than 75% of their male counter parts, and are stigmatized based on their class and race. By the end of the century, female citizens were still treated unfairly in every aspect of American society. Women did not achieve equality in America in the 20th century, based on their roles in politics, the widespread views of female sexuality, and the race, class, and gender ideals for women at the time. Although women have made progress in each of these areas, and more, they still have so far to come.
Women, for decades, have strove for complete equality with men. This fight is not a new fight, it is a fight that started long ago and is still going today. Many times when we think of the life of women in the past we draw to the Victorian age, an age with great female writers, like the Bronte sisters. Charlotte Bronte, author of many great works, served as a critic and wrote many satire of society and the treatment of women in the Victorian era. The story of Jane Eyre is a bidungsroman, or a coming of age story. Jane strives to find her place in a society that is slowly changing its view of women. In Bronte’s work, Jane Eyre, Jane is a manifestation of the quintessential Victorian women; the ways she diverts forge a new path for women in their search for freedom.
Feminist Theories: The Oppression of Women at Home and in the Workplace Due to Gender Stratification
Frye opened the introduction with argument how the women that are oppressed as they are in the male-dominated society demands, which they cannot acquire. So many women are promoted that way that they did not realize in fact that they are oppressed, which she used the Birdcage metaphor as to show the bigger picture of the oppression. By picking only one wire, you merely see one wire in one setting, but when you move your eyes up or down, you start to see more wires, thus making the conclusion that the bird cannot fly away without being harmed. “No humans free of social structures, nor (perhaps) would happiness consist in such freedom.” [10]. The women are oppressed to their own roles that it hinders their realization that males are controlling
Half the Sky helped contribute to my understanding of "First World privilege" a lot by not only hearing about these poverty stricken, man dominant developing nations, but also showing it. Seeing it brings a whole new view to sexism, racism, and discrimination, especially with being sold into sex slavery and woman not even being allowed to have a life saving treatment unless the men give their consent. In America, every person can at least go into a hospital and get treatment needed to save their lives, in other countries they can die just because a man doesn't give his consent to save her life. This documentary shows the little things we take for granted because truthfully we do not even realize how truly horrific it is out there in the
Marilyn Frye and Julie Scelfo stand near a coffee pot in a break room at Vermont University. Their lunches spin in the microwaves on the counter.
My strongest qualities, determination and independence, are deeply rooted in my family. Coming from an extremely tight-knit family all living within 30 minutes of each other, we bring new meaning to the cliché, “It takes a village.” My Aunt Betty is CEO of two corporations and taught me to sacrifice nothing for my dreams. My Grandmother, having borne seven children of her own and cared for twenty-one grandchildren while working with her husband in the family business, taught me that I do not have to sacrifice one for the other- prosperity comes in the balance. My strength comes from my mother. Having overcome obstacles and making immeasurable sacrifices, she lives her dreams through her three daughters. She never accepts anything from the best from me and I do my best not to disappoint her. She instilled in me the strength to have MY OWN dreams and to never be afraid of them. Individuality emanates from my Aunt Kathy, as she has always encouraged me to break the conventional molds of femininity and go after what I desire.