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Essay #1: Sexual Politics
It has been said that “Society has always defined for us what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, what a man should be like and what a woman should be like, and these traditional definitions of gender roles have limited and even harmed individuals”. The theme of sexual politics comes to mind for this quote. One can define sexual politics as the relationship of the sexes, male and female regarding power. Society’s definition of this can limit an individual in their gender role and restrain a person to not be themselves.
Works like “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady and “Ain’t I a Woman” by Sojourner Truth all have the elements of
In doing this she is listing off things that the Daughter should be acting out upon. “Don 't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know” (Kincaid 68). The mother is demonstrating how the daughter should act in the presences of boys and explain she is not one. As a girl she must act proper and not play the ways boys do. Boys are aggressive and dirty as seen by society; a girl like she is supposed to be kind and proper. Then the mother explains in one section on how to do housework and chores; a woman’s job. “This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so they don’t have a crease” (Kincaid 67). Kincaid writes that the mother is instructing the daughter on how to do her father’s clothing. This shows that the father; a man does not iron his own clothes but that it is a woman’s job. This can connect to Judy Brady’s work “I Want a Wife” which is about a woman who is listing all the things women do for their husband. Like Kincaid she brings up the same chores of housework and tending to clothing. “A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended,
Scout, the protagonist, is a young girl coming of age in a society trying to shove her into a dress and the role of a gilded daughter. For example, when Scout recalls a conversation with her Aunt Alexandra, a figurehead for society and one of the major female figures in her life, she begins to shine her own light on how to brighten her father’s life in a way that is true to herself. On page 108, Scout comes to terms with the fact that she is defying stereotypes, “I could not possibly be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants. Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father’s lonely life. I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. She hurt my feelings and set my teeth permanently on edge,
Even with the advancement of women in society, their roles and societal expectations have not changed. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” are two stories with varied elements set in different periods in history, that show the role society has deemed as belonging to women. "The Story of an Hour" was written in the year 1894, almost a century before Kincaid wrote "Girl". However, despite the large gap in the times of the authors, a common theme emerges and that is the theme of the oppression of women and the role they are expected to assume in society.
Zeilinger believes that not only women suffer from oppressive gender roles. Men often suffer just as much if not more. She seeks to expose the issues men face in todays society. Guys do have emotions, and when they come, they must face a big dilemma. They can either disconnect from their human emotions or live in a “state of contradiction” against their “manliness.” The traits that traditionally come with being a man are harmful to society. They are expected to be “cunning and take power and control instead of sharing it.” Men must be willing to point out weaker men in order to be above them. Zeilinger points out the adverse effect this mainstream mentality has. Guys are afraid to stray from the strict rules of manliness. If men go against the common standards they risk losing their identity as men. Those who choose to not follow these social norms are seen as a threat by those who are clinging to them. Gay men, for example often choose to stray from these norms. Zeilinger brings up a story of a friend who is gay and must overcome “male and female stigmas”. He often feels displaced as he does not fit in the realm of male or female roles. Zeilinger ends her article calling for change among both men and women in order to create a healthier
Daughters have always had a special bond with their fathers, even at the time where women did not have the same rights as men, and were seen as the weaker sex. This father is no different, in wanting the best for his little girl. The father in this letter wants the daughter to accomplish her roles differently than the women before her because he knows that women are capable of accomplishing “male” tasks. The letter also addresses how women were seen and treated by men and the changes that were occurring in order to gain a status quo for both men and women.
but washing must be done and procrastination won’t do it for me (Schlissel 83).” Although this woman obviously did not like doing the washing, she saw it as her job to do. In addition, the book describes this scene, “The banks of a river would be lined with women who carried their kettles, their washtubs, and piles of unwashed linen (Schlissel 82).” Again, it is the women who are doing the cleaning. The McGuffey Readers, being the handbook that young girls would read in school, taught them that it was their place to do the cleaning.
...am Victorian society, sexual liberalism transformed the ways in which people arranged their private lives. Shifting from a Victorian environment of production, separate sexual spheres, and the relegation of any illicit extramarital sex to an underworld of vice, the modern era found itself in a new landscape of consumerism, modernism and inverted sexual stereotypes. Sexuality was now being discussed, systemized, controlled, and made an object of scientific study and popular discourse. Late nineteenth-century views on "natural" gender and sexuality, with their attendant stereotypes about proper gender roles and proper desires, lingered long into the twentieth century and continue, somewhat fitfully, to inform the world in which we live. It is against this cultural and political horizon that an understanding of sexuality in the modern era needs to be contextualized.
While the first sentence is mostly objective description, the second sentence is full of the affectation of a subjective point of view. Aunt Amy is described as wearing a “white collar [that] rose from the neck of her tightly buttoned black basque, and round white cuffs set off lazy hands with dimples in them, lying at ease in the folds of her flounced skirt.” Words like “tightly,” “lazy,” and “ease” seem to describe what would be considered the traditional concept of the Southern woman. The wealthy Southern female is conservative, pure, fragile, peaceful, and delicate. These descriptive words could be viewed as an alignment with the traditional Southern view of women; therefore Amy is “beautiful and charming” in the eyes of the Grandmother and “every older person” and “everyone who had known her.” However, within those same words there appears the rather opposite yet still highly subjective view of the young girls who are attempting to reconcile the new values and ideas of the present with the old traditions of the past. The words “tightly,” “lazy,” and “ease” could be seen from the young girls perspective as negative descriptions suggesting boundaries, confinement, limitations, and exclusion.
...of sexuality in the public arena. As they left the hallowed domestic sphere, women increasingly perceived sexuality as a political, and not simply a private, issue. (4)
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
Nowadays, more people tend to care about and work on social justice. Women’s rights, as one of the topics, draws people’s attention. The society and female-selves have rethought the meaning of being women in the 21st century. Therefore, nowadays twenty-something girls start to behave differently from early generation. One of the behaviors becomes ambiguous, which is female sexuality. In “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom”, Leslie Bell argues that neither contradictory directing nor expectation from others is the main reason that causes female sexuality. She sets up this claim, because the identity a woman established by herself impacts more on a woman’s sexuality. Establishing an identity is more important because it’s more independently authentic, also it represents what the woman wants, who she truly wants to be. Another reason is that, sexuality is one of the changed-behaviors that women use to prove their established identity. Therefore, female sexuality is driven by identity rather than social expectation or confused directing from others because, first, the identity is established by a women herself independently; second, the identity is the way how a women defines who she is, which matters more than any other outside effects; third, women decide to have a certain kind of sexuality in order to prove their defined identities.
There is so much controversy in the society that we live in, it has resulted in an absolute mess. Certain topics as in gender or men and women’s bodies, is so controversial to the point that it has caused a misrepresentation of both men and women. Both Jean Kilbourne and Allan G. Johnson form their own opinions in their articles “Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt” and “Why Do We Make So Much of Gender” that comment on society as a whole, while expanding on the concept of why gender is so important for a fully functioning society. Although, both Kilbourne and Johnson have differentiating opinions to gender, they both come to the conclusion that gender is a key factor to explain our society and the social change in it. We live in a society where
...e need for women’s dependence on men. Unfortunately, compulsory heterosexuality is reinforced daily through multiple social institutions including, religion, literature, and politics. Compulsory heterosexuality has contributed to the confinement of women in lower paying jobs than men due to the sexual marketability required of women to be heterosexual feminine woman. The pressure to be heterosexual in the workforce then and in present day America stretches out to society turning women into sexual pray feeding the dominance of men especially in the workforce. This reality has caused a disturbance within the feminist movement for it continues to disempower not allowing for the growth of sexualities like lesbianism. By disregarding other sexual orientations, society is inhibiting the prosperity of people especially women who are still fighting the battles for equality.
... decades ago. This book is one that will allow the reader to view many aspects of sexuality from a social standpoint, and apply it to certain social attitudes in our society today, these attitudes can range from the acceptance of lesbian and gays, and the common sight of sex before marriage and women equality. The new era of sexuality has taken a definite "transformation" as Giddens puts it, and as a society we are living in the world of change in which we must adapt, by accepting our society as a changing society, and not be naive and think all the rules of sexuality from our parents time our still in existence now.
Society has set limits on gender roles with ideals such as male privilege and patriarchy. Patriarchy is the political structure to control womenbs thoughts on their sexuality, laboring, and place in society so...
The relationship between sex and gender can be argued in many different lights. All of which complicated lights. Each individual beholds a sexual identity and a gender identity, with the argument of perceiving these identities however way they wish to perceive them. However, the impact of gender on our identities and on our bodies and how they play out is often taken for granted in various ways. Gender issues continue to be a hugely important topic within contemporary modern society. I intend to help the reader understand that femininities and masculinities is a social constructed concept and whether the binary categories of “male” and “female” are adequate concepts for understanding and organising contemporary social life with discussing the experiences of individuals and groups who have resisted these labels and forged new identities.