Disjunction Between Women

The Disjunction Between the Women and the Individual

Throughout history an idea that has been used to combat the fight for women’s rights is the idea of universalism. This idea, as Joan Scott presents in her work Universalism and the History of Feminism, was based on the concept that being an individual was celebrated and everyone was allowed to be their own valued individual in society. Many people would say that feminism is engulfed in universalism just on the definition of the word, Scott would disagree. Scott redefines what the “individual” is and how women’s attempt to become an “individual” creates the paradox of feminist speech. Author Marilyn Frye redefines some common words in her essay, “Willful Virgin or Do You have to Be a Lesbian

They attempted to use the logical route of how they were a unique perspective and thus should be included in the public sphere because of that. However, at the same time they were saying that they shouldn’t be excluded because they were different. They were in a position where it became difficult to gain entry because it seemed as if they were contradicting themselves. Women would offer the idea that their perspective would compliment those of the men in the space based on the idea that “marriage” was the most cohesive way to run a society. Contrarily, Scott saw this idea of complementing the qualities of the men as actually a way to supplement and take over the qualities of the men. So in this instead of actually achieving and celebrating difference the women were actually trying to gain inclusion by severing all the ties that made them visibly different. The women would have to take on the “masculine” qualities of the leaders in the political space because men believed that one reason women couldn’t be individuals is because they weren’t apart of the “social fraternity.” This idea was that all men no matter what differences they were united by their sexual desire for women (Scott,6). Women would never be able to break into that fraternity because they would never be able to have that same desire as men. However, women who choose to be

However, Frye redefines this term as “a female who is sexually and hence socially her own person” (Frye 133). Frye makes the argument that only women who are willful-virgins can enact any change to destroy the the paradox of feminist speech because they have consciously made the decision to reject the institution that promote heterosexual hierarchy. Only women who decide not to be penetrated, so to speak, by the social norms that constructed the individual that Scott describes can actually challenge or destroy the barriers that stop women from entering the public