Addressing an audience at the Women's Convention, Truth utilized her personal experiences as a backdrop to question the societal norms that undermined the capabilities and rights of women. Her repeated rhetorical question, "And ain't I a woman?" punctuates the narrative, challenging the logic of gender discrimination by highlighting her own strength and resilience in enduring hardships typically reserved for men. She recounts having worked as hard as any man, borne the pain of seeing her children sold into slavery, and survived the harsh realities of a racially and gender-biased society. Through these vivid personal anecdotes, Truth not only sets the stage for her arguments but also frames the discourse within the larger context of human rights and equality, thereby encapsulating the essence of her plea for recognition and…
Feminism has been born through decades of ignorance and misguidance, a perception of a weaker sex, and a belief that equality is not truly meant for all. Because of this deprivation of equality and privileges that exist exclusively for men, decades of work have been put forth from the feminist movement to ensure that no woman will any longer be held back or have opportunities revoked simply for having the status of a “weaker” gender. Before taking this class, I was hesitant to ever label myself in such a manner and questioned those who had, but after reading Penny Weiss’ revealing piece “I am not a feminist, but …” I no longer have that same reluctance.…
Imagine a world where women have a very little amount of rights, where women being hired was rare, and where only women cleaned. The only reason our world isn’t like that anymore is because of Betty Friedan, and others like her. Betty Friedan experienced having little rights her whole life, and one day wondered if other women felt the same way she did.…
from the view of “miss”, the message that women cannot be taken seriously, that women live in…
that they should make their personality mild to match their physique: "Why are our bodies soft,…
In the academic article “Selling Hot Pussy,” Bell Hooks explains the bewilderment and the representation of the black female body in society. Bell Hooks really emphasizes that in popular culture, the exploited body has many sexual throwback references to slavery. Bell Hooks contrast the white female body and how it is not as sexualized as the black female body. She details how much the black female body is used in the media to sell things. Bell Hooks especially points out how the black female musicians such as Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner have used their bodies to sell their music. Bell also points out that black females play the white roles in movies and magazines. These actresses or models would have blonde, straight hair, and smaller…
Feminism is a fight for equality and should help everyone realize that equality needs to be shared on a global spectrum. The push for feminism has been widely spread across North America but it needs to be brought into other countries as well. Gay says, “What about other women of color? For Hispanic and Latina women, Indian women, Middle Eastern women, Asian women, their absence in popular culture is even more pronounced, their need for relief just as palpable and desperate” (Gay 268). Feminism is more than just local and the women struggling across the world need to be recognized too. Aside from women solely, there needs to be support for those of every gender specification, sexual orientation, age, race, and so on. Gay reminds the readers to never bystand and take a stand against wrongful discrimination, “As individuals, we may not be able to do much, but when we’re silent when someone uses the word ‘gay’ as an insult, we are falling short. When we don’t vote to support equal marriage rights for all, we are falling short” (Gay 178). Even if the discrimination is not directly said to a gay person, using the term “gay” in a derogatory way is wrong and hurtful. She encourages her readers to divert that person, and others from using the wrongful term in the wrong context. Finally, she says that help is needed everywhere, “So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as…
39). In a recent study, it was reported that 85% to 95% of women involved in the sex industry want to leave, but see not option or have a choice to leave. That survivors of the sex trade work explain 'disgusting,' 'abusive,' and 'like rape,' and [explain] that they learned to cope with it by disassociating themselves from their bodies or by using drugs and alcohol to numb physical and emotion pain (Beran, 2012 p. 41). Ultimately radical feminist want to eliminate and abolish sex trade, by policies work. This will protect women’s rights over their bodies, empowering women, and reduce the dominance the men have over…
Ever since women were given suffrage and more generally equal rights, there has been a rise of women in the common work places. Unfortunately, much of the business and high power corporations within the United States are under a patriarchy and women don’t get much of the power and pay as men do. Furthermore, women in the workplace just become “eye candy” or even objects of sexual fantasies for the men who hire them or for the men who work with or around them. Though women have fought to be equal along the side men, they continue to struggle in their everyday lives to match the power and pay that their male counterparts receive without any extra effort. However, in some rare cases, women have a subtle yet influential power. Unfortunately, this “power” is a double edged sword. On one side, the women can use their sexuality to gain power or use as a source of power. And on the other side, women who use their sexuality for gain is seen to be disrespectful, unprofessional, and pointless to the struggle of equalizing themselves to men.…
The Cooper family loved having early summer dinners at “Burl’s” and that day was no exception. After the meal, young Bernard Cooper had the duty of leaving the restaurant to buy his dad that day’s paper, with the juncture that two transvestite women were walking down Hollywood Boulevard at that moment. At that time, the 1950s housewife cliché dominated the US and the social more toward sex was particularly restrictive and prudish, to a degree that those women were risking themselves of severe recrimination. Certainly Cooper’s traditional parents would have followed that norm, but not him, an innocent child who admired the women as they walked by. For better or worse, that encounter had bewildered him forever. Along came the scary and promising…
Post-feminism endorses rejection of practices that identify the differences between male and female. For example, the recent movements to refuse to shave legs or underarms as well as cosmetics. Post-feminism re-evaluates the relation between femininity and feminism, establishing a new subjective space for women. While there is a constant struggle to establish a cultural idea of femininity, fashion has a huge impact in bewilderment of this image. As McRobbie argues: ‘’Fashion is a tool of post-feminism for gender re-positioning. This is carried out through the idea of what she calls ’post-feminist masquerade’. This kind of ’re-positioning’…
Females struggle for equality. A complaint heard way too often. But what happens when men join the fight? What happens when men become women and decide to be part of the movement? An interesting concept of this day and age has arisen. The evolving social norms including gays and trans-genders have altered the roles of men and women interchangeably. As society becomes more relaxed with how far to stray from traditional roles, feminists gain a foreign enemy. A loose group called Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism does not tolerate transgender women and aims to exclude men who have become women and desire to join the movement. Ostracizing transgender women suggests that there may be more to this organization than radical feminism; in…
In M&M, she is also mostly described by the men as being a prostitute and them commenting on her appearance. This depicts how they thought of women as always trying to please men, and that they are just objects and something for them to look at and for their own gratification. Especially with their lifestyle, and how their only interaction with women is in brothels, they don’t hold them to the same esteem as they do each other at all because they haven’t lived in cities and in modern towns. So, they don’t know how the culture in the rest of the nation is changing because of their isolated jobs as migrant workers.…
In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Kitty Warren is forced to engage in a lifestyle that she cannot find a way out of. Kitty views prostitution as a solution to escape poverty, starvation, and slavery. She believes that her profession is a good decision based on the various intersections of her identity, which places her to experience continuous oppression within society. Hence, she finds prostitution to be getaway from the cruel, unfair and unequal society. As she asserts to her daughter Vivie, “where can a woman get the money to save in any other business?...Do you think we [are]…
Women are expected to be beautiful and pretty beings and nothing more because they do not want the man to be threatened by their intelligence or job. In Shiela Jefferey’s Keeping Women Down and Out, women in the strip club industry are discussed and their use of striping as a “transgressive” act. In one instance the article discusses how women “Striptease” which “enables women to reverse roles and have power over men” Pg. 419. While this may be an exercise of a transgressive act and it can be said that women do profit more from men in this interaction, it still focuses on the pleasure of men and women having to compromise themselves for men. Beyoncé’s husband is also an entertainer and has about the same wealth as her and in the black culture black women have often been seen as a threat because they are so independent and “intimidating”. In the case of Beyoncé and her husband, it does not seem to be an issue because she is just as wealthy and successful as her husband. Also even though Beyoncé has a husband she is still seen as a singular being without him and sometimes arguably the bigger star. Beyoncé is inspiring to women because she is not just a subservient wife to her husband but a women who has a career and a family and chooses that for…