Summary Of Why Is Diotima A Woman

Sexuality is prevalent in every society. It is what allows us to reproduce, and it makes life exciting. Sexuality has been discussed, re-discussed, and then discussed some more for thousands of years, with varying levels of acceptance. While many people still shun outward displays of sexuality, it had become far more widely accepted to be comfortable with one owns sexual desires. From gay pride parades to women being able to breast find in public, western civilization has begun to accept sexuality as a normal part of life. Within this new found acceptance, comes freedom, freedom to speak up and share ones’ identity. Whether that be gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, cis-gender, ect. sharing these truths is an important and healthy part of
He pretends to know what women think and feel, as he uses Diotima, a woman that he created to discuss the male sexual experience. In Halperin’s Why Is Diotima a Woman? the way in which Plato takes the female experience and makes it his own is discussed. “To turn “pregnancy” into a mere image of (male) spiritual labor, just as Socrates’s male voice at once embodies and disembodies Diotima’s female presence” (Halperin 139). This shows how Plato took the female experience of pregnancy and turns it into a male centric idea, along with stating that women can’t have spiritual ideas. This severally represses women, and sets a “harmful” precedent for how women would continued to be
Alfred Kinsey was raised in a household where sex wasn’t accepted. His father was very religious, and believed that masturbation was detrimental to one’s health. Kinsey trusted his father, and felt wrong for masturbating, he even spread false information about self pleasure to his friends. “Any habit which causes the sex fluid to be discharged must be resisted. Doctors link it to an assortment of illnesses… including insanity, blindness, epilepsy… even death’’ (Kinsey). Kinsey says this to one of his friends, before the scene jumps to Kinsey masturbating while crying. This is the first time that the audience sees the dangers of repression, as it isn’t until he got older that he discovered that sex wasn’t wrong, and started to heal from the emotional scars he gained from childhood. This isn’t the only time we see repression affecting people’s lives. Throughout this film, the audience sees the ways in which mis-information and sex negativity affects peoples