women and sexual freedom
Women and Sexual Freedom
In Leslie Bell’s “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” twenty something women are confronted with the struggles of being a woman in this day and age realizing they are being pushed to act in a way suitable enough for men and the norms of society. The author uses the concept of sex and love to express the way these women feel using the word “splitting” to categorize the uncertainty and concern women have about their freedoms. The meaning of Bell’s work is truly emphasized showing how over empowerment of economic, political, and social strength can make women feel “weighed down by vying cultural notion” (Bell 26). The essay accentuates the idea that women do not know how to get what they want or what they want as well due to gender roles, gender politics, and distribution of power in “normative” heterosexual relationships.
The effect that modernization had on women came with opportunities and freedom, but also with the price of having the “paradox implicit in this new freedom” (Bell 24). In Bell‘s work, she discusses how “in modern western culture, autonomy and all that accompany it are much more highly valued than are interdependence and all that accompany it” (Bell 29). From psychoanalytically analyzing women, she uses the word “splitting” to describe how some women feel as if they cannot be valiant and self-assertive while they are with men. These women deem themselves to be vulnerable and often dodge new possible endeavors open to them. Some women “feared losing their identities and independence through being in an intimate relationship” (Bell 30). Since women suspected they would lose their liberty when being in a close relationship, they were split amongst three archetypes: sexual woman, relational woman, and desiring woman. (Ending)
Gender politics plays a crucial role in how the term “splitting” is used concerning men. Women feel as if they are being undermined by men at work and even at home
In Leslie Bell’s “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” twenty something women are confronted with the struggles of being a woman in this day and age realizing they are being pushed to act in a way suitable enough for men and the norms of society. The author uses the concept of sex and love to express the way these women feel using the word “splitting” to categorize the uncertainty and concern women have about their freedoms. The meaning of Bell’s work is truly emphasized showing how over empowerment of economic, political, and social strength can make women feel “weighed down by vying cultural notion” (Bell 26). The essay accentuates the idea that women do not know how to get what they want or what they want as well due to gender roles, gender politics, and distribution of power in “normative” heterosexual relationships.
The effect that modernization had on women came with opportunities and freedom, but also with the price of having the “paradox implicit in this new freedom” (Bell 24). In Bell‘s work, she discusses how “in modern western culture, autonomy and all that accompany it are much more highly valued than are interdependence and all that accompany it” (Bell 29). From psychoanalytically analyzing women, she uses the word “splitting” to describe how some women feel as if they cannot be valiant and self-assertive while they are with men. These women deem themselves to be vulnerable and often dodge new possible endeavors open to them. Some women “feared losing their identities and independence through being in an intimate relationship” (Bell 30). Since women suspected they would lose their liberty when being in a close relationship, they were split amongst three archetypes: sexual woman, relational woman, and desiring woman. (Ending)
Gender politics plays a crucial role in how the term “splitting” is used concerning men. Women feel as if they are being undermined by men at work and even at home