final essay one

Final Essay One
Readings;

The five readings that will be reviewed and this essay are White Privilege and Male Privilege by Peggy McIntosh; Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher; The Will to Change: Man, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks; Fresh Lipstick by Linda M. Scott; and The Opt-Out Revolution by Lisa Belkin. These readings brought to the reader insight into many of the issues which continue to be unresolved and of great importance to the feminist movement. Each of these readings approached one or more of the inequalities and suppressions of women that are continuing unresolved issues of today. It is the intention of this essay to explain the main thesis of each article and how they work together in showing how much of the issues facing the third wave of the women’s movement are still unresolved and requiring the attention of all young women of today.
The fight for equality and the freedom to choose one’s own pathway in life started many years ago by women fighting for the right to vote. In reality they were fighting for the recognition of being human with all the rights that entailed. They achieved the vote, but did not gain the equality of being a reasoning human being. Women remained constrained by social and traditional boundaries which limited their roles to those occupations which were considered proper for the ‘weaker sex’ that being ‘women’s work’ such as stay at home mothers, teachers, waitresses, nurses, and the other womanly work.
In White Privilege and Male Privilege by McIntosh the privileges of being male were demonstrated by revealing some of the rights that are so taken for granted that most are totally unaware that everyone does not have these ordinary rights. The really surprising things she had to explain were the rights of being white. Some of these privileges are so common place that it was difficult to realize that they were actually a privilege. These rights were everyday happenings that when explained in the terms of privileges those of us who are white were quite surprised to realize that we were unconsciously being racist and suppressive of others. To quote McIntosh “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege….I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious.” She lists forty-six ways whites enjoy privileges over other races. They range from being able to find and share ideas with people of the white race anywhere at any time. To being able to find employment, entrance into schools, and to finding housing in any part of the country without difficulty and harassment these are a few of the white privileges mentioned.
As for the male privileges these transcend the race barriers and are found in almost every society. Men have always had the top and women have always been secondary to them. Even today, although not as much, men still are in the positions of control and have the higher incomes, which give them the authority both in public and in private life. McIntosh writes “I have…noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged…, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended.” If we are unable to get men to realize that they have unfair advantages, they will never acknowledge that women are kept at a disadvantage yet today. The work started by our ancestral grand-mothers is not finished. There is a very long way to go to reach economic and other types of equality. Some of those are the subjects of the next four articles.
Reviving Ophelia is an essay written about young girls and the way they are stereo-typed into being the little ladies that society expects them to be. By the time a girl reaches early adolescence they are expected to fit the mold of womanhood. Society neatly packages boys and girls in to what they think they should be, but this mold does not always fit the individual and this causes the child to feel bad about his/her self and girls according to Pipher;
Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence.
Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously in the Bermuda
Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They
crash and burn in a social and developmental Bermuda Triangle.
In early adolescence, studies show that girls’ IQ scores drop
and their math and science scores plummet. They lose their
resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to
take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic and “tomboyish”
personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and
depressed. They report great unhappiness with their own bodies.
This is not necessarily true for all young girls, but it does occur in more than just a few and it is a product of our society. The media and the expectation that women and girls place on themselves to fit the perfect mold that our culture has placed upon the females in our country are unrealistic and unreasonable. The gender difference here is very pronounced. There is much less pressure on boys to meet a specific body model. There are social pressures on boys to be “men” and this is also unfair. Children should be allowed to be children and to become androgynous to find the gender fit that makes them happy and content to be themselves. This gender theme is carried along with Bell Hooks essay The Will to Change; (Being a Boy).
Hooks writes quoting Christina Sommers; “….feminists thinkers are as critical of sexist notions of femininity as we are of patriarchal notion of masculinity. It is patriarchy, in its denial of the full humanity of boys, that threatens the emotional lives of boys, not the feminist thinking. To change patriarchal “traditions” we must end patriarchy, in part by envisioning alternative ways of thinking about maleness, not only boyhood.” So, not only must we stop the way we think girls should be raised, we must also change the model for our sons. Hooks spends some time on the fact that mother’s, especially single moms, are afraid that if their boys do not have a male role model they will somehow grow up to be weak men and unable to compete in today’s society. “Homophobia underlies the fear that allowing boys to feel will turn them gay; this fear is often most intense in single-parent homes.” (Hooks 45) This article brings to attention the fact that not only to girls suffer from gender inequality, but so do boys. The inequality of gender is a two way street and in order to bring women gender equality; we must bring men the same equality.
Linda M. Scott takes a totally different look at the feminist movement and makes an argument against the reasoning that the movement is for all women. She writes that only the women who have the economic and class advantages to dress the part have benefited from the movement. Scott has made the movement a fashion argument, not a political one.
She writes:
…feminism’s antibeauty ideology serves the interests of the few
at the expense of the many. The social superiority of feminist dress
reformers on dimensions of class, education, and ethnicity is
recurrent: Inver generation, the women with more education, more
leisure, and more connections to institutions of power –from the
church, to the press, to the university—have been the ones who tried
to tell other women what they must wear in order to be liberated.
This was a very different and interesting view, but not one that is necessarily of much importance in the movement of women’s rights. It was never a matter of consideration. You were allowed to dress as you chose. There were and are much more important issues in the women’s liberation movement than dress and apparel. The point of class and economics is of value; these women were able to do more and spend more in advancing the movement. They also, were able to influence more of the government as well as the press in the changes that needed to be made. There is no way the movement would have made as much progress as it did, without those rich and generous women, who talked and talked to the men who changed the laws.
There are many issues witch still are in need of work by the feminist movement, yet without the young women taking an active role both in the home, at work, and in politics; both voting and running for office, there will be little gained.
It is to be hoped that they do not take the easy way out and do as the rich women in The Opt-Out Revolution by Lisa Belkin did. Even when it becomes difficult women should always find ways to stay in the working world and if not to stay active in the political world. Opting out is not a good way to live your life. Quitting is not a satisfactory way to solve any kind of problem. These women were able to just stay at home because of the income their husbands had and were not dependent upon their jobs. Most women do not have the choice to opt out and must work to support their families.
It would be great to see a world or just this country with equality and fair treatment to all its citizens, but humans being human, this will probably not happen with out a great deal of change. Changes in attitudes, changes in outlooks, changes in acceptance of differences, and many others, but there is always hope and that inch by inch, little by little, man and woman are reaching out to each other and trying to find that balance that will set us all equal and free.