Elinor Burkett's What Makes A Woman?

431 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Woman in our society

The quote of Simone de Beauvoir, “ One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” is saying that anyone can be a woman and is able to know more about women than a woman. Since we have different beliefs, we shouldn't judge people by the biology terms. Both news article authors are feminists and support of feminism, but they propose different perspectives on the word, woman. I agree with the quote because trans women are increasing in the community and receiving unfairness where also the change of society, cultures have a major effect on ideas and people's preference.

Discussing about women, Elinor Burkett, the author of "What Makes a Woman?" thinks extreme about how women should be,"...being a woman means having accrued certain experiences, endured certain indignities..."(Paragraph 13)It means women must go through some experiences to turn themselves to real women. This is not true because women are always benefited or helped by experiences instead men learn and enrich more knowledge about women …show more content…

Jenner...shouldn't get to define us.” (Paragraph 9) It implies that she is resistant of being define by trans women and denied trans community. I think that is offensive to transgender people because their words can be wrong, but we can't ignore them from our community and hurts their feelings. However, Jill Filipovic in response to Burkett thinks Transgenders people are being discriminated. In the article, she said "...suffers the kind of violence and discrimination heaped on trans women should of course, make transgender rights a feminist issue." (Paragraph 13) That states how unfair trans people are treated and the needed support for trans women to be part of the women group. Even if trans women are not originated women, but their positive attitude and efforts should be appreciated and be recognized as the sign of society

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Sex Segregation At Work: Persistence And Change By Anastasia Prokos

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    In class, we talked about how transgender people face many hardships today and are a highly discriminated group in America. In this article however, the author uses transgender men to prove a point. Prokos states that before the man transitioned, he was not treated as well in the work place when he identified as women. Discrimination can also be based on race, class, and cultural backgrounds of people rather than just discrimination based on

    Read More

  • Simone De Beauvoir

    685 Words  | 2 Pages

    All people are forced to see themselves as society has shaped them, both male and female. Although progress for gender impartiality has been made, it can still be said that societal maxims enforce the incorrect notion that women are inferior to men. In matters of economics, women are offered far fewer employment opportunities, and I believe that this can be validated by the fact that many women have been conditioned to "marry well and let him...

    Read More

  • Becoming A Woman By Jenny Finney Boylan

    1183 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout reading this novel, my thought on transgender and transsexual individuals was pretty set and stone. For example, I knew from reading the textbook that a transgender is a person that is born—in Jenny’s case—a male, but was psychologically and emotionally born a female. However, Jenny took things one-step further and became a transsexual, which is an individual that underwent surgery to obtain the genitals that match the psychological and emotional gender within, which in her case was a female. Therefore, Jenny Finney Boylan would be considered a transsexual female. What I did not know prior to reading this book is how tedious the process is to make a sex change. To be honest I never thought about the process a transsexual needed to go through to become one’s self, I did not think about the many steps taken to obtain the voice, or look of a female that Jenny was striving for. I also did not think about the surgery, and how scary that type of surgery could actually be. For example, on page 124 Jennifer is discussing the process of transition with her psychologist, Dr. Strange. On this page Dr. Strange is beginning to inform Jenny, and essentially myself, on how to begin the transition of becoming a female. First Dr. Strange was listing off the effects the hormones will have on Jenny’s body, and I first they made sense to me; softer skin, fluffier hair, but I never knew the physical changes hormones could have on someone, especially a man. For instance, I learned that there is such a thing called “fat migration.” This is when the fat on previous parts of your body migrates to another location. I learned from this novel that fat migration is a result of hormones, and since Jenny was once a man, her face would become less r...

    Read More

  • Laverne Cox's 'Orange Is The New Black'

    1164 Words  | 3 Pages

    In one interview Katie Couric sat down with Cox and transgender model Carmen Carrera to discuss their experiences as high-profile transgender women. However, Couric seemed “…mostly interested in talking to both women about their genitalia, in order to ‘educate’ others who may not be ‘familiar with transgenders’” (McDonough 2014). This demonstrates a distinct lack of the sociolinguistic competence necessary to determine what questions are or are not appropriate in a social setting. No cis woman would be expected to answer questions about their genitalia in a televised interview, yet these inappropriate questions are ones trans women face far too often. The fascination with investigating whether or not they fit with the mainstream media’s view of what a woman is—one who’s gender identity and genitalia both match—results in a complete disregard for what would otherwise be a very clearly taboo topic. Additionally, her use of “transgenders” as a noun shows a clear lack of understanding in even the most basic rhetoric used in describing trans individuals, emphasizing once again the linguistic divide between cis gendered woman and trans gendered

    Read More

  • Transgender In Pop Culture

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    To conclude, I chose this article as I found the discussion point interesting and wanted to bring to more people’s attention some of the underlying discrimination that is embedded in U.S. culture. Although transgender people are in the minority, they are no less than myself. I believe strongly that they deserve the same rights and opportunities that are presented to me daily. This article is relevant to the issues of Cultural Anthropology as it addresses questions surrounding gender stereotypes, gender discrimination, gender performance as well as relationship ties and kinship.

    Read More

  • Transgender Argumentative Essay

    1449 Words  | 3 Pages

    Transgender is an umbrella term, meaning an individual’s gender-identity does not align with their assigned sex at birth. Although transgender is a protected class in eighteen states, these individuals still face discrimination within the country and around the world (“Non-Discrimination Laws”). Transgender is not a lifestyle, no one chooses to live their life constantly being discriminated against. Transgender issues should be more educated on and their lives should be more protected.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Erin George's A Woman Doing Life

    1380 Words  | 3 Pages

    Erin George’s A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women sheds light on her life at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW) where she was sentenced for the rest of her life for first-degree murder. It is one of the few books that take the reader on a journey of a lifer, from the day of sentencing to the day of hoping to being bunked adjacent to her best friend in the geriatric ward.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Urgency Of Intersectionality

    942 Words  | 2 Pages

    Particularly in this video, Kimberle Crenshaw mentioned an employment discrimination case. Emma is the name of the African American woman who was discriminated in her job. Emma who came from a minority group was seeking better opportunities for her family, so she applied for a job in a factory. However, she was not hired because of gender and race discrimination. She is one of many people who come from minority groups which are not only discriminated against because of their gender, but also because of their race. Basically, we always take into account that a person is discriminated against by only one factor, however, in this case Kimberle Crenshaw emphasizes how Emma was being discriminated different compared to the African American males and white women’s working inside the factory. Although the men remained in the same ethnic group as Emma they were not discriminated against at the same level of an African-American woman. Therefore, Emma suffered what Kimberle Crenshaw called double discrimination. Unfortunately not only women are typically those who suffer sexism but also other groups in our society. Such is the case of transgender people. It is here when we can see how discrimination exceeds more complicated levels when compared to the discrimination and inequality that cisgender people face. For instance, society ignore how transwomen

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Trans Women At Smith

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    The eye opening article utilized for this analysis is titled, “Trans Women at Smith: The Complexities of Checking ‘Female’” ,written by contributing writer, Sarah Fraas on August 24, 2014 (pg 683-685). Fraas starts off by introducing the audience with a school that accepts trans women, Mills College, and talks about how glorious this decision is. The author then begins to talk about other schools not as accepting as Mills, especially Smiths College. She spews many facts and analysis on the issues trans women face today throughout the article including how transgender women are not gaining enough support to succeed, most transgendered women are neglected in school, and the fact that many have been accused of being a woman for the “wrong” reason. She also mindfully includes the image of a woman of color holding up a sign saying, “Support your sisters, not just your CIS-ters!”. The author utilizes this image to show people that we are all one whether we

    Read More

  • Simone de Beauvoir in Relation to Howard Gardner's Model of Creativity

    2865 Words  | 6 Pages

    When Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986, the wreath of obituaries almost universally spoke of her as the 'mother' of contemporary feminism and its major twentieth century theoretician. De Beauvoir, it was implied as much as stated, was the mother-figure to generations of women, a symbol of all that they could be, and a powerful demonstration of a life of freedom and autonomy (Evans 1).

    Read More

  • The Second Sex Sartre Analysis

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main thesis of The Second Sex revolves around the idea that woman has been held in a relationship of long-standing oppression to man through her relegation to being man's "Other." In agreement with Sartrean philosophy, de Beauvoir finds that the self needs otherness in order to define itself as a subject; the category of the otherness, therefore, is necessary in the constitution of the self as a self. In other words, for one gender to feel more important the other must be made inferior. de Beauvoir confronts history from a feminist perspective; however, within her arguments against the “oppression” of women, elements of Existentialist ideas can be seen. Though she attempts to bring to light the historical oppression of women, there is a slight undertone to her writing; a small air melancholy and malcontent hides under her meticulous research. de Beauvoir carries a whiff of depression as the timeline has gone too long in what she is trying to fix; even though she brings to light the idea of the Other, de Beauvoir knows well that the way things are will not change. And if they do change, the ideals behind the change will remain the same;

    Read More

  • Reconfiguration of Social Relation: The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Speech On Transgender Rights

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    Within the recent years, the transgender movement has become more apparent than ever. With television shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, “Keeping It Up With Cait” and “I Am Jazz”, the voices of transgender people are more public than ever. Celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverene Cox are changing the face of the movement by showing people that it is never too late to be their true selves. American laws are acknowledging the rights of transgender people, but not in a positive way. These are just people trying to be their best selves. Transgender people deserve to have all the rights that a non transgender person has.

    Read More

  • Gender Neutral Bathrooms: Transgender Rights And Gender Neutral Bathrooms

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    Transgender Rights and Gender Neutral Bathrooms Cassidy Howell No one wants to feel like they do not belong or like they are not cared for. Transgender people are just like everyone else and deserve to be treated equally as cisgendered people. According to Sam Killerman, being transgendered means living "as a member of a gender other than that expected based on sex assigned at birth. " This definition is extremely important because a transgender person is still a person.

    Read More

  • The Social Construction Of Sex And Gender In Sociology

    1685 Words  | 4 Pages

    The work of Simone de Beauvoir’s that says, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” ,distinguishes sex from gender and suggests that gender is an aspect of identity gradually

    Read More

More about Elinor Burkett's What Makes A Woman?

Open Document