The Intimately Oppressed Summary

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Howard Zinn - The Intimately Oppressed In the article “The Intimately Oppressed” Howard Zinn follows the historical backdrop of women's roles from the colonial period to the Civil War, contending that women were one of many in the United States, along with whites, African-Americans, and Native Americans, that endured oppression during this period. Zinn claims that women were appointed a "special status...something akin to that of a house slave in the matter of intimacy and oppression, and yet requiring, because of that intimacy, and long-term connection with children, a special patronization, which on occasion, especially in the face of a show of strength, could slip over into treatment as an equal” (Zinn, 2010). Woman were the ones that were intimately oppressed. History has put woman on a platform but has also disparaged them to not exactly their value. Women were loved and abused yet they were systematically oppressed through law and religion. An influential periodical titled The Spectator invaded the America with patriarchal views of. Men thought of themselves as both king and priest. Therefore woman were seen as inferior because of religion, childbearing abilities, and an idea that women were simply built to be dependent on men. Reverend John Cotton a powerful church father from Boston said, “ . . . that the husband …show more content…

Affirmative action is necessary and is changing. Woman are allowed to vote, they can own their own home, and they can earn the same amount as a man if not more. Woman are also allowed to be lawyers, doctors, and involved in ministry. How could one not agree that Affirmative Action isn’t necessary with all these changes? I guess if an individual believed that Affirmative Action should be terminated…they probably wouldn’t be a minority or a woman behind the computer screen, just some food for

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