The Pursuit of Equality

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Recommended: Women throughout history

Women have faced the subordination of their male counterparts since the beginning of time. They have endured some of the most dehumanizing violations of any persecuted group in history. Some dauntless women defied the cultural norms and stood up to these immoralities. For example, the Sitones, a society acknowledged by Cornelius Tacitus, were looked down upon in contempt as their matriarchal tendencies were viewed as “the measure of their decline” (paragraph 45 of Germania). Another exemplification could be found in the Alapine Village of Alabama, founded in the 1970’s by a small group of ladies resisting the cultural views of the passively objectified southern woman. In this ‘womyn’ settlement there are literally no boys allowed. These feminists are good because they boldly defied their oppressors in order to prove their gender’s worth. However, their goal was to reverse the gender roles, not to align the scales. This makes them, ultimately, no better than the men that oppressed them in the first place. The greatest women of history are not the chauvinistic extremists that believed women to be the superior human, but those that relentlessly advocated the rights of women and men, equally, as the paradoxical yin and yang of humanity.
One of the earliest proponents of women’s rights was writer Marie de Gournay, the female editor of Michel de Montaigne. Born 1565, she read Montaigne’s works at a young age, dreaming of meeting him one day. When she finally got the opportunity to travel to see him, he ended up becoming his “fille d’alliance” or “adoptive daughter”. After Montaigne’s death, his widow Françoise de Montaigne asked Marie to publish the third book to Montaigne’s acclaimed trilogy Essays. This fame gave her the opportunit...

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...r dangers. These women believed in equality for all, that all men and women were created equal. That is what makes these women outstanding, and that is why it is important we honor them this National Women’s Month of 2014.

Works Cited

o "Alapine Herstory - Alapine Community Association, Inc." Alapine Community Association, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. o "Alice Paul." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. o "History of Feminism." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. o "List of Feminists." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. o "Malala Yousafzai." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Mar. 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. o "Marie De Gournay." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. o "Sitones." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.

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