As well-known feminist theorists, both Catherine Mackinnon and Simone Beauvoir dissect the nature of gender-based oppression as well as how it plays into women’s liberation from male supremacy in their published writings. While Mackinnon’s vision of liberation, in her book “Feminism Unmodified,” differentiates from Beauvoir’s vision in “the Second Sex,” in that it focuses on the political sphere rather than the social sphere, there is still an element of commonality between the two written pieces. Sex, as the major element of commonality, is intertwined throughout each of their works for the reason that it is fundamental to discovering the ontological status of men and women and the ontological shifts that are necessary for liberating women from male supremacy. However, each has a different understanding of what sex is in their arguments. There are certain concepts besides Sex that both authors use to articulate what they believe is required for an ontological shift including “the Other”, women as pleasing objects, men as subjects, subordination, objectification, and freedom. Although both Mackinnon and Beauvoir discuss these concepts in terms of dialectical relationships, only Beauvoir goes as far as connecting happiness to women’s inability to attain freedom. By comparing each author’s vision of liberation from patriarchy, this paper will explore the notion of women’s “freedom”, how to obtain it, and the ontological shifts that are required for women’s liberation from male supremacy.
Before delving deeper into the complexities of the relationship between women’s freedom and gender-based oppression, we must first understand what the ontological status of women and men is, why they are different, and the role that they play in ...
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... maintain sex difference, we will not be able to obtain equality.
Women’s freedom and liberation from a male supremacy is conceivable but it will only succeed with the support and cooperation from the women of the world, which is extremely improbable. In order for women to obtain freedom and equality, we would have to break our ties with men. It has been built into us that a man is a necessity for a woman’s survival in the chaotic world we live in. Many women would be unable to give that up for something that would only make their lives more difficult.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone De. ""Introduction" to The Second Sex." The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York [u.a.: Routledge, 1997. 11-18. Print.
Mackinnon, Catharine A. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard UP, 1987. Print.
Rampton, M. (2008, September 1). The Three Waves of Feminism. - Fall 2008. Retrieved May 28, 2014, http://www.pacificu.edu/magazine_archives/2008/fall/echoes/feminism.cfm
Kaminer, Wendy. "Feminism’s Third Wave: What Do Young Women Want?" The New York Times Book Review 4 June 1995: 3+.
Women in many societies have fought for obtaining their equal right to men for a long time, and the society where I’ve inhabited for 20 years are involved as well. It has been very tough circumstances for women to struggle since the society has been shaped by history how a woman should live and behave. Women were continuing to be oppressed and limited based on gender and class as they are regarded as inferior to men physically and mentally. This connection between class and gender of women still remain in this society even though many women got equal right as
Woolstoncraft, Mary. A Vindication of The Rights of Woman. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Ed. Volume D. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: Norton, 2013. 134-136. Print.
...rms of power and source of pride in society. Emphasizing sexism in language and rising the concern with words can be a vital feminist strategy to provoke social change (Weatherall, 2002). Language can produce a false imagination and represents women and men unequally, as if members of one sex were somehow less wholly human, less complex, and has fewer rights than members of the other sex. Sexist language also characterizes serotypes of women and men, sometimes to the disadvantage of both, but more often to the disadvantage of women. (Wareing & Thomas, 2012). As a result, it is necessary that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine as their lives unfold, their own gender identities, without regard to genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role. Language about women is not a nonaligned or an insignificant issue but profoundly a political one.
Locke, Jillian L. "Feminism (Second-Wave)." Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History. Ed. Thomas S. Langston. Vol. 6: Postwar Consensus to Social Unrest, 1946 to 1975. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010. 170-174. Gale Virtual Library
Women embedded with the Sisterhood wave revolted against their once confined roles to embrace themselves as intelligent, sexual, and powerful creatures of God. These were the warriors of femininity: the ones willing to lay it all on the line to feel a sense of liberation as a female community. Theses women become so frustrating with the conditioning of their bodies to be docile they ended up dooming themselves to their own inwardness. Third wave feminism is rooted in the variety of women as equals to all genders. I identify this as the Coequal wave. Woman are not placing themselves on a higher elevated scale than men but to simply be accepted as equals no matter what race, nationality, or gender differences (149-150). These three waves are still alive and thriving in our world today, however, they are far from working in a cohesive manner in a patriarchal society. Theorist Simone De Beauvoir writes in her manifesto “The Second Sex”, “Men need not bother themselves with alleviating the pains and the burdens that physiologically are women’s lot, since these are “intended by Nature”
Since the beginning of time, women have strived to achieve an equal status in society. The vast majority of women have rebelled against the norm for equal status. As if washing the dirt off one’s hands, women are forgotten for all of their achievements. The identity of women in the Western world has evolved from domesticity and servility, and moved toward their valuation as individuals of intellect, talent, and independence. The culture about women’s empowerment has been reflected in literature and history throughout many ages.
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.
Freedman, E. B. No turning back: The history of feminism and the future of women. New York: Ballantine, 2002.
Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 text The Second Sex, examines the problems faced by women in Western society. She argues that women are subjugated, oppressed, and made to be inferior to males – simply by virtue of the fact that they are women. She notes that men define their own world, and women are merely meant to live in it. She sees women as unable to change the world like men can, unable to live their lives freely as men can, and, tragically, mostly unaware of their own oppression. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes the subjugation of woman, defines a method for her liberation, and recommends strategies for this liberation that still have not been implemented today.
As women, those of us who identify as feminists have rebelled against the status quo and redefined what it means to be a strong and powerful woman. But at what cost do these advances come with?... ... middle of paper ... ... Retrieved April 12, 2014, from http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/whatisfem.htm Bidgood, J. 2014, April 8 -.
McAfee, Noëlle. "Feminist Political Philosophy." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Winter 2011 Edition ed. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.
At the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, a series of events occurred that would be known as the feminist movement. During this time, many women were starting to change the way they thought of themselves and wanted to change their social roles. In his views on feminist analysis Donald Hall says, “Feminist methodologies focus on gender.and explore the complex ways in which women have been denied social power and the right to various forms of self-expression. In this context the many perspectives that fall under the heading ‘feminism’ vary wildly”(Hall 199). Since women were denied social power and self-expression, they went against what society saw as acceptable, a patriarchal world.
Throughout history, there have been constant power struggles between men and women, placing the male population at a higher position than the female. Therefore, in this patriarchal system women have always been discriminated against simply due to the fact that they are women. Their rights to vote, to be educated and essentially being treated equally with men was taken away from them and they were viewed as weak members of society whose successes depend on men. However, this has not prevented them from fighting for what they believe in and the rights they are entitled to. On the contrary, it has motivated them to try even harder and gain these basic societal rights through determination and unity.