Are Women Morally Superior To Men By Katha Pollitt

As a country, we have come a long way to reaching equality between women and males. During the 19 centuries women fought for their right to vote. When talking about gender, there are a lot issues that continue to be present until this day. Women had to fight for equality during the 19 century which lead up women in today’s society to have a voice. Despite of all the improvement close to gender equality, society still expect particular things from females and males.

Women have long been fighting for their right to be seen as equal to men. Even to this day, women continue to fight for their rights, things such as the right to non-gender discriminatory wages. While there may be some arguments over the state of gender equality in the modern world, it is undeniable that there have been great strides made toward recognizing the female 's worth in the workforce and as a human being. Despite these strides, however, things are still not yet ideal for women and many of the issues females face today are the very same issues that have been plaguing them for decades. While it is unfortunate the oppression of women has been so long-lived, the length of that exposure has thankfully enabled many talented writers to both lament over the fact and emphasize the need for gender equality.

Every writer has a story to tell. No matter gender, religion, or any other classification they all share equal importance. When readers overlook those things, they find great pieces of literature such as Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes. Unbiased readers get to experience the tragic story of Mary’s life in captivity alongside the revelations of Native American stereotypes and Judith’s take on the unfair world of being an educated woman in America. Although they are talking about two different topics they both share the similar conclusion that Americas identity revolves around using stereotypes to defend against anything greater

Judith Sargent Murray was a revolutionary woman- born into a socially prominent and wealthy family during the start of the American Revolution, Murray was recognized for her intellect at a young age and given an education along with her brother. Later in life, she had her written works widely published and read during a time when women’s voices were seen as fundamentally inferior to those of men. In one of her most influential and strongly opinionated works, ‘On the Equality of the Sexes’, Murray makes a strong case for the spiritual and intellectual equality of men and women, arguing that women and men are born equal, but that men are simply given more education and

Eavan Boland’s poem “It’s a Woman’s World” illuminates the fact that history has shaped an unfair role for women in today’s society. Boland criticizes the gender bias with regards to the limitations placed on women and their job choices despite their ability to be just as successful in the workplace as men. Regardless of the fact that the bias against women in the workplace is often overlooked, Boland aims to show the shared reaction of women to the gender bias prevalent in our society by using short sentence fragments, repetition, and a fire motif throughout the poem.

The ever unending topic of gender equality in the workplace and life in general is one that is uneasy to analyze. The essay “The men we carry in our minds” by Scott Russell Sanders not only hit on inequality, it also makes a major point of showing how the upbringing of an individual really impact their point of view. Depending on how we grew up or how we were raised, we all see to this matter differently.

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

Gender roles have been a hotly debated topic in the most recent years, especially the role of women in society. Women have had set expectations that they are believed to conform to, which is shown in many pieces of film and literature. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the life of a man in the upper class in the 1920’s, as well as women in the 1920’s. The movie The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman, visually explains the treatment and expectations of women, and especially focuses on the “damsel in distress” stereotype.. Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist” explains the stereotypes against women and ways women can come together and fight these constraints. Based on these sources, societal expectations take away from each individual’s identity, forcing women to conform to society's standards. In order to fight against these expectations, women have banded together and formed movements against these standards.

To become a carpenter, one needs a saw. To become a forester, one needs an axe. Tools are required for—and are even symbolic of—their respective professions. For women, however, the tools required to become scholars, free-thinkers, and intellectuals were held out of their reach for much of American history. The reason behind this was simple: they had not shown themselves capable to earn it. Women, it was argued, typically showed no signs of being rational thinkers, and therefore, were not even afforded the opportunity to prove themselves. In the late eighteenth century, Judith Sargent Murray argued that women had, in fact, proven themselves to perform creatively and intellectually with the opportunities that were given to them—opportunities that were often overlooked. Most notably, Murray argues that women partake in almost destructive social behavior as an outlet for creativity—an idea which is played on in the nineteenth century American novel The Linwoods through the importance of hierarchy to its female characters.

“Hypocrite of Women,” by Denise Levertov seems to contain a deep message within its playful wording. The basic meaning that I was able to pull from within this was that as women we are hypocrites, because we will shun others within society for what we consider to be inappropriate behavior, or below the standards of society, however when it comes down to our own personal faults within our characters, we tend to overlook them or ignore them. This is a fascinating poem because I feel like it does reflect how society was as well as is today. In “The Ache of Marriage,” I was able to discern that Denise Levertov’s goal was to explore the pain of an unwanted marriage. The pain that she reflects within her writing seems to be of both an emotional and a physical basis.

In her book “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of us,” Kate Bornstein goes over a lot of the major issues regarding gender awareness and identity politics. She talks about the ideas of labeling ones self, understanding gender differences, how people view laws, behaviors, and the medical and scientific privilege that make transitioning challenging for a lot of people. Bornstein touches on many of the issues today that affect trans people. She includes poetry, pictures, quotes, essays, and a play to raise questions and discuss the idea of gender. This is a great book to introduce and discuss the issues that affect the lives of trans people as they navigate and explore the lines that define gender.

A disguise is used to mask a person’s identity and it is used as a tool to aid a person’s escape from reality. In Eliza Haywood’s novel Fantomina or Love in a Maze, the main character’s true identity is unknown to the reader and the characters featured in Haywood’s novel are fabricated personas. As the title suggests, the main character finds herself in a love maze. Fantomina’s disguises help guide her through this maze to an end goal. Whether this goal is to fulfill her own desires or to find love is unclear however, Fantomina will stop at nothing and the choices she makes reflect this. Eliza Haywood uses her masquerade novel, Fantomina, to challenge common misconceptions for women in social positions, gender, morality and identity.

Marilyn Frye in her article "Sexism" argues, our society groups us according to gender (male or female); which then dictates how we are treated and viewed. She argues this by saying, sexism is a learned habit, that can be fixed only if individuals are willing to do so. I will begin this precis by discussing Frye’s idea of “sex-announcing”, and how it helps others determine our gender based off of factors such as clothing and pronouns.

Women all over the world have been mistreated for more than a century. It has been exploited throughout the world as how “women aren’t currently treated the same as men in certain situations” but it is far more beyond that. Only half of the world seems to at least know what is really happening behind the curtain. Ambiguous people have manipulated the very much realness with what is exactly taking place in our society. In this essay, I will be talking about the following things; Inequity in the workplace, “Asking for it”, Violence against women globally, Education, and The psychology of it all. These five topics need to be demanded attention. Our younger generation needs to be cognizant of what has been going on for many millenniums. Girls and women should be able to walk around at night and not be afraid, nor should they be afraid to oppose another man. There is no real justification on why women should be treated like this but there is plenty of justification on why they shouldn 't, so genuinely why is this problem happening? Some of the books that I read to have mostly validation on this paper from other human beings but also to enlighten myself even more that I already am. “Subjection of Women” by John Stuart Mill, “Created Equal: Voices on Women 's Rights” by Anna Horsbrugh-Porter, and “Equal Pay for Equal Work” by Grace C. Strachan. I chose these three texts because each one yet talks about the same thing but has a little bit of a different perspective on each. I

The generation now has made it easier to equalize men and women but there is still a substantial amount of places where gender inequality is still happening in the workplace and where females still face discrimination. Women are often discriminated in the workplace and are usually not promoted as quickly as men are and they also receive less pay. History shows that women have not always been defined as property and thought of as second class citizens. But in the 21st century many have seen a drastic change in the so called “traditional” family ways where women are suppose to stay home and take care of the household chores, food, and children and men are suppose to work to support their family and provide financial stability. Many assume that in the workplace women are more vulnerable and less competent than men because women 's instincts are to put their family before work or anything else. Whereas men are the ones who will usually stay the late hours to work. People on both sides of the political spectrum and everywhere in between seem to be fearful of what is to come and more fearful of others than they are often willing to admit.