Graycloud By John Nola Analysis

Tateh’s abuse of Ruth and mistreatment of blacks resulted in her attraction towards men of color. As a child, Ruth was forced to work long hours in her father’s grocery store, immediately after school until close. After, long days of both school and work Tateh often crawled into bed with Ruth and molested her. Which ended in Ruth quickly growing to both fear and hate Tateh for what he put her through. The abuse he put her through also allowed her to sympathize with people of color as Tateh mistreated them as well. Ruth saw how despite the constant mistreatment of blacks, by both Tateh and others, they were always laughing. This happiness attracted Ruth and gave her hope that she could overcome her abuse and prosper. Considering Ruth’s hatred towards Tateh and his hatred towards blacks,even she admits

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” However, I will not be silent. Sexism is a thing of the past, present, and future. Women have never been seen as equal to men. This idea and concept affect how women carry out their lives. Women may act different or speak different just based on society's thoughts about their gender. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and in today’s society it is clear that because of women’s perceived “weakness”, men now dominate women legally, physically and financially.

That woman today doesn’t have a lot of power because we live in a planet where in other countries and religion, men are to be believed to be superior to women. Also for the second point women should claim any type of abuses, even if it is a minor incident, to alert me to step away and not to mess with women, even if these types of defenses mechanics could be called by men as feminism.

Not only did Tateh do terrible things to his wife, but he also did terrible things to his daughter. Ruth was terrified of her father because he sexually abused her when she was a young girl. She says that he would get into bed with her at night and do sexual things to her. At the beach he would also molest her in the water under the guise he was teaching her how to swim. Ruth felt she could tell no one about this, the events greatly scarring

In “The Longest War,” Rebecca Solnit discusses the vast amount of violence against women and how violence affects women. To begin with, she provides some stark facts: it is statistically proven the male population is more violent than women (522). Additionally, rape takes place more often than the average person knows. This is problematic because violence derives from the need for power and control. Women cannot simply “get out” of violence because of a man’s desire for power over the situation.

Tateh, who’s a rabbi is racist, and always charges the black customers in his store with more money, making Ruth hate the atmosphere she lives in. Ruth is the topic of racial prejudice within the White South. To escape the violent and loveless area that she lives in, she fleds to Harlem and marries Andrew Dennis Bride, who is a black man. Inspired by her husband, she becomes apart of the Christian religion and soon her and Dennis have eight children together. After a while Dennis dies of lung cancer while Ruth is pregnant with James.

In addition to growing savvy when dealing with discrimination, Ruth devotes her love to her kids so they will not repeat her sad youth. Roth recalls her despair in her callous Jewish family, “I was starving for love and affection. I didn’t get none of that” (McBride 83). Ruth resents the tyranny and cruelty of Tateh, who disrespects his wife, molesters Ruth, and enslaves his son. Attracted to black men’s kindness, Ruth falls in love with James’s father Dennis, yet their marriage offenses both Tateh and the Jewish faith. Ruth depicts the

Women and men are born equal. However, females are receiving unequal judgement and unfair treatment in the society, and thus Marilyn Frye brings up the notion of “oppression”, claiming that women are oppressed. Throughout the essay, I will first give the definition of Frye’s oppression and then list 5 critical qualifications to be considered oppressed. After that, I will explain my appreciation on Frye’s perspective on elaborating oppression using the “bird cage” analogy. I will support Frye’s “double-bind” argument for sexism followed by flaws in the argument. Furthermore, I will point out some social group are mistakenly placed inside or outside the parameters of oppression, once the theory of oppression extends over other marginal groups.

Women of different races, age groups, and lifestyles have dealt with sexual, physical, and psychological abuses from history until today.

This ideology outlines and endorses separate spheres for women and men, the domestic and public spheres. This idea derived from the natural features of each gender. As women were considered to be physically weaker than men, they were more suitable to belong to the private sphere. As Ellis writes, ‘women’s strength is in her influence’ , demonstrating the view that, though physically fragile, women were morally superior to men.

Society has come a long way in accepting gender equality, however there are still many that have a mindset similar to those in the past. They are stuck in that past and believe that it there is a superior gender. In Pearl S. Buck’s historical fiction novel, The Good Earth, a family is reliant upon the mother who, over time, has been taken for granted. The mother, Olan, is expected to do all the work and act as a slave to her family. Buck uses Olan and other female figures to emphasize how easily the female gender is oppressed and discriminated.

She makes another statement affirming her position that female oppression could be related to anything but human constructs that must be destroyed:

In "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye, Frye discussed how a bird cage symbolizes the systematic oppression of women. Frye explains that if you look at a single wire in a bird cage you cannot understand why the bird, is unable to simply fly around the wire and be free. But, when you step back and look at the cage as a whole system of interlocking wires you realize that the bird has no chance of escaping because of all the barriers put in their way (Frye). This is exactly the same case for women. When somebody tries to see the oppression of women. they look only at one problem women face, refusing to step back and see there is no one cause for their oppression. If instead they looked at all the barriers women face at once, they would finally see that women have no way of escaping oppression without continuous efforts of every person involved in the oppression, including the woman being oppressed and the sexist men doing the oppressing.

In the book, she uses the approaches and method of ethics, epistemology and metaphysics to examine ecology’s link with the feminist movement. In particular, she holds that a main cause of the environmental crisis is the existence of the so-called twin domination. According to twin domination thesis, environmental degradation and exploitation and oppression of women share the same conceptual and evaluative structure, that is, an oppressive conceptual framework, “one that functions to explain, maintain, and “justify” relationships of unjustified domination and subordination.” According to Warren, there are three common features of an oppressive conceptual framework：1. value-hierarchical thinking, i.e., “up-down” thinking which places higher value, status, or prestige on what is “up” rather than on what is “down”; 2.value dualisms, i.e., disjunctive pairs in which the pairs are seen as oppositional (rather than as complementary) and exclusive (rather than as inclusive); 3. the logic of domination, “a logical structure of argumentation that “justifies” domination and subordination”. The last is “explanatorily basic” as the bottom lines in ecofeminist discussions of oppression, “if accepted, it provides a justification for keeping downs down”. In short, “for any X and Y, if X is morally superior to Y, then X is morally justified in subordination Y”(Warren, The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism 128). Thus, at least, in western societies, humankind is morally justified in subordination nature, and men are justified in subordinating women. The two forms of oppression are conceptually maintained by a patriarchal oppressive conceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination. It thereby explains at a conceptual level why the eradication of sexist oppression requires the eradication of naturism, which leads to reconceive ecofeminism

In his article "The Terrestrial and Aquatic Intelligence of Linda Hogan" (1999), Donelle N. Dreese stresses that "water (is) a recurring image for physical and psychological healing in a contemporary world of sexism, drought, violence, and hunger." (Dreese 1999: 8) The four writers studied in this thesis use "an ecofeminist activism that brings together women and water imagery to expose male exploitation of women and nature on an aquatic terrain." (Dreese 2002: 73) However, the researcher 's analysis of oppression and exploitation focuses not only on the mutual oppression of women and elements of nature (here water) but on how one oppressive system is interrelated with all forms of oppression as well, whether these forms are based on gender (women), natural elements (water), race (American Indians), or on ethnicity and cultural minority (Nubians). The interrelatedness of oppressive systems is explained in Huey-li Li quotation of what Sheila Collins states that "racism, sexism, class exploitation, and ecological destruction are four interlocking pillars upon which the structure of patriarchy rests." (Li 289) In addition, Karen J. Warren asserts, Andy Smith quotes, that "because all feminists do or must oppose the logic of domination which keeps oppressive conceptual frameworks in place, all feminists must also oppose any isms of domination that are maintained and justified by that logic of domination." (Smith 21)