#reaghinbencaz

[engl2593fall2021]

Feminism is Valid: A Movement for Equality of Women

If you are a woman, you know how hard it is to do something “right” as a woman because you will always have someone behind you judging. You are wearing too much or you leave nothing to imagination, she has too much makeup or she needs to put some on, she looks too much like a boy or she looks too much like a woman, she is too young or too old to dress like that, she needs to act more ladylike or she is too polite. Nothing will ever be enough for someone else.

What makes being a woman so hard? Being a woman is psychologically difficult. Not only do we carry the burden of birthing children and we aren’t doing that, we have periods every month along with mood changes from hormones. Our prime purpose is having children and taking care of them and the duties that come along with that. You have a job title that is gender-specific. Having children requires sex and somehow who you have sex with and how many times is everyone else’s business because if it’s not, men can’t tell whether you are a “whore” or not. If you have sex too soon, you’re a “slut”. If you wait too long, you’re a “prude”. There is no winning ever.

Not only is being a woman psychologically difficult, it is physically impossible to please everyone. Feminism is about women supporting women, in the battle for equality and liberation from men. Sometimes, that isn’t the case because women can have a tendency to fall into the same mindset men have and play the submissive and agreeable role. Being a submissive woman is the way some people were raised, which is why it takes women to break the cycle. Don’t let others dictate what you want to wear and how you wear it, have sex (responsibly) with who you want, say what you want, do what you want, go for whatever you want to achieve, and let nothing stop you in the process. What you wear has nothing to do with rape, a study found only 4.4% of all reported rapes involved “provocative dressing”. Rape has everything to do with rapists, not what you choose to wear. It’s not okay to keep normalizing these behaviors, which is why the cycle needs more women to break the chain.

Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/13/why-dress-codes-cant-stop-sexual-assault/

https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/being-a-woman-shouldnt-be-this-hard-2e8c756b349a

[engl2593fall2021]

Too Much Woman or Woman Enough? Why Feminism is About Equality and not a Man-Hating Club

Reading “Real Women Have Bodies” in the book Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen María Machado, I wanted to analyze this further. In the short story, Machado tells a story about a young woman who works at a dress shop and falls in love with the dressmaker’s daughter. In this world women are seen merely as a side character--or invisible completely, which can be true to our world nowadays. This invisibility portrays women that are seen and considered worthy as a green light for rape or harassment and further carries on the idea that misogyny is normal and acceptable among men.

Something so true to our world and this story, is that women are seen as invisible or unimportant unless they are pretty in the face and “valuable” for their body as well. Why does that then only make women enough? 

Carrying on in the story, the young woman sees this reality as true, but feels an exception herself. She found her love and sees her version of being “seen” fulfilled by sex and acknowledgement. This angers her for other invisible women that do not achieve their sense of self worth and for the women who are seen as nothing more than a body and a victim for rape. She is so angry and wants to do something for other women--and this is why feminism exists and why it is focused on equality. Nobody should ever have to feel like not enough or too much of a woman.