Sexism And Sexism

From a plethora of many authors and compilations over many centuries comes the fourteenth century The Thousand and One Nights, a Middle Eastern frame story during which there are as many as four implanted stories. In the outermost frame of this tale, a king who is betray by his wife vows to take a new wife each night and kill her the next morning in order to prevent further unfaithfulness. The main inner frame are stories from one of his wives which she continues each night to keep the king interested and thus postpone her death. Through these stories, the reader can examine the role of men and women in this time, specifically how women function in conjunction to men in the text. The reader may assume the men are superior while the woman are inferior, but through close reading of the text, the reader will discover that women in the text are only treated subordinately by men in the story but are revealed to the reader as the more powerful of the sexes. Authors reveal the power of women by their prowess at trickery or “women’s cunning” (The Thousand 1181), and their ability to force the actions of male counterparts. The reader can examine men’s attempt to stifle this power, which further acknowledges the women’s merit, through the excessively frequent occurring instances of men treating the women as insignificant, as well as instances when women are turned to ungulate animals, such

“The world is still sexist.” — Barbara Broccoli. From the creation story to modern day, women and men still struggle with a power dynamic of inferiority and superiority. The problem of sexism has been ever-present throughout history, and although it has been acknowledged by many, it has not been eradicated or resolved. Although the acknowledgment of sexism has grown over the course of the modern era, it is heavily rooted in society’s developmental process, which makes it continuously difficult to annihilate. Furthermore, throughout many historical texts, women are often represented as objects instead of real people. Within texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah, women are constantly regarded as inferiors instead of equals with men. Throughout these texts, there is a clear separation between the treatment of men and women, with women always being referred to as property.

Women first gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920 with the 19th amendment was approved, giving women full voting rights. Fortified by the constitutional victory in 1920, the handful of new women in Congress embarked on what would become a century-long journey to broaden women’s role in government. In the intervening years, the drive for more women’s rights encompassed the lives of the next generations of women. Even today, women are still fighting for their rights and stand up against prejudice. On the forefront of this movement are our women congresswomen who speak on behalf of all women. When Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy, controversial questions immediately surfaced about the role of gender in politics. Through Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008 and 2016, media is the principal propagator in showing bias and sexism.

When we hear the word sexism most minds automatically associate feminine oppression. I began to wonder why that was. Webster defines sexism as “prejudice based on sex; especially: discrimination against women.” After reading this I had to know why that was.

In the modern world women work, vote, run for office and the list goes on. In most aspects, women are equal to men. However, this was not always the case. In centuries past, women were not viewed as being equal to men socially, intellectually, or politically and were thought incapable of accomplishing anything of value. Consequently, many cultures held the view that women were possessions whose only purpose was to be subservient to men. The view of women as mere objects is evident in various works of literature throughout the ages. Two classic works of literature that exemplify this are The Thousand and One Nights and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of

The last hundred years have brought the world many valuable things; computers, better sanitation conditions, understandings of diseases, vaccines, surgery, education, and so much more. But there are so many social constructs that have made little progress such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. In reality vaccines and sexism are manmade, a vaccine is a manmade invention and sexism is a manmade idea. Neither would exist without human beings backing the idea that they are necessary. Racism is “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior (Oxford Dictionary).” Racism over the last hundred years has been directed towards Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian’s. Looking at the past in relation to racism in the United States, reveals that racism is still alive and well in 2015 just as it was in 1915.

Each sex comprises fifty percent of the world’s population, yet they remain unequal. Women discrimination, or “misogyny”, has been prominent since the beginning of time through art, society, and literature. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contains misogynistic ideologies and traditions. In the poem, Sir Gawain, one of King Arthur’s best men, needs to prove his knighthood by going on a journey to find the Green Knight. Sir Gawain is successful in his journey that was eventually revealed to have been planned by a woman. Regardless of his newfound respect following his successful journey, Sir Gawain and the other men continue to blame and degrade women; in reality, the men should be thanking the poem’s female figures. The role of women is prominent, powerful, and positive in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, yet the anonymous poet has managed to weave misogyny into every line.

In this book, women are portrayed with no power since they are not allowed the same luxuries as men, their opinions are disrespected by men, and they are judged based off their appearance or status and not on an intellectual level. Showing as a common theme throughout the book, it is seen

Sexism, is a prejudice plain and simple. One of the earliest forms of violence directed toward women was the Witch Hunt Trials of the Middle Ages. Bishops debated whether a woman was really human at all. If her nose were too long, she had red hair, a humped back, or if she was exceptionally beautiful, she was thought to be a witch and was burned at the stake. There was an estimated nine million women burned during the Witch Trials. During the “Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960’s, feminist theorists explained that oppression of women was widespread in nearly all human society, and spoke of sexism instead of male chauvinism. Male chauvinists were usually individual men who expressed the belief that they were superior to women” (Napikoski). By the mid 20th century sexism was established and began to appear in advertising. Between the 1970’s and 1990’s women began to feel more equal to men until the 1980’s where they were portrayed as sex symbols on national television (The Origin and History of SEXISM). There are two main types of sexism, benevolent and hostile, and their definitions are opposite from one another. Hostile sexism is what most people perceive as sexism today as it seems sexism is occurring more and more often and is, notably, more vulgar. It is the notion that women are inferior or not as worthy; a belief that males are intrinsically superior. For many years women have been degraded and looked down upon with the idea that their place is in the kitchen with

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an Arthurian romance that is one of the first to highlight women’s roles during the period of change that comes with King Arthur’s demise. Culturally, during the time period, women had little perceived power. Women were treated well and often idolized, but they remained in a male-dominated society, where they were not respected as their own capable beings. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is heavily laced with the Knight’s “Code of Honor,” namely the idea of chivalry. During this time, the chivalric code gave men the idea that women could not achieve much, so these men needed to achieve it for them. Women in Arthurian times, as well as throughout the rest of cultural history, were seen as the downfall of men. Compared to Eve from Biblical times, women were a symbol of lust, sexuality, and temptation. It was the man’s duty to avoid those temptations and remain virtuous. This essay argues the use of this poem as a forewarning toward the danger of women to men’s honor and chivalric values. ¬

What is a woman’s role in society? Today this question would cause uproar of answers from both feminists and anti-feminists. Despite the disagreement, the most popular response would be, without a doubt, that women’s role in society is equal to men’s. Currently, women can vote, hold a stable job, and lead a successful life without a husband. However, back in medieval times there were no such luxuries for women. Examples of their treatment can be found in Chaucer’s story, The Knights Tale. From being forced into marriage, to oppression by men, it is clear to see that women were treated as objects.

In the 13th century, during Arthurian period in England, society was mostly male-dominant, in which women had little to no power; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by The Pearl Poet illustrates

Throughout literature, men are appeared in higher roles and have more control over the women. The men appear superior to the women due to men’s actions and comportment towards women. In general, men have more confidence in themselves and their facilities. Women are treated with not enough reverence due to how men utilize their control. Women are optically discerned as frail and powerless.

Throughout literature women are depicted with a wide variety of abilities and skills. In the Anglo-Saxon era of literature, the depiction of women greatly relies on their social status. Poor women in this era had little rights and were considered property of their husbands or fathers. Lower class women were expected to conform to their husband’s wishes along with cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. Although lower class women had very little rights and their responsibilities were based in the home, upper class women had more power and did not perform civil house duties. Upper class women often acquired power through obtaining money or items of monetary value. Queens do not have to cook, clean or take care of their children and often obtained great power over their kingdom. Women in “The Wife’s Lament” and Marie De France’s “Lanval” are depicted differently which exemplifies the importance of social status.

During the Middle Ages, there were strict gender roles for men and women; men were seen as active figures of authority in both the household and society, whereas women were largely confined to the domestic realm and expected to submit passively to men. These gender roles resulted in a strict gender binary which held the belief that each sex was born with a set of traits that made them distinctly masculine or feminine. Accordingly, the society in the thirteenth-century old French fabliau “La Dame Escoillée” upholds these medieval attitudes towards men and women. Throughout the fabliau, the speaker portrays a patriarchal society which privileges men over women and is governed by prescribed gender roles that men and women are expected to adhere to. In the beginning of the story, the knight is feminized through his obedience to his wife, while his wife assumes a traditional male gender role of dominance and authority. The wife’s rejection of a traditional female role is later passed on to their daughter, who attempts to gain authority over her husband in her own marriage. As a whole, the fabliau is driven by challenges of masculine social authority, with a central focus on violence against women as means of asserting masculine dominance. Moreover, the story’s theatrical excess of male and female gender roles calls attention to the performativity of gender, in which gendered behaviour is learned and enforced to shape individuals into idealized masculine and feminine subjects. In