Straight Guy And The Neoliberal Project Summary

…offers up particular notions of agency in which white working class and middle class men are allowed to see themselves as oppressed and lacking because their masculinity has been compromised by and subordinated to those social and economic spheres and needs that constitute the realm of the feminine.

Wilton refers to Monique Wittig, a French author and feminist theorist, who states “our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women.” Thus, Wittig expresses that “heterosexuality is a social system” (Wilton 165). Why heterosexuality is forced upon the majority, however, is still unclear. Emily Martin, in her article, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” explains why this is so. Procreation can only occur upon the union of sperm and egg and their behaviors have created stereotypes which “imply not only that female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterparts but also that women

A peculiarity he mentions after explaining the search for a specific gender partner is how, in the South where he is, gay men tend to seek “masculine” partners, which defeats the idea of gender roles in same-sex relationships. The concept of gender is defined as “the identity and roles associated with, and/or appropriated by specific persons, regardless of their biological sex,” (Rich, 2016). While the concept is different across cultures and time, a constant happens to be the grouping and automatic attribution of roles based on a person’s biological sex. The author challenges the idea of gender roles associated with biological sex, however, saying that these men in the South tend to seek boyfriends who are sporty and have other classic masculine characteristics. Mays comments that there are few actions or characteristics that can be classified as gender neutral as these can be in present-day society. Thus, in their case, if both partners will exhibit these masculine qualities, they will both, in turn, be forced to take up women’s roles to live normal lives, for example cooking and cleaning, which would lead to the canceling out of masculine or feminine qualities.

Firstly, Frye discusses the etymology of the word ‘oppression’ stating that it has its elements from the word “press”, 1983, p: 2. She then gives imagery in order to demonstrate that the word is very restrictive in nature as if something were; “caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict or prevent the thing’s motion or mobility”, (Frye, 1983, p:2). Frye makes the point that he first criterion in defining oppression is that the oppressed is restricted or limited in some manner, giving the sense that they have been moulded, immobilised or reduced. She exemplifies this notion with the following comparison using her theory of the “double-bind” theory. According to Frye, in the United States, young women, are locked in a bind where if they exhibit that they are heterosexually active, then she is explicitly regarded as “loose, unprincipled or a whore”, 1983, p:2. The woman may then feel that she must hide her behaviour from her parents who are likely to look down on her for her promiscuity. She will also face criticism by her peers as being an “easy lay” and put down in comparison to her friends who practise more restraint, (Frye, 1983, p:3).

Everyone has their own take on controversial subjects faced in society, and no matter what age we live in, this particular subject seems to stay just as relevant in the generation before as it does today. The poem written by Richard Blanco titled â Queer Theory: According to My Grandmotherâ (2012), which

Society’s current structure of masculinity is unforgiving in form. It cuts out other forms of masculinity, it physically and mentally demanding, and its ill effects extend far beyond the men it infuses itself in. Yet what would we do if we were given other options for masculinity, ones that allowed for unique blends of attitudes and perceptions? Looking in to the lives of homeless men we can see the forced strategies which create new masculine codes created for the adaption against patriarchal pressures. They are made out of survival need to circumnavigate the painful mental and physical reality that is only made worse by harsh masculine standards. Yet these new masculinities hold out a form of hopefulness for society. They offer up new discussion to what it means to be a man, the potential for change, and what we can expect from changes in male identity over time. Using what we learn from the disadvantaged, we can hope to improve the lives of people, although the process will take time, effort, and careful mediation.

Chauncey’s, Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, is essentially a social history investigation into the non-invisible gay New York. The author introduces his reader into city where no man was either a homosexual or heterosexual. Instead, this was a place where a man was either masculine of feminine rather than the sex of their chosen partner. Chauncey makes this argument by saying

Later on Rich believed that women who were starting to make a difference towards society were switching their gender roles by surpassing the male. In the essay she claimed that “…middle-class women were making careers of domestic perfection, working to send their husbands through professional school, then retiring to raise large families” (Rich 9). She argued how women are supporting their spouses when the men are dependent and how women later put their dreams on hold when they start a family. But men don’t have the same sympathy towards the women’s careers, when they have children they don’t let them continue ‘their careers of domestic perfection’, instead they make the women become dependent on them. This is ironic towards the male and female roles because now the male is portrayed

In her essay titled “Compulsive Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich claims that any alternative to heterosexual outcome is discouraged by society. The essay claims that Western tradition has used the heterosexual family model as the basic social

Sex and gender categories, such as “men,” “women,” “masculine” and “feminine,” have been in place for generations. They are socially constructed categories and expectations assigned to children at birth, in order to regulate and shape them into this “ideal” heterosexual being. Men are expected to embrace masculine qualities, while women are required to be feminine and submissive to the male authority. Monique Wittig’s article, “One is Not Born a Woman” observes how the class of “women” is not “natural,” but is created by the society and framed by the male ideology, as a way of producing a clear gender difference between men and women. J. M Coetzee reinforces Wittig’s beliefs by sharing similar ideas of hegemonic masculinity and male dominance

The intended audience for Hook’s article was a wide range of people. The text suggests aims at those who grew up in patriarchal households and suffered because of it, as well as those who grew up in a very accepting household yet were criticized outside their home for not conforming to patriarchal gender roles. Hooks mentions that men who grew up in significantly patriarchal households and

Adrienne Rich also speak compulsory heterosexuality in her work, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Compulsory heterosexuality as discussed by Rich is how we view heterosexuality as a part of institution of capitalism that maintains power through the ideas of heterosexuality being acceptable to society and how we do not allow for differences in the binary system. As Rich states, “the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness” (Rich, 135). Meaning that we understand how heterosexuality is maintained by our capitalism system just as we understand oppression of classism, racism, and gender differences. Heterosexuality becomes institutionalized by maintaining through the normalization of forcing us to believe in the capitalism

The heterosexual imaginary is immensely ingrained in our everyday experience that most people, including feminist sociologists, has become inclined to conceptualize and theorize based around the heteronormative. The heterosexual imaginary acts as an invisible framework at play that structures our thinking processes and in which constructs our social identity. For instance, the inquiry of a survey taker’s marital status in most social science surveys come to show that our recognized and appropriate social identity is formed around heterosexuality. That is, any deviation from this heterosexual norm would be considered abnormal and be marginalized. To a minimal extent, this focus has served the interests of women because of the lack of activism

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4

The economics of intimate partner relationships play a role in patriarchy and the reinforcement of women abuse. Martin (1981) states that meritocracy is a discourse that everyone has equal opportunity in the workforce. It fails to recognize the barriers that prevent people from having the same opportunities as others. For instance, women face many social pressures that prevent them from working in the public sphere such as discrimination, sexism, being pushed down to apply for certain jobs because it dominated by males and may not have the physical requirement like body mass. Martin (1981) argues that capitalism supports patriarchal families and the idea that a woman's place is considered to be in the private sphere, the home, while a man is to be in the public sphere. Martin (1981) states that capitalism is about competition and succeeds when barring disadvantage or vulnerable populations including women from advancing to the top of the hierarchy so that people, predominantly white males, would remain in power. One strategy to prevent women from advancing in their career is to receive minimum wage and less income than men which therefore makes them easily replaceable in the work force. This defines women as temporary workers (p. 41). This leaves women economically dependent on men and gives a reason