The Discovery Of A Radical Movement

First, I want to start off by saying I definitely became very informed of what it was like for women prior to the Women’s Liberation Movement! I had no idea just how bad women had it back then. In addition, I am guilty of referring to most feminist as man haters and often wondered what all of the fuss was about, I guess I never took the time to do the research to see in fact what the true meaning and purpose of a feminist is. In the end my beliefs about feminism have in fact changed after reading the three articles “A Day without Feminism”, “Fear of Feminism and “Claiming an Education.” I believe these authors wanted to inform readers of what it was like for women before the Women’s Liberation Movement but to send the message stating although things are improving, we are not there yet and there is still a lot to be done!

As I developed my own sense of feminism through pop culture and literature, I detached more and more from my mother’s sexism. Because she was prone to rage outbursts and volatile tempers, I learned to escape through another medium, like books or music, so a lot of what she said didn’t stick. While I was aware that her behavior was toxic, I didn’t realize how dangerous it truly was until this

As I grew up I never realized that I was growing up in a family with very feministic views. Growing up I knew my grandmother ruled her house and the women in my family tended to make most of the choices. I never realized that this was so different than others until I started seeing other people’s family structure and the different topics in feminism. So as a child even though I was not raised with the word feminism in my vocabulary but I was getting the base of my feministic outlook on life now.

Just as Martin Luther King, Jr. knew “through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” (King 227) in the fight to end segregation, the same goes for women’s rights. King learned through his time spent trying to achieve justice that if people do not actively try to carry out their goals, then nothing will be done. Women have always been seen as inferior to men in the society we live in. Unless women are able to break out of these roles they have been placed in, these deeply rooted problems will not be

“For male feminists, maintaining an awareness of their own privilege in order to vigilantly disassemble male dominance is crucial. It is not enough to talk the talk; one must also incorporate principles of equality into one’s daily life” (19).

During the 1970’s most fail to recognize how the women’s liberation movement resurrected the “woman question. This has then done the job of rebuilding our world with being more conscious of the exploitation and oppression of women. Women never had a strong voice and were never heard. When the mass movements in the 70’s created a differentiation along class and political lines women’s liberation have come to be dominated by a middle class leadership. The whole idea for this era was to raise conscious levels of organizing around someone’s own oppression. Most women around this time had a difficult time admitting that they had been oppressed, when in reality countless numbers of women and not only been oppressed but gathered a larger amount of frustration, anger and bitterness. In Fact while reading the rise and demise of

Women have been the most discriminated-against group of people in the entire history of humankind. They have been abused, held back in society, and oftentimes restricted to the home life, leading dull, meaningless lives while men make sure the world goes round. It seems strange that half of the world's population could be held down so long; ever since the dawn of humanity, women have been treated like second-class citizens. Only in the past 100 years or so have women started to win an equal place in society in the Western world. However, the fight for equality has not been a short one. The seeds of the liberation movement were planted hundreds of years ago, by free-thinking

As a young woman, I have experienced inequity because of my gender. This isn’t something rare or new. I could write pages on the discrimination myself and women I know personally have experienced. Throughout history, women have been ignored and oppressed. Women have experienced the fear of assault and harassment. Women have experienced their rights being taken away while all men were created equal. Women have experienced inadequate health care due to an injustice in our own male flooded government. Even in our own military women have experienced prejudice with not being able to hold combat positions. Throughout history, women have been overlooked and discounted. Women have supported male historical figures without getting recognition and have

One of these realizations is the fact that I am a participating member of an inequivalent social structure and my acknowledgement of the benefits I gain from it as a male. To every piece of literature we encountered this year this statement held true, but the most drastic scenarios depicted were in the works, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and A Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. In Things Fall Apart the men rule over the women and females are seen as inferior to male. This point is stressed through the repetition of the main character Okonkwo saying that he wished his daughter was a boy so that she could be like him and have greater value. In A Handmaids Tale, women are again treated and seen as inferior beings whose sole purpose is to bear and raise children. Previous to this year I was a victim of falling into this trap of believing that this way of thinking could have possibly been true. I noticed how my peers started to objectify women and see them simply as sex objects and not as just another human companion. Seeing what women go through on a daily basis and the discussions of domestic violence we had in class really allowed me to recognize how despicable men could be. By noticing such behaviors from my peers, it allowed me to become more

Contrary to countless movies, books, or television shows, people do not change in an instant. It takes more than a single moment to change how someone makes their decisions, envisions their future, and cherishes their present. These shifts in personality can seem so natural, nothing appears to be different until one chooses to trace how they have evolved. However, these changes can occasionally be linked back to one experience, one decision, or one moment that has spiraled into more experiences, more decisions, and more moments that end up shaping the people we become.

At a young age, I was pressured by society to be a certain way and act a certain way for my gender and age, similar to everyone else. As I got older I realized that this was not right, and saw many people fighting against it. At 14 years old, I was introduced to intersectional feminism, the idea of equality for all women: politically, financially, and socially. This ideology really grew with me because

A woman is sluggishly walking down the street with a large backpack. In the backpack she carries her children, her husband, her bills, her student loans, her job, the burdens of the world; she is literally carrying the weight of the world. All of a sudden a man in a business suit comes up to her and starts to yell at her telling her she is ugly, will never be good enough, she is stupid, she will never get anywhere in her life. Although the woman hears him she steadily continues walking because she has to be a mother to her children, she has to a be shoulder for her husband to lean on and cannot stop because she is forced to live up to an image of multi-tasking and not showing signs of giving up. Women have been looked down upon, stereotyped, and even not treated as equals but they still continue to hold up the world and put on a winning and convincing smile for the camera. Some women have giving into the oppressions of the world leaving the women that does have hope struggling to carry the world. Women are continuously dehumanized because they are not treated as equals in the work place, the media, and school however the women’s rights movement has given women the right of freedom of speech and right to vote

Growing up in India the sickening culture of misogyny deeply affected me. I remember reading newspaper headlines everyday detailing the atrocities of how women were treated as second-class citizens, of how women were treated as inferior beings, and how women were raped and tortured. My mother, a fervid feminist, engrained the notion within my impressionable mind that when women are empowered, when women succeed, when women are viewed as equals, we all succeed. She imparted the values of feminism within me. As I grew older and older the blatant degradation of women’s right across the planet acutely disturbed me. In my senior year I decided to channel my passion for women’s right by joining the Zonta Club as the sole male member. As a member

If we take a look at the social structures surrounding our culture, we can see that women are vulnerable individuals. For years women have had to fight for equal pay, equal conditions, and even for the right to vote. Women not only face income and occupation disparities, but they according to Solomon, are also twice as likely to experience depression when compared to men, due to their position is society. Perhaps this can be the result of lack of power; nevertheless, the truth is that our culture has created a social system that allows the divides individuals, which allows patriarchy to flourish. Since, our society is male dominated and male centered, little attention is offered to women, and in fact it actually strips them away from their

First, I became aware of the generic language. Words like "mankind", "brotherhood", and the overused pronoun "he" was supposed to describe all of humanity. IT was clear that they contained a masculine bias. Little girls grew up hearing those words literally and scaling down their self-image. I decided that even if I was not personally offended by these terms, inclusive language was a matter of justice. Language both reflects the way we think and informs what we think. That was stage one in my feminist journey.