Monday, November 26, 2012

Talking Point #2 Oppression

I decided after reading this excerpt that I had a lot of personal connections to this text. There were a few parts that seemed to fit into past experiences and things I deal with to this day.

When Marilyn Frye talks about "....neither sexual activity nor sexual inactivity is all right. If she is heterosexually active, a woman is open to censure and punishment for being loose, unprincipled or a whore......On the other hand, if she refrains from heterosexual activity, she is fairly constantly harassed by men who try to persuade her into it.." I'm usually a very private person but for the benefit of connecting to the text I will be open when I was young I had very little interest in being sexually active so I was called a prude, bitch and uptight among other things. For the most part these were things coming out of boys mouths and like many girls I felt pressured into things I didn't feel comfortable with. I was 18 when I had sex for the first time and shortly after was being called a slut and a whore how does someone go from being called a prude to being called a slut it doesn't make sense. Sexually inactive or sexually active I never felt comfortable either way and its because of all the stigma you cant win either way. I feel like its something women just have to deal with or ignore it and not let it bother you.

She also talks about how the parents who would be disapproving of sexual activity may be worried by inactivity. I think there are ALOT of girls who feel the way I do in that when you're young you're terrified to bring a boyfriend around so I just hid it for the most part. I wouldn't bring around someone I was dating or I just acted like they were a friend. But because I did that my parents thought I was a lesbian. Once I finally brought a boyfriend around my mom constantly gave these sex talks. Once again you can't win!

Frye also states "If one dresses one way, one is subject to the assumption that one is advertising one's sexual availability; if one dresses another way, one appears to "not care about oneself" or to be unfeminine." It seems that if a girl dresses one way she's looked at as "high maintenance" and if they dress the opposite they're a slob. When I was in high school I really didn't place much importance on the way I dressed but over time I felt the pressure to dress better. It was actually after I got my job at Nordstrom if you didn't have the latest fashion or top name brands on not only would the people you worked with judge you but even the customers would as well. Customers will not trust you to dress them if you yourself don't look well dressed. Even after I stopped working there I felt the pressure to dress well and still do to this day and every once and a while I catch myself criticizing the things people wear I know its not okay but yet I still do it.

There's all these things we get criticized for but no happy medium. There's this helplessness that comes along with oppression that you just let it go on because you don't feel you can change things.

This article speaks about the same things that I covered. Dr. Marty Klein writes "Today's woman is supposed to be sexy, but not too sexy. She's supposed to be responsive enough to validate her partner, but not too aggressive or hard to please. Sexual, but not lusty. Not frigid, but not quite red hot. Her sexuality should express love, not lust." 

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing and opening up!! your raise good points...society likes to contradict everything they say ten minutes after they say it...

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  2. I really like how you connected the text to your own life. You raised good points on things that still happen today, trying to just be who you want to be is hard today in society.

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