Randolph Trumbach's essay, Sex, Gender and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London, questions why male sodomites and female prostitutes were awarded similar social status in this period. Trumbach investigates this question through an analysis of the effects that Enlightenment thought had on the gender/sex system. Trumbach utilizes police documentation, hospital manuscripts, written laws, and his own previous research concerning the sexual relationships between men during this time period. Through this investigation Trumbach comes to argue that prostitutes and male sodomites were regulated in society both socially, and politically (under the law), to more clearly define the lines that separated,…
Once, women were looked down upon. Not only were their rights neglected, but so were their lifestyles. For many years, it was nearly impossible for a women to have any self-confidence whatsoever without being judged by the opposite sex, or even the government. There were times when even the most ignorant men were given more rights than the most intelligent women. Women were not only forced to be uneducated, but to practically “wear the pants” in the relationship by doing nothing short of the dirty work.…
You think, therefore, you are a criminal Equality smashed a window with one bare hand, grabbed his invention with the other, and leapt out of the broken window to save himself and his invention from the angry mob of so-called intellectuals who could not understand him or his genius gadget. From there he runs straight into the uncharted forest. The protagonist is trying to escape from the dystopian society imagined by Ayn Rand, in her novella Anthem. Equality, the central character of the story, is a naturally inventive person who wants to have an intellectual profession; instead, he is assigned a street sweeper's job, which he is required to perform for the rest of his life without question or complaint.…
In the seventeen hundred, there were different thoughts on what women are expected to do. Such issues are made on the questions of why women were created and what their duties are in society. However, in the twentieth century, there are no longer as any women issues as there was back then. One of the big issues back then was that woman were not to be treated equally to men. This was specifically talked about by two enlightenment thinkers named Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft.…
In Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy, Judith Butler talks about the correct path to attain human rights in connection to autonomy and community. Butlers struggle finding the right balance between the two in order to achieve success in the political arena connects greatly with the ideas of Appiah in Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections, and my own personal experiences with the law. Throughout Butler’s essay, she struggles with the concept of balancing autonomy and community when it comes to human rights. Butler discusses the struggling that is fighting for our rights early in her essay, and she brings attention to the paradox it creates: “We have an interesting political predicament, since most of the time when…
An important topic is being discussed and it concerns the article of natural rights and feminism. For instance, “natural rights is defined as rights such as life, liberty, and property, with which an individual is born” (Roots of Wisdom Pg. 354). In addition, feminism is defined as the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to their male counterpart. Indeed, there are many opinions about these topics. However, the concept of natural rights and feminism have been prevalent throughout history.…
Imagine an entity whose is in a constant stage of metamorphosis yet seemingly goes unnoticed. Now imagine this entity is the definition of gender. Judith Lorber 's essay The Social Construction of Gender poses an effective argument to explain how and why gender is defined and constantly redefined through social interactions. In order to effectively argue her point of view Lorber 's essay is constructed with academic diction to appeal to her audience, logical reasoning to make content plausible and appeals to authority to give her content credibility. Lorber creates academic diction through formal language to appeal to a target audience.…
Gender equality is an issue well known by the global population. The problem dates way back throughout history to the ancient civilizations and even before that. Women were given less rights and had a lower social standing in society. In the book Gender in World History, the author, Peter N. Stearns writes about the inequalities between the two sexes as well as their individual roles and positions in different societies. Some examples in his book are “In patriarchal societies, men were held to be superior.…
Mead wrote from a neutral standpoint, pinpointing each quality provided by these norms we have accepted, and in a sense molded into what society thinks is a norm. Since Mead’s time the way society has looked upon gender roles has changed immensely. Upon these changes, some of the theories and references Mead wrote about still apply to today’s time. Mead uses the method of general comparison and example when describing how society is to look at gender roles and the part they play in the development of a thriving society. Throughout her essay, the reader takes…
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS The American Revolution also known as the Revolution War was fought from 1775 to 1783. Britain had control over 13 American colonies and when conflicts began between the colonies and Britain and the colonies they began fighting for their freedom. The United States finally won its independence from Britain in 1783. The American Revolution affected people’s lives in many ways.…
Gender inequality is an issue that has been happening for thousands of years, affecting cultures from all around the world. Women have endured since ancient times the title as the inferior being, the “other” gender besides the man, the weaker and less valuable specimen. This gender inequality created a huge difference between men and women, placing women’s rights under men’s jurisdiction, which dictated what women were and were not allowed to do. This issue was analyzed by the French and feminist supporter and writer Simone de Beauvoir in her text, “Woman as Other.” In her essay de Beauvoir explains the entire concept of women being considered the “other” gender apart from the men.…
As for this week’s reading assignments, I was introduced to two pieces of readings: Judith Lorber’s “Night to His Day,” and Cherrie Moraga’s “La Guera.” Having read and thinking about the issues of the readings, I was aware of the process that the society has used to construct gender over the years (in “Night to His Day”) and how mistreatment, like racial discrimination or gender inequality, is involved in the construction of gender (in “La Guera”). Let’s talk about Lorber’s article. As I read, I noticed what the author indicates: “For individuals, gender means sameness,” and “for society, gender means difference;” I believed that it was true. From my perspective, each individual in this society complies with his [or her] group’s expectations…
Comparing Rousseau and Mill on Liberty In this essay, I would like to contrast and compare the concept of liberty in Jean Jacques Rousseau's “the Social Contract Theory”, which was written in 1762 and J.S. Mill's On liberty, which was written in 1859. In a fact, the authors were born different century and also, had different ideas. They were successfully influence the society by sharing their ideas. In the writings, both Rousseau and Mill mainly discourses about the relationship between authority and one's liberty. First, I would like to examine both Rousseau's and Mill's schemas and then compare their thoughts.…
This chapter is going to shed light on two distinctive feminist standpoint theorists: Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Among other feminist standpoint theorists, the feminist critiques of these two women stand out for me as applicable when analyzing Umm Zakiyyah's trilogy If I Should Speak. The mutuality Smith and Collins have is that they have sought a sociology which takes women's experience as a vantage point where they could see the full picture of society. They are empiricists who experienced marginalization in the patriarchal or racist society whether as housewives or professional and academic women, and of course for Collins as an African-American woman.…
Introductory Paragraph A. The actuality is that our society wants to gender inequality. Our history has shown that men want to be in control of everything. We place gender specific roles on male and female because our long history of men dominating can’t be easily replaced. In many countries around the world, including the United States of America, we question and raised concerns about a women’s place in male dominated world whether it’s a work place, at home or in public.…