William Marston, the creator of the DC Comics character Wonder Woman, designed the heroine after being inspired by Margaret Sanger and the women’s suffrage movement (Margaret Sanger). Although she didn’t wear Bracelets of Submission or red leather boots, Margaret Sanger was quite the superhero herself; she was the founder of the modern birth control movement. She fought tirelessly for women’s rights to contraception and freedom of speech in a time when information about birth control and sex was made unavailable by Comstock laws, which she was arrested eight times for breaking. Sanger is also known as the founder of Planned Parenthood, a clinic that provides reproductive health services worldwide. However, none of this would have happened if…
Frith’s Feminist Façade Considered an epic feminist text, Melika Burke pierces through the illusion of female freedom underpinning Year of Wonders to reveal its underlying paradox. Geraldine Brooks’s Year of Wonders (2001) is one of the most grievously misinterpreted and misunderstood texts of the twenty first century. Brooks’s (2009), who proudly identities as a “modern western feminists”, intertwines her experience as a Middle Eastern war correspondent where she observed the emancipatory potential of women with the historical scaffold of the 1665 Bubonic Plague to create a feminist utopian heroine: Anna. This rich exploration of the female identity has elevated the novel to an erroneously distinguished position by depicting the text as quintessentially feminist. Cultural Critic Lee (2012) encapsulates this prevailing interpretation by praising the “[s]trong feminist consciousness operating through Year of Wonders”.…
Jessica Valenti is a prominent feminist, she’s written four books on the matter and currently writes for The Guardian about Women’s Issues. I looked into her pieces and found a big problem with what she was talking about. One article was her complaining about catcalling, where she tells women to walk the streets without fear, which is certainly a good thing. But another article a year later, by the same journalist, says that she misses it and wishes society would give more attention to women.…
Throughout the 80’s, the AIDS crisis and the failure of the US government to address the problem became the impetus for the unification and diversification of the LGBT movement. The separatism of lesbian feminists dissipated, and both the gay and lesbian communities became more moderate in order to better politically address the new right and fight for health care, marriage equality, rights to abortion, and other discrimination. Furthermore, because the AIDS epidemic worst affected the poor and marginalized LGBT groups in the US, political and activist groups began having a more diverse membership, including racial minorities, bisexuals, immigrants, and transgendered people. This and legal reform oriented community has continued through the…
“Wonder Woman” by Gloria Steinem is an essay about comic books having power in everyday life. Comics book tend to only be about super-heroes that save the day—but those super-heroes are men. Wonder Woman is the first female super-hero to be published continually since comic books began. Steinem mentions that Wonder Woman is a gateway for young girls to believe that they do not need to rely on men to save them—but they themselves can save the day. “Comic books have power because they are not part of the ‘serious’ grown-up world.”…
Nonetheless, she is still dependent on the male lead to save her: “The original portrayal of Lois was as a tough, successful reporter, who could handle many things on her own, but occasionally needed to be saved from imminent disaster by Superman.” (Kuchenmeister 90). Both characters were created roughly at the same time in history, but while Wonder Women tries to defy gender-specific stereotypes, Lois Lane enforces them. Another monumental difference between the women remains in their position in the comics. During the Golden Age of comic books, (Marston’s) Wonder Woman was a heroine in her own story, she was the protagonist, while Lois Lane was Superman’s love interest and the occasional damsel in distress.…
Through various viewpoints, overlapping timelines and embellishments manifested by the author, Maxine Hong-Kingston is able to examine female roles and their assimilation into Chinese/Chinese-American society and culture; an extensive projection of Kingston’s intimate past and selfhood. Within this memoir, Kingston attempts to resolve the complexity of her own identity, being a Chinese-American, as she continuously discovers her cultural roots and sorts their placement within her own life. In the memoir, envisionments of various reoccurring, paradoxical female figures: primarily Brave Orchid, The No Name Woman, and Fa Mu Lan, serve as “talk-story” teachings that are all fundamental in Kingston’s development to becoming an actual “woman warrior”.…
After realizing that Mariam is one of the protagonist in the story “A Thousand Splendid Suns” it shows that there is more to her than what we read about. So that means I will be using chapters 3, 1, 11and 14. Then I will compare “How to Read Literature” by using chapter 3 “Nice to eat you: Act of Vampires”.…
When someone says they are a feminist, people often think they hate men when in reality they do not. Many people who identify as a feminist do have anger and some hate towards men, however, that is not what true feminism stands for. Feminism is not about empowering women and putting men down, or turning a patriarchal society into a matriarchal one; it is about advocating for women’s rights to be equal to men. Even though it seems that a woman’s role in society has changed, it has not. In the 1960s when the women’s liberation movement began, the expectation was that a woman was a mother and took care of the home.…
Nasserism and the revolution of 1952 came to Egypt with a number of changes, and not just through land reform, voting rights for women, and the nationalization of the Suez Canal. The new era that followed the 1952 coup did not only affect politics and the economy. In tandem with economic reform and social justice movements, Egyptians faced a change in the collective mind of the nation, the relationships of individuals, new morals and values, and growing national identity. In The Open Door, Latifa al-Zayyat highlights how the political revolution changed the personal lives of Egyptians. Her novel fills the holes that are often left empty by purely historical discussions.…
The moral philosophy of feminism is a big part of today's world socially. Women feel that they are not treated the same as men on a social level considering that men do not receive the same consequences that women do when they do not accept their traditional gender role. In “Feminist Criticism” an article by Lois Tyson from 2006, Tyson talks about what traditional gender roles are in today's society. She compares the ways in which men and women are seen in society and how women can be seen as “bad girls” meaning they don't accept their gender role. The traditional roles are seen as girls are emotional and weak while men are strong and rational.…
Sociologists need theory. Theory is the building block in our area of study. Theory gives us particular ways of looking at the world. Theory gives us the language to describe, explain, and critique our social world. Overall, theory helps us as sociologist with conceptualizing our research and developing our own argument or framework.…
During the mid-1930s, gender bigotry ran rampant throughout American society as women became the victims of gender oppression due to male supremacy. In Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, Celie, Walker’s protagonist, suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hands of both her step-father and husband. The pain and abuse she suffered by the two men in her life crushed her self-worth, leading her to believe she was unworthy of the space she occupied. The pain and sense of worthlessness she felt due to her past influenced her internal fight to reach her self-actualization: the ability to realize her full potential as a powerful, independent, happy, and successful woman – bulletproof to insults her husband and society threw at her. This…
The movie Wonder Woman by Patty Jenkins takes on the beloved superhero we all know and love. Wonder Woman is about the backstory of how this superhero came to be. The film depicts issues from the early 1900’s, those including women’s rights, war, and race. Wonder Woman was able to break that stereotype of women in the 1900’s and set a new ground for feminism in the twenty first century, although there were some historical inaccuracies. Women in the 1900’s were expected to stay at home and see their husbands off as they went off to fight the war.…
Feminism is the advocacy of women 's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. This is an important belief for me as we are all human, and therefore all equal. Although feminism is the belief and practice of gender equality, it is frequently considered to be ‘all inclusive’. This includes the erasal of gender role stereotypes, bias, and double standards. It also includes equal pay, the right of bodily autonomy, and other equal rights movements.…