Patriarchy In Cool For You

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Cool for you is a book about an Irish-American girl and her progress while growing up in the working class while living in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a young Catholic girl who attends Catholic school where she feels students get treated unfairly due to their class. She is a tomboy heroin addict who has many family issues. She encountered sexual activities at an early age and had many different jobs. Throughout the course of the novel she states how she wants to be an astronaut but instead she becomes a poet. All through the novel Eileen discusses her female experiences and what it’s like to be a female in today’s world, while illustrating her female experience through fifty years of being a female. What is gender? According to the University…show more content…
Johnson, “What Is This Thing Called Patriarchy?” discusses the social inequalities, privileges and oppression between men in women in today’s society and uses history to explain the present. The essay talks about America living in a patriarchic society because of this idea that men have between control and fear. They feel as they need to control everything and the fear of not having that control makes them even more controlling. Women tend to be devalued and discriminated because they are women. For many years women have been trying to gain more respect from other women but mostly men, so that they can be equal to them. This happens in work, schools, and in the home Cool For You portrays a lot of patriarchy situations. For example when all the students prepare to go to the Arsencia Beach party, they chose a male rather than a female to pick up the liquor for them. This displays male dominance because they are taking control of getting the liquor. Another situation is When the mother feels that her son terry got suspended for drinking because he was suppose to play a male figure in the house since they have no father and he disappointed the family by getting drunk. Throughout the novel Eileen discusses her school experiences and you can analyze situations in which they portray how the males ruled the schools and the women were just
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