Armaan Mahmood 13T Discuss Atwood’s presentation of female characters in the Handmaid’s tale Atwood presents female characters as being oppressed slaves who are subject to sexual abuse and violation from the various male individuals. They are portrayed as characters who have an extremely scarce amount of freedom within a dystopian future. Due to this lack of freedom the novel consists of recurring themes such as an attempt to regain freedom and a constant power struggle. The idea of dehumanisation is another theme which is vividly portrayed by Atwood in terms of how her female characters are made to reproduce in order to stand a chance of surviving. Atwood presents the female characters as being both oppressed and dehumanised through how their freedom being stripped from them.
A People’s History of the United States: Reflection Chapter 6 The Intimately Oppressed This chapter mainly focuses on the injustices done against women, as we can tell from the first few sentences. Zinn gives numerous examples of women’s subordinance and invisibility to the rest of the world. Women at the time (approx. colonial to early 20th century) were seen as inferior and were used in more ways than one. According to Zinn, “…their physical characteristics became a convenience for men, who could use, exploit, and cherish someone who was at the same time servant, sex mate, companion, and bearer-teacher-warden of his children,” (Zinn 103).
Helene Cioux: The Laugh of the Medusa The Laugh of the Medusa is about how women shouldn’t be afraid to express themselves through literature. The article is written from a feminist’s point of view. According to the article, women are afraid to write in a world that is controlled by men. I chose a paragraph from the article to summarize: “Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs.
Sexism in The Hunger Games Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm once said, “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, "It's a girl. "” Collins demands that we take notice of the fact that society has made it acceptable to degrade women. The Hunger Games urges society to recognize the way it diminishes women by sexual objectification. From a young age women are told they should act a certain way, usually to please others. In the article, “Controlling your reality” Paige Pfleger states “Reality television can also preserve old fashioned notions about sexual stereotyping.
Why are female murderers represented so differently to men in broadcast fiction and news media? Female murderers are seen as more extraordinary and deviant than their male counterpart. Assumptions about gender roles and the ‘correct’ behaviour for men and women are reflected in how the media report crime and criminals, it is reflected in their use of stereotypical views of women. Bronwyn Taylor in (Marsh and Melville, 2010) researched how crime was reported in the print media and found significant differences between male and female criminals in the way their crimes were reported, the crimes themselves and the seriousness of them. Where females were the offenders, the emotional and irrational nature of the crime were outlined whereas for males the violence was made to seem ‘normal.’ Words such as ‘unnatural’ ‘unfeminine’ and ‘sadistic’ are boldly written in newspaper headlines when describing crimes committed by females, their appearances and lifestyles, unlike their male counterparts, are also of major interest.
The act of female cutting has been a controversial topic throughout today’s world. Many people believe that it is immoral and abusive to the women and children of these cultures that participate in the ritual, but most of the participants in these surgeries think that it is just a transition into womanhood or an act of purity. Alice Walker’s novel Possessing the Secret of Joy has opened the eyes of Westerners to this detrimental problem that has consumed many parts of Africa. Through her fictional story, she portrays the life of Tashi, a woman that has been demoralized and degraded through the traditional act of female genital cutting at a late age. Critics have depicted their ideas on female genital cutting over the years through their extensive and eclectic research.
One of the most powerful themes in the story that especially resonates with me is gender inequality. This essay effectively communicates unfair treatment of women in China and the amount of a support that women gave to the patriarchal system because punishment came from both: men and women. Punished women did not simply accept the treatment but acted in accordance with their culture: instead of standing up for themselves, they perpetuated the patriarchy by torturing other women. On the third page of the essay Kingston says that “to be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough” (p.396). This passage effectively points out that women were considered physically and mentally inferior to men; it also implies that their job could be easily accomplished by men as if women are imperfect, mindless beings that are incapable of completing a task.
For example, there are many cases in the first several stories of Arabian Nights when women are disloyal and evil, but there are also stories about the wrong of men. This is because Shahrazad wanted to balance human wrong and she attempts to expose the wrongs of both sexes equally. According to feminism, the women's and men's rights are equal. So, she tried to explain that women can also make mistakes as men and it is not right that they take into account only women's mistakes (Smith, 1).
This in turn makes life even harder for young African-Americans because now they are looked upon as being a “potential threat” to a person’s life. This only increases the amount of racism against African-Americans because people believe what they hear and may begin to develop of fear of what is in rap lyrics. As rap has progressed and evolved, it has begun to lean more and more towards sexually explicit lyrics, which in turn has damaged the image of women. Unlike the “old days” or the so called “early stages” of rap, today’s rap music portrays women in a negative light through sexually inappropriate remarks. Critics of my position do not fully understand how women are being dehumanized by these lyrics and in turn are now being looked upon as sexual objects to our youth.
Bullying- Boys vs. Girls Bullying has become more popular over the past years. The article “Girlfight” by Karen Fanning describes the ways boys and girls verbally bully, while the article “Culture of Cruelty” from Raising Cain, by Dan Kindlon explains the different ways boys bully and how they differ from the girls’ ways of bullying. While both boys and girls are bullied because they do not conform, girls tend to engage in a war of words while boys settle their disputes by physical acts of violence. Although it may seem that only girls are bullied because they do not conform, they are not alone.