Useless Sex &* Do They Hear You When You Cry

1039 Words5 Pages
Her Tradition, Her Freedom The United States has been known as “The World’s Melting Pot” since the Second World War. The United States has so many different ethnicities and cultures, that the way most Americans’ view situations are different from other cultures’ beliefs and views. Gender roles, faith, beliefs, traditions, and society change from city to city as well as country to country. That is why the world is so diverse; no two people feel exactly the same way about everything. Cultural plays a very large role in people’s views of gender roles. In both essays “the Useless Sex” and “Do They Hear You When You Cry?” the main characters are women. In both essays these women undergo their cultural traditions causing them to suffer life-altering experiences. In both instances the women are forced to choose to between their traditions or their freedom. In “the Useless Sex,” the author Oriana Fallaci from Florence, Italy, she travels to Pakistani. Little does she know that Pakistani is nothing like her home town of Florence. Observing outside the hotel they were staying at, she saw something rather strange. She found herself viewing a wedding of an arranged marriage. An arranged marriage is when the parents find suitable spouses for their children from an appropriate family. Arranged marriages are hugely practiced mostly in Asia and Africa. It was a practice that avoided courtship. Chapter one for this book begins with a story about a young girl and her arranged marriage. She did not understand what truly was going on. Pakistanis believe that females do not have a large role in life. Pakistani females are only woman in their cultural, and their job is producing many sons for their husbands. The girl cried as Fallaci tried to talk to her, because she was scared. The young girl had never seen her so-to-be husband; she had never talked to him, or even touched him.
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