Feminism Essays

I really enjoyed reading these essays about feminism and women’s rights. It was interesting to see how the arguments for feminism developed over time. The first essay by Mary Wollstonecraft was written in 1792. It was a bit hard to get through because the language was so different back then. I was able to get Wollstonecraft’s point, though. She talked mostly about education. During the late 18^th century, women had little to no education, as stated by Wollstonecraft when she says, “the education which women now receive scarcely deserves the name.” She believed that boys and girls should get the same opportunities for education— they should be in the same classes together and learn the same material. She says this would help young men and women learn how to be together in a purely platonic way. During this time period, women were treated like slaves “in a political and civil sense.” Wollstonecraft believed that women should be allowed the same education and government opportunities as men. She acknowledged that these changes would take some time for the world to get used to, but stressed that they were necessary changes to make.

The second essay by Margaret Fuller was a huge rebuttal to the arguments that men made about women’s rights. Like Wollstonecraft, she remarks that men see women as slaves. The men try to justify their treatment of women by saying that giving them rights would cause problems. “The beauty of the home would be destroyed, the delicacy of the sex be violated, the dignity of halls of legislation destroyed, by an attempt to introduce them there. Fuller retorts that women have proven themselves able to “express publicly the fullness of thought and emotion, without losing any of the peculiar beauty of her sex,” as shown by actresses and female Quaker preachers. Fuller goes on to say that women should be the ones representing themselves in the fight for women’s rights, rather than men, because men will not be able to represent women with justice to their concerns. She says that if women gain rights, many problems would be solved and it would “bring forth ravishing harmony.”

My favorite essay was “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. I had read this essay before, but I was able to gain some new perspective by reading it after the other two essays. I loved Steinem’s use of humor to get her point across. One line that stuck out to me, and sets the stage for the rest of the essay, is this: “Whatever a ‘superior’ group has will be used to justify its plight, Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be ‘stronger’ than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be ‘weaker.’ Logic has nothing to do with oppression.” The privileged groups in power often try to find ways to rationalize and support their power, even if the reasons are completely arbitrary. Steinem says that if men could menstruate and women could not, then men would use their periods as a way to validate their power. They would say things like only men could serve in the military because “You have to give blood to take blood.” Sanitary supplies would be readily available for free. Men would find ways to use science against women by saying that since women don’t biologically measure natural cycles, they wouldn’t have the same sense of time, space, and mathematics as men. One of the most thought-provoking excuses that I read was that religions would say, “Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean.” I found this curious because in real life many religions say that women are unclean when they are menstruating. It’s interesting to think how this would be turned around if men were the ones who menstruated. This whole essay brings up a great point-- that we can’t let people justify their supremacy through completely superficial reasons. We have to stop thinking we are better than others and instead strive for equality.