My english language teacher gave my class an eighty minute rant on feminism this morning.
Sure, I agree that men and women are equal and should be treated equally, and I realise that the term 'feminist' means equilibrium between men and women, however I think a lot of opinions and thoughts that feminists hold away from their title, give them the stereotype that they have in today's society.
My teacher (who I will refer to as msj) went into discussing, or more lecturing rather, the pictures displayed at the front of newspapers. Some famous girl with flimsy, half-decent clothing on, on the front of the Herald Sun.
"It is wrong on both men and women parts, suggesting that men only think about one thing all of the time and women are only seen on a physical basis! Women are going to look at her and go "wow wish I looked like that" or think "guys will only like me if I look and dress a certain way, they will love me if I show half of my body", while guys are sitting there going "yeah look at the tits on her!" How is that okay?! What is that teaching people? Women are treated like animals!"
Maybe its just me, but I believe there are a lot of things I think are 'wrong' about her argument.
See, men and women brains are completely different. Men are made to want to have sex, be interested in the matter and if they're of straight-sexuality, be interested in looking at an attractive woman. This isn't to say guys only care about sex, it's just to say that men think about sex more than women do on a general basis and when we're talking about selling newspapers, we're talking about men and women on a general basis and the general men and women in our society.
If a woman has consented to be at the front of a newspaper in revealing clothing whether its just for the money and/or the satisfaction of getting her bits out there to impress, how is it wrong that it's going to grab a mans attention? It's selling the newspaper! Was that not the point to begin with?
Women have sex hormones too, and like men, they want to seem appealing. You don't see attractive men on the front of newspaper covers, because women aren't as likely to become mentally and sexually stimulated by it as men are when they see an attractive woman on the cover.
If women look at the cover and think "I should look like that!" That is their own issue, their individual insecurity. Why is it suddenly the medias job to make women feel good about themselves? Would that sell money in the long term? Nope. I'm not saying it is right, but it is the way society functions.
Another topic msj brought up was the debate about women having to stay home and look after the kids while men went out and worked. Allegedly, it is wrong that men expect women to look after the family and expect a meal on the table when they get home while they go out in the world and work, bringing in the money.
You know, as much as we deny it or try to hide ourselves from the fact, the truth is that when it comes to our life style, a lot of it runs from animal instincts. We are all animals at the end of the day, yes we are technologically advanced but again, we have those hormones that tell us to behave in a certain way. Most women instinctively, want to have children at some point in their life. They have high levels or hormones that allow them to be nurturing and affectionate to bring up a child. The man is going to have to provide for this; like women, the animalistic point of life, is to reproduce; so how does a man do that? Well he has that testosterone for a reason, he can easily create muscle and is usually bigger than a woman. Well he's probably not going to look after the children in his tribe and clean the 'nest', he is going to go 'hunt', he's going to get with the other males in the tribe and go get dinner so the woman and child can live, he's going to protect his family and land because he wants there to be a suitable, good place for HIS child and the children within his tribe, he wants them to be brought up healthy and to survive so they can continue this process.
In this day and age, women are having the kids, working, trying (or at least trying to try) to stay sexually appealing and are looking after the home, what good is that to anyone? A lot of women want to have the kids but want the man to stay at home while they bring home the bread and create a career. It's called a balance, something I think everybody should come to terms with. We have hormones for a reason, of course we can go out there and make a career for our selves and what not, but by going against what really is nature and thinking that we can do it all and be the man and woman, is not at all a balanced way of living and is completely denying the truth of what we are biologically.
On top of all the opinions, I wasn't at school to learn about this, I wasn't in history, philosophy or in the debating team, I was in english LANGUAGE. And it's not like msj was encouraging us to hold and share our own opinion, she said on a couple of occasions, "I believe this and I hope you guys do or will..." That is not a stable teaching method. It is not going to produce balanced, open minded young thinkers at the end of it and if that isn't what school is about, I don't want any part of it.
I'm not sure if I went on my own rant there, going off topic in any places. But that is my opinion. I can say that msj set me to expressing and thinking more deeply into my own opinion, though it was wrong that we were looked down at if we had different opinions and expressed them in class, which was the case to the few that spoke up very shortly at the end of her speech-that had not a pause in the entire thing.
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