Although women suffrage was over, their suffering still continued. During the 1950’s and 60’s, a woman’s main job was to be a housewife. In fact, when filling out forms they put in the occupation “Housewife” as their job. Something that many men didn’t know was how exhausting it is to be a housewife. A lot of the time housewives are under pressure because they are expected to have the laundry done, groceries in the fridge, a warm meal cooked, clean house, after dinner she must wash all the dishes and big heavy pots with no help because that’s her “duty”. Their dreams of becoming something more than just a housewife is crushed at a very young age. Women are taught as little girls to fulfill one major task in life, which is to get a man and to keep him. Find a man with great wealth, a career that can support you and the five children she will have. Everyone has to deal with homework and all the bad ups that come with it. Men never have to worry about maintaining the house because they know their wife will get everything done. In Modern society, the ideology has changed completely. Nowadays men and women live together for years without being married to one another. There are very few housewives at home, it’s actually rare to see a housewife unless she is on maternity leave. Women are chasing after their dreams and conquering the world. Single women have more sex than married women and have more of a social life because they are not busy with married life chores. Women can do what a man does, society just has to get used to this idea. 

The first reading “The Politics of Housework” by Pat Mainardi really resonated with me because I related to it ALOT. When the author wrote ‘MEANING’ and explained the explanation was actual things I heard from my step dad. When my step dad was in our life he was very adamant about traditntal roles and how each role is made for a reason and how men and women should stick to them. This would infuriate me all the time. He would constantly say how he works and shouldn’t be doing housework responsibilities because it was a women’s job. When my mom. would ask for his help because she was tired of cooking , and cleaning and running errands he would flip and create this entire argument saying how if thats how she feels that he can easily leave her and find someone who can do everything he’s asking for without complaining. Glad to say my mom left. The second reading “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” written by Anne Koedt also resonated with me because it reminded me of a friend of mine who vented to a group of friends about how she felt about her sex life and how her husband didn’t care about her needs. Anytime she would vent to him about it he would just tell her “because you don’t concentrate on reaching your climax” . Honestly these two reading resonated with me because I do agree men are programmed and conditioned to think a certain way. All around us we have influences like our own family and household growing up to even media saying how things should and shouldn’t be by people we idolized.

I couldn’t help but draw parallels to today while reading the two pieces. The heteronormativity aside, it’s interesting how something written more than 50 years ago is still relevant, while the society (at least from a technological, industrial and architectural standpoint) is so different. Many households still face issues in dividing housework and childcare evenly, even when they share the expenditures. I’ve seen a lot of women talk about “weaponized incompetency” and how their male partners say they can’t do certain chores as good as them, or purposely do a bad job so that when the woman complains or does it herself, they can say “oh but you don’t like it even when I try to help”. Pat Mainardi basically says the same thing in so many words.

Similarly, Koedt’s claim how men only see sexual acts as a way of pleasing themselves, and it has rarely anything to do with women still rings true. We have to just look at the porn industry and we can see the evidence. Almost everything is catered to men, usually at the expense of women. We recently even read an essay stating the same. Also, it’s ironic how sex is portrayed as a largely male subject but the burden of contraceptives is almost entirely put on women. Furthermore, the side effects are downplayed or outright accepted as collateral damage when it comes to women, but the same side effects (even less severe) are the reason why male contraceptive pills are still not available. It’s hard not to be frustrated by the glaring unfairness we see in almost very aspect, all the while being accused of exaggerating the sexism we face. Also, the fact that people somehow manage to use women’s liberation to feed their twisted, perverse perspective, like “Equal rights, Equal fights” as a pass to be violent against women, is insane.

In this week I learned about the reading “The Politics of Housework” is Pat Mainardi discusses her personal experience of attempting to equalize the work of daily living with her husband in one of the most well-known early feminist works, published in 1969, and offers guidance to women who desire to share duties with their male spouses. I also learned how liberationists effectively changed how women were regarded in their cultures, defined the cultural and political roles of women in society, and reshaped mainstream society throughout the decades when the rise of feminism flourished. There has been a huge impact on women’s liberation movement that has happened throughout the years.Women have achieved huge societal advancements since 1960. Job growth has been especially impressive. I learned the definition of liberation is the act of setting someone free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression; release. When you say someone is liberated, you’re referring to their refusal to follow their society’s traditional norms or behavioral constraints. There was a famous slogan I learned about which was “the person is the political” and it means the feminist notion that women’s personal experiences are founded in their political circumstances and gender injustice.Working women rose, with much of this expansion taking place in traditionally “traditionally masculine” and professional occupations. The movement’s primary purpose was women’s liberation, hence the term “women’s liberation movement.” Long-held societal norms were disrupted, and the American legal and political systems underwent enormous upheavals as a result. Political and personal are two terms that are used interchangeably. The expression “the private is political” became popular in the late 1960s as a rallying cry for the student movement and second-wave feminism.

This week’s readings by Anne Koedt and Pat Mainardi were a pleasure to read. I loved how open, honest, and really they were when talking about their strong opinions on the many expectations and assumptions society, but even more so, men, have on women. I recently moved in with my boyfriend of three years and before moving in, I myself wondered how I might approach him on how I expect to be treated and vice versa. Simple questions and statements were somehow beginning to be very hard for me to ask and make because I almost felt embarrassed. Thinking about asking him questions such as, “Hey, if I’m cooking tonight, do you mind washing the dishes?” or “Hey, do you mind taking out the trash at the end of the day?” made me increasingly uncomfortable. I now realize that the reason I felt this way was because of my very own household growing up watching how my mother treated my father. Although my mother worked just as hard as my father, it was clear to see my mother held him in very high regard and made sure he didn’t lift a finger when he got home, no matter how exhausted she was herself. Although I appreciate the love she has for him, there were many times I would approach her and tell her that it wasn’t fair and that he wasn’t going to die if we ordered Uber Eats. After I realized this, I actually couldn’t wait to run and ask him these questions or tell him the expectations I have once moving in with him. Being able to stand up for ourselves and ask for equal treatment, as women are questions we should never even have to ask. The personal should no longer be political.