This week’s readings have concreted some of my vague knowledge about the power of gender oppression on private life. I often blamed the gender inequality at home on the individual men who “are too dumb to understand simple things like that.” But after reading both articles I realized how it is majorly the society itself that shaped this inequality. Men are often unaware of the problem and its roots. One part of “Politics of Housework” that I found very explanatory is this: “In a sense, all men everywhere are slightly schizoid-divorced from the reality of maintaining life. It is almost a cliché that women feel greater grief at sending a son off to a war or losing him to that war because they bore him, suckled him, and raised him. The men who foment those wars did none of those things and have a more superficial estimate of human life.” Such aspects, that further separate the mentality of genders, affect the creation of gender roles, in which women take care of “maintaining life,” a.k.a housework, while men get more time “to play with his mind.”

I kept connecting the themes of the articles with my personal experiences. When reading “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” by Koedt Anne, it became apparent to me that many women’s insecurities come from some sexual rules that were invented by men. I was surprised to learn that “women need no anesthesia inside the vagina during surgery, this pointing to the fact that the vagina is in fact not a highly sensitive area.” I think many women, including me, have thought that there is something wrong with them and many have lost interest in having sex simply because of the idea (powered by a male-dominated society) that their vagina is the ultimate center of pleasure. It was also relieving and empowering to see an about female sexuality that was written so long ago.