This week’s readings made me think a lot about how men don’t view women as real people. They want us to do it all and won’t even take the time to understand us. I also began to think about how taboo sex is among women growing up. We’re told not to talk about it. And oftentimes, we aren’t properly taught about our bodies. We were told to keep our virginity while men spent their younger years constantly engaging in sexual activity. This produced so many sexually repressed women. Growing up, my mom never even told me about sex. Normally, when a child hits puberty or goes into high school, their parents would sit them down and give them “the talk”. My mom never gave me the talk. I used to beg her, seeing as all my friends had had it with their parents. Finally, she said to me that she wouldn’t have to give me the talk because she knew I wouldn’t do it. Sex is normal, though. There comes a time when everyone has to have it. I think I deserved to know about it. Instead, I like many others, had to go searching for my answers elsewhere. Sex should be spoken about. We need to normalize educating young women properly on sex instead of just telling them “don’t do it”. I also believe that we should start raising young boys to do household chores. Men shouldn’t be reliant on women to do the simplest of things. And it’s not fair to the wives who have to put up with the husband’s incompetence.

This week’s reading felt affirming. Connecting the fact that women are oppressed even in the home and men take part in that oppression when they assume women are going to take care of the house work was super affirming for me because i don’t ever think i’ve heard men acknowledge how they take part in our oppression it’s usually phrases like “not all men” in even the most violent of experiences that something as simple as housework almost seems trivial like it was said in the article. I often find myself explaining to men why is isnt ok to invade a woman’s space or to take up space themselves in a way that does not allow women to be heard. To me it’s obvious and to them they think we benefit from some sort of privilege yet almost every other day i see on the news women suffering at the hands of a person they turned down or broke up with. It is super wild to me how men can deflect and dismiss and devalue women’s experiences and makes it difficult to be able to communicate with most men i’ve met. The readings always grant me an emotional response about the way i have to move in the world to be heard and how i can imagine other women have to behave to be considered human and worthy of “protection” it arms my mind with information to offer up when in conversations with peers and colleagues in terms of where we are in feminism and our successes in certain areas. 

This week’s readings “The Politics of Housework” and “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” allowed me to understand and reflect on how the heteropatriarchal system our society is based on oppresses women. The first reading made me aware of how women doing the house chores places them in an inferior place to men. Before this reading, I knew about gender roles but never thought about they play a huge role in the power dynamic between heterosexual couples. The fact that doing something like washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, or cooking regularly, could be a big threat to most men’s masculinity it’s even funny to me. In my opinion, doing the housework it’s the responsibility of every member of the house, if you are habiting in a house, you should do part of the housework. Men need to acknowledge this and stop being lazy because it’s not women’s responsibility to do the dirty work. This is definitely a clear example of how “the personal is political” and how these common issues between couples or families are rooted in a huge system that oppresses women. Regarding “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” I think that it is interesting and messed up that there are so many misconceptions about women’s sexuality and that even sex it’s shaped by the patriarchy. Honestly, I’m very confused about Freud’s theories about women’s sexuality because I feel they have no real fundament. I get that they’re based on his penis envy theory and women’s supposed inferiority to men, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t know if he took biology into account (I don’t think so) or only his theories but he should have taken biology into account to give a reasonable theory, but I guess he was mostly focused on proving women’s inferiority because they don’t have a penis. I will keep investigating bout him.

This week’s reading was based on the stereotypes of the role women have to play during the 1960s and the myth of women’s orgasms. The reading, “The politics of the housewives” made me think differently and learn more about the inequality in the household. When Mainardi writes examples like “I don’t mind sharing the housework, but I don’t do it very well. We should each do the things we’re best at. MEANING: Unfortunately I’m no good at things like washing dishes or cooking.” It seems like men are manipulating or taking advantage of females to do household work and not help them clean around the house. Not only in households but whenever women would speak up for themselves men would find a way to say to boost their self-esteem and make women feel like they’re the bottom. It’s a terrible thing to do especially since this has been going on since the 1960s causing liberated women to fight for their rights and end sexism.

Another reading called, “The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm” explains how male partners aren’t allowing females to feel the same pleasure as men do during sex. The only thing male cares about is getting pleasure not caring or focusing on a women’s orgasm. Men don’t know the anatomy of a woman leading women to get discomfort during sex, this causes us, females, to fake an orgasm or pretends that it feels good in order to not hurt the male’s feelings and bring their pride down. This was an interesting reading to read about, what was interesting and upsetting is that Freud rule that women would be cured if they were in a mental hospital so that their natural role as women would “come back” to them and continue showing society the stereotype role of being a woman.

This week’s readings were interesting. It made me think more about how I saw household chores when I lived with my partner and how things were seen before or even now when it comes to a sexual encounter. In the reading “The Politics of Housework” by Pat Mainardi, Pat explains how there is never an equal distribution of household chores. One always wants to do less because of not being “good at it,” which is always a male response—leaving the female to do all the household chores and leading to arguments because one does more than the other. Pat mentions that women are conditioned to be the only ones capable of performing household chores. Plenty of commercials lures women to follow the best product to keep their floors shiny. When I lived with my ex-partner, I recall that we naturally divided chores. There was nothing that we both didn’t like or did better. That might be the case with my next partner, but I can see that more people deal with this issue sometime in their lives.

The reading “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” by Anne Koedt speaks about how male partners only care for their orgasm and don’t allow their female partners to feel the same orgasm. Women indeed need to be stimulated differently than their male partners. Women tend not to be outspoken when it comes to their own needs. The thought behind it is that women were used to bare children and tending to their husbands. They weren’t asked what they needed or what felt good for them. Once, my curiosity came out to ask my grandmother why she had 12 children. She responded that she had no choice. She was baring more children to make my grandfather happy, and it could potentially lead them to make more money because there would be more hands to help on the ranch.

While reading this week’s articles I thought about the liberation of women in the 70s and how much prejudice women suffer during those time. Thinking about today’s society and how much it has changed but how some things remain the same is eye opening. From personal experience all my male family members depend on their wives to do most of the house chores, if they are left alone, they are more likely to mess up the house then clean it. The liberation of women is a fitting example of what can be achieve because there has been a big development since the 1970s til now. The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm by Anne Koedt had to be one of the articles I found most interesting, many men do not really know how please a woman the right way because of their lack of knowledge about women anatomy. Women do not really talk about their needs in intimacy because it is frown upon and the society, we are in now makes it uncomfortable for women to talk about it freely and so that leads us to not let our partners know that were not being please or fake an orgasm because we do not want to hurt their pride. Therefore, the liberation of women is so Important, and the liberated women show us and make part of that because we’ll just be going around not knowing what examples are of how they could be liberated, this helps us learn and experience.  

Antione Malave-Reading Reflection 9

I have mixed feelings regarding the two articles perhaps i was taking them to literally or out of context. What the articles did was highlight the need for woman to not only compromise sexually but also in the privacy of their home. Those elements were made concise and easy to digest. The part I have a hard time with in “The politics of House work” article is that it Makes it points on the backs of the Neanderthal male sex. The man described or portrayed in this article I would describe visually as a caveman in a tuxedo. She is in a Its a tug of war for housework with a cave dwelling man who may or may not be able to dress himself, and don’t forget this exemplifies all men. It balances between taking her man for a walk and explaining what woman are subjected to on a daily basis . The myth of the female orgasm explains how woman even in the bedroom restrict themselves of pleasure in order to please their partner. I thought it was intriguing I never even considered the possibility of this being an area where woman would need to moderate themselves and deny themselves pleasure.

This weeks readings had m considering how these dynamics play out in my gay relationships. My ex-husband (who I was with for 12 years) and I were TERRIBLE at dividing the household chores. Cooking, dishes, laundry, groceries were all my domain. Neither of us were big cleaners beyond necessity, so we maybe divided that equally. It wasn’t healthy, and many of the same arguments were used by him. I was better at it, I enjoyed it more, I liked things done a particular way. It’s funny the way that labor still mostly landed upon one partner in a same sex relationship. It’s also funny that if we were ever asked that terrible question, who’s the woman in the relationship, that designation fell upon me by definition of the fact that I did these chores. Gay men are as misogynistic as any man.
I also recognize the ways in which gay men also transpose heterosexual dynamics on gay sex roles. Frequently the top (penetrative partner) is regarded as the more masculine, the superior of the two. Bottoms (receptive partner) are much derided, there to serve the tops. Even the names top and bottom suggest a hierarchy. While I understand the parallels to hetero sex, it is impressive that in a dynamic where two partners have the same sex organs and essentially the same orgasm, we still feel the need to impose this power dynamic that has been passed down to us from the oppressive patriarchy. Why within the gay community, where we have the opportunity to establish ourselves outside of these structures do we still feel the need to adhere to them. I guess that speaks to the pervasiveness of the patriarchy.