Women’s Studies Midterm

I.
E. Marilyn Frye provides an all-encompassing definition of oppression as it applies to women.
Comparing it to a bird cage, she describes how no matter what a woman chooses to think or do,
she’ll run into an obstacle, therefore surrounded, stuck. She also explains oppression as a way
of space, how women are “pressed”, flattened, reduced, made to feel small and to cross their
legs, “immobilized”. Frye distinguishes real oppression from it being watered-down to an
almost meaninglessness when men try to use it explaining how they can’t cry. She explains that
the rituals of chivalry from men are also just another way to prove women incapable.

H. Adrienne Rich believes that compulsory heteronormativity has been created in an attempt to
cut off women ties with other women, resulting in the loss of an extremely valuable community
of strong powerful females in unity. This breakdown is also heavily pushed onto women by
society and most literature, in social sciences, religion and media. It shrinks lesbianism down to
simply acting out of bitterness towards men, that they’re deviant and abhorrent. It diminishes
women to merely caretakers and homemakers, all in effort to fuel male success in industrial
capitalism and control.

F. Adrienne Rich develops the lesbian continuum as a continued creation of the lesbian
existence through women thriving community. It is a strictly women-identified experience, that
deals with richening the inner life, generally of women opposed to marriage. It is a form of
bonding over the shared oppression(s) and experiences of women. A community formed
through woman to woman relationships where all topics are welcomed, political views are
respected and advice is spread. Women are able to move in and out of this continuum
throughout their life whether they identify as lesbian or not.

L. Defined through the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist group, identity politics
explains how the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of the
identity of those experiencing the oppression. No other movement has recognized the unique
oppression that Black women face. Identity politics combines race, class and gender
oppression, to form beliefs socialism is the most viable solution, as the systems of
Capitalism does not support those that produce, only those at the top. Identity politics are not
anti-man or part of lesbian separatism because those don’t provide as a viable strategy and
they leave out too many people, these politics promote solidarity among Black people in
America.

II.
2. 599 words without citations
Iris Marion Young explains in Throwing Like A Girl how women are forced from a young
age to take up less space and to under-utilize their body’s full potential. This is exemplified
through sports specifically in Young’s example of throwing a ball. It sheds light on how
throughout society men and women move and take up space very differently, and seeks to
answer why, through three modalities; ambiguous transcendence, inhibited intentionality and
discontinuous unity.
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Ambiguous transcendence has everything to do with immanence, being immanent

means to remain within, trapped, indwelling. Young explains that rather being born with
immanence and learning to move away from it and become more open to the world, feminine
bodies remain encapsulated and unable to leave this place. It’s inherent in the throwing
example that rather than using the entire body to throw the ball, moving hips, stepping forward
and following through, the girl’s body remained in one place, with only her arm moving. This
clearly had a different result than the boy’s ball in how far it traveled and how accurate it was.
It’s a pretty big metaphor for life for a girl compared to a boy. This teaches girls at a young age
that their capabilities are smaller than a boy and this can deeply affect how girls view
themselves compared to guys.
This then leads into inhibited intentionality, the I can’t so I won’t ideal. This is the deeply
rooted idea that if something looks difficult to accomplish a woman might immediately rule it
out. Even if the body itself is capable of achieving a goal, the mind will convince it otherwise.
Even if the woman goes to attempt the goal, but her body doesn’t allow her to, it’s essentially
the body contradicting itself, “their bodies aim to be enacted but at the same time stiffen
against the performance of the task” (Young,37). This also leads to “a frequent consequence of
feminine hesitancy” (Young,37), compared to males who would probably just go for it.
The third modality is discontinuous unity, when the body doesn’t work as a whole.
Young explains very well how this works with inhibited intentionality when “the character of
the inhibited intentionality whereby feminine motion severs the connection between aim and
enactment, between possibility in the world and capacity in the body, itself produces this
discontinuous unity.” (Young,38) It has to do with women’s bodies not working as a whole, they
move one limb at a time, not being able to work together. This is what creates the lack of body
unity and leads to poor coordination.
Women also see their bodies as fragile things to protect, dividing the attention from the
said activity to prevent themselves from getting hurt. Young’s entire idea here is “to the extent
that a woman lives her body as a thing, she remains rooted in immanence, is inhibited, and
retains a distance from her body as transcending movement and from engagement in the
world’s possibilities.”(Young,39) It is displayed through women not performing to their fullest
capabilities, through women not allowing themselves to take up very much space.
I believe these modalities are made very obvious in co-ed sports, when watching how
girls compete against boys. Boys tend to be more aggressive than girls. I think this can definitely
be combated through teaching girls and boys the exact same strategies when it comes to
aggression and endurance. Sports teach life lessons on how much kids believe in themselves
and their abilities. For girls to believe that than can perform just as tough as boys and not be
treated differently could really lead to the same results later in life.

4. 578 words without citations

Judith Lorber describes gender as something created by humans and kept alive by the
humans that continue to perform it every day. She explains that it is extremely pervasive in
society to the point where, without it, many people would feel stripped of much of their
identity. Lorber explains how in western society gender is split into two categories; male and
female based on physiology, “the process of gendering and its outcome are legitimated by
religion, law, science, and the society’s entire set of values” (Lorber,56).
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When Lorber describes transgender people, she explains that these are people who
don’t feel like they fit with the stereotyped gender that they were born into and they would like
to transition to the opposite gender. She does point out though that the “possible combinations
of genitalia, body shapes, clothing, mannerisms, sexuality, and roles [that] could produce
infinite varieties in human beings, the social institution of gender depends on the production
and maintenance of a limited number of gender statuses and of making the members of these
statuses similar to each other” (Lorber,57). She thinks that these two genders are very limiting.
Dean Spade explains the difference that people who are transgender experience when it
comes to gender. After a person has transitioned to a different gender, gender becomes a
much more complicated thing. At that point society wants to put trans people in even more of a
box. Now that they have transitioned, everything from their style, hair, movements and
mannerisms, voice, must match their transitioned gender. If it doesn’t the system becomes
disrupted and society has a harder time accepting them.
This is greatly shown when trans people are trying to convince doctors and surgeons to
perform transitioning surgeries on them. People that want the surgeries need to show proof of
why the surgery is necessary and part of their identity. Trans people that want to get surgery
are often talked down by doctors and counselors. They are told to get other cosmetic surgeries
that aren’t what they’re looking for. Spade tells how some doctors will leave scars that could’ve
been avoided out of their disagreement with the surgery. Surgeons also tend to see the surgery
as either a male or female one, it can’t just be about the change that occurs, it has a great deal
to do with a switch from one to the other. One doctor even admits to bullying his patients to
find out their gender, “The girls cry; the gays get aggressive” (Spade ,14).
Spade finishes his argument stating how “Transsexuals are in a double bind- it is
pathological not to adhere to gender norms, just as it is to adhere to them. The creation of the
image of transsexuals as exemplary adherents to gender stereotypes requires an understanding
of transsexuality that both fully accepts the medical definition of transsexual and ignores the
multiple non-norm-adhering narratives that trans people produce outside of medical context”
(Spade,17). This is huge, it explains how no one gets their real definition of trans from the
people experiencing it, and that is why there is such a gap in the understanding of trans people,
the assumptions.
Both Lorber and Spade, although focused on different topics, shed a lot of light on the
fact that these concepts are heavily regulated and are very pervasive in society. Lorber shows
how limited the two genders can be, and Spade shows how people are forced into them and
prevented and punished when they try to stretch these boundaries.