Ryan Rolison
English 1310
Section 101
Jon Marc Smith
“Battle of the Sexes”
Men and women have not been and are not involved in an everlasting “war” amongst the other. We as humans have always put too much emphasis on unimportant factors and have made the mistake of making every conflict a “good vs. evil” battle, or in this case, “male vs. female”. In bad relationships, both the male and the female either want to have some sense of power or control over the other, or they are both too passive and expect the other to take over. In Karen Horney’s “The Distrust Between the Sexes”, she explains why a “battle of the sexes” doesn’t exist. She compares the ideas and philosophies in Sigmund Freud’s “Oedipus Complex” to her beliefs that personality clashes between a man and woman are indirectly affected by his and her childhood. Horney says that “[The man vs. woman relationship] apparently has nothing to do with the individual partner, but rather with the intensity of the affects and with the difficulty of taming them.”(Horney 108)
In “The Distrust Between the Sexes”, Horney does an excellent job of connecting a person’s background to his personality. She also ties all of that into how a relationship between a man and woman work. It is believed by many that it has always been a man vs. woman conflict. Horney says, “… the fear of love will always be mixed with the fear of what we might do to the other person, or what the other person might do to us.”(Horney 110) She explains why we are always so defensive when it comes to our relationships. We fear of opening up to our partner and disclosing personal information because when we do that, we give our partner a certain source of power. Women, however, more so than men, generally feel for a need of trust, love, and affection. They put themselves out there and “open up” sooner and in a way, will try to force relationships. Men, on the other hand, keep to themselves and unconsciously suppress...