A Feminist Approach to Every Day Use

A Feminist Approach to Every Day Use

Throughout history, women have been assigned a role which has scarcely allowed them to develop their own identities. Women have been cataloged as the inferior sex. They have been relegated to the house and, most importantly, have been imposed a wealth of norms and patterns of behavior that men regarded as "natural" for women. However, the concept of gender is socially constructed; therefore, there are no real concepts of "feminine" and "masculine." There are no reasons as to why women should be doomed to the raise of children, never to clearly convey her stance towards the many spheres of life, always be extremely polite and wear pink whenever possible. Likewise, there are no coherent reasons as to why men should control women because they are incapable of articulating their own decisions towards life and its intricacies. In the same vein, it is absurd to think that it is men's nature to be very competitive in each one of his actions or that in order to be a man an overt aggressiveness has to direct every one action.
Women have been undeniable abused since immemorial times. Having been denied formal education -only from the early 19 century all children were expected to receive education- and rights, ignored in every one need and perspective, women were considered to be less than human and thus tortured and oppressed. We can perfectly recall, for instance, the fact that since Aristotle's times women used to be labelled as 'imperfect men.' Even in the eastern world, women used to be murdered because of the shameful fact of delivering girl babies. It was not even questioned whether it was men or not, the ones responsible for the sexual condition of the new born.
In a more linguistic note, in the 1970's the new revolutionary work of professor Robin Lakoff demonstrated and raised the inquiry for further research on gender studies. Her book "Language and woman's place" made it clear that women and men do not speak in the same way and that a lot of language...

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