On Monday we’ll discuss two short essays: Susan Brownmiller’s “Femininity” and Noel Perrin’s “The Androgynous Man.” Both authors are addressing expectations for men and women -- specifically how we are all expected to live up to certain standards of masculinity or femininity (depending on our sex).
While Brownmiller and Perrin have different perspectives and interests, they do seem to agree about certain issues. There are also some interesting differences between the two essays (besides the obvious one that Brownmiller is concentrating on women and Perrin on men).
Leave a comment about how these essays compare. Or simply comment on any claim or observation made by either author you find intriguing.
16 comments:
Both Susan Brownmiller and Noel Perrin support feminism from different perspectives. Brownmiller seems to be telling women that it is bad if the spirit inside them rubs against what femininity is asking of them. Perrin states that the feminist movment has helped men realize that they don't necessarily have to be 100% tough, and, for example, they can exercise softer paternal duties. What I find interesting is that Perrin looks at exercising paternal duties with his daughters as unmanly. Isn't being a loving father (if that is one's vocation) very manly, and indeed a part of manhood?
Amy Graziano
I don't understand why Amy believes that "Femininity" tells women that "it is bad if the spirit inside of them rubs against what femininity is asking of them." Brownmiller is communicating the exact opposite. She argues that women conform to femininity, "a nostalgic tradition of imposed limitations," by ignoring what Amy might call their spirit (hopes, dreams, ambitions, etc.): "[O]ne works at femininity by accepting restrictions, by limiting one's sights, by choosing an indirect route, by scattering concentration and not giving one's all as a man would to his own, certifiably masculine, interests." Brownmiller wants women to abandon the status quo of gender relations and to free themselves from a social code designed to reinforce what she views to be an unnaturally-earned masculine dominance. Certainly Brownmiller would not think it a bad thing for a woman’s spirit to “rub” against what femininity is asking of her. On the contrary, she would think that such an abrasion is healthy, good, and should continue in that woman and in all women. To it simply, I think Amy has confused Brownmiller’s support of feminism with a support of femininity.
I thought it was very interesting how Susan Brownmiller calls attention to how in the 1980s, after many of the major happenings regarding the feminist movement, there is "female competition for two scarce resources-men and jobs-is especially fierce." If these scarce resources are a result from the feminist movement, then was the feminist movement a success? I think Brownmiller is subtly suggesting that in some specific areas, it was not.
I would have to agree with Raymond's viewpoint on Brownmiller's essay "Feminity." This essay seems to showing how women have to be placed in a certain mold in order to be accepted by society, or more specifically, by men. For example, in her essay, Brownmiller states that women are viewed as "insufficiently feminine" are labeled as "mannish or neutered or simply unattractive" (277). This essay is very similar to Perrin's essay "The Androgynous Man," as Perrin argues that when young men are growing up they are pressured to fit into a "manly" mold. In other words, they have to be tough, fearless, and unemotional.
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