Philosophy 235
Essay 1
In Frye’s writing, she shows that oppression, sexism, coercion, and exploitation work together to portray that women suffer a double bind within each of these topics, but I there are some points to which I disagree with or think that can be expanded. With the first point being oppression, I will bring up an idea of how women cannot be both and how that fit into a double bind. Sexism includes both sex-marking and sex-announcing, I will talk about how it’s important to recognize the counterpoint to her argument and just some things I think should be added. The last point is coercion and exploitation and how the free will of women essentially does not exist, I will counter this with my thoughts on the issue. …show more content…
It’s basically setting choices up in a way that the only option that seems more reasonable is the option that benefits the oppressor the most. The example we discussed in class was about the robber and whether he should kill you or take your money. This shows that exact example of manipulation. The robber limits the choices and makes the choice you are most likely to choose, the choice that favors them. “... by manipulating the intended victim’s perception and judgement through various kinds of influence and deception” (57). Exploitation is to efficiently exploit is to “make their interests my interests” but doing so in a way to keep their traits as humans. This includes creativity, thoughts, mindset, etc. Also doing so in a way that does not use force because once force is used, it will take away the willingness of the person you are trying to exploit. She talks about both of these in regards to enslavement with the example of a sex worker along with the three stages: abduction, seasoning, and criminalization. I don’t want to go too much into this because we already discussed it in class. A good point was brought up with how Frye says that women basically don’t have free will. As in, we never get to truly choose, and that point she brings up should make us uncomfortable. For me, it does, but it is also hard to explain why. Part of me think that she is right, due to what women face in life in accordance to societal measure and the expectations of them sometimes I think that women don’t have a free choice. Another part of me says “no way!!”, we get to choose! But then I think about it more and yes, we do get to choose. We can choose to propose to our significant others, we can choose to stay home, we can choose to work. The important thing is not whether or not we have the ability to choose, but how those choices are seen and how those choices overall reflect who are as women. So,