Cages.

Cages.

You have to look at the feminist movement, the fight for women's rights and equality, from the big picture. 

Studying up on my feminist theory as proposed in a chapter titled 'Oppression' by Marilyn Frye for my upcoming Political Theory exam, I have been enlightened. I feel the message she is attempting to profess through her eloquent writing is an extremely important one. 

As already a person who likes to advocate the equality of all people, women and men, white and black, atheist and spiritual, rich and poor, being able to study such a topical issue in today's society is something I find extremely rewarding in that it allows my own worldliness and knowledge to grow and expand in order for my voice to become richer for the next time I wish to use it. 

Frye speaks pertinently about oppression, her opinion on it as a reality an interesting read. Using the metaphor of a bird in a cage to demonstrate the obvious oppression of women that still continues to exist within modern society, one begins to see just how every single individual's actions contributes to the immobilisation, reduction and molding of women. It is such a powerful extract that I feel it necessary to quote it here so as to allow your own thoughts on its meaning to develop...

'...Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in a cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around that wire at any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, yous till could not see why a bird would not have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why a bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon...'

It is in this light we must consider the subjugation and oppression of women, our struggle for opportunity and equality and the like. Frye goes on to suggest that for men, being a man is something which works in their favour in relation to many of life's goals. She does not believe that being a man will stand between him and anything. On the contrary, being a woman, for a woman, is what stands between so very much and not succeeding or being able to try to. Being a women relates to a higher chance of sexual assault and harassment, is associated with not having equal career opportunities to men, restrains social behaviours and so on and so forth. 

Frye is worth listening to whether you are a die hard feminist or don't care for anything to do with feminism what so ever. This. I believe, because not only does her principle of 'Cages' apply so powerfully to the experience of women, it is something which when one stops and thinks about it, can be applied to many of the major social issues the world faces today in relation to justice, equality and freedoms. 

Don't be a wire in the cage. 

Peace.x