Lori Quijano

Mrs. Gleason
English 11
13 January 2014
Winter Break Synthesis Essay: Feminism
In the 1960s, the suffrage movement allowed for the 19 th Feminism is
considered a widely controversial topic due to the misconceptions associated with it
due to the splintered views and evolution of the movement. Develop an essay
supporting an argument on whether or not feminism is still necessary and relevant
in today's society using the following sources.

Essay Outline
Introduction
Hook
Thesis
Para 1
Misconceptions on feminism
-demonizing all men/victimizing all women
battle of genders
-bra-burners; anti-family
-different branches and splintered views on feminism gives a poor reputation
Para 2
"Female Privilege"
- benevolent sexism
- female privilege is not an advantage/ promotes sexism/women
subordinance/dependence on patriarchy in order to benefit
-"female privilege levels the field, if not makes it worse for men in many
areas. Feminism then reached their goal and there is no need for feminism
anymore"
Para 3
"The Battle is Over" / "It's not my problem"
-Due to misconceptions, many people, including women, are against
feminism
Conclusion
-sum up with powerful resolving statements

-"it's not perfect & it will never be perfect

Source A
Interview: Phyllis Schlafly Still Championing the Anti-Feminist Fight
March 3, 2011
MARTIN (host): My guest today is conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly. She might be
best known for her successful campaign to stop passage of the Equal Rights
Amendment. Let's listen to a clip of Phyllis Schlafly from March 1973.
Ms. PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY (Lawyer, Author, Radio Host): Since the women are the ones
who bear the babies and there's nothing we can do about that, our laws and
customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support.
It is his obligation and his sole obligation. And this is exactly and precisely what we
will lose if the Equal Rights Amendment is passed.
MARTIN: The Equal Rights Amendment fell three states short of becoming a
constitutional amendment, due in large part to the grassroots campaign led by
Phyllis Schlafly.
Many people with your background have embraced the feminist movement. And I
wanted to ask, when is it that you started to question the feminist movement?
Ms. SCHLAFLY: When I went to the hearings for the Equal Rights Amendment and I
heard what they were saying, and they had absolutely no benefit to offer women,
but we could see a lot of disadvantages in it.
MARTIN: What is it that you saw that made you feel that way?
Ms. SCHLAFLY: What that amendment would do is to make all laws sex-neutral. Well,
the typical, classic law that is not sex-neutral is the draft registration law. And we
were still in the Vietnam War in 1972You're going to have a new amendment for
women? And the first thing is they'll have to sign up for the draft like their brothers.
Now, that was an unsaleable proposition.
MARTIN: Talk a little bit about the new book, if you would. What is it - your message
in this book that you feel is particularly current for today?
Ms. SCHLAFLY: A lot of people don't understand what feminism is. They think it is
about advance and success for women, but it's not that at all. It is about power for
the female left. And they have this, I think, ridiculous idea that American women are
oppressed by the patriarchy and we need laws and government to solve our
problems for us. And they're always crying around about things like the differences
between men and women are just a social construct. So they're really in a fight with
human nature. I would not want to be called a feminist. The feminists don't believe
in success for women and, of course, I believe that American women are the most

fortunate people who ever lived on the face of the earth, can do anything they
make up their minds to do.
I think people ought to understand what a large control the feminists have over the
media, and that's why you don't hear some of the other side.
Source B
We Still Need Feminism by Natasha Walter
July 3 2003
The study published yesterday by the Future Foundation, which purported to show
that feminism is outmoded and unpopular, predictably produced swathes of
coverage. Feminism is pronounced dead every few years, even though its basic
goals have never been achieved. Whenever statistics are published to show that
men are still being paid more than women, or that women are still doing far more
domestic work than men, or that women are still concentrated in lower status jobs,
or that almost all the power brokers of Britain are still men, the response from so
much of the media is not that something must be done, but that the persistence of
such inequality simply proves that unfairness is the natural condition of our society.
The suggestion is constantly put out that women must be "free" to choose their own
way of life, even if it is clear that many women whose choices are shaped by
discriminatory workplaces and poor childcare provision do not feel very free at all.
Indeed, even if few people choose to identify themselves as feminists, it is hard to
find a young woman who would not sign up to the feminist goals that are meant to
be so outdated, such as being treated equally at work and being able to share
family responsibilities with their husbands. But even if the desire for equality
remains, it is still unmet.
One of the problems is that feminism has become associated with only one
particular section of society, and the wider urgency that once surrounded the call
for equality has become dissipated. It is true that feminism has benefited ambitious,
well-educated working women far more than women who are in lower-status work or
who have moved out of paid work. But it is not the case that women in different
classes or with different lifestyles cannot find common causes to unite behind. The
problem is that most people now see the troubles they go through in life as
evidence of individual failure or misfortune rather than something that can be
alleviated by any political solution.
All these problems require public solutions. They may sound old hat, but they are
still urgently needed: those basic needs of more investment in, and tax relief for,
childcare, alongside stronger rights to longer parental leave. Despite what the
backlash would have us believe, equality feminism does not threaten any woman's
freedom to choose the life that suits her. On the contrary, it is only when that

straightforward agenda of feminism is met that women will find themselves freed up
to follow their own dreams and desires.

Source C
Who are the Victims? RAINN.org
Women
1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or
completed rape in her lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted
rape).1
17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed
rape.1
9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.
Lifetime rate of rape /attempted rape for women by race:
All women: 17.6%
White women: 17.7%
Black women: 18.8%
Asian Pacific Islander women: 6.8%
American Indian/Alaskan women: 34.1%
Mixed race women: 24.4%
Men
About 3% of American men or 1 in 33 have experienced an attempted
or completed rape in their lifetime.
In 2003, 1 in every ten rape victims were male.
2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape.

Source D
What about men? Lies, statistics . . . and peddling myths about violence against
women
by Michael Roddan
11 December 2013
When Dr Elspeth McInnes talks about violence against women and someone says
What about the men?, she replies enthusiastically: Thank God you asked!
I mean, its a big problem, isnt it? she continues. One that no-one is really
talking about.
McInnes deliberately ignores the intent of the questioner, which is often to imply
that men are ignored as victims of domestic violence. She asks in turn: How do we
get men to stop hurting other men, women and children? Like, oh my God, itd be a
different planet.
So, what about the men? Its a question that is often put by mens rights groups, a
small but influential coalition spawned in response to the hard-won gains of the
post-war feminist movement.
The loosely connected groups seek to challenge the weight of statistics and an
academic consensus of a gender imbalance when it comes to domestic violence
one in which men overwhelmingly perpetrate violence and in which women and
girls overwhelmingly are victims.
Mens rights groups seek to demolish any gendered analysis of violence and falsely
claim that women and men participate equally in violence, says McInnes.
One In Threes Andresen believes domestic violence is a by-product of the education
system. Education about healthy relationships has to been carried out in a gender
neutral, non-sexist way, and unfortunately what happens with a lot of these
programs is that they go in there and talk about violence against women. They take
the boys into another room and tell them theyve got patriarchal privilege and they
mustnt beat up girls. And they take the girls into another room telling them about
how they should protect themselves against the violent boys.
He [Micheal Flood] says that bigger and stronger women can cause just as much
damage in a violent relationship as a male, and that women are much more likely to
use weapons when theyre violent and more likely to take action when their partner
is asleep or intoxicated. We also know that men are two to three times less likely to
report domestic violence to their family and their friends because of the shame
factor, he adds.

Andresen believes that boys are made to feel guilty about being a bloke while at
the same time, in their own relationships, are being knocked around by their female
partner. Conversely, the girls are made to feel that they have a licence to hit their
boyfriend because no-one is telling them that its wrong to do so.
Greg Canning agrees that women are not getting the message that hitting others is
wrong. He says that when a woman hits a man its celebrated as something good:
You go girl. Youre empowered.
Source E
Feminist zealots create an anti-male world by Martin Lehmann
19 April 2004
In a TV commercial, a clumsy male gawks at his son drawing on the wall, turns away
and walks smack into a drawing of a door on the wall, bounces off and ends up
spreadeagled on the floor. His equally dorky son squints at him through coke-bottle
glasses and resumes drawing. Furniture multinational, Ikea, has joined the growing
list of companies using negative stereotypes of men as bumbling fools to advertise
their products.
University texts have become feminised and anti-male. Following university
indoctrination, the more activist teachers are disseminating the anti-male
propaganda, telling their classes for example, that the reasons for war are the
innately violent nature of men.
American sitcoms are replete with images of oafish, bumbling males who constantly
need assistance from smart, smug females.
All of the negative images of males is having a devastating effect on the morale of
young boys. "They are soaking up these negative images", says Don Bowak, NSW
president of the Men's Health and Well-Being Association. "There's huge anger and
they don't even know where it is coming from".
Feminism started out as movement designed to redress the imbalance in
opportunities and conditions for women, but was hijacked by radical socialists
employing Marxist techniques of class warfare to create division between men and
women where none had existed. The man-hating, spiky-haired warriors of Lesbos
gleefully jumped on the bandwagon.
This must become an election issue. The taxpayer-funded feminist bureaucracies
must be disbanded. Men do not want to reverse women's hard-won gains. Normal
women do not want to see their husbands vilified and their sons commit suicide.
There is no gender war - just a war between spiteful, radical feminists and the rest
of society.