Feminism has always been a "complicated" topic for me and Irigaray helped me navigate through it a little bit more.
I come from a very conservative country, so feminism is not something that is widely accepted in the country. We live in a society driven by machismo and I grew up sort of navigating through it. Being completely honest, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea of women taking control of their own sexuality because this concept is relatively new to me.
This reading really spoke to me because I literally live in a place where the ideas Irigaray us putting forwards are rejected. I also think my country/society serves as a good example of how these ideological narratives manifests themselves. Since a very young age, little girls are taught to behave like "ladies" where our sexuality must be kept hidden and any sexual activity is shameful. This, of course, does not happen for men. We still live in a society where men define a woman's sexuality, they enjoy sexual conquests, and believe that we should be trained to become the perfect "well behaved" wives.
Sex is still a taboo, but reflecting on how reading feminist theory has impacted me I think reinforces the premise that education can go a long way in changing society. When we discussed what SexEd education lacks I couldn't help thinking back to my education, and realizing that in El Salvador, we have NO SexEd whatsoever. Although I do think we have a long way to go, I do think the United States is more ahead in integrating and accepting feminist ideas. I just felt sad because I am one of the maybe 12% of youth that are able to leave the country to receive an education like this.
I come from a very conservative country, so feminism is not something that is widely accepted in the country. We live in a society driven by machismo and I grew up sort of navigating through it. Being completely honest, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea of women taking control of their own sexuality because this concept is relatively new to me.
This reading really spoke to me because I literally live in a place where the ideas Irigaray us putting forwards are rejected. I also think my country/society serves as a good example of how these ideological narratives manifests themselves. Since a very young age, little girls are taught to behave like "ladies" where our sexuality must be kept hidden and any sexual activity is shameful. This, of course, does not happen for men. We still live in a society where men define a woman's sexuality, they enjoy sexual conquests, and believe that we should be trained to become the perfect "well behaved" wives.
Sex is still a taboo, but reflecting on how reading feminist theory has impacted me I think reinforces the premise that education can go a long way in changing society. When we discussed what SexEd education lacks I couldn't help thinking back to my education, and realizing that in El Salvador, we have NO SexEd whatsoever. Although I do think we have a long way to go, I do think the United States is more ahead in integrating and accepting feminist ideas. I just felt sad because I am one of the maybe 12% of youth that are able to leave the country to receive an education like this.
Hi Lucia,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in how feminism is a complicating topic because throughout our lives we have been told we have to act a certain way. I think this is something as females we just have to start to get used to with things like expressing our sexuality and so on. However, I still think that no matter how far we get into feminist movements, I think there will always be a stigma against flaunting female sexuality without there having somewhat of a negative connotation. Personally, I grew up with strict gender roles because my mom would always be making me wear dresses, doing my hair, and so on. I think from that it has been engrained in me that I personally like it, but in reality I have been constructed to like it. This feminist theory we have been reading has made me also understand that we have a long way to go with feminism and equality, even if we think we are making progress, there is always more to be done. In America as well, we do not have sexED mandatory in our schools. All that I can remember is a group of students coming to school with a mandatory assembly where the post-grads would talk about abstinence, rather that teaching how to have safe sex. This assembly made it known that sex was a taboo, like what you were saying above.