Short Response to 'Oppression'

As Marilyn Frye says in Oppression, women are often caught in no-win situations. Both sexual activity or inactivity can be good charges against women; if a woman is sexually active, she can be blamed as a whore, when she is the opposite, then she can be accused of being a man-hater or abnormal woman. White women worked in the Freedom Summer were also sank into such no-win situation: they would be criticized as loose for accepting black men’s sexual advances while they would also be charged as racists if they rejected such advances as illustrated in Prologue: The Re-Emergence of the “Woman Question”. So is the dilemma women now facing in China. Many male in China are still obsessed with virginity. They want their wives keep chastity until marriage and they attribute such virginity obsession as another masculine nature. Ridiculously, they do not apply the same rule on themselves and they also want to enrich their sexual experiences before marriage. Because they consider marriage as prison of later sexual lives, they think it is largely advisable to have as much fun as possible in sex before marriage. But here is a simple math question: according to The Fifth Population Census of People’s Republic of China, the birth rate of male to female in 2000 is 106.74 to 100, so how many men can get married with virgins while they also want to gain rich sexual experiences before marriage? This question is quite simple because the answer can only be: impossible! Even if men only have sex with married women before marriage, there are still not enough virgins available. So, what many Chinese women facing today is that before getting married, they meet a lot of men trying to persuade them to ‘enjoy non-marriage sex’, if they accepted this kind of suggestions, they are no longer welcomed as suitable marriage partners because they are ‘touched‘ and ‘impure’.

Besides, Frye’s explanation about the root of the word “oppression” is extremely useful in making ‘‘oppression’’ sensible to readers, at least to me. She says, to press is to “Mold. Immobilize. Reduce.” Oppression women faced is trying to make us molded to be feminine, be immobilized in the feminine circle, and be reduced to do lower level of working. I think feminism can be said as finished only when women finally actively working in various areas not just ‘feminine circles’.

The simile Frye uses to explain why people can hardly recognize the oppression they are facing is really enlightening! Just like people observe a bird in a birdcage, people can only recognize that the bird is being circled only when they set back and ‘take a macroscopic view’ of the birdcage. So is the situation about women being oppressed. Many people, both men and women think that feminism work is done and women are not oppressed simply because they fail to take a macroscopic view of the whole society. Although I largely advocate this supposition, I think it is easier to say than to do. How can we really take a macroscopic view of the present society? Just like how can birds take a macroscopic view of the birdcage which they live in?