Gender and Sexulaity

Jackie Pappas Professor Winchock ENWR 106-AN March 5, 2013 newspaper publisher 2 Middle Draft sexual urge & Sexuality Our e realday lives ar greatly affected by ones sexual practice and sexuality. They shape who we are and define our identities. caller expects a certain gender to practice in a specific fashion and if this does non happen, one is seen as ignominious and wrong, leaving the individual to feel thwarted and out of place. In society further a few decades ago, women were meant to be smooth and restricted. custody were the blue-ribbon(prenominal) ones who had a voice. They shiftly got to do whatever they pleased.In Julia Avarez young lady of intent and Judith Ortiz Cofers poem The Changeling, women were restricted of their confessedly identities and their voices were silenced by the Ppallogocentric order. As a female in society, one was non supportted to mouth freely of her opinions because of men. She must reside silent. It is evident that the nar rator, often referred to as Cukita, in girlfriend of Invention cannot speak what she trusts. She reads poems from a book her novice bought her written by Walt Whit reality. She reads his free spoken language haggle he can openly speak. These are words of a flesh and blood objet dart (Alvarez 14).Because Walt Whitman was a man, he could speak and publish what he so choose. However, when Cukita plagiarizes his words, because she was a charr, she was not permitted to read her put to work at the meeting for which she was writing. When she read her speech to her mystify, her baffle beamed with pride. It was sort of the opposite when she read this speech to her fix. He was shocked that his wife would let their young woman read the speech she wrote. You will permit her to read that? (Alvarez 15) Cukitas father give tongue to as if she needed permission to speak what she believes. As your father, I forbid you to ordain that eh-speech (Alvarez 15). Since he was a man, he h ad the utmost say in what his lady friend express. He could say whatever he desire but his young lady, because she was a woman, could not. Women were expected to be silent and could scarce speak in the male voice. We see the silence of a girl in Cofers The Changeling. In this poem, the speaker recalls a memory of when she was a young girl. She dressed in her associates military clothes which molded her into boy shape (Cofer 725). Her father found it very amusing. He would listen with a smiling (Cofer 725). She loved dressing up as a boy and pleasing her father because it was the further time he sight her. The speaker pretended to sound out stories of her propagation in the war as a man and this was the time that her father would gestate attention to her. The only time he would listen to her words was when she was speaking in his voice in a mans voice. All other times, her words were not important to her father they did not matter to him because she was not his son, sh e was his young woman. Females were restricted in what they could say and do.Women were not allowed to do as they pleased. They were limited not only in what they said but what they could do. In young lady of Invention, Cukitas flummox liked to work on her inventions. She always invented at night, later settling her signal down (Alvarez 10). The get under ones skin could only work on her projects aft(prenominal) she had completed her obligations as a woman. It was a womans responsibility to conduct care of the house and keep her economise and family happy putting her wants and wishes aside until these are rentn care of first. Even her inventions were restricted.She would not invent things that would help the world as a whole but shape up up with ideas that would only help with your casual life, particularly for the typical American woman. When discussing her inventions and why they did not help the greater good, she would shit said that was for men to do (Alvarez 10). T his shows that she was not allowed to create what she really cute to invent. American women were not the only women who were restricted. It was common for women to be restricted all over the world. The narrator, Cukita, talked much or less the fact that her mother did not want to return home. She did not want to go pricker to the old country where she was only a wife and a mother (Alvarez 14). In the Dominican Republic down the stairs Trujillos rule, women were only expected to be two things a wife and a mother. They were restricted to being whatsoeverthing but. They did not turn over permission to explore their interests such as inventing. Women were expected to take care of the house and the family and if they did anything else, saying theyd be in trouble is an understatement. Women were not allowed to be free to be who they are. Women were expected to only take care of the family and the house even if they valued to do nighthing else.It is unflurried joked nearly dire ctly all over the Internet that women rifle in the kitchen. plot it is meant as a harmless joke, it is a reality for others. For example, it was a reality for the speaker in The Changeling. While her father was very amused with his girlfriend dressing as a man, her mother was not. When it was time for the family to sit down for dinner, the mother forbad her from sitting down with them as a man (Cofer 725). The mother tangle that when her daughter dressed in her brothers clothes, it was distracting her from being a girl.She is forced to go thorn into the closet to change backward into her expected outfit. The speaker, who once sawing machine a closet full of adventure, then saw the equal closet as a dark space (Cofer 725). When she emerged from the closet, back into reality, she walked back into the real world of her mothers kitchen (Cofer 725). For the speaker, a woman belonging in the kitchen was no laugh matter it was her reality. She longed to be able to do the things a man did but she could not because she was a restricted woman. She wished to have the same power that a man did.After explaining about how powerless a woman was, it is glide by that men were the winner(p) ones. In Daughter of Invention after the father disapproved of his daughters speech, the mother and daughter felt the need to rebel and join forces (Alvarez 16) against the father. They knew that he was the man in charge. They could not exactly tell him what he was doing was wrong and they for sure could not do it alone. It took two women to live on up to one man and they still lost, the father tearing his daughters speech to shreds, tearing her to shreds in turn. As the father, he had the final say on what happened.After calling her father the hated soubriquet of their former dictator Trujillo, the narrator ran to her room. Her father ordered her on his authority as her father to open that door (Alvarez 16). Because he was a man, he held the power in the house. He got free r eign to tell his daughters and wife what to do and they must obey. In Dominican Republic, men were so superior that giving birth to a daughter was not as great as giving birth to a son. A mother was seen as a misery if she did not give birth to a son. When Cukita and her mother went into the fathers room, his slip rightened as if at long stretch forth his wife had delivered a son (Alvarez 15). Fathers were happier when their wives fag out them a son. There were fathers who did not knuckle under attention to their children if they were not a boy. In The Changeling, the speaker must vie for her fathers attention (Cofer 725). Because she was not a man, the only way she could get her father to bill of fare her was to dress, speak, and act like the son he always wanted her to be. After he mother made her change back into the girl she was supposed to be, she returned invisible (Cofer 725).Since she was no longer dressed as the superior man her father so wanted her to be, he did not pay any mind to her and she felt as if she was no one as if she was invisible. It is because of her gender that she did not fit into society. Gender plays a study role in our everyday lives. Men and women were expected to act in a specific manner or other they end up defeated. Women were meant to keep their thoughts and opinions silent. They were excessively not allowed to act as freely as they would like. Women were restricted in what they said and did.Because women were so repressed, it was evident that men were the superior ones. In modern society, women have earn the right to be treated as equally and as fairly as men. However, there are still some areas in society where women are more oppressed than men are. Works Cited Alvarez, Julia. Daughter of Invention. Approaching Literature. Eds. Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl. capital of Massachusetts Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 10-19. Cofer, Judith Ortiz. The Changeling. Approaching Literature. Eds. Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl. capit al of Massachusetts Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 725.