Life's Not a Bitch, It's A Beautiful Woman

We've come to this point in the class where patterns begin to repeat. I am allowed to make broad generalizations about things I know little about. The last reading from Friday, which we didn't get to discuss much in class, was about Middle Eastern Women and their struggle for freedom. The last reading, bu Graham-Brown, entitled "Images of Women", illuminates for me the ways that power struggles take place everywhere, in every country, of every region, between individuals and also between groups. While Western women must try to thrive within a legal language invented by men, Middle Eastern Women (sweeping gesture) likewise struggle for power also within the home and in their public lives. It seems that women everywhere, even the very privileged young ladies in Girls, is painfully always semi-aware of the doors that are not open to them  to them in life. All these readings suggest that women, or any individual suffering oppression, has no choice but to look for a window, for the human spirit does not prefer to deny itself anything which it sees others enjoying. While harems keep women controlled and sequestered, "safe" from the public noise and din, they are also protected from happiness and liberty. This power struggle involves rights to awareness and a voice. The idea of a harem keeps other, non-accepted, or inferior men from being able to access certain women of a family, but at the cost of the women's free experience of life. And in Girls, where a healthy upbringing and privilege affords you untold amounts of comforts and freedom, the cost is their independence. Our 'seclusion and segregation' has been engrained into our societies and mindset as 'just the way it is'. No one could listen to the stories told during Take Back the Night without noticing a few patterns. Women are allowed to be sexual beings, but at the cost of their sexual freedom. If a predator insists a female was asking for it, what he really means is that he perceives women as surrendering their right to say no by expressing their sensuality as human beings.