Battle Between Sexes critical Essay Example For Students

Battle Between Sexes critical Essay Somewhere in my heart I would like to believe that I am a strong and disciplined woman. Sometimes, that is true, more often, it is half-true and then there are the days when it is a lie. But people are dimensional and complex which often makes it fun to watch them. The truth is, in humanity, there are many stories to be caught but the ones that got away they make the best stories of all. The story of GI Jane begins in the male dominated world of the Navy Lieutenant Jordan ONeil played by Demi Moore. The opportunity comes to be the first woman to train to be a SEAL she decides it is her only option to advance. The carrot comes in the person of Senator Lillian DeHaven played by Anne Bancroft, who has an agenda of her own. DeHaven, chairperson of the Armed Services Committee, has been bashing heads with the male-dominated and liking-it-that-way top brass over the appointment of Secretary of Defense and she decides it is a good time to get what she wants an integrated fighting force. B lackmailed and certain that no woman would ever succeed, the brass agrees to a test case and Lieutenant ONeil is sent on her way. Unaware that she is the political pawn of a feminist Senator, Jordan ONeill agrees to become the first woman to train with the elite fighting force. If Jordan succeeds, then she will strike a blow for the idea of women in combat, but no one expects or even really wants her to succeed. Jordan, appearing as masculine as possible, bravely endures humiliation, ridicule, sabotage, and physical torture to prove she can do it. ONeil suffers each of these indignities, and even shaves her hair to escape its encumbrance. ONeil finds herself fighting for respect and survival among the officers, the fellow trainees, and the world it seems. To make matters worse, she ticks off C.O. Salem by insisting on one standard of training. If it is to be done, ONeil will do it as all the men have to do it or not at all. The toughest battle for her lies in the person of Master Chief John Urgayle whose job it is to destroy and if they stay, then to build them back up. Urgayle doesnt believe women should be in combat, not because they are not capable but because it distracts the men, forcing them to be protective and therefore vulnerable to assault. And Jordan finds herself embroiled against even her allies as DeHaven shows her character to be more suspect than the rest. Even if statistically more men than women could make it as a SEAL, this would say nothing about individuals. It seems so stupid to pontificate in advance, in a vacuum, about whether, being a woman, Jordan ONeil could or should make it. Given the cred entials that the film hypothesizes that she has, ONeil ends up making it after all. Equality feminism is having the right to be equal as a woman. Fighting for your right to have a right and to take on roles as men do. In the movie, Jordan ONeil was given differential treatment because she was a woman. She did not want this treatment and refused to be singled out. She wanted to be treated the way the men were treated. Looking back to the times when women were nothing more than homemakers, our book talks about the women being the ones to take on a mans role when they left for war. This proved that women were capable of holding jobs and were able to get along and provide for their families without the man. Womens liberation was revived after the baby-boom generation. The key concept about this time was to open up the job market for women so they too could become doctors and lawyers and whatever else they chose to do. Classical feminism says that men and women should first be looked at as people. Culture is what has shaped us. Simone de Beauvoir a feminist icon of the 1920s accuses the philosophical tradition as women being viewed as atypical human beings and men as typical. She says it is a cultural fact that women do what they do because theyre normal. Until women begin to think of themselves as a group, they will believe they are abnormal human beings, she says. Men and women both need to receive the same treatment equal education and same treatment from society. Jordan ONeil wanted the same treatment as the men, and that is why she fought against what the Master chief had to say and won. Although, once the news was out and the media was involved that there was a women going through such training, they felt it was wrong. Society was not used to something like this nor prepared. This kind of training was always assumed that only men could accomplish and no women could ever make it through. As the Senator said, American families are just not prepared to have their daughters and young mothers in harm way. This basically saying that a womans death is more hurtful than that of a mans and that they are worth more. Unless, of course, you do have that one woman to stand up and speak out for her rights and say this is something she wants to do and push hard to achieve it, society and men especially will regard them differently. The truth is that when a women is engaged in an enterpri se worthy of a human being, she is quite able to show herself as active, effective, taciturn- and as ascetic- as a man, says Beauvoir. If we change this nature of women we will create responsible human beings and they will be able to respect one another for that reason. German Management System EssayIn my opinion, I believe women are capable of being who they want to be, capable of making their own decisions and have the will to be stern enough to stand up for whatever they believe in. Yes, men and women are fundamentally different by appearance and from what lies inside them but that does not give society the right to restrict women from specific things. Because of such feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, more women are taking a stand on what they believe is right and they also understand the true differences between men and women.