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Carl Cooper
Dr. Corner
Focused Inquiry II
28 September 2015
The article I chose to compare “The Secret History of Wonder Woman” is an article
called “Women, Stop Submitting to Men” by Russell Moore. In this article, Moore is telling
women to stop following the traditional gender roles and submitting to men as assumed by
society. He mentions that in our modern culture, women are pressured to submit to men. He cites
this as the reason why women are consumed by what men think of them. He also cites this as the
reason that women are defined on the basis of sexual attractiveness. He says that although there
is some female empowerment in modern day society, it is almost rendered useless by men seeing
women as “objects”. He mentions how it isn’t really an advance for women when the average
high school male has seen images of women sexually exploited on the internet. Are we really
empowering women when restaurants allow you to pay to stare at a woman in a tight t shirt while
you eat your chicken wings, he says. How is it that an ugly woman will ever obtain power or
celebrity status in our current society’s state, he says. To sum up the article, he tells women that
they owe no submission to men and that women shouldn’t be defined by men and that all women
are beautiful regardless of how men view them.
This article ties in really well with “The Secret History of Wonder Woman” because in
the book Marston’s women essentially “serve” him and “submit” to him. Marston essentially sat
around doing nothing for a long period of time while Elizabeth Holloway made the money and
Olive Byrne looked after the children. Although he was a very strong advocate for feminism, his
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message isn’t as strong with the way he views women. He says he views women as strongest
when they’re submissive. In the book he says “Women enjoy submission – being bound” and
that women should submit to domination as part of her “moral education” and as “the only hope
for peace”. This goes back to what the article said about although there is definitely some female
empowerment in the modern age, saying that women should be submissive to men is like a step
backwards as far as empowerment goes. Instead of Marston’s women being seen equal to him, as
a feminist would want, they were seen as servants to him. This too is seen in modern day society.
Too often in today’s society we see women just submitting and serving men, which is a certain
step backwards for feminism. In conclusion, if we really want to empowerment of women to
grow, they should not be so quick to submit to men. Instead, both parties should make sacrifices
instead of just one.