ENG 333
Yi Huang
Dr.Marie
3/1/2-14
Short paper assignment: Feminist
“As a woman, describing history writing as a social practice that contributes to a radical
critique of dominant discourse on gender.” (Susan 20) Histories are socially constructed
narrative, people who wrote it were always men. There are two kinds of historical work:
histories about women who spoke and wrote in the past and histories that concern themselves
not solely or even at all with women but with the category of gender. They put men into a high
way while put women in a low situation, separating to read the text from women writing and
men writing. What the author want to prove is that woman are equal powerful with man. The
form of rhetoric and history has included the woman’s point of views. For some feminist, they
want to make the history of rhetoric become an active source of inspiration for the future.
However, “reformulation is central to feminism, a transformative social practice contested from
outside and form within.” (Susan 20) There are three woman’s rights activities, the first-wave,
the second wave and the third-wave respectively. They are acquiring for the equal of
monogamy, civic rights, political rights and social state. Why the women fight for it, because
they think in nowadays society, the system was built by men and the center is paternity. At the
same time, they hold the opinion that women need to end sexism, gender exploit and oppress.
In order to make class equal, they launch social theory and political movement. Besides, they
analyze gender inequality and promote gender bottom’s rights, benefits and topic for
discussion.
“In rhetoric as well as in other disciplines we needed not only women’s history but
gendered readings of male-authored texts.” (Susan 21) In fact, it is the point that women and
men have the same level. Some people always think that women are less smart than men and
the ability of earning money are less than men. Some people hold the opinion that the men hold
more strength than the women. Others are under the belief that women need to take care of
the children, educate them and do almost all the house work. Thus, men pay more attention
than women when working. In a word, they think the power of men are powerful than women.
Men can do everything, women just can do part of it. However, according to the history fact,
Madame Curie won two Nobel prizes, Jane Austen was one of the most famous writer around
world. Under the control, emperor Sophie Augusta Fredericka, emperor Wu Ze Tian make their
county to be powerful than before. The CEO of Sunoco and the CEO of Westpac Banking, as well
as the CEO of DuPont all get the high salary. According to the movie Zizanie, La, we can know
that women also can be selected as a mayor. She also can do a great job as the man does. In
fact, women have the same abilities with men that they can do everything and get the same
refund with the man if women try their best, expect physical labour. Actually, men hold more
strength than women because of different gender. Men and women have different parts of
body, this is the reason that why men have more strength than women. However, this is not the
reason that men and women cannot get the same level. As the author said, “The female
principle is negative, like the blank space that defines a positive pictorial image or like the
concept of feminine gender that allows the male to define itself as masculine; it is also
supplementary, like the artistic limitation that represents natural life.” (Susan 22) Man and
women are just two different genders, their bodies are different, their hobbies are different.
That is the natural give us, we cannot change it, we just can accept it. But “Gender as the
constitution of social relations locates dominant forms of discourse---for rhetoric, politics, law,
and performance---within the fuller context of what they excluded, thus providing a ground for
examining discursive energies deflected into the drawing room, the nursery, the personal letter,
the “literary” text.” (Susan 23)
“Feminists have helped us to see how all discourses are located, but that some fail to
locate themselves, assuming an omnipresence.” (Susan 26) In the writing of history, this faire of
location were defined by the oracular voice, who proclaimed the single truth of past. It means
“Gender identities are constructed by a position in an existing cultural and social network.”
(Susan 26) Men are powerful than women are social construct. Men have written history, in
charge of telling truths. This is one of the ways why women’s social state are lower than men’s
social state. To change this adverse situation, women should write history so that it can make
the history event to be more fair than before.
Looking past the way in the writing of history, it was bad and made the woman in rights
troubles. Instead of looking pass by, looking what happening right now is the right way to solve
out the problem. Not only pay attention in writing history in rhetoric way, but also focus on
language, culture, political rights etc. Life in nowadays is filled with high technology, everyone
has the right to study. Feminists pursue the truth that men and women are equal. There is a
large number of people gradually believe and accept that men and women are the same. Thus, I
believe that in the future, men and women will be equal in every ways.