Research Paper Intro

Research Paper Intro

In the United States, women have fought toward equality for years, a clear example being the fight for women’s suffrage from the late 1910s through the early 1920s. In the century since then, the fight of equality has shifted toward matters of work and home life, abolishing the idea that women could not maintain a job and have a family (“History of the Women’s Rights Movement”). However, this movement of equality has overlooked one crucial freedom: the freedom to express one’s sexuality. Sexuality is the psychological and physical opinions one has concerning sex in regards to themselves, and sexual expression is how a person chooses to display and/or satisfy their sexuality. Due to the neglection of sexuality in the fight for equality, modern society evolved to be more open-minded for women being equal to men in most other areas, while a disapproving double-standard (an attitude “which is unfairly applied in different ways to different people or groups”) that favors males’ sexuality and restricts that of females persisted from generation to generation (“Double Standard”). Researchers who have looked at this subject have shown that in terms of sexuality, there is a clear gap between what is acceptable for males versus females. While society accepts a man’s sexuality, often expecting higher levels of activity, the same can not be said for the attitude towards a woman’s sexuality. Leslie Bell’s research in her essay “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom” shows the overarching pattern of confusion among real women on how they have expressed their sexuality, but felt insecure about doing so. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research into the explanation for this double-standard, despite this being a crucial aspect needed for women to gain social equality. Drawing from the ideals of Andrew Solomon and Michael Moss, it is the influence of a person’s family, friends, and media that perpetuates the stigma that women, like those Bell speaks about, should not express their sexuality. The significant amount of time parents and other authority figures, as well as friends, during a child’s development start molding the child’s opinions to be similar to that of the parent. Then, the media’s portrayal of women, often as either overly sexual or prudish, hinder the younger generation’s ability to think of the average women as having a balance between the two extremes.