Erotica v Pornography
Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire anytime it wanted to go somewhere. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one...and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon. It is safe to assume that every man and woman in America has seen some sort of pornography, whether it is a Calvin Klein billboard, or the latest issue of Playboy. The two may seem unrelated, but the link is that they both objectify women. People who view this material transform the human in the picture into an object of desire,
Today, men who cry are still outside the norm, and it is a common sight to see women crying at sad movies, while the men sit uncomfortably in their seats. Even today, in a society that has made major steps towards women's equality, these gender roles still exist. Women are supposedly weak individuals, who function best in a position where not many major decisions are to be made. Still, there are some residual effects: the man being unsure of the woman's work is one. On every step of the corporate ladder, men would be wondering if she was strong enough to withstand the 'perils' of being an executive; would she be able to endure other executives' pressure as well as a male could? It would be logical to assume that men would be trying to take advantage of her all the time, since she is 'just a woman'. Even if one were, she would have had to overcome some major struggles to get there. A typical situation the home might play out like this: a woman notices a door is squeaking, so she lubricates the hinge, and everything is fine. It is a known and accepted fact that the average woman is physically weaker than the average male. He makes all the major decisions, while she simply carries out his orders. For hundreds of years, a woman's role in society has been to run the household for the man, while he provides for the family. Take, for instance, gender roles in society. The majority of at-home parents are mothers; most men are still the breadwinners of the family, and some still expect their wife to make them dinner every night. Men also have jobs that are 'man's jobs', such as construction or hard labor, police work, or executive positions. As with everything, there are opponents to this sort of pornography, one of which is the feminist movement. Take out one of the wires-is it any easier for the bird to escape? The same goes for the oppression of women: even if pornography is eliminated, the rest of the barriers still exist, and it is just as hard for women to proceed around them.
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Acceptance Essays
