Significance of Political Texts

Political texts are the writings that are characterized by different stylistic, lexical and syntactic peculiarities reflecting to the current events taking place in definite time. These texts are more essential that seeks the interest of people to urge for the amendment of wrong deeds going on in a country. Political writings help to grab the attention of people in general either about some covert events in the process for which they are to be made accountable or enforce people to act on some contemporary important issues. In other words, political articles provide the information related to the public associations, societal dealings and government policies to be pondered and further discussed for its controversy to come to a conclusion.

Political texts are most of the time written in a clear cut manner for every reader to understand undoubtedly about the issue in the text. Since, the article contains some crucial matters that require value judgments of the targeted audience to yield the author’s piece fruitful and effective. To support the main argument, the author facilitates with the facts, data and statistics in abundance to clarify the misconceptions about the topic aroused in reader’s mind, prove it authenticate and yield a reaction out of it. These texts do not digress from the main point and directly focuses on the core message. It is surrounded by the political theories too, which hunt for a more precise thought on the topic along with the factual data. As in the article by Kuenning and Amin, they have mentioned the theory or philosophy regarding the human capital approach (instrumentalism) and the capabilities approach to women’s education in Bangladesh. This use of theoretical perspective props up the practical evidences to be accurate thus it produces the emergence in solving the problem portrayed by the text.

Therefore, political texts like “Women’s capabilities and the right to education in Bangladesh” play vital role in the society to judge women’s education in the best possible way as instrumentalist approach or capabilities approach. This political text aware people about the subject of women’s education that is only valued for marriage market to secure their well being, prevalent in most of the sectors in Bangladesh. It has been the current social and a political issue since; all the sectors in the country are more or less affected by it or affect this issue of women’s education. Hence, a political article like this is very essential for it provides the knowledge and facts that are not considered important to discuss, but apparently, influences the economic, social, cultural, ethical and moral aspects of the country.

Works cited

Arends-Kuenning, Mary and Amin, Sanjeda, “Women’s capability and right to education in Bangladesh.” International Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 15, No.1, September 2001. Print

Foundation of Poor Economy: “Deficit or Excess of Women”

“How good is the other explanation…where the ratio is greater than 1.03” (Sen, sec2). In this paragraph, Amartya Sen bewilders if “poor and underdeveloped” countries lack or have excess women, which affects the economic development. He argues that a country gets economically weak when it has a large deficit of women resulting deficient real incomes affecting the gross national product. He suggests if women were to be given equal medical care and food, in other words– women were not discriminated against, the proportion of women would have been risen up. It is possible by backing them with the advanced facilities of hospitals and strategies controlling birth and death rates. Along with those, providing women to access the constituents of development; in particular health, education, earning opportunities, rights and political participation will improve their ability. This can be an aid to build up the economic status of a country.

On the contrary, Sen also puts forward the fact that developing countries have a large ratio of women than in developed countries that hinders economic development. He presents sub Saharan Africa, Southeast and East Asia as examples of poor countries having excess number of women. However, he doesn’t clarify the reason– why were there more women than men despite the result or fact of the biology of reproduction that explains men outnumber women. Sen doesn’t provide with the possibilities rooted by the cultural values of preferring son hence, producing many daughters until they borne boy child and the belief ‘children as the gift from god’, which they can’t deny. These kinds of delusion are the major reason for the presence of “substantial excess of women” (Sen, sec2). Also, these misbelieves obstruct women empowerment through gender inequality that decelerates economic development by producing more dependent bodies than independent contributing figures. As a result, the economy of such countries remains poor in spite of abundance of women existence.

Sen, Amartya. “More Than 100 Million Missing Women.” Nybooks Archives. Dec 20, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.

Fictional Text to Elucidate Fact

A Room of One’s Own is one of the fictional writings by Virginia Woolf. The main underlying basis of this literary work is that the author employs fictional narration to explore women as provided by the historians and poets she has been reading to the real women in Elizabethan age. Virginia Woolf has created an imaginary character named Judith Shakespeare, sister of William Shakespeare, in her “A Room of One’s Own”. She invented this character instead of telling the story of a real woman because she finds nothing about middle-class women except from “a great lady, Elizabeth” that constitutes in historian’s view of past (Woolf 41). She finds “no poems or plays” that could possibly build an image of women in Elizabethan period. This unavailability of the model of past women in her mind leads Woolf to bring fiction in this otherwise non fictional text.

Judith is Shakespeare’s sister who meets a pathetic fate. She is born with the same talent as William Shakespeare however nobody knows her as everybody knows her brother as a universal playwright. This is because she was never given the opportunity to develop her gift of writing going by the fact that women like Woolf were supposed to remain on closed doors while her brothers went to school. This is despite of the fact that Judith was adventurous and imaginative and couldn’t wait to experience the world. The contrast that exists between William and Judith is that while William establishes himself, Judith is trapped by the confines of the expectations of women where her father wants to impose marriage upon her. But she wants to enjoy a life of freedom so she goes to London and tends to join a theatre club. There also she cannot make her free from the fierce attack of male animalism. She falls under the victim of sexual desire of the manager. That is to say, Judith could not choose her profession according to her own choice and later she commits suicide. It is because she does not have a room of her own.

This imaginary character of Judith Shakespeare is the typical portray of middle class women in Elizabethan age who are considered as an insignificant characters. Even if one possesses more intellectual talent than that of a male writer, she could not be as popular as a male could. The same thing would be happened in the case of William Shakespeare’s sister (if he had a sister). Virginia Woolf has proved in “A Room of One’s Own” that Shakespeare’s sister could not be as popular as Shakespeare has been. It would be severely impossible for her to be known by all throughout all ages and all times. This is what every woman in real is facing during that time, which is not known to us because Elizabethan women “never writes her own life and scarcely keeps a diary; there are only a few handful of her letters in existence” (Woolf 41). Hence, Woolf creates a fiction in order to visualize the real condition of women in previous circumstances relating to Judith Shakespeare’s.

Work Cited
Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” Fort Washington: Harvest Book. 1981. First published 1929.

Gender As A Socially Constructed Execution

Gender is a very strange topic in today’s society. Many people don’t know what to do with people who are transsexuals and they often times hate them because they are different. People always think that there can only be two types of gender: masculine and feminine. People also feel that these genders most always correspond to a person’s sex. So if the person is a male, then most people wouldn’t accept that person into society if they acted feminine. “For human beings there is no essential femaleness and maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood, or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations. Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender any may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes.” (Lorber, Page 463) Many people don’t realize that gender is a socially constructed accomplishment. People make up methods in their minds about the ways that people should be and if one doesn’t act the way the other person thinks that one should, and then they do not fit into that person’s reality. “Every society classifies people as ‘girl and boy children’…” (Lorber, Page 460) People always try to guess what gender a person is. If one doesn’t know and is unsure of others gender then they keep on looking at them trying to find clues on about that person’s gender. I often times see people, usually children, and I can’t decide whether they or male or female, or should I say masculine or feminine. “Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated.” (Lorber, Page 460) Then we start looking for the “gender markers”. The sex category is gendered by giving names suitable as the sexes, dressing differently to separate boy from a girl.

Furthermore, when it comes to dealing with transsexuals and transvestites, we often believe that they should not be in our community. Transsexuals and transvestites feel unnatural in the way society treats them so they try to change it by acting differently. They feel that by doing this, society will treat them differently, and often times it does work. “Transvestites and transsexuals carefully construct their gender status by dressing, speaking, walking, gesturing in the ways prescribed for women or men-whichever they want to be taken for-and so does any ‘normal’ person.” (Lorber, Page 460) “…the social construction of gender overrode any possible inborn traits.” (Lorber, Page 463) Many people are very good at accomplishing their goal of changing their gender although they are not capable of changing their sex. Some accomplish this so well that the people they live with don’t even realize the person is a different sex. “Billy Tipton, a woman, lived most of her life as a man. She died recently at 74, leaving a wife and three adopted sons for whom she was husband and father, and musicians with whom she had played and traveled, for whom she was ‘one of the boys’.” (Lorber, Page 461) In conclusion, we must always try to understand a person’s feelings about how they wish to be a different gender.

Work Cited
Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Print.
19th Feb. 2013.

Plato: No Feminist, Diverse definition of Feminism

When I am asked if Plato is a feminist then my answer is no, he is not a feminist. Because a feminist is defined as someone who has “both a doctrine of an equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social equality.” according to modern concept by Maggie Humm in “The dictionary of Feminist Theory.” Plato was never a feminist nor did he intend to be since at that time there was no such concept of Feminism in their society. Women were not offered respect and consideration rather they were confined in their households and were deprived of education. This made them ‘unintelligent’ and ‘untrustworthy’ maintaining the main aim of women as ‘‘to produce more citizens.’’ Despite this unlikable situation, Plato was the first person to come up with the idea of use of women for the betterment of society as men. However, it is true that he did not think men and women are equal nor he gave larger role to women in a society. This reason impedes him from being a feminist because his philosophy and deeds do not match with that of what we define a feminist as in today’s world.

Up to some extent, Plato respected some features of women like their ability to stand forth as men and felt it was a waste of woman-power to seclude women in their homes, when they could be performing useful tasks in the factory or the office. Plato thought of women to be used, just as men were, for the benefit of the community. He believed there were no fundamental differences between the sexes which unfitted women from useful work. Plato also admired the reproductive quality of women to produce something. But as a whole, we can see that Plato valued only few women not for their special quality as women rather he thought that it was: men’s nature of having special qualities: developed in to women’s body. It is implied that “femininity of women is diminished so that they appear to be more like men”. He further suggested that it is ‘womanly’ if a person is unable to control his/her emotions, which is called to be ‘cowardly’. Plato has shown women as very weak and undeserving character so, made negative comments on them. As in Symposium, he puts Diotima in the guardian class by which, he meant woman with a manly soul. The speech of Diotima is presented during the conversation between those men but it existed through the existence of Socrates, who is a ‘man’. Plato supported in raising voice of women but was conflicting in his comments on women and criticized them severely too.

Hence, Plato cannot be called a feminist because he was not seeking for the equality of men and women as it is the essence for a person to be a feminist. Plato only lifted the thoughts about the benefit of women to make men even more powerful and dominant. Still, his trial of putting women into the open during that restricted past period was noteworthy and should be valued for drawing “the possibility of women being equal to men” due to which, we are enjoying our right as women in present days. Therefore, his work needs to be esteemed not criticized as it was not the era enclosing the waves of feminism.

Sophisticated Speech of Erixymachus

In symposium, Erixymachus is a doctor who starts his speech in order to develop or clarify Pausanias “distinction between the two species of love”. He continues with the concept of lovegiven by Pausanias providing different names as in calling “heavenly love” as “the love manifested in health” and “common love” as “the love manifested in disease”(186c). Erixymachus, as a doctor claims that love is at work not only in the lives of human but also in all the order plants and animals; in fact, in all existing things. In addition, he also defines love broadly as the bringing together of different elements, which is not necessarily only human beings or other living beings; they can be something lifeless like the strings of lyre. He sees music as a creation of agreement between high and low notes to produce harmony, fast and slow tunes to produce rhythm. At this point, he refers that “heavenly love” harmonizes the discordant elements in an orderly way, hence, it is consider honorable. Whereas, he refers “common love”, what he calls “Polyhymnia” is itself debauchery and disorder, hence, it is “common and vulgar”(187e).

Erixymachus, as a man of science advocates that love “occurs everywhere in the universe”(186b). He expands the Pausanias definition of love adding it as a broader phenomenon, which occurs ahead of the human beings giving the examples of non living elements: medicines, music and season. And similar to Pausanias, he concludes that the healthy, orderly and temperate climatic love is the one “felt by good people” must be “encouraged and protected” attributing “heavenly love” while in opposite, diseased, discorded and displeasing climatic love is “vulgar” relating “common love”(187e). Likely to Pausanias, he says it is a matter of concern to mark proper kind of love and cherish it.(188c)

The Looking Glass: A Tempting Depiction of Feminine Aspiration

The Looking Glass: A Tempting Depiction of Feminine Aspiration

           The poem “The Looking Glass” by Kamala Das is a descriptive poem, which elaborates the bold imagery of exploring female sexuality in her quest for love. This poem is composed in a free verse with no specific rules applied: the poet uses figurative devices like alliteration “admit and admiration, drab and destitute, living and love”, simile “as”, metonymy “looking glass” for the reflection of image when one is placed in front of it. The poem becomes irony to praise the male ego by admiring his strength only to highlight the soft, feminine self of the poet. Also, the poet frequently uses “the” article as in “the stronger one, the perfection, the shower, the shy walk, the jerky way” to make the descriptions more specific and visible to her readers.

In the poem, the sensuous imagery is created that presents an intimate scene where the female lust is undoubtedly thick in the air as described by the poet. She offers to him her whole female being which includes “the musk of sweat between the breasts, “scent of long hair” and “the warm shock of menstrual blood”. She also adds: “Gift him all what makes you a woman” meaning to the sense of surrender and to submit without any exceptions. Unfortunately, her womanly offers do not suffice to capture the man’s attention forever. She is unable to possess her man till the end in spite of her total surrender. The line “Getting a man to love is easy, but living/ without him afterward may have to be/ faced” suggests that bodily solutions are not enough to keep a man’s love for the female’s desires because in the end she ends up alone and “destitute”.