Male Pride And Female Prejudice By Adrienne Rich Summary

Stereotypes amongst men and women have been going on for years. The literary pieces “Male Pride and Female Prejudice” by John Tierney and “What does a Woman Need to Know?” by Adrienne Rich expands on the revolving roles of men and women in our society. Although their arguments discuss somewhat of the same ideas they are sharing them in two totally different points of views. Adrienne Rich believes that “one of the dangers of a privileged education for women is that we may lose the eye of the outsider and come to believe that those patterns hold for humanity, for the universal, and that they include us”. Which is a refute against Tierney’s entire piece. Tierney believes that if things continue the way they are, women will be the head of the

Adrienne believes that it is a privilege to be educated as women, but doesn’t believe we have taken advantage of the opportunity. Illiteracy is global but “the number of illiterate women is increasing” (Rich 76). They can all go to school but there is a kind of learning they can learn from themselves. Rich believes we need to teach ourselves and “debrief yourselves…of the false messages of their education in this culture” (Rich 76). In her opinion women aren’t educated enough and the education that they have obtained is basically worthless. While on the contrary Tierney is basically saying that women are privileged that they are on the uprising of society. He believes that women are more educated and “the gender gap is projected to reach a 60-40 ration within a few years” (Tierney 130). Rich upholds her argument believing that the education that many women have shouldn’t even be called such things, while Tierney believes that the education women have is something to be proud of because it is going to be running society sooner than

“The token women is encouraged to see herself as a different from the vast majority of women is offered to a few, so that it appears that any “truly qualified” woman can gain access to leadership, recognition, and reward…” (Rich 77). Adrienne assumes that the token women have to have higher standards because they are “token women”. She presumes the token women “demands that she deny her identification with women as a group, especially with women less privileged than she…” (Rich 77). The token women’s’ high standards not only apply to less privileged men but women as well, just the human race as is. While Tierney believes that these standards are discriminated for the male species. He conjectures that it is educated women versus the male species because “women with higher incomes, far from relaxing their standards, put more emphasis on a mate’s financial resources” (Tierney 131). He is saying that women that are apart of the upper side of the hierarchy have higher standards while Rich believes that it is not all educated women, she explains that only token women discriminate and act as if they are better than those “below