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Summary Of Sexism Being Oppressive By Marylin Fryer

847 Words4 Pages

The ethical issue that Marylin Fryer is addressing is the construct of sexism being oppressive. Frye argues that sexism is not just a matter of individual attitudes or actions, but rather a systemic and redundant form of oppression that operates through various means of exclusion, marginalization, and control. Fryer also introduces additional issues such as sex-marking, sex-announcing, distributive inequality, and “Bind and Restrict”, which all be discussed in the premises section of this paper. Frye's work also highlights the ethical imperative to address social inequalities and to work towards a more just and equitable society. She argues that we have a collective responsibility to challenge and resist forms of oppression and to work towards …show more content…

Her whole argument is founded on how instinctively as humans, we use sex marking to differentiate behaviors between men and women and sex announcing to constantly remind others of our sex so they can act appropriately. Fryer claims that this enforces a divide between the two sexes, which then creates a need for dominance of one over the other. In this case, men are typically dominant in our social hierarchy because their sex markings give them an advantage. To further convince the reader, she shares the idea of how normally female sex markings “bind and restrict” both physically and socially. How women are told to dress, talk, walk, and act, how they are addressed, and the treatment they are expected to face is all examples of the conditioning society puts them through to be identified as a woman. Fryer continues to build this argument by presenting the requirements of an oppressive structure, which sexism perfectly fits into. The first condition being the group must be easily identifiable, which is done through sex marking. Next is the subordinate group must have no justification for why they are that group, and women have no reason to not be equal to men due to differences in anatomy. Finally, the differences must be due to natural effects and not a result of customs, which sexism is present in basically every culture for no reason other than natural anatomy. Fryer describes

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