adrienne rich
There are many cultural phantoms that we must face as we write and read in today's society. Adrienne Rich, author of an article titled "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision", tells us of a gender phantom who prevented the development of her writing. To this day, gender inhibits female creativity, but in this day and age, so does sexual orientation. Today, readers are not only affected by an author's gender but by whom a writer decides to love. For gay and lesbian writers, this is continually a hindrance. As if being a female writer was not difficult enough, now a woman must worry about her sexuality getting in the way of success. Adrienne Rich tells us that because she was a typical housewife in the 1950's her writing was restricted. She explains that even when she started writing she wrote to please her father, "or rather, not to displease him." "Men and women have been assigned specific gender roles through socialization." (Kimmel,1987). (The Role of Casual Attributions in Competitive Situations). Rich blames the times for her inability to overcome her creative blocks. In an article called "Professions for Women", Virginia Woolf calls this sort o
greater extent, every woman writer has written for men even This repression applies to all types of female writers, whether they are gay, straight, young, old, whatever. The "angel" that Virginia Woolf speaks of plagues all women. Even now, women are programmed to please a male dominated society. With writing, they are trying to break that mold and are trying to reach the female reading population. No matter how much women try to break free from writing for men, they are somewhat forced to comply with male point of view. In order to get published, it seems a woman must write to please a male point of view. She may not get too creative with any opinion or she may risk being called outrageous. Women must fight this "angel" and must take the risk to be different. They must fight for the right to write. Due to this repression, society often decides that an opinionated woman equals a "bitch". Even more so, lesbians are considered to have an attitude because they express different views. Their work is not allowed to be published, they are subjected to sexual discrimination, and, sometimes, even name-calling. Some publishers automatically assume that a lesbian writer is going to be a man hater. On the contrary, a group of woman today has organized The Lesbian Herstory Archiv
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Approximate Word count = 886
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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