Gender Oppression
Since the beginning of time every angle of life has been looked at from a male/female standpoint. People begin to feel uncomfortable when the ground between man and woman gets broken. After watching Sally Potter's Orlando (1993), a movie based on a novel written by Virginia Woolf (1923), in which a man transforms into a woman over a four-hundred year period, and watching Kimberly Pierce's film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), I began to understand more how the world looks at the two genders. Although Orlando managed to end her life happily, she still had to fight the battle of gender, whereas when Branden Teena was discovered as Teena Branden, the people around her became uncomfortable, and unfortunately, she did not get the same ending as Orlando. Orlando projects a feminist future full of promise, while Boys Don't Cry answers Woolf's optimism with a brutal, resounding "not yet!"Throughout Orlando, Orlando never changes who s/he is no matter what body s/he inhabits. When he changed into a woman he simply looked into the mirror and said, "Same person, just a different sex." Branden Teena, on the other hand, feels completely determined by her body and her self-presentation. When discovered as a girl, Branden did not want to be seen
Life was a little less complicated for Orlando. Even though she had to go through gender oppression, she always maintained her sense of self and kept her composure. She never lost what she had, she managed to keep her properties and her social status. Even though society did not treat women as "real" individuals, Orlando still kept her associates. When she went to the poet's society, even though the men there put women down and tried to make women sound as if they had no thinking skills whatsoever, she managed to keep her head and proved that women indeed, are capable of thought, that they are not mindless wastes of space. Orlando also proved a man wrong when she was told that without marrying him she would only become a spinster. She managed to find someone to love her for her. Her love never tried to put her down for being a woman nor did he try to control her or take what was hers away. In comparison, Branden did not start with anything, let alone have anything to lose. S/he was hidden behind a curtain of lies, so many, that s/he didn't really know truth from falsehood. The social circumstances under which s/he was exposed did not help matters either. Branden was in a world of trouble, which, in turn, adds to the lies s/he was required to tell. Branden not only had to hide from Teena because people only knew him as Branden, but also because Teena was running away from jail time. Unlike Orland
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 955
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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