Oppression and the Bird Cage

In this article by Marilyn Frye, she relates female oppression to a bird cage. One of her main points is the macroscopic picture. If you look really close at female oppression or at the bird cage, you might only see one bar in the woman's/bird's way, but if you step back and take in the whole picture, there is a whole cage.

She talks a lot about the double standards that woman have to live with. One of them, the most common one in my mind, is that she has to be sexually active, but not too much. I think that one is pretty easy to understand. One that really surprised me was the one about rape: "If a woman is raped, then if she has been heterosexually active she is subject to the presumption that she liked it (since her activity is presumed to show that she likes sex), and if she has not been heterosexually active, she is subject to the presumption that she liked it (since she is supposedly "repressed and frustrated")." I had never heard of any justification to rape of a woman who was not sexually active like this before. I have heard excuses for raping a sexually active woman similar to the one given in addition to blaming the girls outfit or flirting. I was just surpised to see that there was any sort of justification to raping someone who was not sexually active; if you were a virgin, who the hell would want their first time to be a rape?

One other thing that she talks about is the chivalry of men. The specific example she uses is a male holding a door open for a female no matter the amount of things he is holding vs. the amount she is. These same men, though, do not help with daily chores and dinner etc. The opening of the door is symbolic for men thinking that women are incapable: "The message of the false helpfulness of male gallantry is female dependence, the invisibility or insignificance of women, and contempt for women." To me, it is just holding the door. I do not expect it from any man, and after coming to Juniata, I see that people (males and females) hold doors open all of the time for others regardless of their sex. But I do agree that woman are often treated as incapable, and the man needs to save the day. I think some of this steams from a lot of chick flicks. If you look at them, most of the story lines involve the woman needing some sort of saving from the man. This perpetuates the myth, and I think some males see these and want to be that man for a woman they know. The prevalence of superhero movies also does not help.