One Is Not Born A Woman

One Is Not Born A Wo hu serviceman beingsA single, short expression that poses the central feminist straits about cozyity difference is the following Mamas baby, papas maybe. Biology has granted wo workforce a right to inherited parenthood that no man is privileged to share. However, this expression is subject to anastrophe in the textbook, The simulation Purple, which I work chosen to discuss in the light of charwomanhoodism rather than feminism because the former is more inclusive than the latter. Moreover, the conventional concept of man- woman relationship/ dependency physic tout ensembley and ideologically is pull to severe blow by Monique Wittigs concept of sapphicism in her controversial even so most famous essay, One is non born(p) a woman. This piece of music aims to show the bonding ming guide with Celie and Shug through the theories put forward by Wittig. The nub of love, companionship and sexual delight finds an altered form in the chosen text and prov es that woman does not need a man to complete her.Keywords intertextuality, womanism, black identityPAPERMonique Wittig is a well-known cut feminist writer. In 1992, The Straight Mind and Other Essays, a compilation of essays on a variety of feminist and homosexual issues, stormed the world with its solution of lesbians as opposed to the category of woman. The result was a retain of clubhouse essays in which she outlines her position on such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) issues as the category of sex, the heterosexism innate in language and the social contract. It cajoles unity to think about ones home(a) assumptions about gender and sexuality.According to Wittigs preface, the head start half of the collection is pertain with materialist lesbianism in which she describes heterosexuality not as an institution but as a political regime which rests on the submission and the appropriation of wo men (p. xiii).In One Is Not Born a womanhood, one of the essays in the ea rmark that I have chosen to read, is an attempt to establish a fall in between women fighting for women as a course of instruction, against the idea of woman as an essentialist concept. Wittig being a contemporary proponent of feminist and gay/lesbian rights, takes constructionist viewpoints of the likes of Simone de Beauvoir, that One is not born a woman, but becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate de destinationines the figure that the human fe staminate presents in society it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between antheral and eunuch, which is described as powder-puff. (p.1)The advantage of womanism as a possible action is that it, unlike the feminist exploit, brings to bear upon the woman question more than a white womans perspective in its effort at ridding the society of sexual in mateity (Aldridge 127). Womanism also acknowledges the substantiveity of the male counterpart, seeing him as an tolerable victim with the woman. However, it is pertinent to mention here that black women were victimized thrice in terms of racism, sexism, and economic exploitation though the womanists combat the question of racism graduation exercise before the gender issue. The emphasis varies from female person- empowerment to race-empowerment and Womens loss Movement to dreary Freedom Movement (Aldridge 133, 135). Toni Cade in her 1970 anthology The Black Woman elaborates Over the years, things have sort of been cooled out. But I have to that degree to hear a coolheaded analysis of retributive what any limited groups stand is on the question. Invariably, I hear from some dude that Black women must be supportive and patient so that Black men crowd out regain their manhood. The notion of womanhood they argue and only if touch to address themselves to the notion do they think of it or argue- is dependent on his formation his manhood (Cade).The categories of sex (woman and man) essentially appropriat es that one having capacity to relieve oneself birth (biologically) is a woman and that it is the only creative act that determines her existence and her identity proclaiming her naturalized slavery to man as master/ oppressor.Wittig defines woman in terms of her relationship with man which takes the form of a agonistic residence, domestic corvee, conjugal duties, unlimited reapingion of children etc. This applies to Celie, the protagonist of Walkers The Color Purple who contents herself with a purposeless deportment and is oblivious of the orgasmic pleasure until she meets Shug Avery. Essentially the patriarchal society, as Wittig asserts, strengthens the form of oppression through imaginary formation of physical features. A black is sensed as a black, in that respectfore, s/he is a black similarly, a woman is perceived or seen as a woman, in that locationfore she is a woman. However, it is not because she is born that way, but because she is made to be so.Walker swept the world with her crude(a) yet realistic portrayal of strong women characters and equally repulsive men characters in her Pulitzer winning novel, The Color Purple. Her clarion call for Black Womanism had just begun. She could not accept the idea of the White feminism speaking for women of annotate because she correctly witnessed the alienation of the black experience and further marginalization of texts by black feminists in the mainstream academic tradition. Her ideology of womanism first appeared in her book In Search of Our Mothers Gardens Womanist Prose (1983), in which she attributes the words origin to the black single out expression of mothers to female children, You acting womanish, i.e. like a woman unremarkably referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous, or willful behavior A womanist is also a woman who loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually appreciates and prefers womens culture, womens emotional flexibility (values tears as natural match of laughter), a nd womensstrength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or non-sexually. Committed to survival and unity of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalistic Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless. And Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. (p. xi-xii)Feminism as a movement is exclusively for women and has as its agenda the repudiation of male hegemony. The meaning of female denotes the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes. indeed, biology can use the term female rather than girl and woman. Femininity, on the other hand, is a group of traits that have culturally become associated with women, but they do not make a woman. The patriarchy views woman as an incomplete man, the second s ex, the other. But in refusing to become a woman does not imply that one adorns the grapheme of a man since as Wittig puts it-For becoming a man would enquire from a woman not only a mans external port but his consciousness as well one feature of lesbian oppression consists precisely of making women out of reach for us, since women belong to men. Thus a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society. (p.4)She elaborates her argument further asserting that-The refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to revoke to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian this goes further than the refusal of the role woman. It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of man. (p.4 )The term gender was coined by Greek philosopher, Protagoras. Greek nouns were divided into three diverse classes which attributed its existence to a word meaning class o r kind- masculine, feminine, and falsify (Cameron, p.89). The masculine, Jakob Grimm, a German philologist explained, means the earlier, larger, firmer, more inflexible, swift, active, mobile, productive the feminine the later, smaller, smoother, the more still, suffering, receptive (Cameron, p.92). However, the category of woman is incomplete biological nor grammatical. It is a cultural construct.Womanism, on the other hand, considers the society as a joint whole and acknowledges the inter-linked fate of the black women with their men in the community. Rather than financial backing separatism, Womanism promotes universalism. Womanism, like Black Feminism, provides a space for Black women and women of color to havedialogue in a non-dominative and a non-threatening environment. Womanism is not a unsanded idea by any means in fact there is evidence of its origins in the sacred texts of ancient Africa, especially the Husia of Egypt and the Odu Ifa of ancient Yorubaland. Concepts from the Husia such as the Divine inclusiveness of male and female principles, woman and man as the image of God and the concept of human customarily written with male and female characters in hieroglyphs indicate the belief that woman and man were equal by nature and divinely and must operate as such (Karenga 324).Wittig thus, busts the myth of woman ( renderd by men) by questioning and agreeing to Beauvoir, that the concept of woman is wonderful, underlining women having the best of features is a judgment men have compartmentalized fit in to their own perception. To save one self being entrapped in such a purview is the aim of the lesbian- feminists who strive for a sexless society. In this light then the concerns of feminism too is subjected to scrutiny. Feminism contains the word femme meaning woman, fighting for women as a class or, the removal of this class. If it is so, then the movement took precedence from the acceptance of the notion that women shared common features as a result of oppression But for them these features were natural and biological rather than social.Wittig takes upon her the scare away task of establishing the idea of lesbians as opposed to the class of woman/man in materialist terms. It does not imply that men as species should be led to extinction but to suppress men as a class through political struggle. Once this category of class disappears, says Wittig, the natural and diachronic division between man and woman too will vanish, for there are no slaves without masters.The political formation of class can be traced back to the ideology of Marxism which states individuals to be product of society, and that only their consciousness can be alienated not the individual herself/ himself until the class that dominates ceases to produce the ideas itself that alienates them from the class that they oppress. For instance in order to achieve a sexless society, the tangible division between the bourgeois and the proletariat has to be rem oved first and then only can there be no-man and no-woman, but all humans society. As Wittig puts-This real necessity for everyone to exist as an individual, as well as a member of a class, is perhaps the first condition for the accomplishment of a revolution, without which there can be no real fight or transformation. But the opposite is also legitimate without class and class consciousness there are no real subjects, only alienated individuals.(p.10)Thus, lesbianism is the only concept that provides for a chance to create such a social form where humankind can expect freely. Celies realization of herself as a woman capable of living individually without the necessity of a man in her lifespan, springs from the unconditional love she receives from Shug Avery, other woman for The Color Purple establishes itself as a story of women by a woman. It moves away from the categories of woman and man because a lesbian is neither a man nor a woman, either economically, or politically, o r ideologically. Here, Wittigs text offers some positive contributions to feminist and queer theory, in particular her deconstruction of the term woman and her focus on the power of language. As she clarifies- at that place is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself. (p.7)In the The Color Purple the women are doubly marginalized, first as a black, seen as the other by the white, and, secondly, as a subordinate group by the men. Celie is so used to the oppression by the men around her that when her step- son Harpo complains of his wifes disobedience to him, she advises him to beat her an alternative for her does not exist. Nettie, on the other hand, refuses to give in to the whims and fancies of the male order. She fights and carves an identity and life for her with her marriage to Samuel, a missionary. It is Shug Avery, a Blues singer, who reveals to Celie the value of independence and the presumption of a womans identity. Through the conversations and the relationship thus enforced between Shug and Celie, one can find clinching evidence of subversive textuality wherein the traditional text is undermined and hetereosexuality is challenged. The realization brings about a metamorphosis in Celie. She forgives the men in her life who viewed her as nothing more than a mule of the world. She emerges like the autobiographic Walker as a butterfly whose fiercely strong bullheadedness makes the society and world at large celebrate her identity and individuality. As Toni Morrison maintains in Beloved, Definitions belong to the definers not the defined. Self naming and self defining is crucial. (Morrison 1987). So too, womanists like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Patricia Hills Collins, Clenora Hudson- Weems assert authoritatively their political identity to the world, amidst the normal conflation with the Black Feminists.