The history of women striving to earn equality in society hasn’t been an easy task because men have been historically dominating and ruling the society in their own way. Women have been through many discrimination regardless their race, class, and color just because men believes women has less ability to take charge of the society. Both Collins in the “Matrix of domination” and Beauvoir by “Woman as other” presents us the history of gender discrimination from a feminist perspective. These two authors present theories on how men dominate women for their own benefit. Moreover, Collins theorized that there are many forms of discrimination in our society and each is interconnected with the other. On the other hand, Beauvoir shows us many tactics …show more content…
In response to these man-made rules, historically women have generated movements to challenge these societal men centered ideas. While Collins proposes a theory where race, class, and gender are interconnected using African-American women as a primary focus of his claims on classifying women as a group oppressed by men, Beauvoir further argues that men very intentionally and consciously takes control of women by referring them as “others”.
Collin argues that Black feminist thinking has advanced in a “paradigmatic shift” because it “rejects additive approaches to oppression”. Meaning, it isn’t solely based on gender rather it puts a similar emphasis on other societal aspects such as race, class, sexual orientation, disability etc. According to Colin, “the significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and …show more content…
Men, most of the time, consider themselves as a subject and sees women in an objective form, the other. Beauvoir further states that it is very natural for a human to understand the position of their opposition but when it comes to gender, it’s flawed because women are a part of human society, and men ruling them in the society and objectifying them basically means denying their humanity. According to Beauvoir, although women “make up about one-half of the humanity”, they are pressed to realize that feminism is in “danger” and their right to receive equal treatment in the society as men are fundamentally denied. For example, many women in our society oppose these man-made attitudes towards women which signify that some women are “haunted by a sense of their femininity”. These denials of women to receive equal importance in society is basically “a fight from reality” (Beauvoir). Furthermore, Beauvoir argues that men dictates the behavior of women and defines “woman not in herself but as relative to him” (Beauvoir). In society, a woman often appears to men as a “sexual being” and “differentiated with reference to men” (Beauvoir). As a result, men is the subject and he is perfect - “she is the other”