Wellman Ch. 4

I also found it very interesting to see the different approaches that feminists use to fight for women's rights and equality. It is evident that some rights do indeed have to be special to each of the sexes, but the main point is that those rights do not create inequality. By not giving special rights and recognition of maternity leave or prostate cancer insurance, men and women alike would be stripped of their identity.

Another very interesting and depressing idea I came upon was that "no appeal to individual rights can ever adequatly remedy the sexual discrimination of women as a group" (80). This parallels to genocide in the way that murder of many individuals does not equal the removal of a people. With sexual discrimination, even the sum of all women's discrimination does not equal the discrimination that they have faced as a group. The roadblock that I come upon is the possible solution for women's pain as a whole? If women are not able to fight discrimination alone, how are they to fight it as a group. Law and legal rights are targeted more specificly towards certian issues. When one brings a case the court, the issue at hand is usually one involving a specific situation. I feel that it would be very difficult to defend a case for women as a group, or people. This leads me to conclude that perhaps the best way to equality is through social change. Raising awareness of the problems might lead to their reduction. A possible objection, I am aware, is that issues not enforced by law sometimes bring no change at all.

Lastly, I want to focus of women's right not to be raped. The traditional definition of rape excludes marital rape, even if the husband brutally beats and forces the wife. It baffles me to think that men seem entitled to their wives' bodies. This way of thinking makes it seem that upon signing the marriage certificate, the women give away any integrity or free will and become subjects to their husbands. Wellman quoted the English jurist, Lord Hale, whose opinion made it impossible for marital rape because the woman consents to her husband's will upon entering the marriage. (Oh, Please!)
It will be impossible for women to achieve equality until men take responsability of social obligations similar to women's and attempt to remedy centuries of wrongdoing.