Society and Gender Essay
...ounds of rice. After some time, he found a girl who indeed, made a complete meal for him. He took her with him and made her his wife. To Saktikumara, he was not complete without this woman. Although she was treated badly by him, she never complained. She worked tirelessly to keep him happy. This was the way things were in their culture. It was customary for the woman to wait on her husband, and do everything for him to keep him happy. They needed to be together for one another to carry on in life. A woman was nothing without a man to serve, as a man was nothing without a wife to serve him. This was just the way they were brought up, and the way they would teach their young to do. This is how their cultures were for many years, and the way they would be for many years to come. In the Chinese culture, marriage was also a big priority. “Footbinding”, written by John King Fairbank, illustrates how symbolic a physical feature, the feet, were to marriage. It was essential for a young girl to have here feet bound. This is the process by which the foot is formed to be much smaller than in its natural state. To the Chinese, this foot would be three inches long, and more slender than normal as well. It was said that a woman could not have a good marriage without these bound feet. As a basic element of the culture, women were inferior, and her feet were one of the things that showed this. Bound feet would ensure that the woman could not travel far, unlike the men. This is a sign of the mens dominance over the women. It set the women apart. It was also a sexual fetish to the men. Although the bounding of the feet was painful to the woman, it gave pleasure to the man. It was considered to be sexier for the womans feet to be like this. Also, a woman who did not have bound feet was ridiculed, and looked down upon. She was not wanted by any of the men like this. In contrast, men had to do nothing to impress the women. They did not have to endure this pain just to be better looking, or to please the opposite sex. This is another point that shows the males dominance over women. In Somalia, women were subject to the pain of female genital mutilation to be considered a woman. “The Horror of Female Genital Mutilation”, by Laura Ziv, explains the process of this horrible ritual. It was basically circumcision performed on a womans genital parts. This consisted of the amputation of the clitoris, and in some cases, the removal of the vaginal lips, followed by sewing shut the remaining sides of the...