No Love No Sex, No Sex No Love

This above drawing embodies two assumptions society have internalized and enforced as the norm or the expected role. First assumption, as Rich points out, is relationships are naturally heterosexual--women are attracted to men and men are attracted to women. The second assumption, or stereotype, is that men and women have different motives in relationships--men are sexually driven whereas women are emotionally drive. I find it interesting how Rich explains men's need to control women's sexuality. She states, "It seems more probable that men really fear not that they will have women's sexual appetites forced on them or that women want to smother and devour them, but that women could be indifferent to them altogether. . ." (22). It seem as if society have confined women's actions and always related their action in terms of men--women's primary motive is men.

Rich's articles problematize this notion; "that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women" (35). I am extremely disturbed by how rooted our society is in the idea that everything women do is in relation to men, as if women don't have their own individuality. Another point Rich brought up in her article that disturbed me is "I believe large number of men could, in fact, undertake child care on a large scale without radically altering the balance of male power in a male-identified society" (18). This idea simple devalues motherhood, and women in general.

Rich's article in content with Rupp's article brings an extremely interesting shift in our society. I find it fascinating the shift in our view in gays and lesbians. Rich's article describes how unrepresented or unacknowledged lesbians were (especially in relation to heterosexual feminists) whereas Rupp's article explains the acceptance of homosexuality of men around the world that goes beyond relationship. However, it seems that in today's society, we have more acceptance of lesbians than we do for gays. Its like lesbians are positive, whereas gays are negative and looked down upon by society. In addition, I liked how Rupp's article brought up the idea that "sexuality" is an objective word--as a society, we do not have a universal definition that everyone agrees on.