Comparing Suppression of Women in Feminine Mystique,...

Suppression of Women through Isolation in The Feminine Mystique,nbsp;Radicalesbians, and Triflesnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; It is far easier to break the spirit of one human being than that of a united group of people.nbsp;Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Radicalesbians, and Susan Glaspell’s Trifles come to the same conclusion: isolation and separation caused women to be vulnerable to domination by male society. Social stigmatization by men, an inability to describe the situation, and a lack of personal identity kept women apart from one another. A fear of social stigma was one factor that kept women from supporting each other. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan discusses how American housewives went about†¦show more content†¦Stigma attached to the word lesbian also kept women apart from one another. Radicalesbians describes the label lesbian as the debunking/scare term that keeps women from forming any primary attachments, groups, or associations among ourselves. The women’s movement was hurt by the labeling by some in the media as a lesbian movement. Ironically, lesbians often felt underrepresented in the movement while heterosexual women were afraid of being labeled lesbians. Radicalesbians confronts this issue by arguing that women are being dominated by men as long as the label ‘dyke’ can be used to frighten a woman into a less militant stand, keep her separate from her sisters, keep her from giving primacy to anything other than men and family. An inability to communicate and a lack of a feeling of sisterhood kept women from communing with one another. In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, Mrs. Hale told Mrs. Peters that women live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things – it’s all just a different kind of the same thing. Mrs. Hale didn’t know how to communicate with the oppressed Mrs. Wright so she simply stayed away from her until it was too late. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan also talks about the issue of communication. The housewives that Friedan wrote about had to develop a vocabulary to discuss the problem that had no name before they were able to come together. Until women realized that the personal is