The Female Eunuch summary

The way we talk about sex promotes the idea that women are passive receptacles. Though a greater awareness of her own desires makes sex more enjoyable for a woman – as well as her partner – many women don’t prioritize their sexual pleasure at all.

Instead, women are taught to treat sex as something to give in exchange for commitment.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a women’s movement called the suffragettes fought to give wives and daughters the right to vote and get out of the house. They succeeded, and the subsequent generations of feminists secured many other victories.

Despite this, girls today are still conditioned from a young age to live cautiously, not ambitiously. While young boys are given the freedom to run wild and grow strong, young girls are taught to play with dolls, sit still and stay close to their mothers. Indeed, girls grow up dependent on their mothers, which prepares them for dependency on their husbands in their adult life.

Men have long been the arbiters of femininity. It is up to women to reject these restrictive definitions of femininity and bring new ones into the world.

Women must start by eliminating the stereotype of the eternal feminine. Poets and painters throughout history have depicted women as fragile and vulnerable, likening them to delicate flowers or capturing them in images of repose and various states of undress. The eternal feminine makes women nothing more than alluring objects that can be owned by men and aspired to as a model by other women.

Why do women find men in uniforms, from cops to military men, so alluring? Women have learned to tacitly or explicitly condone violence.

If women stopped thinking of violence as heroic, men would have far less incentive to risk their own lives and those of others in dangerous acts. Just as women are under pressure to play the damsel in distress, swept off their feet by male machismo, men are forced into the role of the brave and aggressive hero. Women should instead only let themselves be impressed by intellectual bravery.