I-III
pp. 1515-1525
The institutions where women are controlled have been strengthened by legislation, religion, media, and censorship. Lesbains still face discrimination in the workplace and everyday life with harassment and violence. Rich mentions the idea that feminism can no longer refer to lesbianism as less “natural” or as a “sexual preference” and how it is not just an “alternate lifestyle.” She begins to reference Kathleen Gough’s eight characteristics of male power in archaic and contemporary societies in “The Origin of the Family” to use as a framework for “men’s ability to deny women sexuality or to force it upon them” (1519). The characteristics of male power include “the power of men to… to deny women (their own) sexuality, or to force it (male sexuality) upon them, to command or exploit their labor to control their produce, to control or rob them of their children, to confine them physically and prevent their movement, to use them as objects in male transactions, to cramp their creativeness, and to withhold from them large areas of societies knowledge and cultural attainments” (1520). Men use this to manifest and maintain their power. She mentions the gender wage pay gap and how they are segregated or less likely to be hired because they are a woman. Also how lesbians generally have to pretend to be heterosexual in the workplace. She also mentions a “sexual domination perspective” where sexual abuse and terrorism of women by men is seen as natural (1524).