Mina Loy, Feminist Manifesto ; Response

Last paragraph in “ Feminist Manifesto”
by Mina Loy “The desire for comfortable protection instead of an intelligent
curiosity & courage in meeting & resisting the pressure of life sex or
so called love must be reduced to its initial element, honour, grief,
sentimentality, pride and & consequently jealousy must be detached from it.Woman
for her happiness must retain her deceptive fragility of appearance, combined
with indomitable will, irreducible courage, & abundant health the outcome
of sound nerves—Another great illusion is that woman must use all her introspective andclear-sightedness & unbiased bravery to destroy—for the sake of her self
respect is the impurity of sex the realization in defiance of superstition that
there is nothing impure in sex—except in the mental attitude to it—will constitute
an incalculable & wider social regeneration than it is possible for our
generation to imagine.”

Throughout this story my ultimate idea of what she is trying to say is that men
and women are not equal. If both sexes start to be what each other “really”
wants to be and not what society expect them to perform then maybe the equality
between them will come closer.  It states “Leave off looking to
men to find out what you are not —–seek within yourselves to find out what you
are”, in my opinion I think that she is trying to say that many women become
the person their husband or “the men of the household” want them to be. They
never really figure out they real identity within. If we start to live without stereotype
such as : women are for being at home and taking care of the kids and men are supposed to work and support his family , make all the rules people will start to realize
that both sex can actually be able to do either if that’s the person they
really are. One of the lines that really caught my attention while reading has
to be “To obtain results you must make sacrifices & the first and greatest
sacrifice you have to make is of your”virtue”, clearly this line is trying to
say that any women have a hard time in realizing that they are actually more
then what society expect them to be which for example is, a for sex, a house wife,
emotional and a person that dwell a lot in love. The author is trying to say is
that the purpose is not to have the same right men do and be equal to them, but
to look deeper within themselves to gain their individual worth not caring the status
men are in. A women should take full responsibly in their lives make it their
business to be educated and be respected.

1 thought on “Mina Loy, Feminist Manifesto ; Response

  1. You include some of the most powerful claims from Loy’s text, paired with some great interpretations. I hope we can talk in class about her assertion that women need to sacrifice their virtue. By virtue, she means purity or virginity. How does that expand your understanding of the value system she’s asking women to open their eyes to and reject? Commenters–please consider taking up this issue!

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