Prompt #2

Peighton Tindle

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English Language

2 August 2013

Nothing but a Physical Difference

            The world’s thought on women have varied immensely from the point and place in time throughout history. Some people, like Aristotle, think or have thought that women are here for nothing more than to produce children while others have more of a 21^st Century approach to women’s rights and belief that females are equal to men. No matter one’s thought process, one thing that is known is that Earth has been male dominated for thousands of years along with science. Aristotle thought of women as a lower species, or “substance” in his terms, but others disagree with him even though other philosophers are mostly male like him.

I think Aristotle’s view on women is completely justified for his time period because, at the time women had no rights and were reputed to stay at home and reproduce. However, I find it almost disturbing that someone who is considered one of the world’s greatest thinkers can have such an ignorant outlook on life. Aristotle thought of women as nothing more than the soil for a man’s seed and the children claimed no traits of their mother, only the father. This is unfortunate in the fact that many people accepted this as the truth for many years throughout the government and religion, as stated on page 116 of Sophie’s World. Feminism would not be recognized socially until the late eighteen hundreds, not to say that others have not tried to enrich women’s lives.

            Which leads me to a great women’s rights activist, Olympe de Gouges, who was unfortunately beheaded for voicing her political views during the French Revolution in the late 1700s. She fought for the opportunity for women to have the same rights as men. Gouges went as far to create the Declaration of the Rights of Women because, she saw that the Declaration of the Rights of the Citizen mentioned nothing of females’ independence. She was far ahead of her time in women’s rights and sparked a thought in others’ minds around the world.

            The philosophers featured in Sophie’s World were predominately male which I found to no surprise. Up until the past couple of centuries the world was dominated by males, save for a few decades in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, so I would expect to find that most recorded philosophical thinkers are men. The way I look at it is that history is what it is and cannot be changed so why waste time reveling over the fact that men have most of the focus?

            Women are nothing but a “substance” according to Aristotle, and even though most philosophers are male he has been disagreed with in the form of women’s rights activism. The world has been controlled by men for as long as there has been documentation of civilization. Although, that way of thinking began to change in the late 1700s and thereafter thanks to a woman by the name of Olympe de Gouges who fought for females to have the same rights as males. Aristotle did not believe that women were anything more than “fertile soil” for a man’s “seed”.