Women across Cultures - Essay Example

She wants the reader to understand that although what a woman in one culture might take for granted as a right might be something a woman in another culture is still fighting for but it does not make it any less of an issue under feminism. Burn wants to "give you some overall sense of the varieties of issues affecting women and the variety of their response, and how both these are affected by culture and women's roles as reproducers" (p.5).1. The study of lesbianism is important to the topic of women across cultures because almost every country in the world has a lesbian sub-culture living somewhere in it, whether they want to admit it or not.

The consequences of proclaiming yourself to be lesbian can be emotionally trying especially in societies that have very strict social roles that are to be maintained. Numerous countries deny having any problems with lesbianism because they have laws that outlaw it so it cannot possibly exist. The social roles in these countries are so well ingrained in females that even if they are lesbians they will not admit it or even worse allow themselves to become involved in a heterosexual relationship.

This is just another way for patriarchal based societies to control women who are different. Different women who do not conform to the norms are shunned and made even ashamed than they were, to begin with. These attitudes affect women all over the globe to varying degrees, which is why lesbianism is important to the topic of women across cultures (Burn, 2000, pp. 79-80).7. Some of the core beliefs and practices of lesbian feminism are that a woman has decided to combine her lesbian lifestyle with her political practices together.

Burn (2000) defines lesbian feminism as a "variety of beliefs and practices based on the core assumption that there is a connection between an erotic and/or emotional commitment to women and political resistance to patriarchal domination" (p.89). This allows a lesbian to not only support lesbianism but also publicly support the "liberation of lesbians" (Burn, 2000, p. 90). Another belief of some lesbian feminists is lesbian separation. This is where a group of lesbians start their own society without men involved at all.

Most lesbian feminists are not this extreme, they just want to live peaceably and freely and openly in their own society without being abused emotionally or physically for doing so.Many organizations are fighting to have women's human rights recognized as just human rights. There should not be a gender difference between human rights for men and women. Nobody ever fights for men's human rights because they are implied in the term human rights but women have no human rights or they are not as serious as men's because women are undervalued in almost all societies.

The only way women's human rights are going to become a priority is by women to keep organizing and not to let the men in charge push aside the particular problems facing women such as domestic violence and abuse. Not only do men in general need to be educated about women's human rights but so do future generations of women who hopefully will carry on the fight after we are gone.