The statement that "women aren't people, they're women" sounds at first like a throwback to an earlier era when women were relegated to a secondary position, but in truth it is just as accurate to state that "men aren't people, they're men." For a long time, the women's movement pressed for equality, and this was often translated as an attempt to eliminate all differences so that men and women were seen as the same. That trend ran up against an incontrovertible fact--while men and women are equal, men and women are not the same. Women now should be able to celebrate their differences even as they take their place as social equals to men, and commentators more and more are suggesting ways in which women can celebrate and control their sexuality as never before.
Gender and sexuality are not the same things, though they have often been mistaken as synonymous. Gender can be defined as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles, making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female roles. Gender is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the range of behaviors that have been developed to define gender and on the forces at work in the creation of these roles. The role of women in American society was conditioned by religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that prevailed through much of American history. The culture of Europe and America was based for centuries on a patriarchal system in which exclusive ownership of the female by a given male was considered important, with the result that women were relegated to the role of property with no voice in their own fate. Women today want to be recognized for their achievement and to be given equal opportunity with men, but they also want to be women first. Doing so means ...