Are the problems faced by the feminist and sexual emancipation Essay

Are the problems faced by the feminist and sexual emancipation movements similar to those faced by civil rights movement Or are there major differences - Essay Example e to realize that if they are to attain their full emancipation from slavery, discrimination is to stop also, and hence the Civil Rights Movement came into being for this very reason. It took a while for the Civil Rights Movement to become unified, because many of its early leaders pursued their own agenda on a piece-meal basis. Until influential leaders like Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King came along, the movement was fragmented and due to this situation, it lacked the cohesion necessary to achieve its stated political and social aims. It is admittedly and doubly difficult for any mass movement to achieve any objective if leaders are not united, and this was the case during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. The entrenched interests of the white supremacists and the political establishment are not going to give way that easily, and many of them saw blacks as a threat to the American way of life. In this regard, the early Feminist Movement was strikingly similar to the Civil Rights Movement in that it was also fragmented, with no clear articulation of what it tries to achieve. Many feminists pursued different agendas on their own, although feminism owes its origins to the early Suffrage Movement to give women the right to vote. Early feminists cannot agree on what they want; whether it is equality in the workplace, at the home, or in the political arena. On the other hand, there are significant or major differences between these two big movements. Feminism is a fight for equality, but only with regards to womens rights. It is not just a fight for recognition, but also a struggle between the two sexes in which there is often a rampant form of sexism, a form of gender discrimination (Paludi 12). In a sense, feminism is a form of gender politics and pits man against woman, male against female protagonists. While the Civil Rights Movement was a struggle against the political and social establishment, feminism can be seen within the context of human