Response to Marilyn Frye's "Oppression" REFLECTION/QUOTES

            Oppression on women's sexuality can be terrifying and overwhelming. It has far too often led many women to feel guilty and deserving of all kinds of names such as "whore" or "prude," and in more serious circumstances as being underserving of legal rights, letting themselves fall right through the cracks of the justice system. 
           In Marilyn Frye’s article, Oppression, she suggests that anyone who is considered by the general population to be oppressed that is sighted smiling and being cheerful is doing so as a way of showing everyone else that they do not feel oppressed.  However, the oppressed are being held to a double standard where if they are viewed to be acting in an unpopular manner then they must be suffering the burden of oppression, and are only acting in accordance with the label that the oppressing society has pinned to them. I agree that this double standard held against oppressed people is unreasonable and Frye's choice of an example relating to feminism is spot on. She uses the unfortunately common occurrence of women being labeled as “sluts” for being sexually active or as “prudes” for abstaining. How can a woman win? I remember one day I was talking with my mom about being judged by men, and I was caught off guard by how bluntly she communicated the same idea. She said, 
           “If you sleep with a guy they’ll talk to their friends about you like you’re a slut, but if you don’t sleep with a guy they’ll say you’re a frigid bitch! So who really gives a damn what they think!”
    Frye also effectively sums it up by saying that young women “are in a bind where neither sexual activity nor sexual inactivity is all right.”
    She goes further into the mess as she talks about how women who are raped that have been consensually sexually active in the past must have actually liked it because they are known to like sex, and "weren't really raped at all." On the other side, women who are raped that are openly abstinent must also have liked it, as if she used the word rape as an excuse because “she is supposedly ‘repressed and frustrated’” Having been sexually active and sexually assaulted, I know this situation and its consequences far too well. It is extremely unfortunate that in the most common incidences of rape, men are too often given the benefit of the doubt because proving in court that first degree sexual assault occurred is very difficult, especially in situations most commonly experienced involving alcohol or other drugs. What is more disappointing is that according to Day One, Rhode Island’s Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center, “more than 59% of all sexual assaults go unreported to police.” 

 This is usually because the victim often feels guilty, and in fear of being harshly judged and getting trapped in the web that Frye discusses, they find it easier to try to pretend it didn’t happen and keep quiet. I once overheard a conversation being held at a party about rape that I could never forget. I’ll pose to you the same question that they were so stuck on: ask yourself,

Is it worse for someone to be wrongly accused of sexual assault and end up being punished criminally, or for someone to get away with sexual assault because the victim said nothing?