Dorothy Allison's autobiographical tale Two or Three Things I Know for Sure examines how a lower-class upbringing influenced women's identities in her family. Beauty, inadvertently, becomes one of the things most valued by her family members, the perceived lack of which shapes Allison as a person. Through the lens of intersectional feminism, a story of men's rights, how Allison fights for them, and female solidarity is woven into her lyrical prose. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The women in Allison's family were taught that beauty doesn't exist for them, "[they] are the ones in all those photos taken in mine disasters, floods, fires. [They] are the ones in the background with the mouth open, in printed dresses or drawstring trousers and collarless aprons, ugly, old and exhausted. Solid, stolid, wide-hipped children's machines” (33). that says women are inferior and that their only purpose in the world is to be mothers. From birth, men are socialized to believe that the world owes them something and that they deserve everything. Patriarchal society teaches women to minimize themselves. “Don't eat too much, don't talk too loud, don't take up too much space, don't take from the world” (Chernik 602) – lifting up men and women at the same time by allowing them to take up as much space as they could want. Men believe they own the world and the women who live in it; they benefit from a complex system that allows them to “…have the power to decide whether to strive for a more equitable distribution of power” (McIntosh 7) without consequences either way. Allison's story of her rape at the hands of her stepfather is a narrative that helps understand how this system and the rape culture it has built allows and even encourages men to act in atrocious ways without social repercussions. This is something that does not change depending on race or class. Allison's lower-class status in early life deepens the impact of this dangerous sense of male entitlement. Allison's lack of monetary wealth during childhood prevented her from believing she had economic mobility; a perceived lack of beauty – something akin to currency for the men in her family – kept her from feeling worthy of love. Allison talks about high school and how “the pretty girls at [her] high school… wore virgin pins on the right side or knew enough not to wear tacky things at all. [She and her cousins] were never virgins, even when [they] were” (36). Like the poor, "ugly" girls in high school, Allison and her cousins ​​were available to boys; they were the “easy” girls, Allison suggests. Combined with their lower class status, the question is asked, "'[s]hit, who could love a girl like her?'" (36). Identity in every family is linked to multiple factors: ancestry, cultural history, geography, socioeconomic status, contemporary culture, society and politics, and so on. In Allison's family, it is clouded by a reluctance to talk about long-dead family members. However, he believes that his personal identity comes from his nameless and faceless female relatives. Her fascination with "unfolding tragedies, great romances, secrets, mysteries, and desires that no one would ever know" (17) – especially as it pertains to the women in her family – speaks to the weight Allison placed on history in his identity. The value he places on women he never hasknown is a product of the natural support system that women often build around each other: not a system of privilege, but a system of love and strength found only among like-minded women who understand what they have suffered at the hands of men and patriarchy in general. But this understanding of the need for women to support women is not easy to come by. The easiest way to understand this journey is to examine, once again, the role of beauty in Allison's life. The conflict between society that commodifies beauty and Allison's family that delegitimizes its value served as a source of tension between Allison and her sister Anne: "We didn't like each other very much," Anne said. "We didn't know each other." 'Yes? Well, Mommy always thought I peed with rose water.'” “But you were beautiful. Hell, you didn't even have to pee, you were so pretty. People probably offered to pee for you. ( 77) Allison's latent jealousy is the product of a lack of bodily autonomy: her body is not hers, she and her body are not "beautiful" - according to the men in her life - resulting in a desire for the normative ideal of beauty This is not to discredit simple jealousy between brothers, but there are clear patriarchal undertones. Social norms of beauty are shaped by men and their ideas about what makes a woman “beautiful.” of self-hungry, self-obsessed women and the continued success of patriarchy” (Chernik 601), Abra Fortune Chernik explains that self-obsession and vanity are, in large part, due. to the patriarchy that forces women into physical submission, reducing their bodies and personalities to wisps of nothingness in the eternal effort to be beautiful in the eyes of society. This toxic mindset is what drives women, even women like Dorothy Allison, to believe that beauty is one of the few valuable things in the world and that she must compete with other women. However, distorted ideas of beauty are not the only products of male entitlement. As a child, Allison was raped by her stepfather, and the psychological and social impacts of this spill over into her adult life. Rape is, essentially, a physical manifestation of men's belief that they own women and their own bodies, and is surrounded by a violent and taboo culture. Rape is a power trip for weak men. The implications of Allison's underclassness and its relationship to rape culture must be considered. Lack of economic stability is often equated with powerlessness, especially for women. Poverty allows some oppression to emerge. While oppression is often associated with race and gender, it is actually an intersection of race, gender, and class. “The experience of oppressed people is that living one's life is limited and shaped by forces and barriers that are not accidental or occasional and therefore avoidable” (Frye). Allison was born a poor white woman: a Southerner who has no shame or doubt about her origins. But they are all factors that contribute to his impotence. Her poverty and femininity both downplay her value in the eyes of society. Her race affords her some privileges in white supremacist America but, combined with her class and gender, her position in society is ultimately in a position of near worthlessness. Her perceived lack of value in society leads to an internalization of misogynistic and classist behaviors that influence how Allison acts in both public and private contexts. An idea is cultivated that tells her young self that she is to blame for her own rape and most of her subsequent negative sexual experiences. It is the aforementioned system of.