Female Dominance and Men’s Subordination: Gerald and Andy in Woman in Mind, and Dysart and Frank in Equus

The aim of this paper is to claim, analysing four male characters in Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind and Peter Shaffer’s Equus, that problems caused by sex/gender discrimination are not due to men only; instead, these problems exist beyond masculinity since men are also subject to oppression, subordination and victimisation in patriarchal societies. This assertion may be justified by the abundance of subordination of men in patriarchal societies. Moreover, it may be claimed that subordination is not limited to men and women and it spreads to other minorities, which lack power prevailing anything on earth. The solution to the problems caused by not only gender but also sex discriminations may be neutralisation of what is called femininity and masculinity. This article concludes with the assertion that it may be claimed based on the analysis of four male characters in Equus and Woman in Mind that the problems based on so-called gender/ sex issues in any societies are not led by only masculinity since the victims of the subordination and any kind of oppression in societies are not only women, as some of the feminist discourses claim, but also men.