feminism- ppp

1st wave

The first organized movement to change women’s unequal social and legal position, particularly focusing on the campaign for women’s suffrage (late 19th-early 20th century)

2nd wave

A larger-scale politically active movement that advocated equality of the sexes (1960s-1980s). Despite the emergence of first-wave feminism, women had still not achieved equality with men. Second-wave feminism was associated with the women’s liberation movement, which sought to subvert patriarchy and sexism in all aspects of social life.

Key critics:

Simone De Beauvoir Challenged the representation of women in cultural narratives as “Other” compared to men

Betty Friedan, Challenged the stereotype that women  found fulfilment in marriage, housework and child rearing alone

Kate Millett.

3rd wave

an expansion of feminism’s primary goal, namely equality between sexes, to incorporate women who felt excluded from second-wave feminism, especially women of color and non-Western women (1980s-1990s).

Key critics: Gloria Anzaldua and bell hooks

4th wave

focuses on sexual harassment and is strongly associated with the #MeToo movement (2010s).

feminist theory and literature

Feminist critics quickly realized the significance of the images of women as represented in literature

They saw literature as vital to combat these images and question their authority and their coherence

feminist literary criticism - Woolf

•Discusses the representation of women by men

•Points out the socio-economic factors that traditionally prevented women from writing

•Constructs a literary lineage of women writers

2nd wave literary criticism

•Main aim of Second-wave feminist criticism: how to describe and subvert the cultural repression of women as a result of patriarchy. 

•Emphasis on the politicization of the private sphere: “the personal is political”

3rd wave literary criticism

•During second-wave feminism, feminism tried to speak on behalf of all women

•Around the 1970s, some feminist groups began to express their dissatisfaction with a collective feminism that they increasingly saw as shaped by the interests of the dominant group within the movement: white, middle class, college educated, and heterosexual women.

•These groups formulated their own feminisms, including black feminisms and Chicana feminisms

main aims of feminist literary theory

•Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts written by women.

•Examine representations of women in literature by men and women.

•Examine power relations with the view to breaking them down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy

•Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and ‘natural’

•Raise the question of whether men and women are ‘essentially’ different because of biology or are socially constructed as different

•Examine different aspects of identity (including race, ethnicity, sexuality and class) in the representation of women (intersectionality)

bell hooks - ain’t I a woman?

•White women liberationists did not challenge this sexist-racist practice; they continued it. By drawing an analogy between women and black men,  they suggested a sexist-racist attitude toward black women.

•“That black women did not collectively rally against the exclusion of our interests by both groups was an indication that sexist-racist socialization had effectively brainwashed us to feel that our interests were not worth fighting for, to believe that the only option available to us was submission to the terms of others” (9).

•While the women’s movement motivated white women to write about their position, no in depth critical analyses of the black female experience were produced

•The struggle to end racism and the struggle to end sexism are common and interlocked.

crenshaw- mapping the margins

•Main aim: to explore the race and gender dimension of violence against women of color

•The importance of recognizing as systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual

•Intersectionality as a way of framing the interactions of race and gender in the context of violence against women of color.

•Intersectionality is different from anti-essentialism, which rejects the essentializing idea of women, but also against the version that advocates for the dissolution of categories like Black people or women since all categories are culturally constructed. It is important to think about way power has clustered around certain categories and is exercised against others.

•Systemic, Political and Cultural Intersectionality

ahmed - sexism: a problem with a name

•Main aim: to reflect on how and why sexism remains persistent.

•Difficulties in addressing sexism: 1) its omnipresence and its state as a habitual 2) sexism is viewed as something we have overcome, 3) associated with ‘other’ cultures, not present in Western cultures anymore

•The act of critiquing sexism: associated with the complaining feminist, the feminist killjoy. Ahmed also criticises the way in which feminist critiques have been seen as automatic, unthinking.

•The importance of naming sexist practices: “making them appear outside of oneself” as a way to discuss the problem with others, a form of solidarity (8).

•Naming something modifies a relation but also implies that further modification is needed.

•Building an archive: to name something as sexist is already to begin building an archive, as we’re gathering different events, situations, incidents together by using this word.

•“The personal is theoretical”: In favour of drawing from personal experience not in order to claim truth or authenticity, but to bring theory back to life.

•“The personal is institutional”: sexism can be personal but also part of the world, reproduced by institutions, as a habit or structure – hence sexism becomes material.

•“Making a feminist case requires that we show how sexism is a set of attitudes that are institutionalized, a pattern that is established through use, such that it can be reproduced almost independently of individual will. Archiving sexism – showing that a pattern made out of the fabric of our lives – is thus a crucial form of feminist activism.

•The Everyday Sexism archive project

keywords

•2nd wave feminism: patriarchy, “the personal is political”

•3rd wave feminism: intersectionality, namely a theoretical framework that examines aspects such as race, gender, ethnicity to understand differentiated power dynamics of oppression and privilege