Feminism Exam Terms Study Guide

A comprehensive vocabulary study guide containing definitions, historical wave contexts, and key feminist terms from the lecture transcript.

The "Invisible Knapsack"

Peggy McIntosh's 1989 metaphor for the unearned advantages that white people may carry with them because of racism and privilege, often without noticing them.

Social Construction of Gender

The idea that gender roles, expectations, and meanings are created by society rather than being determined entirely by biology.

Intersectionality

Kimberlé Crenshaw's framework (coined in 1989) for understanding how systems of oppression, such as racism and sexism, overlap and shape people's experiences together.

Ableism

Discrimination, prejudice, or social structures that devalue disabled people and treat nondisabled bodies and abilities as normal or superior.

"First Wave" Feminism

A label commonly used for the feminist movement focused especially on women's legal and political rights, including suffrage, spanning approximately the mid-19th century to the early 20th century (1840s–1920s).

Indigenous Feminism

Feminist approaches centered on Indigenous women's experiences, sovereignty, culture, land, community, and resistance to colonialism.

Heteronormativity

The assumption that heterosexuality is normal, natural, or preferred and that people should fit heterosexual relationship and family structures.

Hegemonic Masculinity

The culturally dominant model of masculinity (developed by R. W. Connell in the 1980s) that establishes certain masculine traits, such as toughness, dominance, heterosexuality, and authority, as ideal.

Marilyn Frye's "Birdcage"

A metaphor from Marilyn Frye's 1983 book The Politics of Reality comparing oppression to a birdcage: one individual wire may not seem to prevent escape, but the entire structure makes escape impossible.

The Combahee River Collective

A Black feminist collective founded in the 1970s that developed a political statement (published in 1977) emphasizing the interconnectedness of racial, gender, class, and sexual oppression.

Consciousness Raising

Small-group feminist discussions (especially associated with second-wave feminism in the 1960s–1970s) in which women shared personal experiences and connected those experiences to larger social and political structures.

Networked Feminism

Feminist activism organized through digital networks, social media, online communities, and decentralized forms of communication, primarily in the 21st century / fourth wave.

Feminist "Waves"

A framework that divides feminist history into periods or "waves" (First: 1840s–1920s; Second: 1960s–1980s; Third: 1990s–2000s; Fourth: 2010s–present), often based on dominant issues and forms of activism.

This Bridge Called My Back

An influential 1981 anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa featuring writings by women of color about race, gender, sexuality, class, and identity.

Seneca Falls Convention

The 1848 women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where activists issued the Declaration of Sentiments demanding greater rights for women.

Transgender Feminism

A feminist approach that centers transgender experiences and challenges the assumption that gender is fixed, binary, or determined solely by sex assigned at birth.

"Third Wave" Feminism

A period of feminism primarily in the 1990s and 2000s associated with greater attention to diversity, sexuality, race, identity, individual expression, and critiques of earlier feminist movements.

"No More Miss America!"

A 1968 second-wave protest organized by New York Radical Women against the Miss America pageant and the objectification and narrow beauty standards imposed on women.

"The Woman-Identified Woman"

A 1970 second-wave lesbian feminist manifesto that argued lesbian identity could be understood as a political challenge to male-centered social structures.

Gender Socialization

The process through which people learn cultural expectations about how people of different genders are supposed to behave.

"Compulsory Sexuality"

The idea in contemporary feminist and queer theory that society pressures people to participate in or value sexuality and sexual relationships as normal, expected, or necessary.

Reproductive Justice

A framework developed by Black women activists in the 1990s that connects reproductive rights to the social and economic conditions necessary for people to make meaningful choices about reproduction.

DeGraffenreid v. General Motors

A 1976 federal court case in which five Black women argued that General Motors discriminated against them as Black women, which the court rejected by treating race and sex discrimination separately.

"Supercrip" Stories

Media stories in disability studies and media criticism that portray disabled people as inspirational primarily because they overcome disability or accomplish extraordinary things.

Shirley Chisholm

The first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress (1968) and the first Black major-party candidate to seek the U.S. presidency (1972).

Gloria Steinem

A prominent American feminist writer, organizer, and public figure who helped build the modern women's movement and co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

A 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion.

Disability Justice

A framework developed in the 2000s by disabled activists, especially activists of color, emphasizing collective liberation, accessibility, interdependence, and the interconnectedness of disability with race, gender, class, sexuality, and other forms of oppression.