14.1 Feminism Core Ideas - Sex and gender Flashcards
SEX
SEX
What does sex refer to?
Biological differences between men and women
What are the 2 main debates in feminism concerning sex?
- Difference feminism vs equality feminism
- Transfeminism v transfeminist sceptics
What is difference feminism?
Perceives women as biologically and culturally different from men
What difference feminist argued that biological differences affect the way that men and women think?
Carol Gilligan
What do equality feminists argue about sex and nature?
That a women’s ‘nature’ is socially constructed - determined by society rather than biology
What does transsexual refer to?
Those whose gender identity differs from the biological sex that they were classified at birth
What does transfeminism argue about sex?
Transfeminists argue that sex is socially constructed
What do most feminists argue?
That sex is a biological fact
What did radical second-wave feminist Germaine Greer state about transgender women?
That transgender women are ‘not women’
What did Sheila Jeffreys assert about feminism?
It should only be for ‘womyn-born-womyn’
What radical feminist did support the socially constructed definition of sex?
Andrea Dworkin
What country passed legislation in 2014 that allowed individuals to change their identified sex without court approval?
Denmark
GENDER
GENDER
What is gender used to explain?
‘Gender roles’ of men and women
What do the majority of feminists argue about gender roles?
They are socially constructed and form gender stereotypes
What did Simone de Beauvoir argue about biological differences between men and women?
They had been used by a male-dominated state and society as a justification for predetermining the gender role of women
What was de Beauvoir’s ‘otherness’?
Men had successfully characterised themselves as the norm whereas women were the other, and this ‘otherness’ had left women subordinate to men in society
What did de Beauvoir believe male domination had created?
Men were the ‘first sex’ while women were the ‘second sex’
What did Charlotte Perkins Gilman (CPG) argue about gender roles?
They are socially constructed from a young age, subordinating women to the will of men
What did CPG believe women were socialised into thinking?
They were naturally frail and weaker than men
Where do both bell hooks and Kate Millet both believe social construction as beginning?
In childhood with the family unit
FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER
FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER
How did first-wave feminism extend classical liberal ideas?
That extended classical liberal ideas about human nature and freedom of the individual so that they explicitly included women
What did Mary Wollstonecraft argue about women?
They were just as rational as men and should receive the same educational opportunities
What did CPG conceptualise the idea of?
Economic independence for women
SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER
SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER
Who wrote ‘Sexual Politics’ in 1970, a key text of second-wave feminism?
Kate Millet
What key second-wave feminism book did Sheila Rowbotham write in 1973?
‘Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World’
How did liberal feminists (1W) want women’s problems to be solved?
By the state reforming society and the economy
How do liberal feminists and radical feminists differ on how they wanted society to change?
Radical feminists saw the state as part of the problem and wanted radical changes to the public and private sphere of society.
Liberal feminists wanted the state to reform society
How did socialist feminists want change?
They want a socialist feminist revolution that could solve the problem of capitalism and female oppression
What was second-wave feminism united on?
That women were being oppressed by men, a concept that became known as the patriarchy
