Feminism

Question 1

Lib feminists on HN

Answer 1

Belief in individualism
Should have right to choose + given equality in public realm
Foundational equality- women are entitled to the same rights as men

Question 2

Radical fems on HN

Answer 2

Starts in the family, women are not born passive, mediocre or immanent- she is socialised to believe that proper women must embody those characteristics.
Conditioning due to the patriarchy. Men + women have fundamentally different natures, stemming from biology known as essentialism. Liberation can only be achieved when women are encouraged to allow their diff natures + creative spirit to flourish
Equality feminists believe patriarchy can be overthrown when gender roles and stereotypes are challenged.

Question 3

De Beauvoir on HN

Answer 3

‘One is not born but rather becomes a woman’
Women are conditioned to accept oppression

Question 4

Socialist fems on HN

Answer 4

Women are forced into submission by capitalism. They are seen as part of a man’s priv property, and have to take child duties off of a man so they can work.
Domestic work is a 2nd shift, women work harder

Question 5

Rowbotham on HN

Answer 5

Argued that to achieve women’s liberation required a ‘revolution within a revolution’ maintained that capitalism & sexism are so closely linked that the only way to destroy both was radical change in the cultural conditioning of humanity, regarding child-rearing, homes, laws and the work place

Question 6

Post-mod on HN

Answer 6

More at play than gender, experiences vary for a range of reasons… not just diff between men & women but women and other women (diff classes, race, cultures, relig etc)

Question 7

hooks on HN

Answer 7

Best known for bringing cultural concerns of women into the mainstream fem movement. Focuses too much on white, college-educated middle and upper-class women who had no stake in concerns of women of colour

Question 8

Liberals on patriarchy

Answer 8

Women should not be discriminated against ag due to ‘accidents of birth’
Wollstonecraft - patriarchy in the pub realm could be combatted by education & opening up the public sphere to all women.

Question 9

Radicals on patriarchy

Answer 9

Gender is the most imp cause of Soc div & have advanced the theory of sexual politics.
Patriarchy draws attention to the systematic, industrialised and pervasive power of men
‘The person is the political’
Politics/ power relationships can be found in all relationships between men and women. Focus on diff aspects of the ‘personal’ to show how they are political and patriarchy pervades every aspect of life.

Question 10

Socialists on patriarchy

Answer 10

Capitalism creates patriarchy, women should join together with men to fight capitalism and by doing so, removing patriarchy too.
Lenin in the USSR making divorce + abortion legal
Patriarchy is the consequence of capitalism, only a rev based on Soc values will bring about women’s liberation

Question 11

Perkins Gilman on patriarchy

Answer 11

From childhood girls are forced to conform to a domestic role & motherhood shown by toys advertised for them

Question 12

Post-mod on patriarchy

Answer 12

Challenged that gender alone was the primary factor affecting women. Putting gender alongside race, religion or class was a more precise way of understanding the challenges facing women.
Intersectionality
Fem oft focuses on white-middle-class women.

Question 13

Sylvia Walby’s six structures of patriarchy

Answer 13

Culture- women = misrepresented in media & pop culture
Sexuality- women’s sexuality more likely to be treated negatively
Paid work- women are more likely to be paid less
Violence- women are more prone to abuse
Household- women are more likely to do the housework & raise the children
State- women are unlikely to have formal power + rep

Question 14

Liberals on the state

Answer 14

Can play a role in the promotion of women’s liberation in the public realm, policy should not go beyond the front door.
Women have right to decide what they want to do
Harm principle- will get involved if needs be.
Full legal equality and equality of opportunity

Question 15

Radicals on state

Answer 15

Prov an equal, legal framework is insufficient to overthrow the patriarchy
State promotes the interest of patriarchy
Will get involved in the priv sector, the patriarchy stems from the bedroom

Question 16

De Beauvoir on the state

Answer 16

Conditioning of women.
Motherhood is a way of turning women into slaves as they are forced to focus on motherhood and feminists rather than politics, technology or anything outside the family
Should eradicate patriarchal values in the pub and priv sphere by outlawing porn & ensuring harsher punishments for domestic violence, rape and other crimes against women.

Question 17

Millett on the state

Answer 17

Female oppression was both pol & cultural, sub the undoing of the trad family unit was key to a true sexual revolution.
Family= ‘patriarchy’s key institution’

Question 18

Socialists and the state

Answer 18

Reject the idea that the state is a neutral body, instead that it works in the interest of capitalism and the patriarchy.
Need a rev.
Cap forces us to continue to uphold the patriarchy
Pub + priv sphere

Question 19

Rowbotham on the nature oppresion

Answer 19

Women are doubly oppressed as they are forced to sell their labour to survive, also forced to use their labour to support their husbands and children.

Question 20

Libs on Public/ private divide

Answer 20

Do not seek to change the private, domestic sphere. Society should give women and men an equal opportunity to stay at home, or go out to work or both.
Politics stops at the front door.
Wollstonecraft- key to women making decisions is education. Does not dislike marriage as an institution, women just need choice.
Don’t believe the fundamental reconstructing of Soc is necessary. Rejects that patriarchy as the systematic + pervasive syst of oppression if women, highlights its just discriminatory

Question 21

Radicals on public/ private divide

Answer 21

Legislation should start in the home. Oppression starts at home and in the family, from the ways in which we are brought up and our attitudes, legislation and education are needed to stop oppression

Question 22

Millet on the public/ private divide

Answer 22

Millet’s ’sexual politics’ critiques the patriarchy w/ a particular focus on it w/in the family. Women treated as prop of the husband

Question 23

Socialists on the public/ private divide

Answer 23

Capitalism makes women property, cap was based on the accumulation of priv prop, assuring the paternity of their heirs were vital to men, women required to be virgins and monogamous (in marriage).. soc rev would fix legislation in every aspect.

Question 24

Rowbotham on public/ private divide

Answer 24

Institute of marriage closely resembles feudalism

Question 25

Gilman on public/ private divide

Answer 25

Sex and domestic politics went hand in hand; for women to survive they were reliant on their sexual assets to please their husbands so that he could financially support his family

Question 26

Post-mod on pub/priv divide

Answer 26

Fem everywhere
Focus on minorities speaking up

Question 27

Susan Brown Miller

Answer 27

Talked ab men creating and benefitting from an ‘ideology of rape’, Men are aggressive, dominating & destructive and women are victims of this.
Men rape bc they have the ‘biological capacity’ to do so (women don’t)
Not all men rape, but they benefit from it bc of fear & anxiety it creates amongst women.

Question 28

Andrea Dworkin

Answer 28

Pornography is the tool by which men objectify and subjugate women. Pornographers should be sued for supporting violence against women.
Heterosexual sex is almost always subjugation, and so women should not have relations w/ men.
There should be a sep lesbian state set up as option to escape men (paralleled w/ Jewish persecution)

Question 29

Wittig

Answer 29

Identified herself as a Radical lesbian. In her work the straight mind; she argued that lesbians are not women bc to be a lesbian is to step outside of heterosexual norms of women, as defined by men for men’s ends

Question 30

Lesbian feminism

Answer 30

Not enough for women to abstain from sex w/ men- to be truly free they must become lesbians. Only this was they can break free from being a woMAN
Instead to be a lesbian is to seize a pos + indep identity
For Wittig and other ‘radicalesbians’ like Charlotte Bunch & Ti Grace Atkinson women were an oppressed class that would become conscious of their oppression and become revolutionary. Therefore mixing Marxist analysis w/ radical feminism.

Question 31

Ti Grace Atkinson

Answer 31

‘Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice’

Question 32

Ecofeminism

Answer 32

Earth was in danger of environmental destruction and women could by united action save the world in a way that men could not.
Women are naturally closer to the environment than men
Vandana Shiva and the Chipko movement in India
It is an extension of patriarchy that men should wish to dominate and exploit the natural world like they do women. Most land is also owned by men and they want to dominate the natural world.
Women could help w/ over-pop if they had greater control over their own fertility.
Men have a tendency to see themselves as superior ro nature and women see themselves as part of it

Question 33

Vandana Shiva

Answer 33

Says that women have a special connection to the environment & so can combat cap

Question 34

Friedan on sex and gender

Answer 34

‘Our biology is not our destiny’

Question 35

De Beauvoir on sex and gender

Answer 35

‘Woman has ovaries, a uterus; these peculiarities imprison her in the subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature’
Described woman as ‘not man’ and the ‘second sex’ now internalised… women perceiving that they have roles bc of biology ‘women are not conscious of their own acceptance of their inferiority’ unconscious being

Question 36

Otherness

Answer 36

Male sex is considered ‘normal’ women are considered abnormal- diff and therefore ‘other’

Question 37

Androgyny

Answer 37

Sexless. Fems who agree w/ androgyny hold that women & men have the same basic nature as human beings. Sexual differences are biological facts of life but insists they have no Soc, pol or econ is.
Cold link to lib fem who believes we are all indivs
Rads… Soc can be reconst even dem to achieve ‘personhood’.

Question 38

Essentialism

Answer 38

Belief that biological factors are crucial in determining psychological and behavioural traits. Unchangeable sexual identities of women & men and this impacts Soc & cult characteristics of gender

Question 39

Transfeminism

Answer 39

Rise of transgenderism has led to arguments that sex is socially constructed
More fluid understanding of being a woman… no such thing as woman, impossible to generalise and constrain every1 in that bracket

Question 40

What do all fems agree on?

Answer 40

Women are not treated equally

Question 41

Libs on society

Answer 41

Women are discriminated against in Soc, focus on ref in the pub sphere

Question 42

Rads on society

Answer 42

Society is pervaded by patriarchal values, seek to keep men’s dominant pos.
The person is the political. All rel between men and women is based on power and dominance

Question 43

Equality fems on society

Answer 43

Want a Soc where gender ceases to struc a persons identity

Question 44

Rad diff fems on Soc

Answer 44

Encourage the recog of women’s superior cultural values such as compassion + pacifism, believing these will overcome masculine qualities of selfishness
Cultural feminism also challenge the domestic cultural arg that women are inferior and subservient to men

Question 45

Soc fems on society

Answer 45

Women suppressed by capitalism, effectively working 2 shifts. Conditioning the next gen into workers

Question 46

Post modern on society

Answer 46

Challenge the notion that gender is the sole factor in determining female oppression in society, arguing that black and working class women’s experience of the patriarchy are different from those of white, middle class women- intersectionality

Question 47

The person is the political

Answer 47

Associated w/ 2nd wave feminism seemed to convey that rel between men and women in public sphere… aspects of life that were considered personal were exactly where pols needed to get involved… causing oppression

Question 48

Soc fems on the economy

Answer 48

Soc fems believe that the econ is the key determinant of female oppression , cap in the econ sphere (not patriarchy) determines the nature of female oppression in society. Cap needs women to play a subservient role in the econ & Soc as a reserve labour force.
Modern Soc fems= interplay between cap in the econ & patriarchy in the Soc that causes oppression of women

Question 49

Greenham common peace camp

Answer 49

Set up in the 1980s at the RAFs Greenham common base as a protest against the govs dec to site nuclear missiles there.
All women- women = life givers who had to protect their children + future gens
Mainly non-violent protest took the form of singing songs, linking arms to create a human chain around the base, sit into etc
Women were a perm fixture for 20 years. Police forcibly removed for trespassing (under MT)
Media was hostile towards a largely innocuous protest.
Became a symbol of fem protests against the values of aggression and destruction.
Wealth in partnership with nature rather than exploiting it