Feminism Flashcards
What is Feminism?
Advocacy of women’s rights for them to be equal.
When was one of the first groups advocating for women’s rights? What did they point out?
The 1960s/1970s, who pointed out the limited representations of women in the media.
What do Feminists argue?
Social divisions in society benefit men in terms of work, educational opportunities, wages, and access to political and economical power.
How do they see media representations?
They naturalise the power imbalance between men and women by emphasising that a woman’s role is a domestic one.
What were the three ways that Laura Mulvey identified that mainstream media is male-dominated?
1 - Men controlled the action and were responsible for moving the narrative along.
2 - Women were represented as passive objects of the male gaze.
3 - Pleasure in viewing comes from voyeurism, narcissism and scopophilia.
What is Voyeurism?
Getting pleasure from secretly watching other people in sexual situations.
What is Narcissism?
An extreme sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment.
What is Scopophilia?
Voyeurism without the sexual aspect. The love of objectifying.
Why is it sometimes problematic to apply Mulvey’s theory to all media texts?
Television is constructed for the glance not the gaze with the emphasis on sound, as viewers are often doing other things whilst ‘watching’ television.
Who pointed out the limitations of Mulvey’s theory, and what did they say?
Gammon and Marshment - suggest that in recent years a number of texts have presented men as objects of the female gaze. They suggest women are more active viewers than than people think.
What is the Bechdel Test?
Whether or not a text features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two female characters have names.
What is the Bechdel test used to indicate?
The active presence (or lack thereof) of women in fiction, and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction.
What does Judith Butler suggest in terms of gender?
Gender is not a result of nature but is socially constructed. That is to say, male and female behaviour and roles are not the result of biology but are constructed and reinforced by society through media and culture.
What is Post-Feminism?
The argument that many media texts take a playful and irreverent attitude to the traditional gender divisions of the past.
What is ‘gender trouble’?
Who came up with it?
Judith Butler - a number of exaggerated, disruptive ‘tongue in cheek’ representations of masculinity and femininity, which draw attention to the fact that gender is socially constructed.
