Gender Texts

Question 1

‘Women will discover…’

Answer 1

‘Women will discover that they have a will; once that happens they will be able to tell us how and what they want’ - Germaine Greer

Question 2

‘Male energy is…’

Answer 2

‘Male energy is contoured and deformed too, but in a different way, so that it becomes aggression and competitiveness’ - Germaine Greer

Question 3

‘If women understand by emancipation…’

Answer 3

‘If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counter balance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever escalating speed’ - Germaine Greer

Question 4

‘Men who are personally most…’

Answer 4

‘Men who are personally most polite women, who call them angels and all that, cherish in secret the greatest contempt for them.’ - Germaine Greer

Question 5

‘Whenever we treat women’s bodies…’

Answer 5

‘Whenever we treat women’s bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them’ - Germaine Greer

Question 6

‘Bringing up children is not…’

Answer 6

‘Bringing up children is not a real occupation, because children come up just the same, brought up or not’ - Germaine Greer

Question 7

‘Liberation will not happen unless individual women…’

Answer 7

‘Liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers that be choose to call them’ - Germaine Greer

Question 8

‘Every form of subordination…’

Answer 8

‘Every form of subordination suppresses vital understanding which can on,y be achieved and communicated through the liberation of the oppressed group itself’ - Beyond the Fragments

Question 9

‘Our views are valid…’

Answer 9

‘Our views are valid because they come from within us not because they hold a received correctness…this is the opposite of most left language which is constantly distinguishing itself as correct’ - Beyond the Fragments

Question 10

‘There is a problem inherent in the slogan…’

Answer 10

‘There is a problem inherent in the slogan ‘the personal is political’ for it tends to imply that all individual problems can find a short term political solution’

Question 11

What are the key criticisms of both dominant feminist approaches made in ‘the power of women and the subversion of the community’

Answer 11

‘We must change men/ourselves first… not only political struggle is rejected; so is liberation for the mass of women who are too busy working and seeing after others to look for a personal solution’

‘The class analysis has been used to limit the breadth of the movement’s attack and even undermine the movement’s autonomy’

Question 12

‘A process of socialisation…’

Answer 12

‘A process of socialisation which often makes women, blacks, working class people etc. un confident and suspicious of intellectual work, and makes them doubt the strength and potential of hybrid own language’ - Papers on the Patriarchy Conference London 1976

Question 13

‘Since during the consumption of labour power…’

Answer 13

‘Since during the consumption of labour power, produced by the housewife, surplus value is extracted from the worker, then the housewife is herself indirectly but literally exploited’ - Roberta Farr Women and Socialism conference Paper, Birmingham 1974

Question 14

‘What is the relation of women to…’

Answer 14

‘What is the relation of women to capital and what kind of struggle can we effectively wage to destroy it?’ - the power of Women and the subversion of the community

Question 15

‘I need not hate any man…’

Answer 15

‘I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me’ - Virginia Woolf - Room

Question 16

‘Genius like Shakespeare’s…

Answer 16

‘Genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people’ - Virginia Woolf - Room

Question 17

‘Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Bronte…’

Answer 17

‘…they wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal padagogue - write this, think that’ - Virginia Woolf - Room

Question 18

‘Possibly when the professor insisted…

Answer 18

‘Possibly when the professor insisted a little to emphatically on the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but his own superiority’ - Virginia Woolf - Room

Question 19

‘Our class…’

Answer 19

‘Our class [educated women] is the weakest of all the classes in the state. We have no weapon with which to enforce our will’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas

Question 20

‘Our class possesses in its own right…’

Answer 20

‘Our class possesses in its own right and through marriage practically none of the capital, none of the land, nine of the valuables, and none of the patronage in England’

Question 21

‘The finest education in the world…’

Answer 21

‘The finest education in the world does not teach people to hate force, but to use it’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas

Question 22

‘What are these ceremonies…’

Answer 22

‘What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us this procession of educated men?’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas

Question 23

‘Husband and wife are not only…’

Answer 23

‘Husband and wife are not only one flesh, but also one purse.’ - Virginia Woolf, 3 guineas

Question 24

‘She need not acquiesce…’

Answer 24

‘She need not acquiesce; she can criticise. At last she is possession of an influence that is disinterested.’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 Guineas

Question 25

‘The daughters of educated men who were called, to their resentment…’

Answer 25

‘The daughters of educated men who were called, to their resentment, ‘feminists’ were in fact the advance guard of your own movement. they were fighting the same enemy that you fighting and for the same reasons’ - Virginia Woolf - 3 guineas

Question 26

‘Those who expect women’s contribution…’

Answer 26

‘Those who expect women’s contribution to be utterly different from the contribution of men will be disappointed’ - Eleanor Rathbone, Changes in Public Life

Question 27

‘The invisible ties of common interest…’

Answer 27

‘The invisible ties of common interest in a common purpose … help bind the women of the world together and so help, perhaps just a little to preserve its peace.’ - Eleanor Rathbone - Changes in Public life

Question 28

‘“Here we have a world” we say…’

Answer 28

‘“Here we have a world” we say “which has been shaped by men to fit their own needs, which are by no means always indent ideal to those of woman. Now that we have secured possession of the tools of citizenship we intend to use them, not to copy men’s models but to produce our own”’ - Eleanor Rathbone, changes in public life

Question 29

‘Economic dependence of mothers and children…’

Answer 29

‘Economic dependence of mothers and children is the best and by far the greates weapon of masculine dominance’ - Eleanor Rathbone, changes in public life

Question 30

‘If he is benevolent…’

Answer 30

‘If he is benevolent, here is a field for his benevolence. If he is a tyrant at heart, the power of the purse gives him the means of domineering which meddlesome law makers have sought progressively to filch from him’ - Eleanor Rathbone

Question 31

‘The mothers and children who are not engaged with the immediate production of wealth…’

Answer 31

‘The mothers and children who are not engaged with the immediate production of wealth but are essential not only to its future production but to the continued existence of the community itself’ - Eleanor Rathbone, The Disinherited Family

Question 32

‘A woman who has no aptitude for ‘Bairn minding’…’

Answer 32

‘A woman who has no aptitude for ‘Bairn minding’ and much aptitude for some other profession or industry should feel free to follow her bent…provided she does not spoil both jobs by trying to combine them when they are plainly incompatible’

Question 33

‘Parents…’

Answer 33

‘Parents in short are on strike’ - Rathbone

Question 34

‘Men have commandeered all the energy…’

Answer 34

‘Men have commandeered all the energy and streamlined it into an aggressive conquistatorial power, reducing all heterosexual contact to a sadomasochistic pattern’ - Germaine Greer