They love it. Seriously though, thanks for the great breakdown. Beautifully done and just what I need to give to a young woman I know who's smart and good-hearted and turned off to her first Women's Studies class before it begins. She says the required list-serve is all invites to lesbian things and doesn't read the list much cause she's not included. I would hate for her to drop it, she's got a lot of potential as a thinker. This will help shift her focus.
smooches-p Sorry about the over-post Dd.
At 06:47 PM 6/17/99 -0400, you wrote:
>hi brett,
>
>Brett Knowlton wrote:
>>So here are my questions. Is the term feminism well defined?
>
>surely there is a common theme: women are systematically oppressed and/or
>dominated and this benefits men. as for feminist theory it shares three
>themes: 1] it focuses on women and asks of conventional social theory,
>"what about women? where do women fit in?" 2] women are treated as a
>starting point for social analysis; for some this means that women are
>epistemically privileged in the sense that they offer a 'standpoint' from
>which to pursue knowledge about social life [these days a highly contested
>claim] and 3] feminist theory is critical and promotes activism--efforts
>to change.
>
>Differences emerge when attempting to answer the questions "why are things
>the way they are and how did they get that way?" and "what is to be done?"
>
>i have been fond of using the labels radical, liberal, marxist,
>socialist-- which were initially elaborated by Alison Jaggar in _Feminist
>Politics and Human Nature_ Jaggar argues that we can typify feminisms
>according to how they understand human nature. but she wrote nearly 20
>years ago and i've drawn on another approach [lengermann and
>niebrugge-brantly] they typify feminisms by focusing on two questions. 1]
> what about women? [descriptive] and 2] why is the situation for women as
>it is? [explanatory] Answers to these questions can be furthered
>distinguished:
>
>Gender Difference Feminism:
>
>1 a] women's situations/experiences are different from men's
>2 a] explanatory schemas tend to draw on biosocial and/or social
>psychological and pscyhoanalytic explanations which also carefully examine
>the cultural and institutional practices through which these differences
>are reproduced and sustained
>
>examples: carol gilligan, sara ruddick; helene cixous, judith butler,
>toril moi, julia kristeva [ian's forward of a cognitive psych explanation
>for male agression is a biosocial explanation]
>
>Gender Inequality Theories:
>
>1 a]. women aren't merely different from men but are treated unequally in
>relation to men and thus are the recipients of fewer social goods [status,
>income, power, etc] while men [as a group] receive more
>2 b] liberal explanations for the unequal distribution of the
>costs/benefits of social life caused primarily by sexist ideology which
>encourages sexist beliefs and discriminatory practices that assume natural
>differences in abilities.
>
>marxist explanations of inequality: gender inequality is embedded in and a
>tool of a more fundamental system of class oppression and exploitation.
>women are oppressed, exploited, dominated by men b/c it's functional for
>capitalism: reserve army of labor, depresses wages, women perform the bulk
>of unpaid "reproductive" labor in the home which, for many marxist
>theorists, is not really productive labor. on proyect's marxism list there
>was debate about unionizing sex workers. sex workers were said to be
>parasitic labor, not 'real' labor because it merely provides sex etc rather
>than contributing valuable social goods/services to the economy. [stems
>from rosa luxembourg's claims that the reproductive (childbearing, rearing,
>housework, sexual and emotional comforts/nurturing) labor performed by
>bourgeois housewives renders women "the parasite of a parasite" --b.s. to
>that one, i say].
>
>examples: betty friedan, joyce trebilcot, n.ow., gloria steinam, naomi
>wolfe (liberal)
>mackinon, juliet mitchell, sheila rowbotham, michele barrett. [marxists]
>
>Gender Oppression Theories:
>
>3 a] women are systematically and systemically oppressed by men who have a
>fundamental interest in and benefit from maintaining social institutions,
>practices, and ideologies which sustain this situation
>
>3 b] explanations
>
>psychoanalytic: see patriarchy as a pervasive system in which men
>subjugate women in even the most mundane aspects of everyday life. they
>ask why men seem to have such an interest in and are deeply wedded to
>sustaining these relationships while women seem unable to effectively
>resist [doug noted in december that this was one of his interests in judith
>butler: the attempt to explain why ppl don't resist oppression because
>thoroughly and deeply embedded pscyhodynamics that begin the moment we're
>born]. they tend to reject the claim that men rationally calculate
>strategies of subordination and subjegation; something more must be at work
>given such resistance to change. [doroty dinnerstein, nancy chodorow,
>jessica benjamin]
>
>radical: valorize women and women's experiences. see society as
>characterized by oppression in one form or another and the oppression of
>women was historically primary and served as a model for other forms of
>oppression. they tend to focus on the ways in which women are oppressed
>because of their bodily capacities and physical difference from men.
>patriarchy is the systematic, institutionalized practice of violence
>against, exploitation of, and domination over women. here's where the
>claim that there's a continuum of violence: from high heels and makeup to
>clitoredechtomy, from tyranical ideals of motherhood to control over
>women's bodies in the form of male dominated medicine, from unpaid
>housework to compulsory heterosexuality, from ideals of monogamy, chastity
>to rape. but, as has been noted, the focus is on overt violence: rape,
>sexual abuse, battering, incest, molestation, pornography [though no
>distinctions are made--all are seen as a form of violence against women]
>patriarchy, ultimately, rests on--is at the root of [radix]--women's
>oppression and so it must be eliminated first. [charlotte bunch, andrea
>dworkin, mackinnon, marilyn frye, susan griffin, kate millet, adrienne rich].
>
>socialist: attempts to wed the methods and insights of marxist feminism
>with a stronger critique of women's oppression as not necessary secondary
>to or derivative of capitalist class oppression AND working in conjuntion
>with other mechanism of oppression: race, ethnicity, age, sexuality,
>colonialism. much like marxist feminist but differ in two other ways.
>firstly, they expand what is understood by 'materialism' --to include
>bodies, sexualities, procreation, childrearing, kin work, emotion work.
>secondly, whereas marxists [gasp! often on this list] dismiss the
>subjective aspects of social life, socialist feminist insist that the
>production of subjectivity is fundamental to understanding how domination,
>oppression, exploitation works and is made possible. [heidi hartman, zillah
>eisenstein,alison jaggar, ehrenreich, dorothy smith]
>
>third-wave: linda alcoff calls the shift one from 'cultural feminism' to
>'post-structuralism because there is a recognition that there is a
>fundamental instability [slippage] between the signifier 'woman' and women.
> is it possible to say that what all women are like? what women
>essentially are? "Are there women?" de Beauvoir asks, poststructuralist
>feminist say "no":
>
>"gender is not a point to start from in the sense of being a given thing
>but is, instead, a construct, formalizable in a nonarbitrary way through a
>matrix of habits, practices, and discourses. further, it is an
>interpretation of our history within a particular social constellation, a
>history in which we are both subjects of and subjected to social
>construction"
>
>iow, we both create and recreate gender identities (agents) but we are
>also shaped by powerful social structures that work behind or backs, so to
>speak. this is why the term 'subject' rather than self or other more
>common terms aren't used by folks like butler. subject position is a term
>that rejects 'essentialism' --the idea that a women can be defined as a set
>of attributes that are objectively identifiable. rather, a
>subject-position is a social space filled and created and re-appropriated
>by people, it is a position from which a feminist politics can emerge.
>being a woman is about being a particular kind of woman who exists within
>and takes up a position w/in a shifting historical context that has
>specific, enduring effects but is not immutable.
>
>third-wave feminism sometimes developed independently of postructuralism
>early on but there are, increasingly, common points of agreement and, in
>the academy, a tendency to draw on these texts as exemplars of how we might
>understand 'the subject' without reverting to essentialism. the focus in
>this strain of feminist thought is on difference--typically systemic
>differences [eyecolor doesn't count] four focuses:
>*emphasis on people of color, historically oppressed
>*examination of how domination and oppression is internalized
>*intersection of systems of colonialist/gender/race/ethnicity/sexual/class
>oppression
>
>examples: elizabeth spellman, bell hooks, maria lugones, nel giddings,
>audre lorade, chere moragua and gloria anzaldua, alice walker, patricial
>hill collins-- biased toward north american women theorists. catherine or
>ange may be much more familiar with australian/european theorists
>
>
>
>
>kelley
>
>
>
>
>“touch yourself and you will know that i exist.”
>~luce irigaray
>