Lexicon of Feminist Debates - Weebly



LEXICON of Feminist Debates (or Prominent THEMES in Feminist Thought)

Feminist Thought and Practice WMST 3330 Kinser

|Bodies |Critiques of mind as separate from, and privileged over, the body; Men-mind/rational; Women-body/nature, men to have “dominion” over |Sojourner Truth, 1851 |

| |Reproduction marks women as mysterious, taboo, dangerous |Josephine Butler, 1871 |

| |Private vs. Public sphere |Emma Goldman, 1910 |

| |Sexual differences vs. gender diffs |Margaret Sanger, 1920 |

| |Women’s bodies as material objects, “to be looked at,” subject to the male gaze |Mary Douglas, 1966 |

| |Race/class mark which bodies are for adornment and leisure, which for labor and exploitation |Kate Millett, 1969 |

| |Sexual double standard and sexual exploitation of women’s bodies; trafficking in women; control over one’s own reproductive capacities |Sherry Ortner, 1974 |

| |Struggle for women’s right to control their own bodies underlies much 2W feminist activism; 2W fems analyzed advertising, porn, film, art and violation through battering, rape, forced |Hélène Cixous, 1975 |

| |sterilization. |Mulvey, 1975 |

| |Radical and cultural feminism women’s diffs (esp. m’hood) are resources feminism that must be taken back from patriarchal control; French feminists direct attention to “writing the body” and of |Luce Iragaray, 1977 |

| |writing in the “white ink” of mother’s milk |Donna Haraway, 1985 |

| |Disputes among feminists over whether protective measures based on bodily differences and childbearing was in fact good for women. |Plaskow, 1986 |

| |Anorexia nervosa, bulimia, body image |Judith Butler, 1990 |

| |Subjugation and disability; Disciplining of women’s bodies through medicine, fashion, family planning policies, genital mutilation |Angela Davis, 1991 |

| |The body not as the essential ground of women’s difference, but as the site on which gender is constructed, inscribed, reinscribed, performed |Susan Bordo, 1993 |

| |Role of technology, science in (over)determining the body, and cyborgs as a response |Anne Fausto-Sterling, 2000 |

| | |Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 2001 |

| | |Rosi Braidotti, 2002 |

|Epistemologies |Theories of knowledge and knowledge production (what is true and important, what constitutes the past. To be excluded from knowledge production is to live a “reality” not of one’s own making |Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 |

| |Critiques of “partial knowledge,” and how it perpetuates hierarchy and domination |Monique Wittig, 1978 |

| |How social location—gender, race class, sexuality, age, ability—affects knowing, and knowledge production. |Audre Lorde, 1979 |

| |Who has epistemological privilege—margins or centers? Are margins better for knowledge production? Who gets authority as knowers? |Lugones and Spelman, 1982 |

| |How are women excluded from sites of knowledge production—educ, gov, church, arts and letters [the arts and literature], professions? |Donna Haraway, 1985 |

| |Distortions of women’s lives and “history” in male accounts |Sandra Harding, 1986 |

| |19th C. arguments, like cultural feminist args from 70s/80s: women’s exp with nurturance and care bring specialized knowledge to public arena; encouragement to hear women’s experience through |Gloria Anzaldúa, 1987 |

| |their stories as an attempt to produce new knowledge |Patricia Hill Collins, 1990 |

| |2W: CR [consciousness raising] as a model of generating knowledge from women’s exp, and WS academics transform disciplines and methodologies |Evelyn Fox Keller, 1993 |

| |Postmodern critiques of the dualisms inherent in hegemonic Western thought, seeking sources that would rupture, subvert, interrupt that thought, and free women from it. |Uma Narayan, 1997 |

| |Fems of color and Third World fems argue for the epistemological privilege of their marginal positions, incl Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness” which comes from inhabiting contradictory locations|Saba Mahmood, 2005 |

| |simultaneously; it challenges dualism, is flexible, is tolerant of ambiguity. | |

| |“The science question in feminism,” critiques of objectivity, empiricism, positivism, which deny relevance of identity, exp, locations of knowers/known, and which perpetuate worldview of the | |

| |privileged and exclude knowledge, exp, and questions of women and other marginalized groups. | |

| |Feminist standpoint, and Situated knowledge introduced as models of knowing, replacing the “the view from nowhere” | |

|Essentialism/ |Sexual difference as innate, vs. the position that “one is not born a woman” (Beauvoir, Wittig) |Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 |

|Social Construction/ |Essentialism and sisterhood or a unitary female culture or voice, radical feminist claims of universal oppression of women, psych theories and importance of genitalia and single developmental |Sojourner Truth, 1851 |

|Difference |pattern; claims that “the” women’s movement could speak for all wmn, in one voice |John Stuart Mill, 1870 |

| |Social Construction; social constructionists, following Margaret Mead argue that distinctions between sex and gender are socially produced |Stella Brown, 1923 |

| |18th, 19th, and 20th C. women struggled with essentialism/soc construction, though these terms are 20th C. Many 19th C. women based their arguments on essentialist views. |Margaret Mead, 1935 |

| |20th C. feminists of color, lesbian feminists, and postcolonial feminists called for anti-essentialist feminist theory, pointing out that the subject of 2W feminism was white, middle-class, het |Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 |

| |Identity politics; Some have argued for a “strategic essentialism,” a politics for organizing and resistance that is rooted in identity defined as an “active construction,” discursively mediated|Shulamith Firestone, 1970 |

| |Some have argued against sharp essentialist/social constructionist distinctions, focusing on how each implicates the other, that the subject of feminism isn’t “Woman” but rather “the |Sherry Ortner, 1974 |

| |female-embodied social subject” |Linda Alcoff, 1988 |

| | |Joan Scott, 1988 |

| | |Diana Fuss, 1989 |

| | |Norma Alcoff, 1990 |

| | |Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1997 |

| | |Rosi Braidotti, 2002 |

|Intersections of Race, |Intersectionality: Intersections of race, class, and gender |Sojourner Truth, 1851 |

|Class, Gender |lives are multiply constituted; “Interlocking systems of domination,” “multiple jeopardy” |Anna Julia Cooper, 1892 |

| |Intersections analyses allow us to understand our “capacity as women and men to be either dominated or dominating [as] a point of connection, or commonality (hooks) |Charlotte Perkins GiIlman, 1989 |

| |this paradigm is posed against a hierarchy of oppression (one oppressive structure—racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism) is seen as the first or deepest or most pervasive oppression; |Mary Church Terrell, 1989 |

| |abolition vs. suffrage as example; Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas as another. |Ida B. Wells, 1901 |

| |White women’s movement in 1W and 2W failed to incorporate intersectionality effectively, though 3W and its catalysts in the 80’s have done so more effectively |Florynce Kennedy, 1946 |

| | |Pauli Murray, 1970 |

| | |Combahee River Collective, 1977 |

| | |Audre Lorde, 1978 |

| | |Heidi Hartmann, 1981 |

| | |Mitsuye Yamada, 1981 |

| | |Lugones and Spelman, 1983 |

| | |Gloria Anzaldúa, 1987 |

| | |bell hooks, 1989 |

| | |Norma Alarcón, 1990 |

| | |Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1997 |

|Language |Critiques of lang have been central to feminist analysis, incl forms of address; “generic” he, man; God as father |Susan B. Anthony, 1872 |

| |Questions about whether women can express themselves given patriarchal language’s limited capacity to tell their experience |Virginia Woolf, 1929 |

| |Finding one’s voice, of naming oneself, “reclaiming,” “reconstructing,” “stealing” language are therefore essential activities and metaphors 4 fem theory |Betty Friedan, 1963 |

| |19th C grappled with women’s public silence, asserting right to name of “author” or “citizen” B4 they could speak or write publicly about politics, suffrage, birth control… |Hélène Cixous, 1975 |

| |20th C claiming language and authorship; 2W—giving public language to women’s exp; Freidan’s “problem that has no name” |Robin Lakoff, 1975 |

| |2W Consciousness Raising (CR) as a tool of language discovery and creation; reforming discourse of church, academy, household, workplace; critiques of “generic” “man” and “he” |Mary Daly, 1978 |

| |Writing the body in their own language (French feminists) or l’écriture feminine rather than the “father’s” words |Luce Iragaray, 1977 |

| |Through 19th and 20th C: question of whether language is distinctly marked by gender; seeking out literary forms that spoke of and to their exps (letters, diaries, autobiographies, novels, |Audre Lorde, 1977 |

| |memoirs, and now blogs) |Lugones and Spelman, 1983 |

| |Use of bilingual texts to raise questions about translation and cultural identity (Latina, Asian, and Native American women writers & scholars) |Kramarae and Treichler, 1985 |

| | |Paula Gunn Allen, 1986 |

| | |Gloria Anzaldúa, 1987 |

|Power |Assymetrical division of power, Power as force exerted through domination and exploitation is critiqued; Power as equality and human rights is sought (Power over vs. Power to) |Sojourner Truth, 1867 |

| |Explorations of power in public as well as private spheres |Anna Julia Cooper, 1892 |

| |2W radical fem’s insight that “the personal is political” expanded 19th C and 20th C liberal fems’ focus on public policy; Sexual politics: male dominance suffuses our most local and intimate |Mary Ritter Beard, 1946 |

| |lives |Hélène Cixous, 1975 |

| |Suspicion of power led to emphasis on consensus, “sisterhood is powerful”. |Marilyn Frye, 1978 |

| |Critiques of power through domination, exploitation of the earth—ecofeminism, of the military and militarizing women’s lives |Ynestra King, 1989 |

| |Materialist analyses of technologies of production and commodification, post-colonial critiques of imperialism, and globalization |Chandra, Talpade Mohanty, 1984, 1991 |

| |Foucault’s notion of regulatory mechanisms of self-surveillance and self discipline |Catherine MacKinnon, 1989 |

| | |Cynthia Enloe, 2000 |

|Psychoanalysis in/and |this as been both a productive and problematic framework for fem and fem theory |Stella Browne, 1923 |

|Feminism |Freud’s biological determinism; lack of, and envy of, the penis; deficient genitalia. |Joan Riviére, 1929 |

| |Horney argues that social process an social relations, rather than genitalia, are the source of sex diffs; not penis envy but power envy |Karen Horney, 1932 |

| |Fems have found some Freudian concepts useful, for ex. the unconscious and the method of the talking cure. |Joan Riviére, 1929 |

| |de Beauvoir’s critique—male as norm and female as “mutilated male,” as “other” rather than autonomous being |Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 |

| |Lacan’s re-read of Freud: men break away from prelinguistic connection with mother, enter into language, subjectivity, and the symbolic order; women don’t make this break, they remain tied to the|Kate Millett, 1969 |

| |mother and outside of language. |Gayle Rubin, 1975 |

| |Cixous & Iragary borrow from Lacan in their phallogocentrism—the rule of language, the law, and the phallus as “transcendental signifier,” but also used Lacan’s notion of women as outside of |Nancy Chodorow, 1978 |

| |language as resource for new and subversive fem thinking, l’écriture feminine |Monique Wittig, 1978 |

| |Still, feminist-theorized psychoanalysis remains important tool for understanding interrelationships of gender, sexuality, subjectivity |Carol Gilligan, 1982 |

| | |Diana Fuss, 1989 |

|Sexual Division |Arrangement of work into clearly gendered Public and Private spheres, or spheres of Production and Reproduction; particularly explored/critiqued by Marxist, materialist, and socialist feminists|Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 |

|of Labor |in 19th and 20th C; rooted in Engle’s Origin of the Family, which added to Marx’s gender-blind division of labor analysis |Friedrich Engels, 1884 |

| |Need to pass private property on through inheritance (brought about when societies were able to produce “surplus value,” creating accumulation of private property, necessitated control of wmn’s |Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898 |

| |sexuality and thus confinement of wmn in the fam, the private sphere of reproduction. This division of labor serves the goals of industrial capitalism (women’s unpaid labor in priv. sphere |Alexandra Kollontai, 1914 |

| |sustains workforce) |Mary Ritter Beard, 1946 |

| |19th C and 20th C fems critiqued division of labor in childrearing and occupational segregation of workforce; other fems responded that nothing in this analysis examined poor women from drudgery|Shulamith Firestone, 1970 |

| |as household servants. |Christine Delphy, 1975 |

| |Some fems (Firestone) argued that division of reproductive labor is cornerstone of sex/gender system; Other radical fems and cultural fems argue that women’s private sphere can be a retreat, an |Heidi Hartmann, 1981 |

| |entirely separate culture |Rosi Braidotti, 2002 |

| |Some argued turning women’s unwaged labor into paid labor, or wages for housework. | |

| |Others argued moving men into private sphere and sharing domestic life equally | |

|Sexualities |“Sexualities,” as plural, suggests multiple possibilities for sexual identity, sexual orientation, sexual expression; defined through fem theory as well as gay and lesbian theory and queer |Josephine Butler, 1871 |

| |theory. |Victoria Woodhull, 1873 |

| |Sexuality as a site of domination and simultaneous resource for resistance, self-definition, and subjectivity. |Margaret Sanger, 1920 |

| |19thC: claim sexuality for women; resist notions of women’s “virtue” and sexlessness. Resisted efforts to regulate women’s sexuality, reproduction. Critiques of sexual double standard—female |Stella Browne, 1923 |

| |chastity and male promiscuity. |Margaret Mead, 1935 |

| |Freud introduced into Western theory that sexuality is the key determinant of identity and penis is superior over clitoris; “normal” sexuality is vaginally oriented, determined by penetration |Kate Millett, 1969 |

| |Loosening the grip of Freudian theory in defining female sexuality was a major project of the 60s and 70s. Some argued for sexual liberation, and others for androgyny, or a break from rigid |Shulamith Firestone, 1970 |

| |male/female dualisms |Radicalesbians, 1970 |

| |Critiques of compulsory heterosexuality, some argued lesbianism is the only true freedom from patriarchal domination. Rich’s “lesbian continuum” redirected this debate: heterosexuality is a |Hélène Cixous, 1975 |

| |political institution that deploys a vast ideological apparatus to enforce it as normative. |Charlotte Bunch, 1975 |

| |Discussions of pornography, so-called “anti-sex” feminists, and pro-sex feminists |Adrienne Rich, 1980 |

| |Sexual desire as socially constituted through time; Queer theorists—neither sex nor gender exists, except as fluid performances of arbitrary categories; transgender and transsexual writers have |Carol Vance, 1984 |

| |reintroduced questions of the essential nature of the sexual self. |Catherine MacKinnon, 1989 |

| |Global/Third world feminisms focus on impact of Western values on commercial sex trade, AIDS, health and family planning policies |Judith Butler, 1990 |

| | |Judith Halberstam, 1998 |

|“Third World”/Global |“Third World Women” designates the majority of the world’s women, who live outside the industrialized West, sometimes also including women of color within Western countries. |Margaret Mead, 1935 |

|Feminism |Quotation marks indicate need to problematize this term: |Fatima Mernissi, 1975 |

| |1) Whatever coherence “3rd World women” might claim is political, coming from a common context of struggle. |Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 1984/1991 |

| |2) “3rd World” suggest hierarchy of 1st and 3rd Worlds that is the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. 19th C. colonialism left 3rd World women largely invisible or represented then as the |Paula Gunn Allen, 1986 |

| |“exotic other” |Gloria Anzaldúa, 1987 |

| |20th C anthropologists, also sociologists and economists, who discussed women and/in development |The Beijing Declaration and Platform |

| |global feminism—“recognizing that the oppression of women in one part of the world is often affected by what happens in another, and that no woman is free until the conditions of oppression of |for Action, 1995 |

| |women are eliminated everywhere.” (Charlotte Bunch) |Uma Narayan, 1997 |

| |Western women’s efforts to talk about 3rd World women were critiqued by 3rd World women for exporting a Western feminist agenda round the world and failure to recognize the resistance and |Cynthia Enloe, 2000 |

| |liberation struggles already being undertaken |Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, 2001 |

| |Postcolonial theory seeks a space and discourse in which the knowledge, activism, and subjectivity of 3rd World women can be articulated. |Saha Mahmood, 2005 |

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