CHAPTER 9 FEMINISM
PREVIEW As a political term, ‘feminism’ was a twentieth- century invention and has only been a familiar part of everyday language since the 1960s. (‘Feminist’ was first used in the nineteenth century as a medical term to describe either the feminization of men or the masculinization of women.) In modern usage, feminism is linked to the goal of advancing the role of women, usually by reducing gender inequality, although
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Historical overview
Core themes
Types of feminism 196 The future of feminism 204 Questions for discussion 205 Further reading 205
it has come to be associated with the wider project of transforming gender relations. Feminist ideology has traditionally been defined by two basic beliefs: that women are disadvantaged because of their gender; and that this disadvantage can and should be overthrown. In this way, feminists have highlighted what they see as a political relationship between the sexes, the supremacy of men and the subjection of women in most, if not all, societies. In viewing gender divisions as ‘political’, feminists challenged a ‘mobilization of bias’ that has traditionally operated within political thought, by which generations of male thinkers, unwilling to examine the privileges and power their sex had enjoyed, had succeeded in keeping the role of women off the political agenda. Nevertheless, feminism has also been characterized by a diversity of views and political positions. The women’s movement, for instance, has pursued goals that range from the achievement of female suffrage and an increase in the number of women in elite positions in public life, to the legalization of abortion, and sexual harassment and sexual assault of women. Similarly, feminist theory has both drawn on established political traditions and values, notably liberalism and socialism, and, in the form of radical feminism, rejected conventional political ideas and concepts. However, feminism has long since ceased to be confined to these ‘core’ traditions. Contemporary feminist thought is characterized by a more radical engagement with the politics of difference, as well as an encounter with modern approaches to gender and sexuality, such as intersectionality, trans theory and queer theory.
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