Feminism
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pervade the culture, philosophy, morality and religion of society. In all walks of life and learning, women are portrayed as inferior and subordinate to men, a stereotype of ‘femininity’ being imposed on women by men. In The Female Eunuch (1970), Greer suggested that women are conditioned to a passive sexual role, which has repressed their true sexuality as well as the more active and adventurous side of their personalities. In effect, women have been ‘castrated’ and turned into sexless objects by the cultural stereotype of the ‘eternal feminine’. In Sexual Politics (1970), Millett argued that the different roles of women and men have their origin in a process of ‘conditioning’: from an early age boys and girls are encouraged to conform to very specific gender identities. This process takes place largely within the family – ‘patriarchy’s chief institution’ – but it is also evident in literature, art, public life and the economy. Millett proposed that patriarchy should be challenged through a process of ‘ consciousness-raising ’, an idea influenced by the Black Power movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.
KEY FIGURE
GERMAINE GREER (BORN 1939) An Australian writer, academic and journalist, Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970) helped to stimulate radical feminist theorizing. Its principal theme, the extent to which male domination is upheld by a systematic process of sexual repression, was accompanied by a call for women to re-engage with their libido, their faculty of desire and their sexuality. In Sex and Destiny (1985), Greer celebrated the importance of childbearing and motherhood, while The Whole Woman (1999) criticized ‘lifestyle
feminists’ and the alleged right to ‘have it all’. David Levenson/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Radical feminists generally agree that the origins of patriarchy lie in the structures of family, domestic and personal life, and therefore that women’s liberation requires a sexual revolution in which these structures are overthrown and replaced. However, radical feminism encompasses a number of divergent elements, some of which emphasize the fundamental and unalterable difference between women and men. An example of this is the ‘pro-woman’ position, particularly strong in France and the USA. This position extols the positive virtues of fertility and motherhood. Women should not try to be ‘more like men’. Instead, they should recognize and embrace their sisterhood, the bonds that link them to all other women. The pro-woman position therefore accepts that women’s attitudes and values are different frommen’s, but implies that in certain respects women are superior, possessing the qualities of creativity, sensitivity and caring, which men can never fully appreciate or develop. Such ideas have been associated in particular with ecofeminism, which is examined in Chapter 10. The acceptance of deep and possibly unalterable differences between women and men leads some radical feminists to retreat from what they see as the corrupting and aggressive male
world of political activism into an apolitical, woman-centred culture and lifestyle.Conversely,othersbecomepoliticallyassertiveandevenrevolutionary. This is based on the assumption that the roots of patriarchy reside within the male sex itself. ‘All men’ are thus physically and psychologically disposed to oppress ‘all women’; in other words, ‘men are the enemy’. This clearly leads in the direction of feminist separatism. Men constitute an oppressive ‘sex-class’ dedicated to aggression, domination and destruction; so the female ‘sex-class’ is therefore the ‘universal victim’. For example, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will (1975) emphasized that men dominate women through a process
Sexuality: The capacity for erotic feeling, usually linked to sexual orientation or preference. Consciousness-raising: Strategies to remodel social identity and challenge cultural inferiority by an emphasis on pride, self-worth and self- assertion.
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