The problem is power, not women.
The 90's...feminism is part of the curriculum
Marcuse 1964...read this.
Adorno...another one for a library visit...
Mary Wollstoncraft...1759-1797: a time of revolution
- one of the earliest published examples...
'a vindacation of rights of women.' (1792).
- concentrated on role.
- education
- expectations of behaviour
- talking about educated classes
women receive disorderly kind of education, different to that of men.
> women educated in a certain way.
- great strides made in the Victorian era...(Florence Nightingale 1860's, 70's)
- women tried to educate themselves.
Simon de Beauvoir- born 1908
- the 2nd sex, 1949...just after ww2.
- takes a biological standpoint.
Historical materialism.
- history.
- mythology- art, literature.
- psychoanalytical...talks about how mind works/gender.
60's
Time of cultural shift.
- civil rights: focused protests, black and white.
- women's liberation: contraception, no fault divorce (need reason for...).
- equal pay act.
- female Eunuch published in 1968.
70's
- Legislation- equal pay act.
- systems of selection was patriarchal.
80's
- Susan Griffin, 'made from this earth.' (Was against technology).
- Gay pride.
- Aknowledgement that there is a difference.
- essentialist theory.
2 main debates- Equal or aknowledge differences.
90's
Dale Spender...'man made language.' How our language uses terminology such as 'manhole cover.'
Big backlash against feminism.
Susan Faludi- backlash.
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Childhood...shall be able for men and women to be equal...refers to Marxism. (Useful for written feedback).
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'The woman who realises that she is bound by a million Lilliputian threads in an attitude of impotence and hatred masquerading as tranquility and love has no option but to run away. If she is not to be corrupted and extinguished utterly. Liberty is terrifying but it is also exhilarating. Life is not easier or more pleasant for the Nora's who set off on their journey to awareness, but it is more nobler even. Such councel will be called encouragement of irresponsibility, but the woman who accepts a way of life which she has not knowingly chosen, acting on a series of contingencies falsely presented as destiny, is truly irresponsible'.
The Female Enuch, summary, page 28, Germaine Greer.
Notes from 'Backlash, The undeclared war against women, Susan Faludi.
'Professional women are suffering 'burn-out' and succumbing to an infertility epidemic. Single women are grieving from 'man shortage'. pp1.
'The health advice manuals inform: high-powered career women are stricken with an unprecedented outbreak of 'stress - induced disorders,' hair loss, bad nerves, alcoholism and even heart attacks. The psychology books advise: independent women's loneliness represents a major health problem today. Even founding feminist Betty Friedan has been spreading the word: she warns that women now suffer from a new identity crisis and 'new "problems that have no name'. pp2.
'If women are so 'free', why are their reproductive freedoms in greater jepordy today than a decade earlier? why do women who want to pospone childbearing now have fewer options than ten years ago? pp7
'Nor do women enjoy equality in their own homes, where they still shoulder 70 per cent of household duties. the 1988 British attitudes survey found that in 81 per cent of households where a woman works full time, she is still responsible for the washing and ironing. The only major change in the last 15 years is that now middle class men think they do more around the house'. pp7
'In public opinion surveys, women consistently rank their own inequality, at work and at home, among their most urgent concerns'. pp9
. In the communist manifesto by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels 1848 there is an interesting reference to in the following quote: 'The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry has developed, the more is the labour supersed by that of women'. pp13.
. It makes references to the days of the Patriarchal world in a system where men have all or most of the power and importance.
. I'm interested in the 'Gulliver' quote because it appeals to me in a visual way. The image really does convey a scene of despair...'an attitude of impotence and hatred masquerading as tranquility and love has no option but to run away'.
. This question about the conditioning cultures is argued in: ' Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' was published in French in 1949. It sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. as an existentialist, de Beavoir accepts the precept that existence precedes essence; hence, "one is not born a woman, but becomes one."
http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism.
. The quote seems to be something of a 'call to arms', suggesting that the possibility of liberty to be both exhilarating and terrifying all at once. The idea of accepting things to be the way they were is seen as 'truly irresponsible' on the part of women who refuse to question their way of life. It is a tempting proposal to question but although it may be difficult...'A life unexamined is not worth living'. (Socrates).
. At what point in life are men and women seen as different? Is it important to distinguish between the sexes...is there a need for the aknowledgement?
. Simone de Beauvoir argues that...'women have historically been considered deviant, abnormal. She submits that even Mary Wollstoncraft considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. Beauvoir says this attitude has limited womens success by maintaining that they are a deviation from the normal, and are outsiders attempting to emulate "normality'. For feminism to move forward, this assumption must be set aside'. http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism.
'In the first wave of feminist critiques, theoristsdid not challenge the disembodied individual of the modernist tradition. First-wave theorists agreed with Plato that men and women are in essence identical; sexual differences were defined as superficial rather than constituitive'. Feminism, Identity and difference, Susan Hekman, pub frank Cass, pp6.
. I question whether the same is still the same today. From a personal experience, I'm one of four children brought up on a council estate and have seen first hand the effect of the deadening of the daughters. I was brought up in an environment that didn't recognise the importance of education. I see my two sisters both out of work, low self esteem, barely able to leave their own homes. 'The woman in the kitchen' and 'tea on the table at four' seemed to be the consistent mantra that echoed around the rooms in my early experience of life. Although aware that something didn't feel right, it was only through my thirst for knowledge that I was able to question the 'normal' existence of my childhood. I've found myself asking why are myself and my step brother the ones who are working, myself working towards an MA and my step brother a qualified tradesman. What happened to my sisters?
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Further quotes from the Female Enuch, Germaine Greer, Introduction to The Panther edition.
. 'All over the world there are small groups of women who are the future in microcosm, working joyously, cooperatively, inventively and courageously to care for one anotherand make one another's lives easier and more rewarding in ways that cannot be aped by the masculine machines for domination'. pp14
'The paradigm of a female collectivity which welcomes men as lovers and sires of children, but regards the bond between mothers and daughters as more central to its emotional life is fading from womens consciousness before they have had the opportunity to assess its positive value'. PP15
'...isolated from their own sex western women are more irrevocably crippled than women living in traditional societies, as the revolutionary initiative passes into the hands of others'. pp15
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