Chapter 7 Feminist Lesbians

The most prevalent and popular stereotype of the post World war II era in America is one filled with women abandoning their wartimes jobs and retreating into the home to fulfill their womanly duties. In Joanne Meyerowitz’s Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, she shows how far women departed from this one dimensional image. While Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is reflexive and focused on the mainstream, Meyerowitz’s analysis is a broader and more inclusive exploration of media, as she draws upon multiple sources. Although Friedan effectively unveiled the thought process and reasoning behind society's belief that the message of media was to make women think that their place was to be the happy housewife, Meyerowitz expanded her media archives and found a differing message in analyzing both female responses to media and exploring their stories.

Culture often thrives off of polar opposites—hot and cold, bitter and sweet, male and female. By setting up these opposing constructs, one can easily find a set definition for each. A hot surface could scorch someone or a cold temperature could cause them to shiver. In the same way, a bitter substance would be less enjoyable to eat than a sweet one. These terms are often defined by mentioning their antitheses. Because it’s comfortable to embrace specificity and certainty, topics such as gender and gender expression often get simplified into binary existences—however, they don’t quite operate under the same parameters. In an essay entitled “Bad Feminist”, Dr. Roxane Gay explores and warns against the dangers of binary thinking. Throughout

“La Feminista”, an article written by Anna Nieto Gomez in 1974, discusses the conflicts and struggles surrounding the Chicana identity and the Chicano movement. The feministas are consisted of a group of minority Latin women, the Chicanas, who are “Spanish-speaking, culturally different and non-Anglo group” (Anna Nieto Gomez 183). They suffered racial discrimination from not being white which was the only race superior to all others at that time. Worse still, they encountered sexism in a patriarchal society that gave power, authority and privileges to the male. The formation of the minority group the femenistas can be traced back to the Chicano movement that took place in 1970s. During the Chicano movement, Chicanos, who were racially oppressed

The women’s liberation movement (or feminism as it is now known) of the 1960s and 1970s touched every home, business, and school (WA, 705). The movement even touched the sports and entertainment industries, in fact, “There are few areas of contemporary life untouched by feminism” (WA, 717). The word feminism in the early 1960’s wasn’t often used and when it was it was used with condescension or hatred. However, in the late sixties that changed thanks to a new group of women. This new diverse group of women included the: young, old, heterosexual, lesbians, working class, and even the privileged. This diverse group came together and collectively created the second wave of feminism.

Early feminism was typically focused only on white women, likely because racism was still extremely prominent at the time feminism began emerging. It was not until Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” in 1989 that feminism started to look at oppressed group’s needs (Nash, 2008, 2). Intersectionality is a way of thinking that acknowledges that when a person has identities that belong to more than one oppressed group, it impacts their quality of life more negatively. In this paper, I will argue that intersectionality is important in the discussion of feminist theories and activism because it ensures that feminism is for all women, not just a select group of them. Intersectionality has changed the way the feminist movement handles the overlapping of different identities, which has helped feminist theorists understand the experiences of women of colour much more clearly. While intersectionality has a very important role in the conversation and practice of feminism, there are certainly critiques of the concept that should be brought up. These critiques, however, can offer a way to improve the study of intersectionality.

Being that the majority of the characters in the novel are male, as the reader, you might not quit grasp the concept of feminism right away. Feminism is widespread throughout the story and gradually portrays a clear image of what life was like for women. Some women go along with the concept by obeying and others go against it and live their own way. This, in so many ways, allows for understanding of the life of women during this time.

The weakness of Rosen’s work is the limited information presented on minority women in the United States. Because of the limited information on minority women in the feminist movement it is hard to understand how all groups of women were affected with the feminist movement and if all women equally felt the same about their place in society. Another thing to consider, when looking at the feminist movement is if African American and other minority women were more in tune with the battle for civil rights for all minorities rather than the feminist movement.

“Political solidarity between woman which had been the force putting in place positive change has been and is now consistently undermined and threatened” (17). By giving background information, Hooks is able to explain how sisterhood is still strong but is endangered by class divisions. Overall, the chapter shows where feminists succeeded and where it had problems-what worked and what did not. The evolution of feminism is explained in a way which is more easily understood due to its sequential

During these last thirteen weeks, I have discovered a lot about myself, not only as a student, but as a feminist. Before taking this class, I knew that I wanted to be a feminist. I believed that women should stand up and exercise their rights to be equal to men on every level. Be that as it may, I lacked the education required to develop my own sense of feminism--my feminist manifesto, if you will. When approaching the topic of feminism, every person needs to ask themselves a list of questions: Who am I? Who do I want to be? What has influenced me as a person? How can I help? These are the beckoning questions we, as developing and purposeful human beings, ask ourselves every day, and these are the questions that will lead each and every person

In Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam and Laila were brought together due to circumstances they could not control. Although they were both oppressed wives of a cruel and violent husband, Rasheed, they were eventually able to regain power over their own lives. The two women supported and learned from each other, finding strength in their relationship. Their relationship was an alliance of sorts and was essential to their ability to regain power over their lives. Once Mariam and Laila befriended each other, they each started to gain courage and hope and began to take more control over their lives in separate, small acts of courage and rebellion that eventually led to significant events which cemented their newly regained power. The developing of power did not come without obstacles, but Mariam and Laila were able to persevere and continue to stand up for themselves against both Rasheed and their societal constraints. Finding strength and motivation from each other and from other loved ones essential to their efforts, Mariam and Laila were able to take power over their own lives by standing up to and retaliating against oppressors in a series of events which led to the pivotal moment when Mariam kills Rasheed, finally setting both women free and giving them both complete power over

This statement interested me because it made me begin to think about how she would want to organize feminists around the world. If she believes that society will not accept an organization that is trying to start a transformation, then how will she go about taking action? It seems to me that a transformation is the eventual goal that hook would want to reach. My question to her would be, “what ideas do you have about how to go about reaching a goal through feminism that society is not willing to accept?” Throughout the reading I thoroughly agreed with what she was saying but this issue was the only one that seemed to be left open. This issue was one of the most important because it is the course feminism needs to take to reach the long term goal of social equality.

Feminism by definition means the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men. But many a time’s people restrict the boundary of these forgetting the very important element of diversity of women living in different places and in varied situations.

It is difficult to imagine living in a world without the patriarchal roles that are present in society and have been throughout history. In the article “Feminist Criticism,” by Lois Tyson, the idea of feminism and how society has affected feminism is the focus. These ideas are seen because men have more of a voice in nearly everything and the oppression of women is very common; a society set up like this can be described with the term patriarchy which is “any culture that privileges men by promoting traditional gender roles,” where men are cast as “rational, strong, protective, and decisive,” and women are cast “as emotional, weak, nurturing, and submissive” (Tyson, 1). This thought that men are strong and women weak is not uncommon in

In Afghanistan, it is widely known that certain sub-cultures allow a man to violate his wife physically and sexually to gain dominance over her. This notion is typically created by the unequal treatment of women in their society. The low social statuses of women in society and the power imbalances between men and women created by this, result in discriminatory practices and physical and sexual abuse against the female population of all ages in Afghanistan. (Povey 268). Despite violence against women being part of their general society, during times of war or political conflict, similar to Afghanistan in the novel, this violence toward women increases. This idea is presented throughout A Thousand Splendid Suns in Rasheed’s relationships with

In 1776, the then First Lady of the United States was the first to raise her about women’s rights, telling her husband to “remember the ladies” in his drafting of new laws, yet it took more than 100 years for men like John Adams to actually do so. With the help of half a dozen determined, and in this case white upper-middle-class, women the first-wave feminism, which spans from the 19th century to the early 20th century, finally led to their goal after 72 years of protesting. The Nineteenth Amendment, which secured the rights for women to vote finally passed in 1920. This grand victory brought other reforms along, including reforms in the educational system,