Feminist Manifesto By Mina Loy Analysis

“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

Mina Loy’s writing, “Feminist Manifesto”, is about feminism in the early 20th century. In this period, women were fighting for equality in their everyday life. Loy’s idea is that women should not try to be equal to man but to find a standard within themselves to live up to. This piece has modernism ideas as she is encouraging a change to society and women’s values. She repeatedly questions traditional values and beliefs about women’s roles in society. She was trying to make a historical change for all women in the 20th century. Loy says, “She abandons the suffragette movement’s central issue of equality and insists instead on an adversarial model of gender, claiming that women should not look to men for a standard of value but should find it

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.

Throughout the book, Janie reveals herself as a strong feminist because she searches for love that she always desired ever since she was a little girl. As stated by Zoey Neale Hurston, the author of the book, "She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery” (Hurston, 11). Janie is captivated by the blooming pear tree in her nanny’s backyard and spends as much time as she can there. She was drawn to its transformation which foreshadows a transformation within herself. For Janie Crawford, it took her three marriages to fully achieve her goal of becoming a feminist. Her

Women’s rights were not always a part of society as it may seem in today’s world. Suffrage can date all the way back to 1776. Women had to fight for their rights and privileges, hard and for many years. In the late 1800’s women were seen as much less than a male and had no voice. Women were arrested, prosecuted and put down for wanting more freedom and power for their gender. As you see in many suffrage ads, women were desperate and wanted so badly the same equality as men. A few women in particular stood up for what they believed was right and fought hard. Although it took far too long and over 100 years, in 1920 women were finally given the opportunity to share the same voting rights as men. History had been made.

However, her view of the Modernism could be considered as one of all women in this time period. Loy completely rejects the notion that a woman is no equal to man in her work "Feminist Manifesto"(Loy, 1914). Instead she portrays man as being an enemy of woman while attempting to obtain dominance within society. Loy then implicates that in order for woman to even be remotely considered as an equal of man she would have to be "desuxialized and unlovable"(Loy, 1914). In doing so, she demonstrates that if women were to remove emotion completely from male-female relations an adequate attempt to gain both recognition. Throughout reading "Feminist Manifesto"(Loy, 1914) she indicates the want for change in the treatment of women. Not physical treatment, more so rather emotional and mental. Women of this time period were fighting for equality amongst men. Although in most cases, women are still fighting, this was a good step forward in achieving her goal of recognition of

Catharine MacKinnon, in her book Feminism Unmodified, takes a unique approach to the problem of gender inequality in America. She claims that pornography defines the way in which America’s patriarchal society perpetuates male dominance, and attacks traditional liberal methods that defend pornography on the basis of the first amendment’s right to free speech. According to MacKinnon, pornography is not an example of speech but rather an act. She proposes that this act discriminates against women as a class, and therefore violates their civil rights and should be outlawed. MacKinnon’s critics may think her argument is excessively radical, and contemporary society may not embrace the

For this essay, I have chosen to write about Feminism. The article chosen is by Susan M. Cruea entitled, “Changing Ideals of Womanhood During the Nineteenth-Century Woman Movement”. Her purpose throughout her article is to show the reader how women were mistreated my many men in the 1800s and her frustration is on display for the readers to see. For my argument, I will help support Cruea’s claims about womanhood with secondary sources by Lisa Tetrault entitled, “The Incorporation of American Feminism: Suffragists and the Postbellum Lyceum”, and by Michael S. Kimmel entitled, “Men’s Responses to Feminism at the Turn of the Century”. In this essay, I will display a series of points, from the sources given, to help support the notion that

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

After 1860s in the Prostitution and Social Purity in the 1880s and 1890s, Emma Liggins talks about the power from the Contagious Diseases Acts granted to the police to apprehend women of unknown virtue in the streets and insist that they be medically examined and locked in the hospital. After this act was removed prostitutes had more freedom to roam the streets. Variety of prostitute activities either made her an innocent victim of male lust or as a demon and contagion of evil. Women seen as innocent victims of male lust, they were a medical threat and police tyranny were felt to be appropriate objects of consideration those women who fell outside this classification were branded as shameless, degraded and evil, not deserving of a feminist's

In Estela Portillo Trambley’s play Sor Juana the main character Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was considered to be one of the earliest feminists. Sor Juana’s eternal struggles to study and unshakable craving for knowledge and wisdom, from whatever source it may be, support this attribute. In my opinion however, there are also significant elements of the play that suggest that Sor Juana would not be considered a true feminist. Of these reasons, there are three major ones that I will analyze. The first reason is that Sor Juana gave up her struggle for the acquirement of knowledge from books and settled for reading from religiously accepted writing, essentially giving up what she had been originally fighting for

The word “feminist” has caused turmoil wherever it is uttered. It has gained a negative connotation, and is often mistaken with misandry. While these claims may be true for a minimal number of feminists, the truth is that in order to get an accurate representation on what feminists actually believe one would have to go to the source. The two main problems with that, are that first of all, it is “not rigidly structured or led by a single figure or group”, and most importantly there is not just one kind of feminism, there are hundreds in each aspect of our life (Tavaana, 2014). The most under represented group within feminism is the kind that is in the government. Not all have the same theories, and therefore, do not have the same

     In the aftermath of World War II, the lives of the women have changed dramatically. Women spoke their minds out and wanted to be heard. World War II brought them a new outlook on how they should live their lives. It encouraged women organize social movements such as boycotts and public marches pushing for their human rights and protect them against discrimination. Alongside, they formed their own organization representing them against the federal government like the NOW or National Organization for Women. Through the years, women have been struggling to fight for equal rights and unfortunately still exist even at the present in some areas. Yes, women’s status was not like what they used to back then, where their

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

The literary novel The Awakening written by author Kate Chopin was groundbreaking in its time as a story following Edna Pontellier’s transformation from an obedient, traditional housewife and mother into a self-realized, sexually liberated and independent woman— all written during the Victorian era of patriarchal constraints and beliefs that a woman was fit to be only a wife and mother. Chopin introduces a multitude of feminist issues throughout the duration of the story, including the societal structures of motherhood, marital expectations and feminine liberation. The fact that Chopin’s novel addresses these issues is a testament to how radical and ahead of its time The Awakening was. Although this novel was originally published over a century ago, it is clear that the feminist topics that Chopin proposes in the novel are still relevant today in our modern day patriarchal society.