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Feminist Movement: Textual Analysis

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Over time the feminist movement has been gaining more and more publicity thus allowing for the opportunity to initiate some form of social change. In February of 2016 Beyoncé released her music video for ‘Formation’, a song which caused a controversy across the United States, which touched upon many subjects most Americans are hesitant to speak of. Given the theme of social constructionism present in the narratives and visual representations ‘Formation’ is a feminist work as understood by the definitions of both humanist and gynocentric feminism.
Social constructionism addresses that gender does not exist as a form of classification, but instead it marks social differences between varying individuals. Sally Haslanger gives us a broad definition …show more content…

In regards to the video, the scenes primarily focus on black females and children, groups that do not receive a lot of media attention, performing empowering tasks. These individuals are expressing themselves, strictly for themselves, in the way they want to and not how society expects them to act. Through these visual representations she retells history, this time giving a positive account for black women. She portrays black women sitting in white dresses - a fashion that many would consider a dress of privilege and meant for white women in the upper class in history. In doing this she shows that black women are just as capable as a white woman. Another visual Beyoncé gives us is of a child dancing in front of police officers. When the video was produced the #BlackLivesMatter movement was becoming a widely discussed subject, particularly in regards to police brutality towards black citizens. In this particular scene a child is dancing while the officers stand idly by, when he finishes the dance the officers put their hands up and the camera pans to a wall tagged with “Stop shooting us” (Beyoncé 2016), which is both a reference to the pleading for the end of police brutality, however, it could also be taken to mean that the child is the one control and the …show more content…

Iris Young defines humanist feminism’s form of oppression as “the inhibition and distortion of women’s potential to be in a society that allows the self-development of men” (Young 1984, 174). She makes note that for a humanistic feminist the form of oppression that women cannot be held to the same standard as men. The aim for humanist feminists is to have men and women stand as equals; equating the woman to the man. There is, however, another form of feminism, that embraces womanly characteristics: “Gynocentric feminism defines women’s oppression as the devaluation and repression of women’s experience by a masculinist culture” (Young 1984, 174). Rather than noting the key differences of men and women the Gynocentric feminist would much rather embrace what makes a woman a woman instead of ignoring these qualities. Instead of holding women to the same standard of men, womanly qualities are embraced and valued to the same extent that things are valued from a masculinist

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