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Feminist Theory And Feminist Theory

Decent Essays
A common theme has emerged from the past readings. Feminist theory and intersectionality. I have taken some Women’s studies courses before so I am familiar with feminist theory. Intersectionality is trickier for me as I am a white, female, privilege Canadian woman who has not faced any oppressions for what I look like. The only oppressions I face are for being a woman and there is no intersectionality with having only one oppression. I will explore both feminist theory and intersectionality and finish off with battered women's syndrome in this paper as well as talk about my own personal experiences and how they relate to the course.

Feminist theory is a theory that tries to see women’s issues as individualistic and that all women
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All skills and experiences are learned, no matter what biological factors there are.

The next topic of intersectionality is one I am less familiar with. I don’t experience a lot of intersectionality other then I am a female that suffers from a mental illness. I also don’t have a nuclear family; but none of these come close to the issues suffered by women of color, or women of a different sexual identity. Intersectionality is important in social work because we have such a diverse demographic of people (disabled, vulnerable, children, etc.) that it’s important to remember how oppressions work in conjunctions and become individualistic personalities. It’s also important for social work as you should be trying to combat these oppressions where you can, “The colonial devaluing of aboriginal people is manifested in child welfare practices where aboriginal children are given to specialist [white] families” (Ross, pg. 123) realizing that in social work practice, some issues might be systemic in nature and you should work to overcome those bias that people have. The more oppression someone has, the more intersectionality applies to them; but this isn’t supposed to be the oppression Olympics either. Just because someone is black and disabled doesn’t mean they have more oppression than a queer woman. This pertains to my own life because I am very privileged and I remember finding out someone in my high school class didn’t have a car in grade 12, which was surprising
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