The Radical Feminist Framework

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.

Writer, feminist theorist, and professor Sara Ahmed wrote Living a Feminist Life alongside her blog feministkilljoys.com. She started writing it before and completed it after her resignation in 2016 from her post as director of the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths at the University of London after a lengthy struggle to hold the school accountable for incidents of sexual harassment on campus (Ahmed, n.d.). Her resignation, and location both in and out of the academy informed a lot of the content of this book. In her work, Ahmed successfully argues that feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at work and at home. Living a Feminist Life is well supported through Ahmed’s

Since the beginning of time women have been considered inferior to men, which seem to proceed to affect everyday lives of all social beings in this world. Women have a disease, a disease that will prevent them for ever having the political drive to achieve political, social or economic opportunities men have. This "disease" is the need for independency and self-respect or the lack there of. This is what we have come to know as feminism. Feminism refers to the body of thought on the cause and nature of women's disadvantaged and subordinate position in society, and efforts to minimize and eliminate the subordination (Hughes, 2002:160). Understanding that the need for independency and self-respect is not a real disease,

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.

Daddy’s princess. Big brother’s responsibility. Daddy’s little girl. Some people view these as a sweet pet names for young ladies, but these verbal cues inexplicitly condition women to view themselves as the property of men starting at a young age. These learned notions may take hold as women begin to develop. As young girls mature, they find themselves striving to please their fathers and other male figures as one of their main aspirations in life due to this conditioning from society. (Rholetter p. 1) The submissive nature of young girls is a common theme in literature, but looking through the Feminist Lens offers readers a better understanding of the struggle surrounding remaining submissive or demanding power occurs.

This essay examines the question, “To what extent was the second wave of feminism (in the 1960’s and 1970’s) successful in achieving equality for women?” The essay is introduced by describing why the second wave of feminism developed and the aims of this second wave of feminist. The essay is broken into two parts. The first part of the essay discusses the impact of women 's rights activist on legislation. It is argued that the second wave feminist were unsuccessful in gaining equality in terms of obtaining equal wages and opportunities for women in the workplace. They however were successful in obtaining equal rights laws and reproductive laws for women. The feminist of the 1960’s and 70’s were victorious in securing for many american women the right to have easy access to contraceptives and abortion. The second part of the essay focuses on the extent that the second wave feminist were successful in changing the mindset of Americans. These feminist wanted the view of women to be one that portrayed women less as only a housewife and more as a women who can lead a life that could involve a career in any field. Success ranged in this area. On one side there was women becoming more independent and free as they embarked the sexual revolution while in other regards such as film and music women still held an inferior role to men. The second wave of feminism achieved great success in attaining equality for women however this success was not as far ranging as these mid 20th century

Decades following the Seneca Falls Convention, one of the very first advocacies for women’s rights, the Second-wave feminism in the 1960s saw itself as a movement that achieved great success in terms of women’s social, economic, and political rights. The Women’s Rights Movement that began in the sixties, in comparison to the first-wave feminism in the 19th century—whereas many activists focused on only women’s suffrage—the second-wave feminism dealt with a broader range of issues. From education, the patriarchal system, sexual rights, and the workforce, to advocating for reproductive rights and abortion, the Second-wave feminism allowed women to create more spaces for themselves. Yet, amidst the growing feminist movement, in spite of it being more inclusive to women of color and other minority groups in comparison to the first-wave, the second-wave feminism continued to see white middle-class women as the forefront of feminism. The second-wave of feminism brought both good and bad to the table. While they were able to pass things such as the Equal Pay Act and ensured protection in Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act, the movement was also flawed to the extent in which they failed to address intersectionality—an understanding of how oppressions of race, gender, class, and sexuality were issues not isolated from one another—and fell short in including the voices of minority women in movements such as the Black and Chicana feminism.

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

at the time. Friedan sparked a fervor in women that is unparalleled in the realm of women’s rights. In a society dominated by men and their age old ideals, Friedan was their voice, campaigning for women to stop

For our activism project, my sister, Maggie, and I went to the Ziibiwing Center in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. We live in the near-by village of Shepherd, so we decided to visit the Center while we were home for Easter break. I had been interested in visiting the Center for a number of years and saw this project as the necessary push to finally act on the desire. Mt. Pleasant is located right next to the reservation of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe. At times is hard to tell where the reservation ends and the city begins. The Ziibiwing Center was opened in 2004 to help preserve the Anishinabe culture, honor their ancestors, and to educate people on the culture as well. The Anishinabe are the Ojibwe (Chippewa), the Odawa (Ottawa), and the Potawatomi.

Betty Friedan, feminist author of The Feminine Mystique, wrote, "The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of…women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century… Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone… she was afraid to even ask of herself the silent question – ‘Is this all?’” Authors such as Betty Friedan wrote about their struggles in novels and articles in the early 1960s which were popularized in the late 1960s which led to the start of a new revolution – the second wave of feminism. The Canadian second wave of feminism started in 1967, with many feminists rising up and forming groups and organizations to bring awareness to their issues. This caused a huge uproar within society, women all over the nation found a voice and spoke up about their issues, leading to wide-media coverage and to changes in society, politics, the economy, and much more. The suffragist movement led to huge changes within society in the 1980s, thus changed life for women and changed life for the rest of Canada by reshaping the social structure.

The women’s movement has been going on for at least the last two centuries. The first wave of feminism focused on voting rights, property rights, equal education, and recognition under the law for women. It started in the United States with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was an American social activist and abolitionist. In 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention a declaration of Sentiments was composed that focused on important issues for women at the time. The declaration demanded women’s voting rights, the right divorce, property rights, the right to birth control, and many others important issues of the time. Stanton believed that women were equal to men and deserved equal political rights. The convention at Seneca Falls was one of the first steps towards women’s rights.

Radical feminists claim that patriarchal oppression is direct and personal. Not only does it occur in the public sphere of work and politics but also in the private sphere of the family, domestic labour and sexual relationships. Radical feminists refer to these relationships as sexual politics. Radical feminists therefore focus on the ways in which patriarchal power is exercised through personal relationships, often through sexual or physical violence or the threat of it. Brownmiller notes that fear of rape is a powerful deterrent against women going out alone at night.

"[Stella] backs out of sight. He advances and disappears. There is the sound of a blow. Stella cries out."(Williams 3.165-8) To Stella, this is attractive. Williams ' A Streetcar Named Desire, published 1947 between the first wave of feminism and the second wave of feminism, portrays two polar opposite ideologies regarding feminism and masculinity. Stanley represents what a man was supposed to be prior to the re-evaluation of masculinity by the first wave of feminism; men were supposed to be assertive, aggressive, and the kings of their homes. Stella, his wife, is meant to serve as an example of how women were supposed to act and ignore the behavior of their husbands. Mitch is the polar opposite of Stanley 's type of masculinity; he is

Rape is a crime that’s alarmingly on the rise whilst rape culture follows. A radical feminist clearly expresses in her blog that the core issue is a lack of awareness of what rape really is and continues to suggest statistics from male-supremacist groups are entirely false. Next, she urges all rapists to immediately register themselves as a sex offender and ends stating any male can be a rapist regardless of their morals or personality. This radical feminist abhors males yet fails to acknowledge her anger must be aimed towards rapists, as both genders are capable of rape. Onward, an article written by a liberal feminist outlines her concern for rape victims. She continues to tell readers about the growing dangers of rape in a digital generation