- Misogyny – a fear or hatred of woman.
- Sexism – a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society.
- Patriarchy – when a man is in charge.
- Feminism – a critical articulation for equality.
- Intersectionality – the belief that there is more then just two types (male/female, straight/gay) there can be blurs between them.
Toril Moi
As a final part of this brief introduction, it is useful to draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.
- Feminist = a political position
- Female = a matter of biology
- Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics
Laura Mulvey
- Wrote an essay in 1975 called ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’.
- Her thesis being the role of the male gaze.
- Theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘women as image, man as bearer of the look’.
- Active male (the one who’s looking), passive female (one who’s being looked at).
- Scopophilia- pleasure in looking.
- Vouyerism- sexual pleasure gained in looking.
- Fetishism- erotic attachment to an inanimate object or an ordinarily asexual part of the human body – objectifying and dehumanising.
Jacques Lacan (the mirror moment)
- Psychologist, specialised in child development.
- Mulvey draws on his work on the mirror moment.
- Mirror stage of development, realising you’re a human being and your own person, at a young age.
- Mulvey highlights the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen ‘complex process of likeness and difference’.
Sut Jhally
- His work at the Media Education Foundation (where Jean Kilbourne also produced much or her work) draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video.
Differences between 2nd and 3rd Wave Feminism
- an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
- individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
- fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
- cyberactivism
- the re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
- sex positivity
Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism
- 3rd wave of feminism characterised as a reaction to 2nd wave feminists coined by Naomi Wolf . Fighting against the Anti-sexualised narrative of 2nd wave feminists. More aware of feminist divisions, gay, straight, black, white – less blanket terms across ‘all-woman’.
- ‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’ – Hendy and Stephenson.
Judith Butler
- Applied queer theory to Feminist Critical Thinking.
- Reductionist, essentialist approach towards binary oppositions, male/female, feminine/masculine, man/woman.
- Suggests gender is fluid, changeable, plural.
- She thinks you act/perform in a way that links to who we want to be perceived as.