systemic societal sexism, institutional sexism, individual sexism – misogyny, patriarchy, sexism

first, second, third and fourth wave of feminism. The first wave was from 1850 through to 1940, it focused on legal issues mainly women’s right to vote. The second wave was post wwII from 1960-1980, the slogan was “The Personal is Political”. It identified women’s cultural and political inequalities and encouraged women to understand how their personal lives reflected sexist power structures. The third wave began in the 1990s, the main focus was women’s rights to do what they want with their own bodies, including birth control and abortion. Fourth-wave feminism is a phase of feminism that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women and the use of internet tools, and is centered on intersectionality.

Laura Mulvey speaks about the ‘male gaze’. By this she means the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. In narrative cinema women are over sexualised and objectified.

scopophilia sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity; voyeurism.

fetishism – a form of sexual behaviour in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, activity, part of the body, etc.

Jaques Lacan was a french psychologist who focused on child development, particularly the ‘mirror stage’. This is when a young child views themself in a mirror, it is said that this term can also be applied to to the mirroring process that occurs between an audience and the screen

Toril Moi set clear distinctions between these three terms:

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• 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 reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the 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’ – Hendry and Stephenson

intersectionality – the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.