SYSTEMATIC SOCIETAL SEXISM

The President of the United States, talks and thinks about women. This would be known as MISOGYNY This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM, a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY

SEXISM

• level of institution (institutional)
• individual

WAVES OF FEMINISM

• suffragettes FIRST WAVE
• 1960s Barry makes the point that although the women’s movement was not the start of feminism, ‘the feminist literary criticism of today is the product of the women’s movement of the 1960’s’ . In other words, the issue of women’s inequality has a history that pre-dates the 1960’s, see for examples: Mary Wollstonecraft, (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Women; Virginia Woolf(1929) A room of one’s own; Simone de Beauvoir(1949) The Second Sex.

• 1970s SECOND WAVE,
• This period is often termed second wave feminism – after the first wave of feminism, which was galvanised by organisations such as, the British Women’s Suffrage Committee (1867), the International Council of Women (1888), the The International Alliance of Women (1904), and so on who, in early part of the 20th Century, worked to get women the right to vote.

• 1990’s THIRD WAVE
• coined by Naomi Wolf, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and recontextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class,
• religion, gender and nationality when discussing 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 reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

• FORTH WAVE
• also looked to explore these contradictary arguments and further sought to recognise and use the emancipatory tools of new social platforms to connect, share and develop new perspectives, experiences and responses to oppression, ‘tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online‘ (Cochrane, 2013). As such, from the radical stance of #MeToo to the Free the Nipple campaign, which Miley Cyrus endorsed and supported (which may encourage you to re-evaluate your initial reading of her video Wrecking Ball above), the use of new media technologies has been a clear demarcation for broadening out the discussion and arguments that are played out in this line of critical thinking.
• 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’

LAURA MULVEY

• Second wave feminist
• inspired by Freud
• ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘
• the male gaze
• ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look’
• women are objectified and sexualised
• scopophilia – pleasure of looking
• vouyerism – looking is sexualised
• fetishism – focus on one thing over another usually of a sexual nature
• dehumanises

JEAN KILBOURNE

• Second wave feminist
• In the media education foundation
• TED TALK – ‘the dangerous ways ads see women’
• secretary, waitress
• “babies can recognise logos from 6 months”
• BOOKS – Deadly persuasion (1999) – “if you want to get into people’s wallets first you have to get into their lives” (exploitation of human desires) creates a “toxic culture environment”
• So sexy so soon (2008) – “girls are encouraged to objectify themselves”
• Can’t buy my love (2012)

JACK LE CAN

• also inspired by Freud
• you aren’t born with consciousness
• mirror stage – moment when we recognise who we are (recognise they have consciousness)
• we only know the other, we can’t see ourselves, only see a reflection

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

INTERSECTIONALITY

more focus on individual agency (more power to individuals)