Femenist Critical Thinking

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

First wave of Feminism

In the past men were regarded greater at creating literally pieces and writings then woman were. Virginia Woolf stating that simply if women were not stereotyped and given equal opportunities to men originally, then more literacy pieces would have been made. These opportunities being not regarded as worse or beneath men and given the correct education and same rights as men.

Mary Wollstonecraft: was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. She was one of the first advocate for woman’s rights and created a piece in 1792 named “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects” which is about as the name states, a moral and vindication of women’s rights.

Third wave of Feminism

Third wave feminism is different to feminism of the 1960’s. Similar, but also different. Third wave feminism tries to embrace plural identities. This is called intersectionality.

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s has 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 re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
  • sex positivity

‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘ .

According to Ariel Levy, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs, raunch culture is on the one hand, the idea of liberation involves new freedoms for sexual exhibition, experimentation and presentation, and on the other, it may well be playing out the same old patterns of exploitation, objectification and misogyny?

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