2nd Wave Feminism

In contrast, ‘at the beginning of the 1970’s the Women’s Liberation Movement set great store by the process of consciousness raising’ (Wandor, 1981:13), ‘influencing everyday conduct and attitudes.’ (Barry, 2017:124) and ‘exposing the mechanisms of patriarchy, that is, the cultural ‘mind-set’ in men and women which perpetuated sexual inequality’ (123).

As an overview we can draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.

<Feminist<>Female<>Feminine>

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

‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘

(Michelene Wandor 1981:13)

Feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which heralded, among other changes: the facilitation of of birth control and divorce, the acceptance of abortion and homosexuality, the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship, and the Obscene Publications Act (1959) – which led to the Chatterly trial. Nevertheless,

We have already looked at a number of key concepts, ideas, approaches and theories, which can be applied to a range of cultural / media texts. For example, have already looked at THE MALE GAZE – Laura Mulvey as well as John Berger (who wrote the book Ways of Seeing) and of course, Feminist Frequency

As part of our investigation into representation, we can now look at  Jean Kilbourne‘s work at the Media Education Foundation looked at visual narrative media / culture, primarily in terms of advertising.

‘the feminist literary criticism of today is the product of the women’s movement of the 1960’s’

(Barry 2017:123)

‘all this should not be seen as a straightforward displacement of dominant conservative attitudes‘ .

(Johnathon Dollimore 1983:59)