Feminist Politics - Introduction

What are the three critiques?

Réponse: Critiques 1- Black feminism - bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins – matrices of oppression the way in which ‘ism’ and these structural ways of oppression intersect and that makes it specific. Are constantly being reinforced. Exposure of racism in feminist thinking, a lot of feminists said talking about race is a distraction from universal categorisation of women. Postcolonial - Audre Lorde, Chandra Talpade Mohanty – argued that feminists are too quick to be universal in their analysis, do women have agency in that context, don’t understand the cultural context. Denies women’s choice to be religious. Critiques 2- Queer- Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti – have sought to destabilise categories, recognising the fluidity of gender, there is no essential a priory gender. What does it mean to be a woman? But its problematic for people in that there’s no gender, it caused tensions how the work of queer theorist/post-structural theorists in regard to how they live. Trans - Eve Koyami, Julia Serano, transmisogynist, cissexism, privilege and the sense of inner self. Critiques 3 – Cyber-feminism- Donna Haraway- born out of a clearer engagement with the positive engagement with technology. Should be a fusion between animals, humans and machines. It’s a post-gender world. What would a post-gender world look like? Xenofeminism- Laboria Cuboniks anonymous collective wrote a manifesto on this - gender abolitionist, anti-naturalist, repurposing technologies

What\'s the traditional western divide?

Réponse: Socialist - Zillah Eisenstein, Nancy Fraser – women’s unpaid labour in the house, taken up a Marxist approach and then apply to gender, critical of Marxists notion of productive labour, issues of alienation, how women constitute distinct class and critique of neo-liberalism i.e. targeting products at women by using feminist terminology. Liberal - Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin – we achieve equality, freedom and liberty through small C constitutional change i.e. FTSE 100 women, women in Parliament but these would address the concerns of white elite women so a severe lack of representation. It is a very individualist approach. Radical- what radical feminism actually is, think about the subject and object of radical feminism - Kate Millett, Sheila Jeffreys- forms of sexual oppression in that women are always oppressed.