Feminism

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==Criticisms==
 
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Here are a few dubious backlashes and losses the movement has suffered:
 
Here are a few dubious backlashes and losses the movement has suffered:
  
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[[Category:Politics]]

Revision as of 06:52, 17 January 2008

Feminism is the radical idea that women are people.
Cheris Kramarae & Paula Treichler[1]

Caution: this article was pretty much a hit piece attacking feminism without describing it. It still needs more informed editing.

Bouncywikilogo.gif
There is a broader, perhaps slightly less biased, article on Wikipedia about Feminism
Conservlogo late april.png
For those living in an alternate reality, Conservapedia has an "article" about Feminism

Contents

History

Feminism has a long history, dating from the movements for women's rights to vote, through the sexual revolutions of the twenties and sixties, to the workplace equality efforts still underway. While it seems like "you've come a long way, baby", sadly women are still second-class citizens even in some developed nations.

In the United States and Great Britain, feminism began with the simple demand that women be allowed equal political footing with men. As with all anti-discrimination movements, even when the formal apparatus of discrimination was overturned, ingrained prejudices and biased institutions still prevailed. Even today, women have still not reached the same levels of success in pay and position that men have held for centuries.

Successes

Here are a few highlights [more detail please] of successes in the movement (please add refs if possible):

General

  • Property: Equal rights to ownership and inheritance, and women not being considered property anymore.
  • Workplace: Equal pay for equal work is now accepted as proper (if not always put into place); greater diversification of opportunity.
  • Privacy: CT vs. Griswold allowed married couples to use birth control; Roe v. Wade allowed women to make their own decisions about childbearing.
  • Education: Where once technical higher education was available only to men, women now outnumber men in many areas of study.
  • Social: Women are now able to socialise (pubs, clubs, bars etc) unaccompanied by men, without being stigmatised as "loose women".

Suffrage

The battle to gain the right to vote has raged since the early 19th century.[2]

  • In 1893, New Zealand became the first major self-governing country in the world to give women the vote.
  • In the years before the First World War, Norway (1913) and Denmark also gave women the vote.
  • 1917 - Canada granted the right, except in Quebec, where it was postponed until 1940.
  • 1917 - Soviet Russia also allowed women to "vote" for the winner of their "elections".
  • 1920 - Women acheived the vote in the U.S. with the ratification of the 19th amendment.
  • 1926 - Turkey
  • 1928 - The United Kingdom granted full voting rights to women.
  • 1944 - France extended the franchise, finally.
  • 1984 - Liechtenstein joined the rest of the free world in sisterhood.

Politics

  • Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka - the modern world's first female elected head of state, served as Prime Minister from 1960-1965, 1970-1977 and 1994-2000.
  • Indira Ghandi was the Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984.
  • Golda Meir, after serving as the Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister, became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, until her resignation in 1974.
  • Margaret Thatcher (oh well) served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 until 1990.
  • Benazir Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan, from 1988–1990 and 1993–1996.
  • Hillary Clinton, who is running a prominent campaign for President of the U.S. The Senate, where she currently serves, is still over 90% male, however.

[more detail please]!!!

Ideology

While feminism is not one single ideology, there have been various movements with more-or-less well defined outlooks.

Criticisms

Here are a few dubious backlashes and losses the movement has suffered:

  • Rush Limbaugh and his nasty namecalling.
  • Don Imus and his racist, sexist namecalling.

Reactionary movement

Many conservatives view feminism as an attempt to set up a castrating matriarchy, where neopaganism reigns supreme and all women are lesbians. Rush Limbaugh even invented his own pet derogatory term for feminists. This is not limited to male reactionaries; even some female conservatives have stated a wish to abolish female suffrage.

Some unlinked dumbasses

McGill University misandry researchers Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young call modern gender-focused feminism "fascist". They say that gender-feminism uses recycled Marxism, Romanticism and Classism to create a man-hating worldview.

However, it must be remembered that in all political theories, there are competing sub-theories. "Gender feminism" and "Marxist feminism" are not the end-all and be-all of feminism. If anything, "liberal feminism" is the most accepted form of feminism outside of academia. Liberal feminism (also known as classical feminism) instead seeks to create gender equality in institutions by removing discrimination and promoting equality. (Even within academia, Marxist feminism is probably not the most common. Academic feminism usually revolves around the study of female viewpoints within a classical discipline, without using Marxist critiques beyond that used by the discipline already.)

Another asinine myth spun sideways

For some reason, there are plenty of women who hate feminism. Some of these are due to feminism's attempts to free women from their traditional roles as servants to their husbands. Examples of these kind of critics include Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter.

There are also many women who call themselves feminists, who have been highly critical of the ideologies underpinning modern and post-modern feminism (interesting detail required here, otherwise this sentence has no meaning). These include Suzanne Hoff-Sommers, Wendly McElroy, Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Kate Fillion and others. In addition, criticism that feminists have systematically subverted scholarship for political indoctrination is shown in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales From the Strange World of Women's Studies by Patia and Koerge, two women from within the movement. However, even in these academic cases, it is a simple case of women who are upset with a particular sub-theory of feminism, rather than the notion of feminism as a whole.

References

  1. http://www.memorable-quotes.com/cheris+kramarae+++paula+treichler,a1818.html is one of many sources.
  2. Data ripped from wp:Women's suffrage
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