Feminist second wave

That women were, historically, the first oppressed group.

2. That women’s oppression is the most widespread, existing in virtually
every known society.
3. That women’s oppression is the hardest form of oppression to eradicate
and cannot be removed by other social changes such as the abolition of
class society.
4. That women’s oppression causes the most suffering to its victims,
qualitatively as well as quantitatively, although the suffering may often
go unrecognized because of the sexist prejudices of both the oppressors
and the victims.
5. That women’s oppression . . . provides a conceptual model for understanding
all other forms of oppression.4

She incorporates within herself qualities defined as ‘masculine’ as well as ‘feminine.’ A

Bitch is blatant, direct, arrogant, at times egoistic. She has no liking for the
indirect, subtle, mysterious ways of the ‘eternal feminine.’ She disdains the
vicarious life deemed natural to women because she wants to live a life of her
own.”5 In other words, a “Bitch” does not want to limit herself to being a
sweet girl with little in the way of power. Instead, she wants to embrace as
part of her gender identity those masculine characteristics that permit her to
lead life on her own terms.
Freeman’s views did not go unchallenged
Among others, Alice Echols rejected as wrongheaded Freeman’s celebration of the Bitch. She said
thatFreeman’s Bitch was far too masculine to constitute a role model for
women.
Still, Echols credited Freeman for expressing radical-libertarian
feminists’ desire to free women from the constraints of female biology.
Just because a woman is biologically a female does not mean she is destined to
exhibit only feminine characteristics.
Women can be masculine as well as feminine. 6 They can choose their gender roles and identities, mixing
and matching them at will.

Later, after the shock value of Freeman’s rhetoric had dissipated, some radical
feminists began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of women
striving to be androgynous persons. As they saw it, a Bitch was not a full
human person but only a woman who had embraced some of the worst features
of masculinity. According to Echols, this group of radical feminists,
soon labeled

Patriarchal ideology exaggerates biological differences between men and

women, making certain that men always have the dominant, or masculine,
roles and women always have the subordinate, or feminine, ones. This ideology
is so powerful, said Millett, that men are usually able to secure the apparent
consent of the very women they oppress.

Men do this through institutions such as the academy, the church, and the family, each of which
justifies and reinforces women’s subordination to men, resulting in most
women’s internalization of a sense of inferiority to men. Should a woman
refuse to accept patriarchal ideology by casting off her femininity—that is,
her submissiveness/subordination—men will use coercion to accomplish
what conditioning has failed to achieve.

Intimidation is everywhere in patriarchy,

according to Millet. The streetwise woman realizes that if she wants to
survive in patriarchy, she had better act feminine, or else she may be subjected
to “a variety of cruelties and barbarities.” 14
Millett stressed that despite men’s continual attempts to

Heterosexual as well as other sexual practices are characterized by

repression. The norms of patriarchal bourgeois sexuality repress the
sexual desires and pleasures of everyone by stigmatizing sexual minorities,
thereby keeping the majority “pure” and under control.

2. Feminists should repudiate any theoretical analyses, legal restrictions,

or moral judgements that stigmatize sexual minorities and thus restrict
the freedom of all.

3. As feminists we should reclaim control over female sexuality by demanding

the right to practice whatever gives us pleasure and satisfaction.

4. The ideal sexual relationship is between fully consenting, equal partners

who negotiate to maximize one another’s sexual pleasure and satisfaction
by any means they choose

Radical-libertarian feminists challenged theories of sexuality that separated

supposedly good, normal, legitimate, healthy sexual practices from
supposedly bad, abnormal, illegitimate, unhealthy sexual practices. 60 These
feminists urged women to experiment with different kinds of sex and not to
confine themselves to a limited range of sexual experiences
The Dialectic of Sex, Firestone suggested the desire to bear and rear children
is less the result of an “authentic liking” for children and more a “displacement”
of ego-extension needs.
For a man, a child is a way to immortalize his name, property, class, and ethnic identification; for a
woman, a child is away to justify her homebound existence as absolutely meaningful.

Firestone believed that if adults, especially women, did not feel they had a
duty to have children, they might discover in themselves an authentic desire
to live in close association with children. People do not need to be biological
parents to lead child-centered lives,

No matter how much educational, legal, and political equality women

achieve and no matter how many women enter public industry, Firestone
insisted that nothing fundamental will change for women as long as natural
reproduction remains the rule.
The joy of giving birth invoked frequently in society is patriarchal myth.

Ann Oakley’s gender construction as a psychological process

The idea of admiring motherhood from churches, media and schools, and not desiring such traits would
show signs of anomalies although there are no hormonal drives that irresistibly draw the mother to her
child

Self worth is associated with the ability to give child to the family

Oakley noted that most women who abuse or neglect their children were
themselves abused or neglected as children. Never having seen a woman
mothering properly, these women never learned the behavior repertoire
society associates with adequate mothering.

motherly behavior is observed from mother sister any kin or is taught.

Mothers are not born; they are made

Biological motherhood is the most oppressive myth the fact that mother needs a child to complete herself
and the child needs a mother most from all relations

She is taught this because she is to kept home bound even though a child also needs his biological father
equally

Case of adoptive parents—social mothers are just as effective as biological

Israel kibbutzism – parents are as happy and content as well as child

Rich agreed with Firestone that biological motherhood, as it has been

institutionalized under patriarchy, is definitely something from which
women should be liberated.

Men have convinced women that unless a woman is a

mother, she is not really a woman, said Rich. Indeed, until relatively
recently, the forces of patriarchy convinced most women that mothering
is their one and only job.

Adrienne Rich also argued eloquently that the institution of biological motherhood
prevents women from rearing their children as women think they should be

reared. She recounted squabbles with her own husband about the best way
to raise their two sons

Radical-libertarian feminists disagree with radical-cultural feminists’ assessment

of contracted motherhood, arguing that contracted motherhood
arrangements, if handled properly, can bring women closer together rather
than drive them farther apart.

Elshtain urged radical-cultural feminists to overthrow the categories that

entrap women (and men) in rigid roles. Roles, she said, are simplistic definitions
that make every man an exploiter and oppressor and every woman a
victim. The fact is, not every woman is a victim and not every man is an exploiter
and oppressor

elshtain asked radical-cultural feminists to reconsider the concept

of “pure voice”—the idea that the victim, in her status as victim, speaks
in a pure voice—“I suffer, therefore I have moral purity.

Also at issue in Elshtain’s critique is the radical-cultural feminist understanding

of patriarchy. Elshtain faulted Mary Daly for implying that no matter
when and where it appears, patriarchy, be it in the form of Hindu suttee,
Chinese foot binding, African female circumcision, or Western gynecology,
is about men hating women, ignoring diversity of societies
and applying universalism
.

MARXIST\

Marx believed a society’s total mode of production—that is, its forces of production
(the raw materials, tools, and workers that actually produce goods)
plus its relations of production (the ways in which production is organized)—
generates a superstructure (a layer of legal, political, and social ideas) that in
turn reinforces the mode of production.

“Human beings create themselves”

is not to be read as “Men and women, as individuals, make themselves
what they are,” but instead as “Men and women, through production collectively,
create a society that, in turn, shapes them.

Marxist and socialist feminists see it, when a poor, illiterate, unskilled woman chooses to sell her
sexual or reproductive services, chances are her choice is more coerced than free. After all, if one
has little else of value to sell besides one’s body, one’s leverage in the marketplace is quite
limited.

Wives lover of the bourgeois and proletariat

Marxist and socialist feminists believe women can gain a consciousness of themselves as a class
of workers by insisting, for example, that domestic work be recognized as real work, that is,
productive work.

Monogamy – womens economic power –lives in her house

Matrilineal societies

The “domestication of animals and the breeding of herds” outside the household led to an
entirely new source of wealth for the human community

Surplus--- domestication of women== shift of balance of power

As men’s work and production grew in importance, not only did the value of women’s work and
production decrease, but the status of women within society decreased.

their own biological children to get their possessions, men exerted enormous pressure to convert
society from a matrilineal one into a patrilineal one.

Engels believed men’s power over women is rooted in the fact that men, not women, control
private property.

The oppression of women will cease only with the dissolution of the institution of private
property

the bourgeois family consists of a relationship between a husband and a wife in which the
husband agrees to support his wife provided that she promises to remain sexually faithful to him
and to reproduce only his legitimate heirs.

Unfortunately, things did not turn out so well for postrevolution Soviet women. On the contrary!
Rather than finding in the workplace meaningfu1, high-waged work, most women found drone-
like, exhausting work that was typically less valued than men’s work

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (

Classes do not simply appear. They are slowly and often painstakingly formed by similarly
situated people who share the same wants and needs. According to Marx, people who belong to
any class initially have no more unity than “potatoes in a sack of potatoes.

Male dominance, in the forms of patrilineage and patriarchy, it is simply the result of the class division
between the propertied man and the property-less woman. Engels commented that monogamy was “the
first form of the family to be based not on natural but on economic conditions.” 37
In his estimation, the monogamous family is the product not of love and commitment
but of power plays and economic exigencies.

.
Some of the most frequently cited reasons for the gender pay gap are (1)
the concentration of women in low-paying, female-dominated jobs;
(2) the
high percentage of women who work part-time rather than full-time; and
(3)
outright wage discrimination against women. Worldwide, women tend to
engage in service work (teaching, nursing, childcare), clerical work, agricultural
work (picking fruit), and light industrial work (producing clothes, shoes,
toys, and electronic devices), while men tend to engage in heavy industrial
work, transportation work, management, administration, and policy work. 87
Although U.S. women have gain

Also worrisome is that despite a significant increase in the number of women

in such major professions as business, health care, and legal services, women
in these professions continue to hit the “glass ceiling,” that is, “the invisible
but effective barrier which prevents women from moving beyond a certain
point on the promotion ladder.

Do such pay differentials exist because, for example, flying planes is

so much more physically, psychologically, and intellectually demanding than,
for example, nursing? Or do they exist simply because most airplane pilots are
men and most nurses are women?

For example, the same Juliet Mitchell

who wrote Women’s Estate in 1971 wrote Psychoanalysis and Feminism several
years later.111 In the later book, Mitchell claimed that the causes of women’s
oppression are ultimately buried deep in the human psyche.

Mitchell rejected liberal feminists’ claim that social reforms aimed at

giving women more educational and occupational opportunities will make women men’s equals.

Women’s suffrage, coeducational studies, and

affirmative action policies might change the way “femininity” is expressed,
but these practices could not, in her view, significantly change the overall
status of women. Likewise, Mitchell rejected the claim of radical-cultural
feminists that reproductive technology is the key to women’s liberation,
because, as she saw it, a purely biological solution cannot resolve an essentially
psychological problem.

explanation for women’s oppression, she suggested women’s status and function are multiply
determined by their role in not only production but also reproduction,

she suggested women’s status and function are multiply determined by their role in not only production
but also reproduction, socialization of children, and sexuality.

U.S. women did at the turn of the century,

the modern women spent no less time socializing them. 65 In fact, the
pressures to be a perfect mother, always attentive to every physical and psychological
need of her children, seemed to be increasing.

Likewise, Mitchell rejected the claim of radical-cultural

feminists that reproductive technology is the key to women’s liberation,
because, as she saw it, a purely biological solution cannot resolve an essentially
psychological problem.
Finally, Mitchell rejected the claim of classic Marxist feminists that an economic revolution aimed at
overthrowing capitalism will make men and women full men partners. Just because women enter the
productive workforce to labor side by side with men does not
mean women will return home in the evening arm in arm with.

She noted that even though women are just as physically

and psychologically qualified for high-paying, prestigious jobs as men are,employers continued to
confine women to low-paying, low-status jobs.64

Mitchell speculated that patriarchal ideology, which views women as

lovers, wives, and mothers rather than as workers, is almost as responsible for
women’s position in society as capitalist economics is.

She claimed that even if a Marxist revolution destroyed the family as an economic unit, it would
not thereby make women men’s equals automatically.

Social feminist are combination of radicals Marxist and psychoanalyst

Because of the ways In which patriarchal ideology has constructed men’s and women’s psyches, women
would probably continue to remain subordinate to men until their
minds and men’s minds had been liberated from the idea that women are
somehow less valuable than men.

Alison

Capitalism oppresses women as workers, but patriarchy

oppresses women as women, an oppression that affects women’s identity
as well as activity.

Rejecting the classical Marxist doctrine that a person has to participate

directly in the capitalist relations of production to be considered truly
alienated, Jaggar claimed, as did Foreman above, that all women, no matter
their work role, are alienated in ways that men are not. 67

men decide the policies and

laws that regulate women’s reproductive choices. Vice versa economic burden sterilization, contraception

enormous burdens and expectations for childbearing and child-rearing

Many women feel so unsure

of themselves that they hesitate to express their ideas in public, for fear their
thoughts are not worth expressing; they remain silent when they should loudly
voice their opinion.(aliwn bated from intellectual capacities

Born under the privilege of post-wave first and second-wave eras, third-wave feminists fought
for women's rights across all classes and races
It is often demarcated as beginning in 1991 with Anita Hill accusing
Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment
Despite Hill’s accusations, Thomas was confirmed. In response to this, Rebecca Walker published a piece in Ms Magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem, supporting Hill and heralding the
beginning of the Third Wave. She famously wrote, “I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the third wave.”

The Family Medical Leave Act which allowed employees to take unpaid leave for family and medical emergencies became law in 1993. The Violence Against Women Act which improved
justice for women who faced abuse was passed in 1995. These were significant achievements for the Third Wave and landmark decisions in US history.

The Third Wave of feminism was greatly focused on reproductive rights for women. Feminists advocated for a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and stated that it was a
basic right to have access to birth control and abortion.

Trans feminism was brought more into the mainstream in the Third Wave. The rights of trans persons were not included in feminism till recently and the need to acknowledge the legitimacy of
their concerns was pressing. The discussions of gender, body image and sexuality that defined the Third Wave of feminism made it more inclusive to trans feminists

Debates over a woman’s culpability in her own rape and the prevention of rape by curtailing the movement of women were frequent.

thirdwave” in a 1992 essay for Ms. Magazine entitled “Becoming the Third Wave.” Emerging in the mid-1990s, third-wave feminism encouraged women to
embrace their sexuality and dismantle power structures instead of working toward reform. It also aspired to be far more inclusive of women of color than feminist
movements of the past.

Walker's essay details the need for a third wave of feminism in response to the misogyny she witnessed watching the Anita Hill hearings. Walker then co-founded
the Third Wave Fund, whose mission was to “fill a void in young women’s leadership and to mobilize young people to become more involved socially and politically
in their communities.”