This document discusses various concepts related to post-feminism, third-wave feminism, and feminist thinkers. It explores ideas such as gender being more fluid and constructed than rigidly defined; empowerment and celebration of femininity; women wielding sexual power; and choosing liberation over victimhood. Several feminist authors are mentioned, including Camille Paglia, Susan Faludi, bell hooks, and Naomi Wolf, alongside their critiques of beauty standards, backlash against feminism, and marriage within patriarchal societies.
13. Traditional feminism perpetuates the idea of women as victims, post-feminism concentrates on ideas of empowerment and liberation
14. Emphasis on choices and freedom of choiceActivity: Give examples of how these principles work using TV, music industry, radio or film
15. Camille Paglia– reaction to the excesses of traditional 60s and 70s (“2nd Wave feminists”) ; much more all-encompassing view of feminine identity. Less defined view of sexuality and gender Let's get rid of Infirmary Feminism, with its bedlam of bellyachers, anorexics, bulimics, depressives, rape victims, and incest survivors. Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses. I'm bringing, like Madonna, a sense of beauty and pleasure and sensuality back into feminism. Because, you know, feminism's main problem for the last twenty years has been that it is incapable of appreciating art, okay? There is no aesthetics in feminism. All there is, is a social agenda. Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself. It is woman's destiny to rule men. Not to serve them, flatter them, or hang on them for guidance. Nor to insult them, demean them, or stereotype them as oppressors.
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17. bell hooks (Gloria Watkins) Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media. Since our society continues to be primarily a "Christian" culture masses of people continue to believe that god has ordained that women be subordinate to men in the domestic household. I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society -- because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not. Activity Think about representations of marriage in the media e.g. TV soaps Are they positive or negative? Do they promote or criticise patriarchal values?
18. Naomi Wolf Critique of the way consumerism and capitalist society imposes constraints on women. ‘Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. "To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality." "Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight." 1991 Activity To what extent do today’s media encourage the ‘beauty myth’?
19. Queer theory is a set of ideas based around the idea that gender identities are not fixed and do not determine who we are. It suggests that it is meaningless to talk in general about 'women' or any other group, as identities consist of so many elements that to assume that people can be seen collectively on the basis of one shared characteristic is wrong.
20. And finally …. Simone de Beauvoir- The Second Sex 1949 “Women should reject the socially repressive constraints of femininity and become masculine” An early feminist and in many ways a post-feminist as she was so ahead of her time “One is not so much born, rather, one becomes a woman” Social conditioning Gender roles are constructed
