INTRODUCTION: Feminisms
I. What feminists (of any gender) do:

Examine and critique patriarchy, the continuing male domination of social
institutions such as the family, the state, the educational system, and the media.

Recognize that women and men are, and have been, treated differently by our
society, and that women have frequently and systematically been unable to
participate fully in all social arenas and institutions. Acknowledging these
inequalities, feminists work for social changes that would remedy this situation.

Analyze gender, the set of ideas that define "masculinity" and "femininity" for a
given culture. Feminists recognize the powerful roles that gender plays in our
society: it offers ideal roles, provides rules for behavior, structures the relations
between people, channels desire, influences how we think about high and low
culture, and maintains a division between domestic and other kinds of labor.
II. Sex and Gender
A. What is Sex?
1. Not sexuality, which is often called “sex”—“array of acts,
expectations, narratives, pleasures, identity-formations, and
knowledges . . . that tends to cluster most densely around certain
genital sensations but is not adequately defined by them” (Eve
Kosovsky Segwick, Epistemology of the Closet).
2. Chromosomal Sex: A certain group of irreducible biological
differentiations between members of the species Homo sapiens who
have XX [male] and those who have XY [female] chromosomes.
These include (or are ordinarily thought to include more or less
marked dimorphisms of genital formation, hair growth (in populations
that have body hair), fat distribution, hormonal function, and
reproductive capacity. (Eve Kosovsky Segwick, Epistemology of the
Closet).
3. Still, for some people there is not a neat match between chromosomal
sex, hormones, and genitals. There are also a group of people known
as "intersex" who are not classifiable in the biological categories of
"male" and "female"
4. We often use "sex" to describe something other than biological sexual
difference:
i. Is ‘chromosomal sex’ what we mean when we say we are or
are not attracted to the “opposite sex?” If not, what do we
mean by such statements? Are we still referring to something
biological?
ii. Is there a natural opposition or difference in status between XX
and XY chromosomes?
iii. If chromosomes are not visible to the naked eye, how is it that
we determine if someone is biologically male or female?
B. What is Gender?
1. A social concept by which people are divided into the categories of
"masculine" or "feminine." Understood as the cultural articulation of
sexual difference, gender plays an immense role in the organization of
social and personal life.
2. Gender offers ideal roles, provides rules for behavior, structures the
relations between people, channels desire, and maintains a division
between domestic and other kinds of labor.
3. Dominant understanding of gender in contemporary Western culture is
that it is limited to only two, sometimes complementary, sometimes
opposed categories
4. Binary Thinking. Just as a digital computer ultimately sees the world
only in terms of binary code, as some combination of zeros or ones,
binary systems of knowledge divide the world into two opposed
categories.
5. Hierarchy. Result of that division is privileging of one term over the
other. In this case privileging masculinity over femininity.
6. Other theories of gender.
i. Spectrum. Hegemonic masculinity and femininity may
represent two poles and many people fall at many different
places. Still keeps fixed idea in place (Bornstein).
ii. Female Masculinity. Judith Halberstam points out that there
isn't any neat linking between bodies and genders. Lesbian
women, for example, have developed their own form of
masculinity that is different from "male masculinity."
Butchness in the lesbian community is not a copy of male
masculinity, but is a kind of masculinity that is distinct to
women.
iii. Performance. Gender is maintained by the repetition of
conventions A way of fitting your body into a pre-existing
system of meaning so that others understand how to classify
you. This performance can be interrupted or disrupted.
C. Gender and Popular Culture
1. Modleski. Not just representations of gender in popular culture.
Popular Culture is, itself, a gendered category.
High Culture (Art)
Masculinity
Production
Work
Intellect
Activity
Mass Culture (Popular Culture)
Femininity
Consumption
Leisure
Emotion
Reading
2. High Cutlure critics' fears about role of mass culture in making
audiences passive and vulnerable, prone to consumerism is actually a
fear of audience becoming feminized.
III. Some typologies of feminism
A. Historical Waves
 First Wave. The "first wave" of the feminist movement worked for the reform of
women's social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century. Not all of these women understood themselves as "feminists;" the term
was not coined until 1895. Key issues for first wave feminists were education,
employment, marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single
women. The movement was not concerned with the problems faced by workingclass women. Their major achievements included opening access to higher
education and professional occupations for women, securing property rights for
married women, and securing the right to vote in 1920.

Second Wave. Between 1920-1960 there was not a mass movement based in
feminist principles. The second wave in the United States was sparked in the late
sixties by women participating in the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Second wave feminism was a diverse movement, including black feminism,
lesbian feminism, liberal feminism, and socialist feminism.
One of the most significant ideas from this wave is that "the personal is
political," which means that many of the issues impacting women's personal
lives (e.g., access to health care, unequal responsibility for housework, sexual
harassment in the workplace, sexual assaults and domestic abuse, etc.) should
be made public political issues. Women should take political action on these
issues and make sure that politicians understand that the problems that affect
them aren't just "women's issues" or "personal problems," but are social
problems that need to be dealt with.

Third Wave. Emerging in the late 1990s, third wave feminism is a youthful
movement that accepts the contradictions inherent in struggling against, but still
living in a patriarchal society. Third Wavers accept that lives lived in patriarchy will
inevitably include compromises and complexity. Instead of "either/or," third wavers
more often embrace "both/and." For example, whereas a second-waver might refuse
to wear make-up as a way of rejecting patriarchal standards of beauty, a Third Waver
would be more likely to simultaneously recognize that wearing make-up in a
patriarchal society is connected to imposed ideas of feminine beauty, but at the same
time claim the right to wear lipstick for fun. Third wavers build upon the
achievements of their predecessors while also making connections with other
movements.
Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of riot grrrl punk band Bikini Kill and founder of
electro-clash band Le Tigre, intimately familiar with domestic violence, and an exstripper, writes: "Resistance is everywhere, it always has been and always will be.
Just because someone is not resisting in the same way you are (being a vegan, an
'out' lesbian, a political organizer) does not mean they are not resisting. Being told
you are a worthless piece of shit and not believing it is a form of resistance."
B. Five Forms of Oppositional Consciousness
(from Chela Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed)
The Equal-Rights Form (e.g., Liberal Feminism)
The subordinated group argues for equal rights on the basis that "all humans are created
equal." The group argues that any differences between itself and its social superiors are
only superficial and shouldn't be used as grounds to deny its members access to social
institutions.
The Revolutionary Form (e.g., Socialist Feminism)
The differences by which the subordinated group is denied access to full humanity cannot
simply be assimilated into the existing order. The dominant society must be completely
transformed. The goal of this transformation is an egalitarian society in which there are
not dominant and subordinate groups.
The Supremacist Form (e.g., some forms of Cultural Feminism)
The differences (from the dominant group) that define the subordinate group actually
give its members access to a higher level of consciousness than those who hold social
power. The subordinated group understands itself to be at a higher level of psychic and
social evolution (as a result of biology, spirituality, or social conditioning).
The Separatist Form (e.g., some forms of mid-70s Lesbian Feminism)
The differences that define the subordinated group should be protected and nurtured
through complete separation from the dominant social order. This separation may be
imagined as permanent or temporary, figurative or literal.
The Differential Form (e.g., U.S. Third World Feminism)
A post-modern approach that utilizes whichever of the previous four strategies will be
most effective at a given moment and in a given context. Rather than seeing the equalrights form, the revolutionary form, the supremacist form, and the separatist form as
mutually exclusive ideologies and approaches, the differential form claims that none of
them provide a "final answer" to the dismantling of social subordination. Independent
movements can and should use their own tactics, but struggle together. Cherie Moraga:
"[We] are women without a line. We are women who contradict each other."