POLI 2275 Feminist Theory Mary Woolstonecraft talk about other women as if they're diminished (usually) Public vs.

s. Private Private: domesticity, family, childbearing Public: employment, political engagement, legal rights & entitlements John Locke the separation of the public vs. Private, based on love (love doesn't exist in the public sphere) Great Chain of Being - every link has its proper place, very heirarchical By 18th century, the leadership of guilds is restricted from women Woolstonecraft would have had less freedom than her grandmother By this time the law has taken a decidedly anti-feminist turn Blackstone judge, originated the idea of couverture the idea that women are 'covered' by nearest male relative Working-class women have a bit more freedom Struggles with the economic impacts of the public sphere

Nature of women Weak (humanity is born into complacency, women allowed to stay therein due to socialization) Weak, complacent Mill: fundamental reason

Barrier to women's lives Lack of paid employment Ambition is cultivated in boys Inadequate education Socialization (socializing girls in the wrong direction)

Social change sought/ restricted Equal education More employment opportunitiesf

Marriage then

Marriage Now

Fulfilling social Fulfilling social norms norms Heterosexuality

*reason Mill: we cannot tell what woman is really like due to the fact that they haven't been listened to or their character's cultivated

Economic rel Mill: women Improve social are raised to be class good wives (stifle dissent, compliant and agreeable) Any creature that has reason has a right to have that reason developed and having that suppressed is immoral and an injustice. Half of the world's talents are contained in women! Mill: Creating Institutional/pol chosen family itical with legal rights. - rights for women, voting, employment, education Econ & soc. security

Economic re

Woolstonecraft and Mill are advocates of companionate marriage (husband and wife like each other) Both defy the idea of complementarity and maintain that the sexes are equal (=same) Gender: social behavioural norms (mutable) Sex: biological has to do with physical characteristics (hardwired/fixed) Biological sex physical person of man or woman Gender how they perform that Sex orientation heteronormativity

Sexual identity passive, active/dominant Woolstonecraft/Mill start to play with gender Gender continuum Human beings are very good at thinking in terms of binaries ----------------------------Sojourner Truth Abolitionist Religious groups (Methodist/Quaker) Temperance Women's rights/suffrage First wave 19th c-1930's Trade unionist Second wave Late 1950's 1970's Third wave? 1985-1990's-present? Multiple jeopardies/oppressions / Audrey Lourd Racism Sexism the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex The reality for Lourd is that as a 49 year old black lesbian feminist and in an interracial relationship, these are all her oppressions. White women don't see how they can use their colour to trade off for advantages don't see how their participation in heterosexuality cushions them. 294. White women ignore what black women need. -=-------------------2nd wave the idea of gender is challenged as the dominant form of oppressions. Race/class came up as potentially the dominant form of oppression. Masculinity is also a construct

Equality feminists One kind of human (may be a continuum of gender traits that can be proper to one or the other)

Difference There is something inherent to women and men that makesthem difference. Complementarity How to respect and honour qualities of each

-------------------------------Readings: Sanger, McClung, Jane Adams (in text) Wednesday: Gilligan CHICAGO STYLE. Footnotes or Endnotes, not citations in-text Perkins-Gilman She begins to explore the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy Goldman Bornstein 1894 policing this gender code, obsession with maintaining the fiction of gender roles/ 'gender fiction' MacKinnon 2nd wave (1984)- much more about where is the power in gender relations, and how is it expressed. Not a lot of playfulness. Patriarchy replicates that idea of male dominance from one idea to the next --------------------------------False consciousness don't project it onto your interview subject 28/01/2013 Radicals? Nellie McClung Born in Ontario, moved to rural Manitoba when she was 7. Opposed to the commercialization of farming. Persons case: whether they could be appointed to the senate

Muscular Christianity? All about lifting the poor out of poverty linked to the temperance movement Only woman delegate to the League of Nations Look at McClungs feminism in light of the view of how women are seen, complementarity. Women should be allowed into public life because they are different from men. McClung is a pacifist there's something with masculinity that leads men to war. McClung doesn't challenge the traditional role of woman, she just thinks they should hold power. Sexual division of labour women stay home and it sharpens her moral sense, with that she goes and fixes the world. Margaret Sanger Sees women with few options caught in an endless cycle of bearing babies, operating with few economic resources of their own. Doesn't really get into poverty, believes that that poverty is due to inability to control their own bodies. 1873 Comstock Act: birth control was illegal Sanger sounds very classist responsibility is the key Quite culturally bound to her own perspective Books: What Every Girl Should Know First world federation on birth control in 1927, develops into planned parenthood Key priority should be voluntary motherhood helps keep the idea of reproductive activity within marriage Continuity of experience Linking of events: |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Marriage Sex conception gestation birth parenting Love None of this is necessarily following another Friends with benefits? Sanger thinks of sex as a human right and thinks of it as a travesty that women can't manage their sex lives.

Definitely a eugenics undercurrent in Sanger Negative eugenics: preventing undesirable babies Positive eugenics: encouraging Our Own Master Race book about eugenics in Canada Jane Adams Makes an explicit reference to a link between municipal politics and managing a household Women's studies lecture series Stalled Meghan Noticing Graffiti in women's bathrooms. Took every line from graffiti in women's bathrooms Carol Gilligan: challenges the idea that knowledge is universal what is presented as universal invariably presents a masculine viewpoint Medications work differently in women and men, we assume the human model is the male model and assume the problem is the women. ----------January 6th, 2013 Women's studies lecture: if you stop thinking of the female experience is disfunctional, it allows you to reconceptualize Gilligan's ethic of care? Simone de Beauvoir Immanence body/particular Transcendence mind/abstract The Human Rights Era - The Rise of Choice, the Contours of Backlash (Sollinger article) Reproductive politics race trumps class Reproductive freedom for whom? What kind? One of the big dividing lines is what is expected if you have an unplanned pregnancy, based on race. White girl expected to surrender the baby: to preserve the family name, white babies are in demand (but no more than black babies, but nobody talks about that). Punishment to give it up

Black girl: keep the baby told there's no market for black babies. Motherhood is the punishment. The different expectations of family say that there's no shame (this is a perception, not necessarily a reality) Medical issues Wednesday articles: Gloria Anzel, Joanna, Mary Matsud -------------------------Identity politics Matsuda (and others) We try to make this the singular answer our identity. This isn't a simple question. Structures of oppression (Kadi article - ' who belongs in education') Patriarchy Capitalism Racism Legitimacy/lineage Sexual division of labour becomes the conception of what are 'boy jobs' and 'girl jobs' sex/gender distinction Reformer women would behave more like human beings, they'd be more like men de Beauvoir men are the positive and the neutral McClung women need to be in the public sphere, don't see anything wrong If men were drawn into parenting they could be good at it, if patriarchy would allow them. Essentialism isolating particular qualities core and making these defining qualities Nellie McClung 'all women want to be mothers' Sanger, too. Matsuda we are limited to the experience of our body, the enlightenment allows us to get outside of that. Gilligan the law is totally abstract and outside of us, this is the ethic of justice Matsuda's criticism is of the idea that the law has no particular agenda but it does. The law always treats a person as if they are masculine People of colour? This assumes that non-white people are different. Same thing that's in play with treating masculinity as the default.

Age, sex, race, and class - as a 49 year old black, lesbian feminist.. all the stuff that Matsuda says, you'd never see in an essay that was not about identity.