KAS 4 - LESSON 3

• Feminist Theories

  1. Liberal Feminism
  2. Radical 'libertarian' Feminism
  3. Radical 'cultural' Feminism
  4. Marxist 'socialist' Feminism
  5. Multicultural Feminism
  6. Postmodern Feminism
  7. Global Feminism
  8. Ecofeminism
• Feminist Theory

  • recognizes many flaws in traditional (Western, Judeo–Christian, European, male) philos- ophy and offers a new way of thinking about issues affecting humans and our world 
• Feminist Theory

  • is a set of ideas originating with the belief that women are not subordinate to men or only valuable in relationship to men (servant, caretaker, mother, or prostitute), and that the dis- ciplines, systems, and structures in place in our world today may be changed for the better if infused with a feminist point of view.
• Feminist Theory

  • sets an agenda for action, the aim is of which is justice and equality for women everywhere, and of course, also for men and children to whom they are inextricably linked.
• Liberal Feminism

  • find the roots of women’s oppression in the cultural constraints that hinder women from com- peting in the public world, including the worlds of politics, medicine, law, and finance
• Liberal Feminism

  • demand that society give women the same educational and occupational opportunities that men have.
• Liberal Feminism

  • emphasized the equal rational and moral abilities of men and women, and the fact that women must be able to leave the domestic realm and enter the public realm if they are to use these equal abilities
• Radical 'libertarian' Feminism

  • holds that the patriarchal system that oppresses women is so flawed it cannot be reformed, but must be completely eliminated.
• Radical 'libertarian' Feminism

  • singles out for attack social and cultural institutions such as the family and church, as well as traditional ideologies about the sexual and reproductive rights, responsi- bilities, needs, and preferences of men and women.
• Radical 'libertarian' Feminism

  • Also referred to as, Radical libertarian feminists
• Radical 'libertarian' Feminism

  • aimed to explore what they saw as the pleasures of sex: consensual sex between men and women, lesbian sex, sex with both men and women, autoeroticism, sado- masochistic sex, and even intergenerational sex
• Radical 'libertarian' Feminism

  • They sought to free women from the beliefs that ‘good’ sex could be experienced only in a ‘love relationship,’ and that sex for sex’s sake was somehow ‘bad’ or pro-miscuous. 
• Radical 'libertarian' Feminism

  • help women avoid the burdens of human reproduction, going so far as to recommend that natural reproduction be replaced by technological reproduction.
• Radical 'cultural' Feminism

  • sex, usually understood as heterosexual sex, is more dangerous than pleasurable for most women
• Radical 'cultural' feminism

  • They urged women to extricate themselves from the insti- tution of so-called compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1994), which they viewed as ‘characterized by an ideology of sexual objectification (men as subjects/masters; women as objects/slaves) that supports male sexual violence against women’ (Ferguson 1984). 
• Radical 'cultural' Feminism

  • Emphasized that artificial repro-duction would more likely disempower than empower women 
• Radical 'cultural' Feminism

  • urged women to see artificial insemi- nation by donor, in itro fertilization, and plans for an artificial womb not as new procreative options for women but as means for men to exercise complete control over women’s procreative powers—their ability to determine whether the human species will continue or not 
• Radical 'cultural' Feminism

  • rejected the idea of androgyny as a desirable goal for feminists, re- placing it with proposals to affirm women’s essential ‘femaleness’
• Radical 'cultural' Feminism

  • expressed the view that it is better to be female/feminine than it is to be male/masculine.
• Marxist 'socialist' Feminism

  • claim it is impossible for anyone, especially women, to achieve true freedom in a class- based society where the wealth produced by the powerless many ends up in the hands of the powerful few. 
• Marxist 'socialist' Feminism

  • women’s oppression originated in the introduction of private property, an institution that obliterated what- ever equality of community humans had previously enjoyed. 
• Marxist 'socialist' Feminism

  • stressed that women’s condition is determined by the structures of production (as Marxist–socialists believe), reproduction and sexuality (as radical feminists believe), and the socialization of children (as liberal feminists believe).
• Private ownership of the means of production by relatively few persons, originally all male, inaugurated a class system whose contemporary manifestations are 

  • corporate capitalism and imperialism 
• Capitalism

  • is a primary cause of women's oppression
• Women's sisterhood and solidarity

  • dominant notes of feminist theory
• Multicultural Feminists

  • Stress that although it is hard to be a woman, it is harder to be a woman of color than a white woman; a poor woman than a rich woman; a lesbian woman than a heterosexual woman; an  old or average-looking woman than a young or beautiful woman.
• Multicultural Feminists

  • explain how the idea of ‘sameness’—the seemingly benevolent notion that ‘down deep’ we are all the same—could counter-intuitively be used as an instru- ment of oppression rather than liberation
• Postmodern Feminists

  • Emphasizes women’s differences.
• Postmodern Feminists

  • resolve the old philosophical debates about the nature of reality—is it ‘one’ or ‘many’?—decidedly in the direction of ‘many-ness.’ 
• Postmodern Feminists

  • stress the advantages of being rejected, unwanted, shunned, frozen out, disadvantaged, unprivileged, abandoned, dislocated, and otherwise marginalized.
• Postmodern Feminists

  • emphasis on the idea of differences as the ‘essential’ description of the human condition
• Global feminists and ecofeminists

  • Although global feminists are well aware that women in the US are very different from women in Kenya or Thailand, for example, they are never- theless inclined to believe that the women in these countries share enough common interests to become each other’s political allies and moral supports.
• Global Feminists

  • feminists must take the lead in living more simply so that life on earth can continue through the next millennium and more
• Global Feminists

  • maintain that if feminists are really serious about ending all op- pression, beginning with gender oppression, they must stop being oppressors themselves.
• Ecofeminists

  • human beings are connected not only to each other, but also to the nonhuman world: animal and even vegetative. 
• Ecofeminists

  • The only way not to destroy ourselves, insist them, is to strengthen our relationships to each other and the nonhuman world by refusing to engage in acts of violence, particularly warfare; re- fusing to eat animal flesh; and refusing to lead luxurious lifestyles.
• 2 fields that feminist theory affects in philosophy field

  1. Epistemology 
  2. Ontology 
• Ontology

  • Feminist theory challenges thisl assumption that the more separate the ‘self’ is from others, the more autonomous, unique, successful, and superior that self is. 
• Twenty-first Century

  • the feminist movement has accomplished great equality in many areas, including politics, the workplace, and the legal system
• Feminist Movement

  • Often described as having three ways