Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis,Chodorow, Nancy J., Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (Yale University Press: 1989, 1991) political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Feminist theory often focuses on analyzing gender inequality. Themes often explored in feminist theory include discrimination, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, patriarchy,Gilligan, Carol, 'In a Different Voice: Women's Conceptions of Self and Morality' in Harvard Educational Review (1977)Lerman, Hannah, Feminist Ethics in Psychotherapy (Springer Publishing Company, 1990) stereotyping, art historyPollock, Griselda. Looking Back to the Future: Essays on Art, Life and Death. G&B Arts. 2001. and contemporary art,de Zegher, Catherine. Inside the Visible. Massachusetts: MIT Press 1996Armstrong, Carol and de Zegher, Catherine. Women Artists at the Millennium. Massachusetts: October Books / MIT Press 2006. and aesthetics.Arnold, Dana and Iverson, Margaret (Eds.). Art and Thought. Blackwell. 2003. Florence, Penny and Foster, Nicola. Differential Aesthetics. Ashgate. 2000.
History "The Changing Woman" is a Navajo myth that gave credit to a woman who, in the end, populated the world."The Changing Woman" (Navajo Origin Myth). Feminist Theory: A Reader. 2nd Ed. Edited by Kolmar, Wendy and Bartowski, Frances. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 64. By the 1790s, the leading feminist voice in both the U.K. and U.S. was Mary Wollstonecraft, whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was influenced by the lesser-known American Judith Sargent Murray. Both women asserted that the best route to improving women's condition is education. Their ideas influenced American Charles Brockden Brown, who wrote Dialogues of Alcuin in 1797. The Anglophone world saw no feminist theory of note until "Men and Women: Brief Hypothesis Concerning the Difference in their Genius" (1824) by American John Neal, who repeated Wollstonecraft's and Murray's theories, but added the assertion that women are unlike, but not inferior to men. This and other essays by Neal in the 1820s filled an intellectual gap between female scholars in the 1790s and those surrounding the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. As a male writer insulated from many common forms of attack against female feminist thinkers, Neal's advocacy was crucial in bringing the field back into the mainstream in the U.K. and the U.S. By the time of the convention, writing by Neal, Sarah Grimké, and Margaret Fuller had solidified ideas from sporadic publications over the previous sixty years into a movement that reached a wider audience.
In 1851, Sojourner Truth addressed women's rights issues through her publication, "Ain't I a Woman". Sojourner Truth addressed the issue of women having limited rights due to men's flawed perception of women. Truth argued that if a woman of color can perform tasks that were supposedly limited to men, then any woman of any color could perform those same tasks.Truth, Sojourner. "Ain't I a Woman". Feminist Theory: A Reader. 2nd Ed. Edited by Kolmar, Wendy and Bartowski, Frances. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 79. After her arrest for illegally voting, Susan B. Anthony gave a speech within court in which she addressed the issues of language within the constitution documented in her publication, "Speech after Arrest for Illegal voting" in 1872. Anthony questioned the authoritative principles of the constitution and its male-gendered language. She raised the question of why women are accountable to be punished under law but they cannot use the law for their own protection (women could not vote, own property, nor maintain custody of themselves in marriage). She also critiqued the constitution for its male-gendered language and questioned why women should have to abide by laws that do not specify women.Anthony, Susan B. "Speech After Arrest for Illegal Voting". Feminist Theory: A Reader. 2nd Ed. Edited by Kolmar, Wendy and Bartowski, Frances. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 91-95.
Nancy Cott makes a distinction between modern feminism and its antecedents, particularly the struggle for suffrage. In the United States she places the turning point in the decades before and after women obtained the vote in 1920 (1910–1930). She argues that the prior woman movement was primarily about woman as a universal entity, whereas over this 20-year period it transformed itself into one primarily concerned with social differentiation, attentive to individuality and diversity. New issues dealt more with woman's condition as a social construct, gender identity, and relationships within and between genders. Politically, this represented a shift from an ideological alignment comfortable with the right, to one more radically associated with the left.Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987
Susan Kingsley Kent says that Freudian patriarchy was responsible for the diminished profile of feminism in the inter-war years,Kent, Susan Kingsley. Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain. Princeton, N.J. 1993 others such as Juliet Mitchell consider this to be overly simplistic since Freudian theory is not wholly incompatible with feminism.Mitchell, Juliet. Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing, and Women. New York 1975 Some feminist scholarship shifted away from the need to establish the origins of family, and towards analyzing the process of patriarchy.Stocking, George W. Jr. After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888–1951. Madison, Wisconsin 1995 In the immediate postwar period, Simone de Beauvoir stood in opposition to an image of "the woman in the home". De Beauvoir provided an existentialist dimension to feminism with the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) in 1949. As the title implies, the starting point is the implicit inferiority of women, and the first question de Beauvoir asks is "what is a woman"?Moi, Toril. What is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford 2000 A woman she realizes is always perceived of as the "other", "she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her". In this book and her essay, "Woman: Myth & Reality", de Beauvoir anticipates Betty Friedan in seeking to demythologize the male concept of woman. "A myth invented by men to confine women to their oppressed state. For women, it is not a question of asserting themselves as women, but of becoming full-scale human beings." "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman", or as Toril Moi puts it "a woman defines herself through the way she lives her embodied situation in the world, or in other words, through the way in which she makes something of what the world makes of her". Therefore, the woman must regain subject, to escape her defined role as "other", as a Cartesian point of departure.Bergoffen, Debra B. The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities. SUNY 1996 In her examination of myth, she appears as one who does not accept any special privileges for women. Ironically, feminist philosophers have had to extract de Beauvoir herself from out of the shadow of Jean-Paul Sartre to fully appreciate her.Sullivan, Shannon. The work of Simone de Beauvoir: Introduction Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2000 14(2):v While more philosopher and novelist than activist, she did sign one of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes manifestos.
The resurgence of feminist activism in the late 1960s was accompanied by an emerging literature of concerns for the earth and spirituality, and environmentalism. This, in turn, created an atmosphere conducive to reigniting the study of and debate on matricentricity, as a rejection of determinism, such as Adrienne RichRich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution New York 1976 and Marilyn FrenchFrench, Marilyn. Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals. New York 1985 while for socialist feminists like Evelyn Reed,Reed, Evelyn. Woman's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family. New York, 1975 patriarchy held the properties of capitalism. Feminist psychologists, such as Jean Baker Miller, sought to bring a feminist analysis to previous psychological theories, proving that "there was nothing wrong with women, but rather with the way modern culture viewed them".Jean Baker Miller
Elaine Showalter describes the development of feminist theory as having a number of phases. The first she calls "feminist critique" – where the feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls "Gynocritics" – where the "woman is producer of textual meaning" including "the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career and literary history". The last phase she calls "gender theory" – where the "ideological inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system" are explored".Showalter, Elaine. 'Toward a Feminist Poetics: Women's Writing and Writing About Women' in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory (Random House, 1988), This model has been criticized by Toril Moi who sees it as an essentialist and deterministic model for female subjectivity. She also criticized it for not taking account of the situation for women outside the west.Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics (Routledge, 2002), From the 1970s onwards, psychoanalytical ideas that have been arising in the field of French feminism have gained a decisive influence on feminist theory. Feminist psychoanalysis deconstructed the phallic hypotheses regarding the Unconscious. Julia Kristeva, Bracha Ettinger and Luce Irigaray developed specific notions concerning unconscious sexual difference, the feminine, and motherhood, with wide implications for film and literature analysis.Zajko, Vanda and Leonard, Miriam (eds.), Laughing with Medusa (Oxford, 2006)
In the 1990s and the first decades of the 21st century, intersectionality played a major role in feminist theory, leading to the development of transfeminism and queer feminism and the consolidation of Black, anti-racist and postcolonial feminisms, among others. The rise of the fourth wave in the 2010s led to new discussions on sexual violence, consent and body positivity, as well as a deepening of intersectional perspectives. Simultaneously, feminist philosophy and anthropology saw a rise in new materialist, affect-oriented, posthumanist and ecofeminist perspectives.
Disciplines
There are a number of distinct feminist disciplines, in which experts in other areas apply feminist techniques and principles to their own fields. Additionally, these are also debates which shape feminist theory and they can be applied interchangeably in the arguments of feminist theorists.
Bodies In Western thought, the body has been historically associated solely with women, whereas men have been associated with the mind. Susan Bordo, a modern feminist philosopher, in her writings elaborates the dualistic nature of the mind/body connection by examining the early philosophies of Aristotle, Hegel, and Descartes, revealing how such distinguishing binaries such as spirit/matter and male activity/female passivity have worked to solidify gender characteristics and categorization. Bordo goes on to point out that while men have historically been associated with the intellect and the mind or spirit, women have long been associated with the body, the subordinated, negatively imbued term in the mind/body dichotomy.Bordo, Unbearable Weight, p. 4