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Feminism, and my feminist critiques of texts are usually more about the processes of why I am making a certain critique, rather than what exactly it is that I am critiquing. When I read articles, stories, and different texts that leave me with intense feelings, I always take a minute, and rather than critique what the author is saying I think about why I am driven to critique.

Even though I agree with the idea, from our last discussion that an author doesn’t necessarily have agency to tell the reader how to interpret his or her writing, I appreciate and value the contexts from which these authors come. I had a difficult time identifying with Schweickart’s idea of the feminist goal in critiquing. I identify as a feminist, though I am not necessarily looking to form a community in my critiques.

Why can’t we value the process of reading and observing our reactions to the text and understanding our reactions? However, In Schweickart’s Towards a Feminist Theory of Reading, she writes “...there are good reasons for feminist criticism to engage reader response criticism. Both dispute the fetishized art object, the ‘Verbal Icon,’ of New Criticism, and both seek to dispel the objectivist illusion that buttresses the authority of the dominant critical tradition.(p38)” In this sense feminist critique can be really important in making an effective difference.

When we discussed the idea of feminism critiques being to “change the world” I wanted so badly to disagree with that idea, however we are not in a place yet, even in third wave feminism where we can ignore the masculinized lens where most of our entertainment and educational sources are coming from. This is where the importance for feminist critique is the most important!