Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

This discussion is closed: you can't post new comments.
sarina's picture

Cultural feminism

(I don't know who skumar really is in the class, so please forgive me for not addressing the writer by name).

I love this idea of feminism as an ideology rooted in cultural. It just makes so much sense. So many ideas we have are cultural. Think about the US "liberating" Iraq. While some Americans believed we were removing a corrupt government, some Iraqis disagreed and did not want the US presence. If our definition of democracy comes from our culture, then our definition of feminism will too.

Going back to the home: If you consider the home a strong shaping force of your ideas and values, and home is cultural (one example is the Latino/Latina culture with strong gender role enforcement), then of course feminism is cultural. 

 I first heard about different types of feminism my senior year of high school, when I took a class titled "Women in Society". We learned about womynism. The concept that feminism wasn't a one-size-fits-all theory shocked me at first. I wondered, why can't all the women (or womyn) agree on equality between the genders (my definition of feminism at the time)? It is very hard to step out of your own lens, and it was difficult for me to step out of my lens as a white, middle-class girl (girl then, woman now). The idea of only one feminism baffled me because I was so used to seeing my culture (white culture) as the standard, that a feminism coming from it seemed like the only natural option.

To me, it now makes sense for there to be multiple branches (or types? maybe we could make a map of the different kinds of feminism). We are not all the same. While there will be some things we can agree on, maybe not enough for one definition of feminism to fit everyone.

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
11 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.