Critical Feminist Studies 2013

Introduction

When thinking of topics to write this final web event on, my mind wandered to ecofeminism and stayed there. It’s a topic and issue that has been picking at me since we first discussed it briefly in class and it has been urging me to take a closer look at it ever since. When the final group to present during our last class did their presentation on ecofeminism, the picking only intensified.  I knew then that I needed to learn about the history of the movement and why it carries the images and connotations that we discussed during that class. I felt like this would solve my desire to understand ecofeminism and would help me determine whether or not I could place myself within it. And so, I did just that. I delved into the origins and philosophies of ecofeminism and I decided to look at it from the perspective of people of color. A lack of a presence concerning women of color involved in ecofeminism seemed to be the most glaring issue that I faced when originally analyzing the ecofeminist movement. Keeping this in mind, I concluded that when researching for this paper I would look at popular ecofeminist texts that help establish a general definition of what the movement is, along with ecofeminist movements and texts that directly or indirectly come from the point of view of women of color.

I enrolled in this class because after a history-based women’s studies class in high school, I became very interested in feminist issues and looking past the gender binary. When I started in this class, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself as a humanities student. I never spoke much in English and history classes in high school, because I had trouble with two things: getting invested in the subject matter, and believing that others would want to hear something that I had to say. I also found myself unable to really care about essay prompts I was given, except for one paper senior year where I chose my own topic.

In my third Web Event, I explored the two opposing methods of fighting patriarchal inequality: fighting to unbind gender from inequality and using the present inequality to justify more immediate, relief-providing policies. I looked at how Heidi Hartmann switched her perspective in her essays arguing for change in the workplace, an end to labor segregation and the wage gap. On the unbinding end, Hartmann explained the connections between capitalism and patriarchy, and then she argued that ending labor segregation would take down an important pillar holding up patriarchy. To reach the end of labor segregation, however, we must fix the societal expectations and assumptions that justify and perpetuate the segregation.

…See children as the property of parents to do with as they will, Adult violence against children is a norm in our society. Problematically, for the most part feminist thinkers have never wanted to call attention to the reality that women are often the primary culprits in everyday violence against children simply because they are the primary parental caregivers.  Hooks

Mental Illness and Feminism

            In my first Web Event, titled “Web Event #1: Fear and Self-Representation”, I discussed my personal struggles with fear in the classroom, as well as analyzed where fear comes from and how it interferes with self-representation. I came to the conclusion that my fear resulted in a “self-preserving” performance that did not represent who I truly am, but the person I was okay with others seeing. It was the “me” that could not be criticized or called out for being incorrect. This “self-preserving” performance was difficult for anyone to criticize mostly because it was silent. And it is really difficult to be wrong when you are silent.

            Fear has been a defining factor in my life for almost as long as I can remember. For many years, I have suffered from depression and anxiety. I feel that my anxiety has kept me from being the ideal “strong, intelligent, independent woman” that, it is often supposed, any feminist (and “Mawrter”) should be. I’m surely not alone in this concern. The view of the mentally ill within the feminist movement (as well as in academic spaces such as Bryn Mawr) is not something that is often considered, but can be understood through disability studies theory.

            The definition of power feminism is the act of a woman amassing power in a male dominated capitalist society, and breaking through the gates that have historically held women back from powerful positions. These women inspire others that it is possible for them to reach power in this patriarchal system. But is power feminism real? Can the power of one individual woman liberate us all? Does the feminist agenda of this individual speak to the intersectional identities of others?

Author and feminist activist bell hooks believes that power feminism is not real, she states: “Power feminism is just another scam in which women get to play patriarchs and pretend that the power we seek and gain liberates us.” To further explore why she does not believe in power feminism I turn to hook’s critique of Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg. In Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In, hooks analyzes Sandberg’s book Lean In, and the advice she gives as a self-claimed feminist. Hooks makes three main critiques of Sandberg: she does not include or consider the perspectives and identities of women of color, she does not recognize the challenges of women in poverty, and she does not seek to challenge the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Sandberg

                When I began this class, I did so as a student who had already taken a course with Anne. I was a lot more prepared than I was at the beginning of my first class with her. In addition to being my first course with Anne, the ESEM that I took with her was my first college course. In contrast, I began Critical Feminist Studies after a year at Bryn Mawr, and that shows. I have a better grasp of both “college” (admittedly, mostly in the form of more questions and fewer answers than I began with when I matriculated at Bryn Mawr) and what “Bryn Mawr” is.  Just by comparing the Serendip posts that I wrote last year with the ones that I shared this semester, there’s a noticeable distance. I’ve changed as a person over the last year—not a particularly extraordinary circumstance, but a true one. The ESEM program assumes that students are not quite up to the “Bryn Mawr standard” yet, mostly in terms of writing and classroom discussion, and, upon entering this course, I’m at the very least, a stronger writer and conversationalist than I was when I began that ESEM.

Here I am! Writing my last post on the teach-in that Emma, Erin, and Rachel shared with the class last tuesday.  If you don't remember our concept, we each drew "maps" of our personal feminisms.  Before presenting in class, we had actually started our maps together, but finished them separately.  Point is, I hadn't seen the finished products, and was pretty amazed by them.  For example, I was really only expecting to see topography and road maps, but instead, Erin came out with a dragon! How interesting to think of feminism as a body--or, at the whim of a writer like Acker, maybe that's what it always was.  

I've thought more about the topography of my feminism in the past few days.  When I drew "Binary Arch", I constructed it so that the winding path of identity/cathedral of self lay BEYOND it.  I thought by making that choice, I was freeing up the idea of gender and arguing that by looking past gender, we can be englightened with ourselves in a way that is impossible within strict gender performance.  However, the irony of a gender-fortress is perplexing and misleading...

We are going to play Feminism Jeopardy!!

If you can get  into your Teach-In groups and that will be your team.

1 team starts and they choose a category and a point value. They have 30 seconds to answer the question.

You must answer it in question form.

If the team does not get the answer in 30 seconds it will default to the next team.

Whoever has the most points at the end wins.

We wanted this to be an all-inclusive exercise. We tried to make it as fair as possible and accessible for all teams. We wanted to include a lot of theory, but also supplement that knowledge with how it was applied in class. We realize it is not fully accessible for everybody, but by taking this class we learned that it is a continuous learning process. Everybody defines feminism, accessibility, intersectionality, etc. differently and so we learn from each other. From this process we hope to not only think about the theories, but think about the different ways in which our classmates define and think about the theories so that maybe we will think about them in different ways that we have not thought about before. This is one of the main things we learned from this class.