FEMINIST

Criticism

Presented by Parsa Fall 2023 Professor: Dr. Shabrang

Feminis
m
◦ “I`m not a feminist, I like men.”
◦ “I`m not a feminist, I think women should be able to stay home and raise their children.”
◦ “I`m not a feminist, I wear bra.”

What it
does:
-Economic, political, social, psychological oppression of women.
-Opposes the traditional tendency to believe there is only one best
pov.

Antifeminism because of
oversimplification?
Lois Tyson
Feminis
m
Effects of oversimplification:

Habit of seeing
• Using pronoun “he” for both men and women
e.g. “Who did this bad thing will be punished if he gets caught.

Male Examples Standard

Blinds us

No female pov
• Cultural Attitude
Feminis
m
Until late 1960s:
◦ The standard of university: Only literary works by white male authors from a white male
pov.
◦ Famous women authors Not canonized

Mid 1970s: Women authors` works in universities but still not in equal position

Racism?

Ignorance
Feminis
m
No feminism=Women ignorance

e.g.1: Matthew J.Bruccoli: 20s, age of

achievements
• Names 12 authors but only one woman!
Willa Cather
What about …?

e.g.2: Hollywood eroticizes women

• Male pov

e.g.3: Medicine human tests

• (sometimes)Tested only on men
Traditional gender roles
Patriarchy
/ˈpeɪtrɪɑːki/
Traditional gender roles

Men:
◦ Rational, strong, protective, decisive

Women:
Decision-making
◦ Emotional(irrational), weak, nurturing,
Leadership
submissive

Patriarchy Sexist Women<Men

Hystera (hysteria) No superiority!

(patriarchal belief)
(softer shortness of temper)
Traditional gender roles
◦ Sex Biological Men/Women
◦ Gender Cultural Feminine/Masculine
(social constructionism)

e.g.1: Math
e.g.2: Men do not cry!
• Use aggression to block fear and pain
(womanish) Devastating verbal
• Sissy (sister) Cowardly=feminine attack

Patriarchal men make women believe they are submissive and self-
effacing
Traditional gender roles
Destructive roles
Traditional gender roles
• Mean and jealous woman character
(their concerns are trivial even though they are evil)
• Waiting for a man to be saved
• Tolerating parents` cruelty
• Returning to life by a kiss from a stranger man
(rape)

Good girl
Patriarchal desires

Bad girl (whore/bitch)

e.g.1: Kate Chopin

e.g.2: Victorian period
(male pseudonyms)
Traditional gender roles
Bad girl:
• Men are allowed to sleep with them but not to marry them.
• Used and discarded.

Good girl:
• Modest, unassuming, self-sacrificing, nurturing.
• No need for herself cause she is satisfied by serving the family.

Victorian Angel in the house

(even not different today)

Being on a pedestal
Limited, punished, important only towards patriarchy
Traditional gender roles
- Slut woman
+ Stud man

e.g. Victorian Corset

Summary of feminist premises
Patriarchy = Dominance of men

Feminists` beliefs:

1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially and

psychologically

2. In patriarchy, “Woman” means “the other” (objectified), marginalized only because

they are different from men

3. Roots of “bad girls” in Anglo-European civilization,

roman and Greek mythology
(Medusa)
(Eve)
Summary of feminist premises
4. Sex and Gender

5. Feminist activity in social life: Helpline, nutrition, mothers` healthcare, etc.

6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience of
literature, consciously or unconsciously.

How to get beyond it?

Getting beyond patriarchy
1. No ideology succeeds in fully programming all people.
◦ Mary Wollstonecraft A vindication of the rights of women(1792)
◦ Virginia Woolf A room of one`s own(1929)
◦ Simone de Beauvoir the second sex(1949)

If you do not resist, you are affected! Reviving Patriarchal

woman

2. Avoid patriarchal frameworks: Marxism and psychoanalysis

• Psychoanalysis: Freud “penis envy” “penis substitute”
• Marxism: Denying the pressure
Getting beyond patriarchy
3. Using the frameworks

• Psychoanalysis
• Marxism
• Structuralism
• Deconstruction theory

Deconstruction theory: Love/Hate

Good/Evil Emotional/Rational

Feminism is the boldest interdisciplinary theory

subjectivity
Getting beyond patriarchy
Deconstruction theory
Subjectivity
New historicism

Feminism
Subjectivity

Patriarchy
Objectivity

What we see is a product of who we are (gender, politics, religion, race, …)

What I see from where I am standing

French feminism
French feminism Philosophical dimension
• American Feminism
• Anglo-American feminism

Materialist feminism (economical, social oppression)

French feminism
Psychoanalytic feminism (psychological experience)
French feminism
Materialist feminism

• Economic oppressions
• Patriarchal laws and rules
(laws and customs that govern marriage and motherhood)

Simone de Beauvoir (The second sex) 1949

Men: independent selves with free will

Women: dependent beings controlled by
circumstances

Wo-man (the other) (man`s other)

“she is not fully developed”

(Being free is scary!)

French feminism
Beauvoir:

• Women are not born feminine but rather conditioned by patriarchy

• “One is not born a woman, one becomes one”

(culture)
• “Marriage trapped and stunted women`s intellectual growth and freedom”
(family)
• “If woman seems to be the inessential [being] which never becomes the
essential, it is because she herself fails to bring about this change”

How can we know what “woman” is “by nature” given that we never see her
outside the social conditioning of patriarchy?

No historical basis
Loyalty
French feminism
Marxism Upper class
Economic unit Lower
class

Women => class (in family)

Marriage = labor contract (housework) => no pay Christine Delphy

(non-worker)

No pay? Not worth it

No
wa
• Patriarchal man wants all the power da
ys
• Non-patriarchal woman wants equal
power
French feminism

Men are known by what they do

Women are known by their sex Colette
(NEWS) Guillaumin

Women are properties which are exchanged or given away in

marriage
The primary form of oppression: appropriation
Direct physical appropriation
French feminism
Sexage

1. The appropriation of women`s time

2. The appropriation of the products of women`s body
3. Women`s sexual obligation
4. Women`s obligation to care for family members who can`t.

Result of sexage:

Deprives women of a sense of their individuality, independency and autonomy.

“Women are the social tool assigned to those tasks that men do not want to do.”
French feminism
Psychoanalytic feminism
(Individual)
(first step)
Language
How to control it? Sexual difference/what is
right
Hélène Cixous
Patriarchal binary thought Head/heart
Father/mother
Culture/nature
Intelligible/palpable
Activity/passivity
Where is the woman?

Traditionally the question of sexual difference is treated by coupling it with the

opposition
Activity/passivity
men women
French feminism
Being active as a woman in the patriarchal system => patriarchal
man

 Feminine language
This language best expresses itself in writing

 Écriture féminine (Feminine writing)

Fluidly organized/freely associative
Resists patriarchal modes of thinking and writing (not linear)
(connection with mothers)

Writing might
be a way to get
free!
French feminism
“Utopian thought has always been a source of inspiration for feminists”
-Toril Moi

• Oppression => psychologically/language

• Patriarchal definitions
• Western philosophers => Women are a mirror to
masculinity
(obj)
• Freud => penis envy

Luce Irigaray
A submissive woman has two choice:

1. To keep quiet
2. To imitate patriarchy`s representations of herself

Men invent the rules of the game, they play together with other men, women are the
prizes
French feminism
Irigary: Language is the way out “woman speak” => woman`s
body
(sexual desires)

Is Irigary irrational?
.
.
.
.
……..only with patriarchal definitions :)
(linear, thesis-oriented language)
French feminism
femineity

Julia Kristeva

• Social differences > biological differences

• They are shown together => Men>Woman (women are born
inferior)
• No difference between “Gender” and “Sex” in French

Feminine writing
Semiotic dimension of language
Woman speaking
French feminism
Symbolic (how words operate and meanings relate to them)
2D
Semiotic (intonation, rhythm, body, language … whatever that explains
emotion)

Scientific language is more symbolic

Poetry is more semiotic => tries to take the upper hand

• Infant language

• Don`t go back

• Art and literature

Multicultural feminism
• Patriarchal issues differ from a country to another
• Sometimes multiple issues are connected
(racism and sexism in the US)
(Lesbian women and patriarchy)
(Women living in misery)

Black women
Black community Double
Sexism/Racism oppression
Multicultural feminism
Black feminism
Art, Literature, racial/sexual oppression

Feminism caused problems for black women

Alice Walker Black people

Lorraine Bethel
(Womanist)

• Celebrates the unique feminine

cultural values
Carolyn Denard • Black feminists` impact on literary
Ethnic cultural feminism criticism
(not a solution for sexism)
• Seeking through various categories
Multicultural feminism
Approaches of criticism concerning women:

Based on race
• Feminist criticism • Chicanas
• African-American • Latinas
criticism • Native American Women
• Lesbian criticism • Asian American women
• Marxism criticism
• Postcolonial criticism
e.g. Lesbian-feminist-Chicana / Marxist-feminist
Gender studies and feminism
Feminism focuses on the great role played by gender (femineity/masculinity)

Self-perception
Gender
How we are treated by society
(politics, law, education …)

Queer theory => gender issues

Heterosexual community
Gender studies and feminism
Gender and patriarchal oppression of women
The most effective factors:

1. Patriarchal assumptions about gender and gender roles that continue oppressing
women.

2. Alternative to the current way we show gender as either feminine and masculine.

3. The relationship between sex and gender.

4. The relationship between sexuality and gender.

Gender studies and feminism
Ways women are oppressed

1. “Oh! He just has too much testosterone”

(It can join aggression but it does not cause it)

Aggression increases
testosterone
2. Responsiveness to baby
?

=
Conclusion:
• Cross-cultural studies
• American gender system is not universal
Gender studies and feminism
• South-east Asia culture (e.g. Gerai people)
• More focus on similarities not the differences
• No superiority
• Sexual organs

Gerai people of Indonesia

• Both men and women have completely equal
rights and conditions in Vanatinai Island near
new guinea
• We can not relate these to gender

Conclusion:
• American gender system is not universal!
Vanatinai Island people
Gender studies and feminism
Non-binary system => Native north Americans before European colonizers

Gender based on culture:

1. Women
2. Female variants, or variant gender roles adopted by biological females
3. Men
4. Male variants, or variant gender roles adopted by biological males

Never categorized by their sex or sexuality but by their role

Gender variants => important in rituals

A crow shaman
Gender studies and feminism
Relationship between sex and gender => non is 100% pure

Two-sex system

Annually 1.7% of newborns are “intersexual” => have common organs, chromosomes
and hormones (men and women both)

5,600
300,00
0
Albinos
Why don`t we mention them? Albinism
Gender studies and feminism
Preeves Research => 1990 => Transgenders and intersexed people are not
abnormal
1. Female
2. Intersexed person with more prominent or functional female sex organs
3. True intersexed
4. Intersexed person with more prominent or functional male sex organs
5. male

The number of intersexed children is not a shock, the reactions are!

WHYs
The devastating impact of heterosexual gendering

The third sex: but eventually they had to choose a gender

(marriage)
Effort on showing gender and sex
equal!
Gender studies and feminism
Examples of gender discrimination:

1. A heterosexual man (married/father/cross-dresser)

2. A gay transvestite (cross-dresser/behavior)
3. Transformation of a masculine lesbian

Feminists disagreements

Complexity of gender
Feminism and literature
Reading “against the grain”

1. The ways in which the female characters function as

tokens of male status.
2. The ways in which the good girl/bad girl view of
women validates the men`s sexism
3. A female character has internalized patriarchal
ideology

Sometimes the book invites us to criticize => Toni Morrisons`s The bluest eye
The effects of sisterhood in racism and sexism

Sometimes we face a conflicted response => Mary Shelley

(Mary Wollstonecraft/antipatriarchal)
Feminism and literature
There is a broad range in feminist literary criticism
But the most important point:

Is to increase our understanding of women`s experience, both in the past

and present, and promote our appreciation of women`s value in the
world.
Feminist Criticism
By Parsa Noorani