FEMINIST THEORY DEFINITION
a diverse group of perspectives examining the treatment
of women in societies.
COMPREHENSIVE LINK:
Feminist
Theory
links to a variety of feminist thinkers/theory sites.
THEORY
Feminist Theory link
This is so because our society, like all other historical
civilizations, is a patriarchy.
The fact is evident at once if one
recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities,
science, political office, and finance - in short, every avenue
of power within the society, including the coercive force
of
the police, is entirely in male hands.
Kate Millett, SEXUAL
POLITICS, 1970
Feminist Theory link
Women are all female impersonators to some degree
Susan
Brownmiller
Feminist Theory link
I met Audre
Lorde, Toni
Morrison, Alice
Walker, June
Jordan, Nikki
Giovanni, Sonia
Sanchez, Clayton Riley, who all seemed to me stunningly attractive,
articulate and bigger than life. They used to say what I now realize were
perfectly outrageous, revolutionary things and they were photogenic.
Michele Wallace, "To
Hell and Back: On the Road with Black Feminism in the 60s and 70s"
Feminist Theory link
...the syllabi and reserve reading shelves of women's studies courses
have been dominated by two sex-killing styles, the anti-art puritanism
of the Catherine MacKinnon
school and the word-obsessed, labyrinthine abstraction of Lacanian
Analysis. The pro-sex way of feminism was virtually invisible
until very recently.
Camille
Paglia
Web resources
PRACTICE:
Feminist Theory Practice link
Roy Lichtenstein,
Kiss
.. when the act of romance
reading is viewed as it is by the readers themselves,
from within a belief system that accepts as given the institutions of heterosexuality
and monogamous marriage, it can be seen as an activity of
mild protest and longing for reform necessitated by those
institutions' failure to satisfy the emotional needs of women.
Janice
Radway, READING THE ROMANCE: WOMEN, PATRIACHY AND
POPULAR
LITERATURE, 1984
Feminist Theory Practice link
...even now, most men don't read women or read very few women and
leave us out of the literary landscape. I find the intellectual level higher
- I hate to say it, sounding chauvinistic. Not always, of course. Some
women's
magazines have that very soft romanticism, that squishy quality
where all real controversy, all real sexuality, everything really threatening
gets edited out, and you are left with a girl scout camp and pajama party
level of reality.
But we are just discovering what we can do. I read women's magazines
with great interest and want to know what is being said and what is being
done. There is so much that we have to say to each other, so many interesting
controversies.
Marge
Piercy