Feminism: Re-visioning the Man Made World

Contrary to the opinions of many people, many feminist like men, think that women
should be able to stay at home and raise children if they want to do so. .Feminism
may broadly be defined as a movement seeking the reorganization of the world upon
the basis of sexual equality, rejecting all forms of differentiation among or
discrimination against individuals upon grounds of sex. It urges a worldview that
rejects male-created ideologies. At another level, it is also a mode of analysis and
politics, committed to freeing all women of gender-based oppressions. Literally, then,
anyone who supports such an ideology can be a feminist, regardless of gender.

One of the most abused feminist claims is that using the masculine pronoun he to
represent both men and women, which reflects a "habit of seeing", a way of looking
at life, that uses male experience as the standard by which the experience of both
sexes is evaluated. In other words, although the" inclusive he" claims to represent
both men and women, in reality it is part of a deeply rooted cultural attitude that
ignores women's experiences. For example, this "habit of seeing" is found in the
world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been
tested on male subjects only. As a result, women may experience unexpected side
effects while male users are unaffected.

Traditional gender roles consider men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive,
while consider women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing, and submissive.
These gender roles have been used very successfully to justify inequality, such as
excluding women from equal access to leadership and decision making positions in
the family as well as in politics, academia, paying men higher wages than women for
doing the same job, and convincing women that they are not fit for careers in areas
like mathematics and engineering.

Patriarchy is thus, sexism, which means it promotes the belief that women are inferior
to men. This belief in the inborn inferiority of women is a form of what is called
biological essentialism because it is based on biological differences between the
sexes. For example the word hysteria, which derived from the Greek word for womb
(hysteria) and refers to psychological disorders employed especially to women and
characterized by overemotional, extremely irrational behavior.

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Behaviors forbidden to men are considered “womanish” that is, inferior, beneath the
dignity of manhood. Men, and even little boys, who cry are called “sissies.” Sissy
sound very much like sister and it means “cowardly or feminine”. Thus, being a “real”
man in patriarchal culture requires that he should not hold feminine qualities.
Americans stereotype the homosexual male is an extremely feminine one. The story
of “Cinderella” illustrates the effect of gender roles, because it introduces femininity
with submission; wait patiently to be rescued by man. Other fairy tales portrays
women as witches or stepmothers. So women were either angles or evil.

Feminists share several important assumptions and premises: women are oppressed by
patriarchal economically, socially, and psychologically; in every domain where
patriarchy reigns, woman is other; she is objectified and marginalized, defined only
by what she lacks and what men have; and biology determine the sex (male or
female), culture determines the gender roles (masculine or feminine), all the traits are
learned, not inborn.

Feminist faced many problems in getting beyond patriarchal programming and have
offered many different solutions .For example, considering the possibility that no
ideology succeeds in fully programming all of the people all of the time. Every
ideology has points of self contradiction, of illogic, that permit us to understand its
operations and decrease its influence. Many feminist believe that they should be
cautious about using frameworks that are themselves patriarchal,

Nevertheless, many feminists draw an element of psychoanalytic, Marxism, liberalism

and other theories because they find them useful in examining issues relevant to
women's experience. For example, psychoanalysis can be used to help in
understanding the psychological effects of patriarchal ideology.

Psychoanalytic feminism challenges the Freudian notion that men's sense justice and
morality is more highly developed than women such as psychoanalysis, because he
used male experience as the standard against which he measured female experience.
Freud believed that women suffer from what he called “penis envy” and that they tend
to see their first born sons as “penis substitutes” to make up for their own lack.. In
other words, women have an inborn deficiency. Feminists therefore distinguishes
between the word sex which refers to biological construction as female and male, and
the word gender which refers to cultural programming as feminine or masculine.

Marxism feminism can be used to help in understanding how economic forces have
been controlled by patriarchal law and custom to keep women economically,
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politically, and socially oppressed as an underclass, so capitalism is patriarchal and
sexism.

Radical Feminism claims that the oppression of women is the oldest, most profound
and widespread form of oppression. Oppression of women tends to cause more
suffering than any other form. Model of oppressing women is necessary to
understand all oppression. Separatist feminism demands separation from male culture,
in literature, science and religion. It may also include female sexuality where in
lesbians and heterosexuality relations as well as issues like abortion, prostitution, rape
and sexual harassment. Most don’t “hate” men, but hate patriarchy, and
some believe that men cannot escape patriarchy.

Liberal Feminism privileges the autonomy of a woman and views the

society as a system of individual rights that safeguard personal autonomy and
allow self-fulfillment. This perspective of individualism enables her to reject
traditional sex roles and asking for sex equality. It is a reformative movement without
radical change to the class structure, the equal opportunity sought by feminists is a
chimera. So one of feminism's strength is the freedom with which it borrows from
other theories and adapts them to its own needs. Worth mentioning that liberal
feminists tended to replace the pronoun he with I .

While all women are subject to patriarchal oppression, but there is a multi cultural
feminism that each woman has specific needs, desires, and problems are greatly
shaped by her race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, educational experience,
religion, and nationality. In the United States, for example, the experience of
patriarchy for women of color is inseparable from their experience of racism; lesbian's
experience of patriarchy inseparable from their experience of heterosexism; poor
women's experience of patriarchy is inseparable from their experience of classism;
and so forth.. Therefore, many feminists promoted to a sisterhood- psychological and
political bonding among women based on the recognition of common experiences and
goals.

After all, research as re-vision was feminist researchers' tactic; they adopted other
theories to its own rapidly evolving need. For instance, they adopted the binary
oppositons idea from the Constructionist and employed it in feminism to change and
reform a systematic hierarchy world, Structuralism principles used to study
underlying similarities among the experiences and productions of women from
various cultures as well as underlying similarities in ways they are oppressed,
Marxism and other critical theories as well. We conclude that, feminists researchers
may share methodologies and methods with researchers of other domains and
transform it to represent them apart This why I believe that feminism theory will
never become antique.

References

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 1- Crotty, Michael. California: SAGE Publications USA,1996

2- Tyson, Lois .Critical Theory of Today. New York: Routledge

press, 2006

3- Htt://www.glbtq.com

4- Http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/sojour.htm

KHOLOUD AL-KHALIDI

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