| A
movement with a long history. Three basic positions of feminism during 1400-1789:
1) a concious stand in opposition to male defamation and mistreatment of
women; 2) a belief that the sexes are culturally, and not just biologically
formed; a belief that women were a social group shaped to fit male notions
about a defective seks; 3) an outlook that transcended the accepted value
systems of the time by exposing and opposing the prejudice and narrowness
(Joan Kelly, 1982). "Begins but cannot end with the discovery by an
individual of her self-consciousness as a women… Feminism means finally
that we renounce our obedience to the fathers and recognize that the world
they have described is not the whole world" (Adrienne Rich, 1976).
"A method of analysis as well as a discovery of new material. It asks
new questions as well as coming up with new answers. Its central concern
is with the social distiction between men and women, with the fact of this
distinction, with its meanings, and with its causes and consequences"
(Juliet Mitchell & Ann Oakley, 1976). "We are actively committed
to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression
and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and
practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking
(Barbara Smith,1983). |
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| Source:
A Feminist Dictionary, Kramarae & Treichler, page 158, 159, 160, Pandora
Press, London, 1985 |
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