Sexist? Offensive? Morally dubious? Or clever, postmodern, post-feminist and ironic?

Sexist? Offensive? Morally dubious? Or clever, postmodern, post-feminist and ironic?

•Third Wave Feminism – criticism of 2nd wave fem of the 1970s•Response to Backlash against 60s & 70s fem. •Recognition of diversity of women black, post-colonial perspectives•Rejection of dogma •Gender – less rigid, more fluid; idea that traditional notion of gender is constructed and imposed by social cultural context•Empowerment & celebration of femininity•Women can wield sexual power•Men have lost essential aspects of masculinity and have become more vulnerable•Fuelled by advances in abortion, employment and fertility laws•Moderation of discourse on oppression •Traditional feminism perpetuates the idea of women as victims, post-feminism concentrates on ideas of empowerment and liberation•Emphasis on choices and freedom of choice

Post-feminism

Activity: Give examples of how these principles work using TV, music industry, radio or film

Camille Paglia – reaction to the excesses of traditional 60s and 70s (“2nd Wave feminists”) ; much more all-encompassing view of feminine identity. Less defined view of sexuality and gender

Let's get rid of Infirmary Feminism, with its bedlam of bellyachers, anorexics, bulimics, depressives, rape victims, and incest survivors. Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses.

I'm bringing, like Madonna, a sense of beauty and pleasure and sensuality back into feminism. Because, you know, feminism's main problem for the last twenty years has been that it is incapable of appreciating art, okay? There is no aesthetics in feminism. All there is, is a social agenda.

It is woman's destiny to rule men. Not to serve them, flatter them, or hang on them for guidance. Nor to insult them, demean them, or stereotype them as oppressors.

Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.

Susan Faludi – Backlash 1991•Feminism……..asks that women be free to define themselves -- instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.

• Women are enslaved by their own liberation.

• The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful. Stiffed – The Betrayal of the American Man (1999)• The internal qualities once said to embody manhood - sure footedness, inner strength, confidence of purpose -- are merchandised to men to enhance their manliness. What passes for masculinity is being extracted and sold back to men. Literally in the case of Viagra.

ActivityHow does retro-sexism in programmes such as ‘Life on Mars’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’ fit a post-feminist agenda?

bell hooks (Gloria Watkins)Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.

Since our society continues to be primarily a "Christian" culture masses of people continue to believe that god has ordained that women be subordinate to men in the domestic household. I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society -- because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.

ActivityThink about representations of marriage in the media e.g. TV soaps

Are they positive or negative? Do they promote or criticise patriarchal values?

"To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality." "Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight."

Naomi Wolf

‘Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

Critique of the way consumerism and capitalist society imposes constraints on women.

1991

ActivityTo what extent do today’s media encourage the ‘beauty myth’?

Queer theory is a set of ideas based around the idea that gender identities are not fixed and do not determine who we are. It suggests that it is meaningless to talk in general about 'women' or any other group, as identities consist of so many elements that to assume that people can be seen collectively on the basis of one shared characteristic is wrong.

And finally ….

Simone de Beauvoir- The Second Sex 1949

An early feminist and in many ways a post-feminist as she was so ahead of her time

“One is not so much born, rather, one becomes a woman”

Social conditioning Gender roles are constructed

“Women should reject the socially repressive constraints of femininity and become masculine”