Second Wave Of Feminism - Lesbian Morals

Other feminist ethical theories are more openly political than care ethics. They may be founded on existentialism, political solidarity, postmodernism, or radical feminist principles, for example. 

I only address one other clearly feminist ethics here - ‘lesbian ethics,' although existentialist feminist ethics was represented with ecofeminist ethics, and global feminist political solidarity. 

There are many articulations of lesbian ethics, such as an ethics of caring and an ecological feminist ethics. 

• However, all lesbian ethics theorists believe that lesbian views expose the advantages of heterosexuality because of their place on society's periphery. 
• Lesbian ethics is recognized for emphasizing the necessity for a feminist ethic to investigate the institution of heterosexuality, as well as the family, marriage, work environment, and other ethical topics. 

Lesbianism is generally thought of as a sexual preference or orientation that is unique to a person. 

• This perspective is enriched by the inclusion of lesbian ethics. 
• As a result, lesbianism may be seen as a political commitment, i.e., a commitment to prioritize women above males, which may or may not include same-sex sexual interactions. 
• Although contentious when originally suggested in the mid-1970s, this is an essential element of the women's movement. 
• Some extreme lesbian feminists believed that to be a feminist, one had to be a lesbian. 

Other feminists, on the other hand, believed that include lesbians and lesbianism in the feminist movement would harm it. 

(They were probably also worried about perpetuating the notion that all feminists are lesbians.) 

Challenges to the assumption of heterosexuality are seen as beneficial to feminism since they concurrently question gender norms, according to the more moderate lesbian ethics viewpoint. 

• Women do not have to draw their identity from males, according to lesbianism as a political commitment. 
• Women may seek emotional assistance from other women and be free of the stigma of being men's "second sex." 
• Lesbians suffered invisibility as a group for a long time since lesbianism was rejected by Western society. 
• The ideas of feminist lesbian ethics are born out of this experience of invisibility or marginalization. 
• Traditional ethics, as well as parts of the feminist movement, may be criticized by both sexual and political lesbians for failing to examine the oppressive systems of what Adrienne Rich refers to as "compulsory heterosexuality." 

According to Rich, women have been taught to be heterosexual in a patriarchal society (a quick look at the toys, books, and movies targeting young girls supports this claim). 

• Rich claims that patriarchal indoctrination conceals our real identities and promotes female rivalry. 
• To break free of these repressive prescriptions and learn to be woman-identified, women must establish women's spaces or cultivate a women-centered society. 
• Only in this setting, a woman-identified context, can one really be free to make moral choices, according to lesbian ethics. 
• Heterosexuality is not in and of itself a problem; but, heterosexuality's dominance and assumption, as well as the societal advantages that come with it, are. 

According to lesbian ethics, patriarchal training solely toward heterosexuality prevents women from being free. 

Certainly, awareness-raising organizations and sisterhood initiatives may be seen as attempts to establish women's spaces. 

To ease the transition away from patriarchal indoctrination, several lesbian ethicists created retreat centers and communes. 

The criticism of feminist ideas that unintentionally presuppose a heterosexual paradigm is one of lesbian ethics' many significant contributions. 

The intersections and linkages between sexism and heterosexism as forms of oppression are shown by lesbian ethics and third wave queer theory. 

These kind of movements inside and outside of feminism will continue to be extremely essential in driving us to a better awareness of oppression in general as society grows more comfortable with social change and a nonexclusionary vision of social participation.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Caring Ethics

The ethics of care is by far the most well-known and probably the most contentious feminist ethical theory. This normative moral theory arose from Carol Gilligan's psychology study and is often contrasted with Kantian deontology or justice-based normative theory. 

• Traditional Kantian ethics has been attacked by several feminist moral theorists for overemphasizing fairness at the expense of relationship-based accountability. 
• To address this seeming flaw in conventional Kantian ethics, several feminist ethicists have proposed an alternative that utilizes personal connections as both a model for moral responsibility to others and a starting point for making decisions. 

Care in a specific situation, rather than abstract rules of conduct, becomes the ethical decision-making guideline. 

Lawrence Kohlberg, a moral psychologist, created a six-stage model of moral growth, which Gilligan was a student of Kohlberg's phases tracked a child's moral growth from a punishment orientation, in which he or she is obedient (or moral) out of dread of punishment, to the greatest degree of moral development in autonomously chosen universal ethical standards. 

1. The lower phases all indicated that individuals are moral because they desire to be seen as good by others — in other words, moral decision-making was driven by preserving interpersonal connections or keeping one's reputation as a decent person in the eyes of others. 
2. The upper phases placed a greater emphasis on abstract law or commercial agreements as the foundation and motivation for moral decision-making. 

Individuals behave autonomously, but the greatest, self-legislated universal ethical standards universalize the principles on which they act such that they would expect all other people to act similarly. 

The context of a choice or the connections that it impacts should not be considered during the discussion. 

Gilligan utilized the identical moral problems and scenarios that Kohlberg had used in his research (which he created by testing male volunteers), but observed that girls and women tended to react by concentrating on the relationships of the players in a moral dilemma scenario. 

• On the other hand, the boys were more concerned with individual rights and the legitimacy of the fictitious situations. 
• The players in the dilemma were regarded by the boys as autonomous, self-sufficient people who made moral choices solely on the basis of reason. 
• The girls saw the different characters as interdependent subjects with a sense of community who made moral choices based on both emotion and reason. 
• In terms of ethics, this implies that the boys tended to see the characters in the problem as acting in accordance with abstract justice ideals. 
• The characters, according to the girls, operate based on the value of connections and accountability within those ties. 
• Females who made moral choices in this way were morally immature, whereas males were at a higher level of moral development, according to Kolhberg's six stages of moral growth. 

Instead of being morally immature, Gilligan found that women just made moral choices differently; her results are published in the book In a Different Voice (1982). 

The reason of this variation in moral decision-making has been investigated by subsequent thinkers. 

Some believe that the gender gap is due to patriarchal indoctrination, while others argue that it is due to women's natural ability to care for others. 

Whatever the reason of women's "different voice" in moral decision-making, Gilligan's work has resulted in the "ethics of caring" thesis, which has changed how all moral theorists think about ethics. 

Some care theorists believe that care stems from family connections, particularly the mother-child bond. Others argue that women think in a different manner, which informs a more compassionate approach to all types of decision-making. 

A web analogy is often used by care theorists to show how caring plays a role in moral decision-making. Consider a spider's web. 

• The many components of the internet are interconnected and dependent on one another. These many components are analogous to the individuals with whom we are associated. 
• When confronted with a problem, a person does not decide and act on their own. 
• Rather, that choice considers the many connections one has with others – the majority of whom care about the person as well – and has an impact on these people. 
• Furthermore, the choice, by its very form and origin, is likely to include the decisions of caring-others. Some relationships are more important to a person than others, much like a spider web. 
• Most care theorists believe that the most proximal connections contribute more to decision making than the more distant ones, implying that there is an ever-expanding web of ties. 

Some forms of care ethics extend this web of relationships to far people, either via the growing web or by similarities between remote others and those one cares about. 

However, ethics may not necessarily apply to people. 

Some environmental ethicists have discovered that the ethics of care may be applied to organisms other than humans, such as plants, animals, and whole ecosystems. 

The topic of care technique has sparked a lot of controversy and discussion. 

Caring is a highly personal act performed in a specific situation. It seems illogical to establish moral standards based on it.  

As a result, care theorists avoid using principles at all. Rather, they provide standards for caring behavior. 

Among the many guidelines proposed are: 

(1) develop a ‘disposition to care,' which means that a moral agent has an attitude or desire to care; 

(2) act on a duty to ‘care for,' which means that care should be acted on appropriately and in a non-domineering way; 

(3) attend to the caregiver, or make sure that in caring we do not exhaust ourselves or completely lose ourselves in those we care for; 

(4) pay attention to the caregiver, or make sure that in caring we do not in some ways caring as precisely what a patriarchal society expects of women.

Therefore feminists must be careful not to fall into the trap of praising feminine self-sacrifice while attempting to reclaim women's distinct perspectives and contributions. 

The ethics of care, like other normative systems, may be applied to any moral problem. 

Feminists, on the other hand, prefer to emphasize women's experience in creating applications of a caring ethic. 

For example, an ethics of care has been applied to the care of elderly parents, environmental protection, domestic violence, childbirth and other biomedical practices, parent-child relationships, and all of the many decisions that go into raising a child, business situations, and countless other moral situations. 

An ethics of care, for all of its advantages, is not without flaws. 

Some feminist and non-feminist moral theorists reject any rigid separation of justice and caring; the two may and do coexist in various moral systems. 

• Among feminists, some argue that an ethics of care is modeled on relationships that are perpetually imbalanced, unequal, and frequently unreciprocated: the parent–child relation. 

• Other critiques center on the caregiver's capacity for self-sacrifice, the misuse of caring, and the potential for caring to become oppressive or dominating. 

Another issue may be that an ethics of caring lacks the capacity for collective political action or a liberation plan. 

Such a critique suggests that care must entail not only the specific relations in which it is evidenced, but must be politicized so as to acknowledge the ramifications of caring action on other relationships as well as oppressive structures.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Ethics In A Feminist Context

The definitions and relationships between words such as justice, the good, autonomy, rights, duty, moral actor, and responsibility have been the focus of traditional ethics. 

However, keep in mind that these ideas mostly apply to people acting as moral agents on their own. 

Feminist ethicists examine these and related ideas, frequently altering them to include feminist understanding, but they also include problems about ethical agent interactions as well as gender-based societal duties and expectations. 

Normative moral theory, whether conventional, feminist, or non-feminist, is tasked with dictating conduct. 

• The goal of a moral theory is to offer action-guiding principles to the moral actor or agent that encompass both positive and negative obligations, i.e., what should be done and what should not be done. 
• The extra necessity of including women's experience is accepted by feminist normative moral theory. 

Feminism offers a fresh perspective on the human person as an ethical agent, a new method to engage in or conduct human activities, and a new way to think about what is the topic of ethical discourse, all while trying to achieve justice for women. 

• In order to be more inclusive of some of the elements that define women's lives, a feminist ethics would likely question or alter how we interpret "autonomy" or "justice." 

• When we think of autonomy as an isolated person making choices exclusively for himself or herself, we miss out on how connections influence decision-making. 

• Autonomy may be modified to incorporate that relational element, or it could be replaced with a more flexible, shared notion. 

• Similarly, in reaction to the awareness of human linkages – particularly among the most vulnerable among us, such as children – justice may be converted from abstract fairness to tangible social justice. In feminist moral theories, community plays an important role. 

The awareness of the link between what occurs on the local level and what happens on the global level is essential in a feminist perspective. 

As a result, defining what constitutes community becomes a meta-ethical issue. 

• To begin with, community serves as a forum for identity development and is an essential component of complete self-determination. 

• Individuals engage in a number of communities, creating or defining them in the process, and these communities, in turn, contribute to the individual's identity. 
• As a result, a moral theory must account for both the person and the social groups/communities to which they belong. 

• Community boundaries denote the kind of connection and consequent duty that many feminist moral theories employ to guide behavior. 

• Community may be defined by people's closeness, geography, common interests, or even physical characteristics. 
• For feminist ethics, there is no one moral actor or isolated person. In two ways, feminist moral theory prioritizes experience. T
• he first is that moral theory and moral problems emerge as a result of particular men and women's circumstances. 

Some feminist ethicists focus on women's experiences, while others highlight all those who have been marginalized by conventional moral theory or otherwise excluded from the "norm." 

• Others argue that, in order to properly address experienced reality, conventional moral theory should utilize actual rather than hypothetical experience. 
• The point is that theory is guided by real-life experience rather than attempting to define what constitutes acceptable moral speech. 

Feminist ethics acknowledges that philosophy is rooted in a specific socio-historical setting. 

• Recognizing this allows us to face our prejudices and objectively examine the consequences of a certain hypothesis. 
• As a result, as time passes, our moral theory may need to evolve. 
• It also has a connection to the following meta-ethical topic, identity and difference, in that cultural differences have a significant influence in both moral theory and practical ethics. 

Traditional ethics has most blatantly failed women by neglecting to recognize or account for women's concerns. 

• Women's issues were not regarded to be intellectually interesting or deserving of further consideration. 
• Women's moral action was limited to the home and controlled by nature or instinct, according to most conventional or canonical interpretations of ethics. 

Public opinion, taste, and the pursuit of beauty were sometimes acknowledged as factors in women's decision-making, but they were conspicuously missing from the praiseworthy kinds of moral decision-making described in canonical writings. 

Furthermore, some feminists have criticized conventional moral philosophy for being too focused on a rationality that ignores emotion. 

The labor women perform and the responsibilities they assume in society should be taken into consideration in philosophical formulations of ethics, regardless of whether these issues are socially created based on gender roles or biologically established. 

The main goal of man, according to some of the most famous classical moral thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is to become more perfect as a citizen, whereas the principle aim of woman is to become more perfect as a wife. 

• She was not seen as a moral actor in her own right, but rather as the moral agent of her husband or father. 
• It's not surprising that the first significant efforts to define a feminist ethics in the Western liberal tradition centered on affirming a woman's complete personality and the development of universal virtue rather than a male or female virtue. 
• Moral virtue was not gender specific, according to Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor Mill. 
• Women have been assigned to a certain social function (wife and mother), but their ethical responsibilities should be established in the same way that men's are.

 A somewhat different approach is used by second wave feminist ethics. 

• Rather than accepting the masculine as the norm and arguing that women are capable of fulfilling it, second-wave feminists looked for new ethical sources that were inclusive of women and their concerns. 
• Traditional ethics and politics, for example, placed a greater emphasis on the capacity to take life in battle than on the ability to give life via birth. 
• Recognizing the one-of-a-kind ability to give birth alters how values are valued and decisions are made. 

Of course, there is a distinction to be made between a feminine and a feminist ethic. 

• A feminine ethic is one that is based on the unique "feminine" qualities that women are believed to have. 
• These traits or attributes are usually regarded as a product of nature - part of the essence of being female – and may be used to support an argument that women are ‘more moral' than males, according to feminine ethics. 
• For example, a feminine ethics may claim that women are naturally more tranquil since they give birth to children. 
• This may lead to a slew of related conclusions regarding the social and political roles that women can and should play. 
• Similarly, it's possible that being able to give birth makes women more caring. 
• Rather than or in addition to fairness or justice, an ethics based on women's nurturing ability would stress loving connections. 

This approach is classified as a "ethics of care," although few care theorists believe that there is anything inherent in women that causes them to be more compassionate. 

Depending on how the theorist explains the origins of the caring disposition, the ethics of care may be either feminine or feminist. 

Feminists must create ethics based on the belief that women's subordination is morally wrong and that women's moral experiences are deserving of respect. 

Feminist ethics is uniquely positioned to connect theory and practice, thinking and action. 

• A feminist ethics would not only provide advice in moral circumstances, but would also be guided by them. 
• The technique and substance of a feminist moral theory are both feminist. 
• Though a theory may concentrate on one or the other, they are neither distinct or separable.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Psychological Oppression Of Women

Psychological oppression is a term used to describe the state of being oppressed. According to Sandra Lee Bartky, women's oppression infiltrates one's mind, resulting in "psychological oppression." 

She demonstrates how, 

1. stereotypes, 
2. societal dominance, 
3. and sexual objectification 

...divide and mystify women. Internalization of oppression affects a person's awareness, cognition, and knowledge, according to various feminists and oppression theorists. 

Bartky exemplifies this trend in oppression studies and catches a lot of insight from feminist attempts to broaden the definition of oppression and therefore broaden the scope of what is needed for liberation. 

1. Stereotypes are generalizations about a certain group of people. Individuals who are labeled as members of a group may have nothing in common with the stereotype, yet they are nevertheless evaluated and judged by it. 

• Stereotypes, fragment women by reducing them to pieces. 

• One woman is reduced to being a wife rather than a person with a diverse range of interests and activities, while another is reduced to being a prostitute without knowing her motivations or what led her to that career. 

• Stereotypes restrict a person's potential and become internalized to the point that a woman limited to being a wife evaluates her self-esteem only in terms of that aspect of herself. Stereotypes, in a similar manner, are perplexing. 

• Mystification occurs when a person starts to think that the stereotype is normal; reality is jumbled up with repressive psychological signals. 

• So, in the instances above, the wife or prostitute learns to think that she gets her position because she was born to it or for other self-deprecating reason. 

2. Societal Dominance: Cultural dominance is analogous to the culture/nature dichotomy described previously, but instead of identifying women with the natural, cultural domination diminishes women's cultural contributions and removes them from the main areas of cultural creation. 

Here, too, there is fragmentation and mystification. 

• Language, art, cultural institutions such as colleges, and literature, are all sexist. 
• Language is a good illustration of this. When the gender of the noun is unclear, it is possible to internalize the use of the masculine pronoun. 
• Girls who hear about firefighters and mailmen as children, or who hear physicians referred to as "he," may not believe that such occupations are available to them. 

However, the argument extends beyond these simple instances. 

• She demonstrates how culture not only reflects sexist beliefs or attitudes, but also actively supports and preserves women's and other disadvantaged groups' exclusion or marginalization. 
• Women are cut off from cultural contributions because their works are regarded craft rather than art, their writings are ignored in university curricula, and their literature with women-centered or feminist topics is judged insufficiently rigorous for cultural norms. 
• As women accept these evaluations of their cultural contributions, they become mystified, thinking that women are unable to achieve on par with males. 

3. Sexual objectification is the third kind of psychological oppression. 

• When a person is made into an object for sexual reasons, it is known as sexual objectification. 
• For just this reason, feminist movement has targeted beauty pageants. 

• The sexual components or talents of a woman are objectified for utilitarian reasons.
• A woman is transformed into a womb or a cunt. 

• She is reduced to and represented by her sexual parts. 
• That is fragmentation in and of itself resulting in a Lifetime of Sexual Slavery and Reproductive Servitude

Because she internalizes the objectification and thinks she is nothing more than a sexual object for men to exploit, mystification adds to the psychological oppression. 

FACT OR FICTION IN REGARD TO BRA BURNING? 

Feminists are often portrayed as "bra burners." 

This misconception stems from a feminist protest against the Miss America Beauty Pageant in 1968. 

Bras, girdles, pots, pornography, and other "instruments of female torment" were thrown into a "Freedom Trash Can" by activists. 

Nothing was destroyed, even the bras! 

Psychological oppression has varied effects on different types of women. 

• Some women have a higher social standing and can transcend some of the mystification, even though they are still fractured by others' gaze. 

• Other kinds of oppression often interact with sexism, causing other forms of stereotypes and sexual objectifications to mix with or overwhelm sexist preconceptions. 

Internalized or psychological oppression, on the other hand, is a powerful force in the lives of oppressed peoples, and liberation tactics must have some means to combat it. 

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Public Vs. Private - Personal Politics

The phrase "the personal is political" was popularized by second-wave feminism. The rallying cry's message was that women had suffered in secret as individuals but would no longer do so. 

• The term 'personal' refers to both what one goes through as a female body and what one goes through as a woman in the home and at work. 
• Menstruation, pregnancy, delivery, housekeeping, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and a slew of other issues were pushed to the forefront of public debate. 
• Feminists broadened our awareness of oppression by politicizing issues that had previously been kept quiet. 
• Women's bodies and homes, not only their social and political lives, have been identified as oppression sites. 
• Feminists deconstruct the often accepted difference between a public and a private existence in this manner. 

The duality of the public and private, when used to represent the difference between the home realm and civil society, relegates women to the private sphere and sends males out into the public. In this instance, the private connotes a sense of belonging to a family. 

• The public sphere encompasses anything that isn't private, such as politics, the military, work, and everything else that isn't part of home life. 
• Because the spheres are mutually exclusive, it's possible that each one is controlled by a distinct set of principles. 

• Second-wave feminism emphasizes that the problem is that women are generally excluded from the public arena, where life-altering choices are made. 

• This keeps problems like spousal and child abuse out of the public eye; the ‘sanctity of the home' shields actors from unwanted interference, but it also shields them from private damages in the home. 
• Alternatives proposed by feminists include validating the home sphere as worthy of public attention or denying the existence of a rigid public-private divide.

 

Some advocate bringing public values into the private sphere, while others advocate the opposite. 

• The distinction between public and private is frequently used to categorize different kinds of activity into production and reproduction. 
• Activity that generates surplus value for the state is referred to as productive activity (the public sphere). 

Reproductive activity produces use-value, or value that may be consumed right away in the household. 

Childbearing and raising, as well as household work and caring for aging parents, are all part of reproduction. 

• Women's reproductive work is not recognized inside the capitalist system, according to Marxist and socialist feminists. 

• They are looking for methods to make the personal political by bringing reproduction into the domain of productive work or by assigning a productive value to reproduction, or by completely erasing the difference between production and reproduction. 

• In addition to the sex/gender dichotomies (masculine/feminine, male/female, man/woman), the public/private divide, and the production/reproduction divide, second wave feminist social theory examined additional dichotomies to determine whether or how they may contribute to women's oppression. 

Dichotomies divide thinking into two groups that are mutually exclusive. 

The issue is that the two groups seldom function on an equal footing; one is seen as inferior or undesirable, while the other is regarded as superior and valuable. 

Furthermore, many feminists have pointed out the negative consequences of dichotomous thinking on women. 

Women are often linked with the subservient, lesser side of the duality. 

• The culture/nature divide is a perfect example of this. 
• Man produces culture via reason and artifice, while woman is linked with nature since her main function is to give birth.
• This contradiction must be broken down through feminist philosophy. It does it in a variety of (and sometimes conflicting) ways. 
• Showing the various ways women contribute to culture is one approach to combat the divide. 

Another argument is that delivery isn't only or even mainly a "natural" process. 

Other perspectives dispute that there is such a clear distinction between culture and nature, or argue that man-made culture isn't worth praising. 

Ecofeminism is perhaps the greatest long-standing challenge to the dichotomy. Ecofeminism and kindred environmental groups reassert the importance of nature in Western thinking.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Race And Social Status

Identity politics brings up a key question in second-wave feminism: should women be treated differently or the same? 

The problem is really threefold. 

1. First, the equality/difference dichotomy relates to whether women want equality with men or different acknowledgment for their distinct abilities while pursuing equality. 
2. Second, the equality/difference dichotomy refers to the metaphysical issue of women's nature: are all women fundamentally the same or do they vary significantly? 
3. Sex/gender and sisterhood show some of the benefits and drawbacks of equality as sameness; the discussion of identity politics elucidates some of the benefits and drawbacks of concentrating on diversity. 

Despite the fact that there is no feminist consensus on how to address these problems, there is widespread agreement that race, class, sexuality, and disability should all be included in feminist theory. 

Critical race theorists have posed the issue, 

"What is race?" over the last three decades. 

They questioned the notion of race as a natural category in the process. 

• People of the same race, as a natural category, will have at least one trait in common – and are often believed to share several. 
• A natural or inherent inferiority would be one of the hallmarks of a racist culture. 
• For example, early twentieth-century white social scientists looked for a biological explanation for black people's inferiority. 
• Critical race theorists undermined the naturalistic basis for social inferiority by deconstructing the biological grounds for race. 
• Furthermore, rather of being a natural or biological concept, race became a political one. 
• In a racist culture, the political category of race is mainly determined by those in power or those who are favored by the racist system. 
• Anti-black racism, for example, includes acts of violence and unfair stereotyping of black people, as well as the giving of undeserved advantages to white people. 

Feminism may discover similarities between sexism and racism, or it may discover that it participates in or benefits from racism. 

For feminist thought and liberation theory in general, class oppression presents a unique set of challenges. 

• One's social class is often assumed to be the product of one's own efforts (or lack of efforts). 
• This is undoubtedly true for some individuals, but the bulk of us owe our social position to rigid social institutions that allow certain people to progress while preventing others from doing so. 
• Status as a member of a certain social class becomes almost unassailable. 
• Even if a person is able to advance up the social ladder, some signs of lower class position may persist. 
• Vocabularies, preferences, school pedigrees, fashion sense, and other elements of one's public presentation may reveal one's lower-class origins and limit one's potential to rise. 

This example demonstrates that class is more than simply an economic position; it is also a social status or social mark. 

The difficulty for feminists is to comprehend how class influences or influences sexist oppression, as well as what concerns a feminist theory based on class should prioritize. 

The first efforts in second-wave feminism to acknowledge the impact of racism and classism on women's lives provided a kind of building block approach. 

• Each new type of tyranny was piled on top of the previous ones. 
• Occasionally, debates would erupt about which kind of tyranny was the most heinous, or who had it the worse. However, the building block methods are ultimately ineffective. 
• They promote rivalry among people fighting for freedom, as each group uses limited resources and compares its position to that of others. 

Alternative models use the terms "intersections" and "interconnections". 

• Kimberlé Crenshaw's work on intersectional thinking is addressed. 
• Crenshaw demonstrates the limits of thinking in terms of race or gender, as well as the limitations of thinking in terms of building blocks. 
• We can identify some of the elements of oppression that impact women because they are "black women," not simply because they are "black" and "women," by thinking about the intersections of forms of oppression. 

By focusing on the failings of social and political theory and practice rather than race, class, and gender identities, intersectional thought goes beyond the proliferation issue of identity politics.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Identity Politics

For comprehending both subjectivity and solidarity, some second-wave feminist social and political thought drew on group membership based on shared identity. 

• Identity politics arose in response to a sense of solidarity or sisterhood based on shared experience, as well as a subsequent effort to secure social, legal, intellectual, and economic rights for oppressed peoples. 
• Rather than presuming that all women have the same oppressive experience, feminist proponents of identity politics advocate for the representation of different identities (or oppressive experiences) in society. 
• Identity politics is a broad term for a movement or trend in social and political philosophy. 
• The ‘identity' is a common experience of oppression based on cultural background, linguistic community, assigned identity (that is, other people identifying certain individuals as members of a group), or other oppressive experiences. 
• Because various groups are subjected to different types of oppression, they are likely to establish distinct identities. 
• More precisely, identity politics refers to the fact that there are many distinct types of oppression, each of which results in a particular set of demands. 

As a result, the political system is responsible for recognizing these various groups and their requirements. 

To take the title of Iris Young's 1990 book, a "politics of difference" is a politics capable of practicing acknowledgment, recognizing the variety of identity and experience while also listening to the demands of particular groups. 

• Traditional social and political philosophy is challenged by identity politics because, in order to recognize distinctions between groups, public policy must treat individuals differently. 

• The political community must guarantee that democratic institutions place a high priority on the needs of oppressed peoples in order to overcome long-standing disadvantages and oppressions that have ignored their demands. 
  
  

To put it another way, identity politics promotes a greater understanding of how oppressed group identification has molded people and continues to impede their capacity to participate in and be treated fairly in social life. 

• The consequences of identity politics may be observed very clearly when compared to conventional social and political theories such as social contract theory. 

• The social contract hypothesis implies that rational people are more or less similarly placed, equally gifted, and equally treated. 

Identity politics introduces new and difficult methods of integrating diversity into political theory, as well as recasting equality as a goal rather than an assumption. 

• Furthermore, it believes that due to societal distinctions, individuals must be treated differently. 
• In popular culture, identity politics is often seen as a depiction of variety within politics. 
• When women are elected or appointed to public office, one manifestation of feminism is shown. 
• The assumption is that since the elected person is a woman, she would represent women's interests. 
• The issue is that individuals seldom, if ever, consider themselves to be members of identity-based organizations. 

Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (and the first female leader of the Conservative Party), could be used as an example of bringing women into political positions by a feminist proponent of identity politics. 

• She obviously overcame several long-standing boundaries, and she is often cited as a role model for women in general. 
• 'I owe nothing to Women's Liberation,' Thatcher famously remarked. Her legacy for women is a hotly debated topic. 
• Her sheer existence as Britain's most powerful politician defied stereotypes about women's talents and may have opened opportunities for other female politicians. 
• However, her activity in office is often regarded as detrimental to women's status in society, and she accomplished nothing to promote any women's cause. 
• In fact, this exposes a potentially dangerous aspect of identity politics: assuming that just because one has an identity, one would act on behalf of those who share that identity. 

Indira Gandhi, India's first female Prime Minister, served from 1966 to 1977 and again in 1980 till her murder in 1984. 

• Her time as Prime Minister was contentious for a variety of reasons, but she did act with compassion for India's poor and disadvantaged, including involving women and children in her efforts. 
• Of course, she rejected the term "feminist" on many occasions, but in doing so, she was separating herself from American feminism, which she characterized as a desire for women to imitate men. 

Extreme versions of identity politics believe that putting a woman, an African-American, or any other marginalized person in positions of power will make a difference. 

They are, without a doubt, right in that the public presence of successful members of oppressed groups empowers oppressed individuals and helps to alter prevailing views. 

When it is thought that one's political convictions are determined by one's identity, there is a problem in the argument. 

• While it is possible that a person's identity influences or even defines the political problems that they pursue in public service, this is not a required relationship. 
• While identity politics has enormous potential for strengthening and representing marginalized people, this does not mean that it will inevitably change the public and political environment in order to relieve or repair injustice. 
• Identity politics has also been chastised for exacerbating the spread of identities. 
• If identity groupings constitute the bedrock of political representation, then relatively sharp distinctions between identities must be established. That is almost difficult to do in practice. 

Individuals may identify with several races since races are not precisely defined. How do they portray themselves in such a situation? 

• Similarly, if women are considered a group, the varied conditions of color, class, sexual orientation, handicap, and gender are ignored or hidden. 
• That obscures what issues ought to be brought to public or political discussion and often entrenches systems of class or race domination while attempting to obtain representation on the basis of sex.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read more about Feminism and Activism here.

Second Wave Of Feminism - Sisterhood

The discussion of sex and gender often returns to the potential of collective feminist action. Many political groups strive to create a sense of community among its members. 

The second wave was sparked by Beauvoir's demand for female unity in liberation tactics.

Solidarity, on the other hand, may take various shapes. 

'Sisterhood' is one model. Sisterhood is a concept of female togetherness, or the idea that all women are sisters. 

What, on the other hand, makes women sisters? 

Sisterhood, according to one theory, is based on shared oppressive experiences. Our shared worries, sorrows, and difficulties may be a source of female bonding. 

Take, for example, a typical aircraft trip. 

• Except for a few niceties spoken here and there, the majority of passengers on any given trip have no special connection or link with the other passengers. 
• However, if anything occurs during the flight, this changes. 
• Let's say there's a lot of turbulence, to the point that the trip is unpleasant or scary. 
• For example, imagine the aircraft bursts a tire on takeoff, making it unclear whether it would be able to land safely. 
• Could the passengers become more united as a result of these tough, hazardous, or frightening circumstances? 

The more terrible the circumstances in which individuals are forced to suffer or survive, the more likely they are to reach out to one another in some manner or at least feel linked simply because they have shared an experience. 

Sisterhood is a connection that is comparable to these. 

• Perhaps women have a connection or want to connect with other women because they share the difficulties of being oppressed, being victims of violence, being stereotyped, being excluded, or being oppressed in some other way. 
• Women who work in a workplace where there are obviously sexist behaviors that impact them may commiserate with one another, and this may grow and spread well beyond the office. 

There are many advantages of basing sisterhood on similar oppression experiences. To begin, naming an issue is beneficial. 

• Sexual harassment was not recognized as an issue until women began to share their workplace experiences and emotions of annoyance, frustration, and unhappiness. 
• In reality, sexual harassment was not officially recognized as such until the late 1970s. 
• Women chatting to other women and sharing their stories were crucial in bringing it to the public's attention. 
• Domestic violence, date rape, and gender discrimination all rose to prominence as they moved out of the private lives of individual women and were identified as societal issues. 

Another advantage of the sisterhood approach to female relationships is that when women share experiences of abuse or oppression, they may become more feminist-aware. 

• The feminist movement's consciousness-raising clubs started as small gatherings of women discussing their personal experiences. 
• They soon grew into more structured support systems for other women. 
• The organizations also provided information and educational tools, which were especially useful for assisting women who had been victims of sexual harassment or domestic abuse in navigating the social and legal systems to help them rectify their unfair position. 
• There is also the personal advantage of telling one's tale and understanding that one's experiences of violence or persecution are not unique. 

When women are sisters, they encourage one another and have an underlying understanding. 

• Sisterhood, in other words, entails moral and epistemic ties between women, regardless of whether or not they know one other. 
• The concept is that all women are victims of sexist abuse, marginalization, and exclusion, and that this subjugation brings women together. 
• Sisterhood should imply that sisters help one other when they are in need. 
• Women, on the other hand, do not always or even often react compassionately to other women. 

Women often blame one other for the violence they experience, such as when a woman says to a friend, 

"Why doesn't she simply leave the violent relationship?" 

or 

"If she hadn't dressed like a slut, she wouldn't have been raped." 

Sisterhood is problematic in a variety of other ways as well. 

Not everyone has experienced persecution in the same way. If feminist organization is based on a connection amongst women that is based on a common experience of oppression, then if there is no shared experience of oppression, no bond will develop, and feminist organizing will be paralyzed. 

Furthermore, a woman's sense of oppression may be influenced by a variety of factors. Take, for example, the issue of sexual harassment. 

• A white-collar worker who is sexually harassed at work is likely to have access to attorneys, counselors, and psychiatrists who can help her preserve her self-esteem and fight the injustice. 

• A woman in a low-paying profession that needs minimal training, on the other hand, is likely to be concerned about her job security and may be hesitant to report the harassment. 

• She would also be unlikely to have the financial means to hire attorneys and psychiatrists. 
• If she decided to report her harassment, she would have to depend on her employer's goodwill – which is frequently lacking, or impossible if he is the harasser – and, if the matter went to court, she would almost certainly have to rely on legal aid or pro bono help if she could find it. 

• It's difficult to strategize for feminist action when people's experiences of oppression are so diverse. 

• It becomes even more complex when we consider how much feminist thought and action comes from bourgeois and upper-class women and men. 

• Some feminists may be unaware of the complexities of issues that women face regardless of their social status or ethnicity. 

Another significant issue with sisterhood is that it emphasizes victimization. 

• Clearly, recognizing and identifying an issue that others are experiencing is critical. 
• The first sensation of increasing awareness is empowering for many women. 
• However, concentrating on the many ways in which women are abused may be exhausting and debilitating. 

Sisterhood will never be able to change the social and political structures that produce victimization if it focuses only on how women are victims together. 

Women must go beyond victimhood in order to recognize and act on the numerous qualities they possess for the greater benefit of everyone.

 ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read more about Feminism and Activism here.

Second Wave Of Feminism - Gender Vs Sex

Many feminist theorists see Beauvoir's words as establishing a sex-gender difference. From the 1960s until the late 1990s, this difference was widely used in feminist thought, and it is still relevant in certain situations. 

The biological categories that are assumed to be natural, given, or apparent are referred to as ‘sex.' 'Gender,' on the other hand, denotes social classifications. 

While the terms "male" and "female" refer to biological sexes that are differentiated by their reproductive functions, "masculine" and "feminine" refer to culturally distinct social categories that vary over time and include a broad range of traits and roles. 

Take, for example, the subject of body image. 

• What is considered feminine in one culture may be very different from what is considered feminine in another society at the same time. 
• Within any particular culture, social expectations or cultural mores regarding haircuts, clothes, comportment, and even typical breast and hip sizes of women appear to vary significantly. 

• These are gender characteristics that are the consequence of societal norms or socially created expectations of femininity. 
• This sex/gender difference has many ramifications for comprehending women's subjugation. 

• To begin with, when gender is seen as a social construct, much of women's oppression is viewed as a product of society rather than being rooted in the character of women. In some ways, this gives the issue a new lease of life. 

If societal practices define woman in such a manner that individual women are unable to exercise self-determination or pursue freely chosen initiatives, altering gender social conceptions may be a solution.

 

• Feminist attempts to alter uneven social connections would be fruitless if women are inherently inferior to males. If, on the other hand, any inferiority stems from perceptions or varying gender roles, feminists fighting for societal change may genuinely achieve gender equality. 

• Second, feminists may imagine political unity among women because of gender as a social construct. The premise is that through discussing similar oppressive experiences or gender norms, women can find common ground and band together for political action. 

Consciousness-raising groups were widely utilized during the second wave to capitalize on the revelations concerning gender social construction. In the following section on sisterhood, I go through this specific social and political feminist approach. 

Gender as a social construct means that a woman may be a woman but not a ‘woman,' and a man might be a man but not a ‘man.' 

• Biological men and females may choose to acquire feminine gender features, whereas biological females could choose to adopt masculine gender traits. 
• A person may even choose to combine features from both genders. 

• Recognizing gender's pliability, if it is a social construct, implies allowing for a wide range of gender characteristics to be combined. 
• However, some feminists dispute the tight separation of sex and gender. 

• Perhaps biology is socially produced in a variety of ways as well. 

Even Beauvoir, like Friedrich Engels before her, recognized the physical consequences of social activity. 

Perhaps the idea that men and women have distinct muscular-skeletal systems is a consequence of societal conditioning that is reinforced through breeding and handed down from generation to generation. 

• Women, for example, are often considered to be physically weaker than males. 
• If biology, like gender traits, is a social construct, then women's physical weakness may be attributed to a long history of insufficient physical exercise. 

• Genetics and natural selection have virtually eliminated the muscular groups. 
• Intersex persons, who are born with ambiguous genitalia or more than one XX or XY chromosome, may be regarded as evidence that there are more than two sexes. 

• The socially created dichotomy between biological man and female obscures intersexuality. 

A related question is if there is something fundamental about being a ‘woman.' 

Some postmodern feminists argue that the term "women" does not exist since there is no universal trait or experience shared by all women. 

• To put it another way, they contend that the term does not relate to a metaphysical category since it lacks a defining characteristic. 
• Because it rejects their significance - they don't refer to anybody – such a stance may be helpful in confronting sexist notions of women. 

• However, many feminists are concerned that the rejection of the category of "woman" eliminates the potential of a group that might wield political power for constructive social change. 
• Between stating that women do not exist and arguing that gender is still an appropriate category for defining a social construct, there is definitely some middle ground here. 

• For example, some feminists believe that "woman" is and will continue to be a useful term as long as there are political grounds for it. 

When certain individuals are targeted for exclusion, marginalization, or violence based on sex or gender categories, whether those categories are perceived, natural, or socially created, terms like "woman," "gender," and, of course, "feminist" are still useful.

 ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read more about Feminism and Activism here.