Feminism

1. Feminism Megan Kehrein Ann Telnaes' Women's eNews Cartoons

2. Mary Wollstonecraft • Beginning of First Wave Feminist Philosophy • Focused on the individual woman and her rights • Thought women should not be held to the same standards as men • Believes that men’s attitude towards women needs to change • Associated with Enlightenment thought because she emphasized reason

3. Wollstonecraft and Locke • How does Mary Wollstonecraft relate to Locke’s Enlightened views? • Locke and Wollstonecraft both believed that all individuals are equal, despite gender. • Locke’s “A Letter Concerning Toleration” • Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”

4. Seneca Falls • Beginning of First Wave Feminist Movement in America • Voting on the Declaration of Sentiments-a document that declared the rights of women • Women’s Right to Vote was a debated issue • Many women involved in this movement were also involved in abolitionist movement

5. Central Question of 19th Century Feminism • Is it OK to put more value on African American rights than Women’s Rights? • Sojourner Truth says, “Ain’t I a woman?” in response to the African American Civil Rights Movement being set against the Women’s Rights Movement • In the end, white men kept the control, as always.

6. 72 Years Later… • America becomes more democratic.As most males are forced to fight WWI overseas, women are beginning to work in what were primarily male dominated industries. • In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. • Women finally had the right to vote!

7. Virginia Woolf and A Room of One’s Own • Seen as the first Post-Modern Writer. • Her Thesis: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” • “..thinking of the safety and prosperity of one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer…”

8. Woolf and Marxism • Marxism is the idea that class struggle leads to improvement of government and society. • Woolf believed that everyone had to be economically successful to be influential, especially women. • Basically, men controlled the ideology. • This was shown through the lack of history about and by women.

9. Women’s Liberation Movement • Feminism began to die out. • The title feminist was viewed as an insult.However, women still were gaining rights. • During WWII, women were the ones that held America together. • They worked and supported our economy, while men fought overseas. • The resulted in a high number of highly educated, underemployed women. • The second wave of feminism was born.

10. Second Wave Feminism • First Wave Feminism was focused on legal issues, while Second Wave Feminism addressed a much larger span of issues. • Commission on the Status of Women, National Organization for Women, Federally Employed Women, Professional Women’s Caucasus, and Women’s Equity Action League • Basically, all these organizations believed that women should have all the same rights as men.

11. Today • There are still feminists in our culture today. THEREFORE… • We are still living the Enlightenment.

12. Relation to Ideology • Feminists are considered radical individuals. • Therefore are outside mainstream ideals. • Feminists see past the ideology that males are the only ones that can dominate society. • They see past it, because they are harmed by it. • Men cannot see that this an ideology, because it benefits them.

13. Review Questions • How does Feminism show that we are still living in the Enlightenment? • In what ways is Feminism romantic? • What is Locke’s relation to all of this? • How about Rosseau; How does he tie in to Feminism?

14. Sources • The Norton Anthology of Western Literature • http://www.class.uidaho.edu/engl_258/Honors/s09H%20schedule.htm • http://www.jofreeman.com/feminism/liberationmov.htm • http://civilliberty.about.com/od/gendersexuality/tp/History-of-Feminism.htm