This lesson is based on ideas from an essay by Anna Wahl ‘The Cloud: Lecturing on Feminist research’ (NORA: Nordic Journal of women’s studies, vol 2-3 1999) pp.97-108. In this essay, Anna Wahl describes how raising the word “feminist” when she began teaching or lecturing (on women and business) always provoked a strong series of negative reactions in her audience.
Anna Wahl describes the effect of teaching and talking about the word “feminism” as generating a cloud in the room – a cloud generated by misunderstandings, prejudices and preconceptions – and which must be worked through before it is possible to engage with any shared understanding of the subject of feminism or feminist research. The cloud here is not a storage device on the web for data but a fog obscuring understanding and meaning. She proposed actively using the idea of a “cloud” as a tool to start to identify common beliefs about feminism which need to worked through in order to make way for feminist knowledge based on research.
Here are some of the most common negative associations about women who declare themselves feminists:
- Feminists are bitter women, incompetent or have failed, and can only complain
- Feminists are all lesbians
- Feminists hate men
- Feminists want to be like men i.e. have positions of power and authority over others
- Feminists are ugly, mad or bad women
- Feminists are trouble-makers
- Feminists are unwomanly and/or aggressive
- Feminists are sexist because they want women to dominate the world
These stereotypes associate feminists (persons who support feminism) with something extreme and unpleasant and with many negative character traits: weak, ugly, bitter, aggressive, demanding, dominating, men-haters etc. Most of these statements are about the women who support feminism, and they deliberately project negative ideas about women or “womanliness”. They are not about feminism as an idea, a politics or feminist research and, as Wahl points, out they show a range of ignorance, misunderstandings, preconceptions and actively anti-feminist forms of prejudice and misogyny (woman-hating attitudes).
If there is something missing from this list that you are familiar with, you are welcome to comment on it. However, rather than confronting or challenging these stereotypes and trying to refute them or argue against them, the cloud model asks you to examine how such statements arise in relation to:
Contemporary popular versions of feminist debate today include:-
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We should all be feminists (Fourth Estate, 2014)
Laura Bates Everyday sexism (Simon and Schuster, 2015) http://www.everydaysexism.com/
Sheryl Sandberg Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (W H Allen, 2013) www.leanin.org
Caitlin Moran How to be a Woman (Ebury Press, 2012)
Lisa Appignanesi, Susie Orbach (ed) Fifty Shades of Feminism (Virago, 2013)
Rebecca Solnit Men Explain Things To Me (2012)
Nina Power One Dimensional Woman (Zero Books, 2009)
Selected List of classic books in Feminist Politics – which everyone interested in feminism should read :-
(N.B. these books largely represent debates in and from USA/Anglophone Europe. They have many different editions and have been published in many languages, many are also available in full or part online)
Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Mathilda Joselyn Gage Women, Church and State (1893)
Alexandra Kollontai Women Workers Struggle For Their Rights (1919)
Ray Strachey The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Britain (1928)
Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938)
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (1949)
Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Juliet Mitchell Women: the longest revolution (1966)
Valerie Solanas The Scum Manifesto (1968, self-published, 1967)
Mary Ellman Thinking about Women (1968)
Monique Wittig Les Guérillères (1969)
Shulamith Firestone The Dialectic of Sex: The case for Feminist Revolution (1970)
Robin Morgan Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement (1970)
Susan Brownmiller Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1971)
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective Our Bodies, Ourselves: a book by and for women (1971)
Kate Millett Sexual Politics (1971)
Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch (1970/1971)
Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James Women and the Subversion of the Community (1972)
Sheila Rowbotham Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World (1973)
Andrea Dworkin Woman Hating (1974)
Juliet Mitchell Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1975)
Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976)
Luce Irigaray Ce Sexe qui n’est pas un / This Sex which is not One (1977, English 1985)
Mary Daly Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978)
Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary (French, 1976, English, 1979)
Michele Barrett Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis (1980)
Adrienne Rich Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980)
Angela Davis Women, Race, Class (1981)
bell hooks Ain’t I a Woman? (1981)
Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa This Bridge Called My Back: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1981)
Alice Walker In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens and other essays (1983)
Joanna Russ How To Suppress Women’s Writing (1983)
Alison Jaggar Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1983)
Audre Lorde Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (1984)
Nawal El Saadawi The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (1984)
Toril Moi Sexual/Textual Politics (1985)
Susan Faludi Backlash: the Undeclared War against American Women (1987)
Lynne Segal Is the future female? : troubled thoughts on contemporary feminism (1987)
Gloria Anzaldua Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth (1990)
Iris Marion Young Justice and the politics of difference (1990)
Judith Butler Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)
Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990)
Paolo Bono and Sandra Kemp (eds) Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader (1991)
Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (ed) Feminists Theorize the Political (1992)
Elizabeth Grosz Volatile Bodies.Toward a Corporeal Feminism (1994)
Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (1995)
Radha Kumar The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1990 (1997)
Chela Sandoval Methodology of the Oppressed (2000)
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richard Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future (2001)
Nancy Fraser with Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political Philosophical Exchange (2001)
Chandra Talpade Mohanty Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003)
bell hooks Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2003)
Cynthia Cockburn From where we stand: war, women’s activism and feminist analysis (2007)
Sylvia Walby The Future of Feminism (2011)
Mary Evans The Persistence of Gender Inequality (2017)
Drude Dallerup Has Democracy Failed Women? (2018)
Many books on Radical Feminism available as free downloads from:
radfem.org/
Visit also: www.fragen.nu/
The FRAGEN project brings together books, articles and pamphlets that were influential in the development of feminist ideas in 29 countries and in as many languages
Scroll over headings with your mouse
Ignorance
Misunderstandings
Preconceptions
Anti-feminism
trouble-makers
aggressive
“want to be like men”
trouble-makers
sectarian
unwomanly
women who want to dominate men
out of date/passé
unnatural
“differences between men and women don’t matter”
hold extreme views
ideological
Social media – particularly twitter, facebook and google forums – are full of negative statements about feminists. The phenomena of “trolling” women who express their political opinions coupled with the “occupation” of feminist sites and newsfeeds by comments from men is well known. This kind of statement ranges from the denial that any woman today suffers from discrimination to sexually abusive remarks about their person. The “trolls” have also repeatedly posed as young black women in an attempt to dissociate black women from any history of feminist activity and to “shame” other white women for racism. This does no service to the many black feminists in the last 150 years who have spoken for women of colour around the world. Be aware that this behaviour exists but do not let it determine your own attitudes or actions.
The history of feminism suffers from similar negative and inaccurate anti-feminist associations evident in characterisations of “bra-burning” women’s libbers; aggressive Red-Stockings; stereotypes of “witches” (associated with the Witch craze); old-fashioned Blue Stockings (early feminist literary intellectuals); “window-smashing” Suffragette campaigns of civic resistance; and the same slurs have been used against many different political protests around the world for women’s social, civil and political rights.
There are many other aspects to this “cloud” of misinformation about feminism:-
• Feminism is outdated (or belongs only to the past)
• Feminism is driven by ideology or sectarian
• Feminism is no longer needed in the West because there are some women today who are successful as politicians, doctors, nurses, lawyers, scientists, musicians, film-makers, actresses, pilots, firefighters or artists….
• Feminism is a Western invention, not needed in other parts of the world
• Feminism is no longer needed in the West – but it is needed in other parts of the World because they have development problems the West has “overcome”.
• Feminism is flawed because it is only a white middle-class movement of women
• Feminism is not needed because the only struggle that counts is against capitalism, globalisation, global warming, or war – and gender is not an issue here.
“Other common beliefs are that feminism is based on a description of women as weak and defective; that women themselves are the problem; that feminism supports the idea that women need helping (equal opportunities measures) in all their inadequacy – something that women of high self-esteem, for example, sometimes distance themselves from.” Anna Wahl
However, if you spend too much time dwelling on this negative picture of feminists, you will never start to explore feminism as a politics or an ideology nor engage with any feminist research.
Remember that this is what the loudest detractors against feminism really want you to do: TO NOT ENGAGE with feminist arguments or ideas.
To change this picture, Wahl suggests thinking about feminism in terms of:-
1) Feminist research as both a theory and a description, explanation or a set of interpretations of the world.
The key terms here are feminist research into how
- patriarchy
and - patriarchal thinking operates as the first step in how to work for change and an end to discrimination against women.
2) Working for change in the world
Key terms here for changing the world are awareness and involvement in:
- the organised political activity of the women’s movement
- working for suffrage (as suffragettes or human rights activists)
- for equal opportunities (in education, work and social life)
- for promoting women’s rights as human rights
- for female emancipation defined as “freedom of choice”
- for sexual liberation
- for an end to all discrimination based on a person’s sex, their sexual preference, ethnicity, race, or physical/mental disability.
3) Ideology, not in negative terms but about:
“what ought to be” as opposed to what “is”
Key terms here are:
- arguments for social and political justice,
- equal worth,
- equal opportunities,
- women’s rights as human rights.
So, what is feminism? Click here for part 2 of this lesson
Welcome to the first lesson in n.paradoxa’s MOOC
This sidebar feature allows you to view additional content associated with the lesson topic available on the internet. Each lesson has multiple parts:
… Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 >
If you do not recognise certain terms in the lessons, look up terms and definitions online in a free English language dictionary: e.g. Cambridge Dictionary or Oxford Dictionary. You can use search engines to look for further links on individual women named in this course. You might find this PDF A glossary of Women’s Studies terms useful or this online resource of feminist criticism terms.
Please note: this course was prepared without any references to Wikipedia.
VIDEOS
Many short popular videos for feminist campaigns and student-made videos about feminism rehearse these basic arguments about overcoming negative stereotypes and campaigning for social justice.
Here are two examples, amongst many:-
I’m Not A Feminist…But from Sara Baumgartner on Vimeo.
April 25, 2013 2.25 min
linked to the campaign website http://whoneedsfeminism.com
Feminism Animated Infographic from Courtney Babcock on Vimeo offers brief arguments about feminism in the USA, past and present.
For an alternative view of why women are feminists: watch Simone de Beauvoir speaking in 1975 on ;Why She is a Feminist’ French sound, English subtitles.
