GENDER AND SEXUALITY Beasley

CHAPTER 1

GENDER AND FEMINISM: an overview

Discuss the term gender in order to place Feminism as a subfield within overall
gender/sexuality field.

GENDER: THE MEANING OF THE TERM:

Feminism is one of two subfields that arguably can be situated under the umbrella term
gender.
Gender typically refers to the social process of dividing up people and social practices along
the lines of sexed identities. The gendering process frequently involves creating hierarchies
between the division it enacts. In modern Western societies gender divides into two distinct and
separated categories men and women- as well as to then division of social practices.
men = public life and women = domestic life binary division oppositional. The two
categories are not opposed but into hierarchy one is cast as positive and the other negative.
Binary nature of gender: to be a man is to be not a woman and vice versa.
Contemporary meanings of gender in Feminist and Masculinity Studies have altered over time
and continue to be the subject of debate. 1960s was restricted to what is coded in language as
masculine or feminine. The latter approach conceives it as a structuring process, may be seen
in Bob Connells notion of gender relations. In recent times it has extended to denote
personality attributes associated with men and women. Attitudes towards gender and social
change differ as well. Some writers advocate getting rid of gender and gender categories while
others suggest that the premature abandonment of marginal group identities like women may
produce political paralysis.
Gender is understood or regarded by critical thinkers referring to two major subfields Feminist
and Masculinity Studies-. While Feminist studies talks about women Masculinity does it about
men.

DEBATES ABOUT GENDER.

DEBATE 1.The term gender is dominant for analysis of sexed identities and practices men and women.
It would seem that gender as the proper name for a combined field including Feminist and
Masculinity agendas. While Masculinity Studies writers are more accepting of the terminology,
they too often appear concerned about the potential for retreating from a focus on power
relations between men and women. Some gay male writers are not convinced that their issues
can be adequately addressed under the broad mantle of Gender Studies.

What this debate signals is an ongoing discussion central to the entire field of
gender/sexuality theory regarding the question of whether focus on particular identity
groups is politically helpful or harmful. Discussion about the status of identity politics
arises in Feminist, Sexuality and Masculinity Studies. Identity politics highlight in
reference to gender/sexuality field along a Modernist-Postmodern continuum.

DEBATE 2.Gender has been used to indicate that nature (bodies) do not tell you much about human social
organisation of sexed identities and practices. A male body is not necessarily result in social
masculinity, in a personal identity deemed masculine. Gender in this setting was seen as a
reference to social construction. Gender was a term that enable a questioning of biologistic
presumptions.
Other thinkers asserted that setting up gender against (bodily) sex = distinction between
social/cultural and biological/natural.
Some writers employing psychoanalytic frameworks and/or attending to bodily materiality, prefer
to use sex, sexuality or sexual difference as the coverall term rather than gender.

Gender did not become widespread in critical thinking on the topic until the 1970s.

DEBATE 3.Writers who justify the usage or the term gender as against sex or sexuality do so
indicating that the differentiation of men and women is not nature. By contrast, those who
dispute its usage reject the biological-social division.
Most writers in Feminist and Masculinity Studies view gender as intertwined with sexuality.
Many go so far as to presume that gender is the foundation of sexual identities and practices.
Gayle Rubin claims that sexuality should be treated separately from gender and sexual theorist
to assert that sexuality is prior to gender.
Feminist and Masculinity Studies tend to line up together and focus on the significance of
gender while Sexuality Studies focus upon the organisation of desire. Debates:
- Whether we should focus on particular groups/identities (woman rather than
gender)
- The relationship between the social and biological/natural/bodily.
- The connection between gender and sexuality.
The three of the subfields of gender/sexuality theory are Feminist, Masculinity and Sexuality
Studies.

INTRODUCING FEMINISM:
Feminism is the first of the three subfields of gender/sexuality.
Beasley consider that gender/sexuality in terms of five main theoretical directions, which are
distinguished in relation to certain frames of reference and debates. She uses ModernismPostmodernism continuum of views on a range of debates as a means to highlight main
directions. Views on debates tend to be connected to weaker or stronger versions of Modernism
and Postmodernism and to positions on the Modernist-Postmodernist continuu.

USING FEMINISM AS AN EXEMPLARY MODEL

CRITICAL STACE:
Feminism has a critical history. It starts from a critique of the norm, of what is taken for
granted. This subfield operates from the point of view of scepticism. In the case of Feminism its
critical stance takes the form of a critique of misogyny, the assumption of male superiority and
centrality. Feminism is a critical theory that refuses what it describes as the masculine bias of
Western thinking that this bias renders women invisible/marginal to understandings of humanity
and distorts understandings of men.
Feminism theorising in the gender/sexuality field, starts from a critical position in relation to
social arrangements and takes as central the link between sex and power in society.
Feminism is a critical stance that decentres the assumptions of the mainstream in terms of
centre (men)/periphery(women). This is also a feature of Sexuality and Masculinity Studies,
which similarly decentre notions of the norm in relation to sex and power.
Masculinity Studies offers a critical stance on sex and power but focusing on those that are
central to Western thinking (men). Sexuality Studies is mostly concerned with marginalised
identities and practices (lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, transgender).
Critiques of the mainstream using a focus on the mainstream such as critical analysis of
masculinity by the position of men, are becoming more common and more accepted part of the
gender/sexuality field.
All of the subfields are characterised by an inclination to challenge the notion of a proper norm
in relation to gender and sexuality. Masculinity theorists have been taken to ask by feminist
thinkers because they have been insufficiently critical. Sexuality commentators have raised

similar concerns in relation to Feminism. The subfields show a concern with social change that
resists the existing hierarchy of sex and power.

CONTENT: FRAMES OF REFERENCE (THE CONTINUUM OF VIEWS) AND

MAIN DIRECTIONS:
The field of gender/sexuality theory and its subfields Feminist, Sexuality and Masculinity Studies
may be described in terms or an array of five main theoretical directions spreading across the
Modernist-Postmodern continuum
MODERNISM
Strong --------------- Weak

POSTMODERNISM
Weak -------------------------- Strong

1.- HUMAN
2.- (SINGULAR) DIFFERENCE
3.- (MULTIPLE) DIFFERENCES
4.- RELATIONAL
POWER
5.- FLUIDITY/INSTABILITY

1.- THE HUMAN: MODERNIST (EMANCIPATORY/LIBERATIONIST)

FEMINISMS
The first wave of Feminism in the 18-19th centuries was marked by its critique of dominant
Western thinking its critique of Liberalism = freedom of the individual, rights to be free from
intervention by government. The social and political rights of gender-neutral individuals reside in
their humanity, in their ability to reason.
Women were regarded as irrational creatures, not to vote, own property once married and little
legal control over their children or their bodies.
Activists did not disagree with Liberalisms idea of a universal standard for social and political
rights and selfhood. They noted that the standard was male rather than universal. Early Liberal
feminists proposed womens inclusion in the Liberal universal conception of the Human.
The second wave of Feminism in 1960-70s there was stronger criticism of this universal
standard. Types of Feminism developed additionally Radical feminism. What is crucial is that all
of these strands of Feminism had an emancipatory orientation. They focused on womens
theorising and activities were rescued from obscurity. The aim was to make women assimilate
into society.
Second wave feminists may be seen as linked to a Modernist frame. Four points:
- All of them conceive of an universal truth that reveals the key mechanism of all
society. This truth is about power and oppression.
- Power is understood in terms of suppression and dominance = patriarchy =
repression. Men have the power.
- The aim of this theory is to overthrow mens authority.
- Emancipatory/Modernist movement form of Feminism involves a particular notion of
the self. In Liberal feminism women are included the existing Liberal universal
standard of human nature (reason). In Marxist/Socialist and Radical feminisms, less
individualist, more co-operative universal human nature and one less firmly tied to a
particular account of competitive masculinity.
This assimilationist stance is concerned with removing barriers to womens full social
participation and be recognised in the social world as men are.
Emacipatory feminism, whether of first or second waves, is called Modernist because:
- This form of feminism exhibits a faith in metanarratives which offer notions of
universal truth about society, power and human nature/human-ness.
- Power: domination that power can be thrown off and society can be made free of
power.
- The self as repressed/oppressed by social power but having an inner core
(universal human essence) which can be emancipated or liberated.

There are equivalent frame works of Modernist emancipatory of liberationist thinking in

Masculinity and Sexuality Studies.
The universalist and assimilationist orientation Beasley has outlined, which focused upon a
common Human nature as well as a common political action agenda, was a feature of Liberal
and Marxist feminisms of the first and second waves. This orientation was less straightforwardly
embraced by Socialist and Radical feminisms.
Gender difference was increasingly promoted focus upon womens difference from men and
upon affirming women as a group, enabling women to enter, participate in a mans world on
equal terms. Feminists evolved from male-centred character of the universal human standard
towards gynocentrism or women-centred analyses, which emphasised gender difference.
Rethinking of Modernist general paradigms and a shift towards Postmodernism.

2.- GENDER (SINGULAR) DIFFERENCE: IDENTITY POLITICS TO SEXUAL

DIFFERENCE FEMINISMS:
1970-80s: gender had become the predominant tendency in Western Feminism = focus un
difference between the genders. Gender Difference feminists argue, like the Emancipatory
feminists, that universal presumptions are derived form men and constitute women as outsiders.
The former theorists do not attempt to include women in a gender-neutral universal human
standard in which men and women are the same. They speak for worldview highlighting gender
difference. Identity Politics and Sexual Difference to distinguish these frames of reference.
The aim of the Gender Difference framework in Feminism was to acknowledge difference
positively. Difference theorising involves privileging the marginalised = in Feminism: Revaluing
the feminine. In the Modernist Identity Politics versions of Gender Difference assert gender
identities and experience on political platforms based on positioning of women. The womencentred focus in this Identity Politics gives women difference from men and an antidote to the
androcentric nature of existing society.
Sexual Difference theorists do not assume that women have any particular qualities that can
be contrasted with those of men. Sexual Difference feminists revalue the Feminine as
representing in cultural terms difference from the masculine norm.
Conceiving the Feminine as offering a vision beyond hierarchy, Sexual Difference theorists
reinterpret it to envisage plurality in society. While Feminist Identity Politics and Sexual
Difference approaches depart in their assesment of the meaning of the category
women/feminine, the share certain features.
In the case of Sexuality theorising, lesbian/gay studies strongly focus on marginal group
identities and on the difference between homo and hetero sexualities.
While Masculinity writers have sometimes followed feminist Gender Difference models to stress
womens world views, their agenda has disallowed any form of Identity Politics based on
manhood.
Within Feminism the Gender Difference approach includes Radical, Socialist and
Psychoanalytic feminisms.
Feminist Gender Difference writers are Modernist but the can be seen as the border of the
Modernist/Postmodern.

3.- MULTIPLE DIFFERENCES: RACE/ETHNICITY/IMPERIALISM AND

FEMINISM:
It is found right across the spectrum of the Modernist-Postmodern continuum. Feminist writings
focus of race, ethnicity and imperialism (REI) cluster around the middle, on both sides of the
dividing point of the continuum. Their presence is most evident in the Marxist/Socialist tradition.
Feminists dealing with race/ethnicity/imperialism are suspicious of Postmodern positions.
Feminists attending to race/ethnicity/imperialism have a voice in both group Difference and
Social Constructionist camps, wishing to revalue and affirm group difference and identities. They
also criticised singular group difference approaches that only emphasise gender/sexual
difference. REI feminists assert that a focus on singular gender difference involves suppressing
other differences of men an woman as unified groups. Categories of men and women cannot be
seen, in this REI framework, as self-evident identities that are always the same. This position
has links with or overlaps with Social Constructionist criticism of Gender Difference.

4.- RELATIONAL POWER: FEMINIST SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM:

Social constructionism or materialist feminists strongly rejected the Gender Difference
position in the 1980s. Social Constructionists argue that difference is created by relations of
power.
These feminists can be located on the Modernist side of Modernist/Postmodern border. Social
Constructionist approaches describe truth and power in universal terms and power is perceived
as negative domination. Social Constructionists theorist reject Modernisms humanist emphasis
on a pre-existing inner core to the self. They assert, identities are made by the social effects of
power.
Social Constructionism, along with Postmodernism, offers a critique of both Emancipatory and
Gender Difference. Social Constructionism with its emphasis on socially and historically
concrete studies, continues to pay attention to identity categories.
In Feminism, Social Constructionism draws for the most part upon Modernist Marxist/Socialist
and Radical feminisms, but some writers show and increasing awareness of Postmodern
theorising.

5.- FLUIDITY/INSTABILITY: POSTMODERN FEMINISM

Lastly we come to Postmodern feminism. The predominant feminist position in the 1990s and
2000s offers a multiplication of the notion of difference. Postmodern feminists to not aim to
include women in a male world. Nor do they wish to reverse the traditional hierarchy and focus
on women/the feminine. Postmodern feminists intend to destabilise the conception of identity
(human or group) and the binary identities (men and women).
Differences that is characteristic of REI frameworks is extended to where the issue is not
multiple categories or difference but a movement beyond such categories of analysis which
questions their very status.
Postmodern feminism in this usage represents a particularly thoroughgoing version of social
Constructionism. The emphasis of Postmodern feminism is to assert that there is no truth
behind identity. While Social Constructionism has not abandoned a conception of social
humanity, Postmodern frameworks conceive humans as a social product organised by power.
Gender is an obligatory masquerade and there is nothing behind that mask. Postmodern
feminism is anti-essentialist. In this form of feminist thinking there is no prior or authentic true
self underneath power. Postmodern feminism is an anti-generalist, anti-humanist and antiessentialist position.
MODERNISM

POSTMODFERNISM

Strong <------------------- Weak

Weak -----------------------------> Strong

1. EMANCIPATORY
(Liberal, Marxist/Socialist
And Radical Feminism)
2.- (SINGULAR) GENDER DIFFERENCES
(Radical, Socialist and Psychoanalytic feminisms)
3.- SOCIAL
CONSTRUCCIONIST
(Socialist feminisms)
4.- (MULTIPLE) DIFFERENCES
(race/ethnicity/imperialism feminisms
5.- POSTMODERN
What I have delineated as Postmodernism might be labelled Postructuralism.

GENDER AND SEXUALITY Beasley

CHAPTER 2: MODERNIST EMANCIPATORY FEMINISM: LIBERAL
FEMINISM WOLLSTONECRAFT TO WOLF.
Feminism= the Modernist Emancipatory perspective is one of the types of Feminism.

CHARACTERISING MODERNIST THINKING.

Modernist Emancipatory feminism features:
- Modernist thinking what is universal to human beings. Modernism is for this reason
associated with Humanism, the notion that human beings possess a foundation
core (essence).
- Modernism is concerned about what is universal in society and power relations
within society. Society and power are capable of being understood by a universal
rule or law or truth.
- This foundational truth in relations to humanity, society and power is linked to
conceptions of power as negative.
- The human self whom power having universal features, repressed/oppressed by
power. Essential self can be liberate from power.
Modernist thinking is optimistic about the opportunities for change. Over time society and the
self will be liberated. They declare there is no foundational truth to the human society, power,
the self or history.

FEMINISMS RELATIOSHIP TO MODERNIST THINKING

In Feminism, as in Masculinity and Sexuality Studies, there are frameworks along the wholw
continuum from Modernist to Postmodern. Feminism has a long tradition of Modernist or
Emancipatory thinking. There are several types of this form of thinking. The most strongly
Modernist types are: Liberal and Marxist feminisms = offer a weaker Modernism.
Marxist, Socialist and Radical feminisms have less clear-cut adherence to a Modernist frame of
reference.
Modernism in the West has involve two major traditions:
The individualist: Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Mill and Wollstonecraft.
The collectivist: Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Goldman, Kollontai and Said.
While the former shaped Liberal political thinking and ideology of Western societies, the latter
has its greatest impact in Socialist perspectives and oppositional to Western societies. The
oppositional stance of Socialist inflected viewpoints like Marxist, Socialist and Radical feminism.
While these feminisms remain indebted to Modernism, notions of the universal human are
undercut in Marxist, Socialist and Radical feminism by recognition of social differences like
class, race and gender.

LIBERALISM AND LIBERAL FEMINISM:

Liberal feminism is a response to and development of Liberalism. Mainstream Liberalism 18 and
19th centuries offered a form of thought in which the individual is a descendent of the
Enlightenment concept of an autonomous rational being and political equality is associated with
that ability to reason.
The Enlightenment: collection of ideas which emerged in the West in 17-18 th centuries
opposed religious explanation (God as truth) and the divine right of kings in favour of secular
rationalism. According to Enlightenment thinking, all those who can reason are capable of
independent thought and action and hence should be able to participate in society. In practice,
all women and certain men were excluded from these claim as less capable of reason.
Mainstream Liberalism is a form of thought and a form of social regulation that has dominated
Western societies since the emergency of the Enlightenment.

Liberal feminism pointed out that Liberal, supposedly universal standards of humanity, equality
and reason were not in fact universal because women were denied full social participation,
public life and education.
Equality and liberty refer to human beings capable of reason, those who are deemed outside
reason are not quite human and not capable of receiving these rights and freedoms. They are
controlled and cannot be free within the private realm of the family and/or public legal terms.
Liberal feminism has pointed out that full social participation and public life has been denied to
women. Liberal feminism asserts that the universalist claims of the Enlightenment did not
extend to women.

LIBERAL FEMINISM: A BROAD GROUPING

Liberal feminists fo the 18-19th centuries such as Mary Wollstonecraft argued for women to be
included in this masculine project. She wanted women to attain what men of a similar class had
in terms of opportunities and access to public activities.
By the second wave of Feminism in the 1960-70s most women in Western countries had gained
basic social and political rights. The new women movement gave rise to a new form of Liberal
feminism Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Beatrice Faust. The were involved in the emergence
of new reform-oriented womens organisations such as NOW (National Organisation of Women)
and WEL (Womens Electoral Lobby). They argued that despite most gaining formal rights,
women remained confined to the domestic and subjected to constraints. The public worlds of
politics, business and the professions still remained gendered. This view is supported by the
ILO (International Labour Organisation).
Second wave Liberal feminism asserted that women continued to be marked as lesser, because
they were judged as woman not as individual human beings. Women continued to be
discriminated on the basis of their sex.
Liberal feminism, from its earliest forms to now, may be understood as focusing upon the
elimination of constraints facing women and gaining equal civil rights for women as public
citizens.
Women are assisted in fitting into workplace priorities rather than fundamentally confronting
gender inequities in public and domestic life.
Second wave Liberal feminism has tended to extend the more welfarist version of mainstream
Liberalims and counters the marked individualism of most of its forms = advancing collective or
social responsibility and attention to social justice.
Second waver Liberal feminisms concern with collective politics, with women as a class/group.
Younger feminists have critised this practical political collectivism with its focus on obstacles
and discrimination/oppression against women. This third wave Liberal feminists argue that the
1960-70s womens movement are inclined to overestimate social obstacles and are disinclined
to admit womens own responsibility for their lives and status. Third wave Liberal feminists,
some of whom are sometimes described as anti-feminist argued that women must take
individual responsibility and not hide behind a group status as victims. This return to the
individualism of mainstream Liberalism. In the work of some third-wave writers Katie Roiphe or
Rene Denfeld this analysis amounts to women-blaming but in others there remains a greater
recognition of women as collectively subject to discrimination.

THIRD-WAVE LIBERAL FEMINISM: NAOMI WOLF.

In Wolfs books on beauty and motherhood The Beauty Myth and Misconceptions she devotes
considerable attention to the social obstacles women face and in typical Liberal feminist style,
she urges social reform. Nevertheless like other third wave Liberal feminists, she also focuses
upon empowering individuals. Wolf suggests woman should seize the power that is on offer.
Her power feminism celebrates meritocratic social hierarchy, personal responsibility, public
success and the individual. Personal individual change flows on to a collective result. In her
traditional reiteration of Liberal conceptions of power and the self, empowered individual women
can alter power relations. There is no reference to the state or other social institution, but focus
on the spreading impact of empowered individuals who take control of their lives. She says in
Misconceptions that the greatest loss for many new mothers is the loss of self.

Naomi Wolf locates her power feminism as an extension of the Liberal feminism of 19 th century
thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft. In common with Wollstonecraft and most Liberal feminists,
she is little concerned with class or money or race, and appears primarily focused on the
problems of women like herself. She encourages women to form power groups to pool their
resources in the way men do. Like all Liberal feminists, she seeks to incorporate women and
Feminism into capitalism. Wolf even seeks to develop a brand logo for Feminism to sell it all the
better. The enthusiastic self-help and inspirational tone of Wolf work, combined with its
readability, highly effective in showing women in an increasingly conservative political climate
what Feminism might mean to them individually. Wolf is a kind of celebrity feminist, in an age of
celebrity worship.

CONCLUSION:
Liberal feminism is an assimilationist and reformist approach. It aims to fir women into existing
society and to remove obstacles to their public advancement. Its willingness to accommodate
and celebrate the virtues of mainstream capitalist democracies makes it a form of Feminism that
is possibly the only popularist platform for feminist thinking today.