Feminist Theory Research Paper

In understanding feminist theory or feminist philosophy, it is necessary to understand theory and why humans develop theories. Philosophy helps us understand what it means to be rational beings, to have knowledge, and to express virtues such as benevolence or justice. Humans develop theories to explain elements of reality, how we interact with one another, and who we are as persons.

However, the history of philosophy and those humans who have developed the theories has centered around male humans. Western philosophy is dominated by the writings and thinking of men and, therefore, it often reflects stereotypes or biases against women, or simply omits any point of view that might be particular to women and their lives. For example, basic concepts of political theory—autonomy, freedom, individualism, power, competition, justice— have been designed to fit the experiences of males in male-dominated cultures (Kourany 1998). Particularly reflecting the daily lives of men who do not birth and raise children or provide the major, mundane caretaking duties for a family, these ideas represented for many centuries the heights to which human nature should aspire. Conversely, traits associated with women for many centuries—emotionality, passivity, cooperation, nurturing, compassion—were thought of as inferior and weak. Clearly, here are philosophical ideas that favor the experiences of men over women, relegating women’s experiences to the inferior realm. Feminist theory, usually described as beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries along with women’s movements and suffrage movements, reconceives these historical theories and includes the experiences or general characteristics of women in addition to men. Women are, after all, the sex with the capacities of gestation, lactation, and menstruation. There are specific differences in the bodily functions of women and men. Traditionally, women have been associated with these bodily functions, associated with the ‘lesser’ of many hierarchical oppositions: mind/body, sacred/profane, reason/emotion, active/passive, spiritual/material. This duality—particularly where it privileges so-called ‘masculine’ virtues and values over ‘feminine’ ones—is rejected in feminist theory.

Feminist theory, as a ‘new’ way of thinking, is sometimes difficult to understand because it does not represent one uniform view. The basic premise of feminist theory is that women have been excluded from traditional philosophy; moreover, not only have women been excluded, but also people of ‘different’ economic classes, races, ethnicities, or nationalities. Feminist theory recognizes many flaws in traditional (Western, Judeo–Christian, European, male) philosophy and offers a new way of thinking about issues affecting humans and our world. Additionally, feminist theory operates with the understanding that our current society is patriarchal, structured by and favoring men, and that this patriarchal order should be overthrown and replaced with a system that emphasizes equal rights and just and fair distribution of resources for both sexes. Because this element of feminist theory particularly impacts political and moral theory and the basic functions of our society, there are, as mentioned above, different ‘political’ interpretations or understandings of feminist theory, ranging from so-called liberal perspectives to so-called global perspectives. So great is the diversity of feminist theory that some critics fail to see that no matter how they label their particular way of thinking, virtually all feminist theorists agree that in order to be ‘feminist’ a theory must (a) proceed on the assumption that women and men do not share precisely the same situation in life; (b) offer action guides ‘that will tend to subvert rather than reinforce the present systematic subordination of women’; (c) provide strategies for dealing with issues that arise in private or domestic life; and (d) ‘take the moral experience of all women seriously, though not, of course, uncritically’ (Jaggar 1992).

1. Different Feminist Theories

Liberal feminism receives its classic formulation in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and in John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, two nineteenth-century works. Liberal feminists find the roots of women’s oppression in the cultural constraints that hinder women from competing in the public world, including the worlds of politics, medicine, law, and finance. Because traditional society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less mentally and physically capable than men, society often excludes women from the arenas mentioned above. Insisting this is discriminatory, liberal feminists demand that society give women the same educational and occupational opportunities that men have. Liberal feminism is clearly reflected in the work of the National Organization of Women, current laws against sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace, and past lawsuits against same-sex schools that receive funding from the state, including female tax-payers.

In contrast to liberal feminism, radical feminism holds that the patriarchal system that oppresses women is so flawed it cannot be reformed, but must be completely eliminated. In overthrowing patriarchy’s institutions and assumptions, radical feminism singles out for attack social and cultural institutions such as the family and church, as well as traditional ideologies about the sexual and reproductive rights, responsibilities, needs, and preferences of men and women.

Initially, radical feminists—sometimes referred to as ‘radical libertarian feminists’ (Tong 1998)—aimed to explore what they saw as the pleasures of sex: consensual sex between men and women, lesbian sex, sex with both men and women, autoeroticism, sadomasochistic sex, and even intergenerational sex. They sought to free women from the beliefs that ‘good’ sex could be experienced only in a ‘love relationship,’ and that sex for sex’s sake was somehow ‘bad’ or promiscuous. In addition, radical libertarian feminists wished to help women avoid the burdens of human reproduction, going so far as to recommend that natural reproduction be replaced by technological reproduction. They agreed with thinkers such as Shulamith Firestone that no matter how much educational, political, and economic equality women achieve, nothing fundamental will change for women so long as their reproductive roles remain the same. Natural reproduction, said Firestone, is not in women’s best interests. Pregnancy is ‘barbaric,’ and natural childbirth is ‘at best necessary and tolerable’ and at worst ‘like shitting a pumpkin’ (Firestone 1970) and had best be replaced by in itro fertilization and ex utero gestation. What is more, insisted Firestone, natural reproduction is not in men’s or children’s interests either, for as soon as men and women are truly free to engage in polymorphous, perverse sex, it will no longer be necessary for men to display only masculine identities and behaviors and for women to display only feminine ones. Freed from their gender roles at the level of biology (i.e., reproduction), said Firestone, women would no longer have to be passive, receptive, and vulnerable, sending out ‘signals’ to men to dominate, possess, and penetrate them in order to keep the wheels of human procreation spinning. Instead, men and women would be encouraged to become either equally masculine and feminine (monoandrogynous) or as differently masculine and/or feminine as they wished (polyandrogynous). As a result, not only would men and women become androgynous persons, all of culture would become androgynous. Furthermore, in this newly-evolved androgynous culture, the categories of the technological and the aesthetic, together with the categories of the masculine and the feminine, would disappear through what Firestone termed ‘a mutual cancellation—a matter–antimatter explosion, ending with a poof!’ (Firestone 1970).

Firestone’s ‘poof’ proved too much not only for the general public and most liberal feminists, but also for some radical feminists, particularly those who were beginning to wonder whether women would really gain true liberty by engaging in permissive sex, refusing to bear children, and becoming androgynous persons, that is, persons who are free to develop both ‘female’ qualities—nurturance, compassion, tenderness, sensitivity, cooperativeness—and ‘male’ qualities— aggressiveness, leadership, initiative, competitiveness. This concerned group of radical feminists—sometimes called ‘radical cultural feminists’ (Tong 1998) or ‘essentialists’ (Alcoff 1988)—began to caution that sex, usually understood as heterosexual sex, is more dangerous than pleasurable for most women. They urged women to extricate themselves from the institution of so-called compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1994), which they viewed as ‘characterized by an ideology of sexual objectification (men as subjects masters; women as objects slaves) that supports male sexual violence against women’ (Ferguson 1984). Radical cultural feminists insisted that, as it has been experienced so far, heterosexuality is men’s sexuality. It is about men seeking to control women’s sexuality: representatively in pornography, and actually through the use of prostitutes or the selective harassment, rape, and physical abuse of women in their power. Only if women can free themselves from sex as men want it, can women discover what sex as women want it might be.

In addition to stressing the dangers of heterosexual relations and the pleasures of lesbian relations, radical cultural feminists emphasized that artificial reproduction would more likely disempower than empower women. They urged women to see artificial insemination by donor, in itro fertilization, and plans for an artificial womb not as new procreative options for women but as means for men to exercise complete control over women’s procreative powers—their ability to determine whether the human species will continue or not (Rich 1976, Ruddick 1984).

Finally, radical cultural feminists rejected the idea of androgyny as a desirable goal for feminists, replacing it with proposals to affirm women’s essential ‘femaleness’ (Echols 1983). Far from believing the liberated woman must exhibit both masculine and feminine traits and behaviors (traits or behaviors culturally or stereotypically associated with a particular gender), radical cultural feminists expressed the view that it is better to be female/feminine than it is to be male/masculine. Women should not try to be like men, they said. On the contrary, they should try to be more like women, emphasizing the values and virtues culturally associated with women including ‘interdependence, community, connection, sharing, emotion, body, trust, absence of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace, and life’ (Jaggar 1992)), and de-emphasizing the values and virtues culturally associated with men including ‘independence, autonomy, intellect, will, wariness, hierarchy, domination, culture, transcendence, product, asceticism, war, and death’ (Jaggar 1992). Women’s liberation, according to radical cultural feminists, exists in women’s conviction that it is better to be women than men.

Somewhat unconvinced by the liberal and radical feminist agendas for women’s liberation, Marxist– socialist feminists claim it is impossible for anyone, especially women, to achieve true freedom in a class-based society where the wealth produced by the powerless many ends up in the hands of the powerful few. With Engels, Marxist–socialist feminists insist women’s oppression originated in the introduction of private property, an institution that obliterated whatever equality of community humans had previously enjoyed. Private ownership of the means of production by relatively few persons, originally all male, inaugurated a class system whose contemporary manifestations are corporate capitalism and imperialism. Reflection on this state of affairs suggests that capitalism itself, not just the larger social rules that privilege men over women, is a primary cause of women’s oppression. If all women—rather than the ‘exceptional’ ones alone—are ever to be liberated, the two-headed beast of capitalist patriarchy or patriarchal capitalism (take your pick) must be killed. Agreeing with this thought, Marxist–socialist feminist Mitchell (1971) stressed that women’s condition is determined by the structures of production (as Marxist–socialists believe), reproduction and sexuality (as radical feminists believe), and the socialization of children (as liberal feminists believe). Women’s status and functions in all of these structures must change if women are to be men’s equals.

Common to liberal, radical, and Marxist–socialist feminist thought is a desire to view women as somehow the same, even if this sameness falls short of the extreme ‘essentialism’ of radical–cultural feminism. Women’s sisterhood and solidarity are the dominant notes of feminist theory as discussed so far. The problem with such a view of women is, however, that women are not only different from men, but also from each other depending on their class, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, and so forth. This point about women’s difference, about the tendency of some feminist theorists to confuse ‘Women’ with a particular kind of woman—perhaps white, Western, middle-class—is the core conviction of multicultural feminism. In the 1990s, the buzzword ‘cultural diversity’ affected social, legal, educational, and religious institutions in the US, and multicultural feminism emerged as part of this diversity. Multicultural feminists stress that although it is hard to be a woman, it is harder to be a woman of color than a white woman; a poor woman than a rich woman; a lesbian woman than a heterosexual woman; an old or average-looking woman than a young or beautiful woman. Repeatedly, multicultural feminists explain how the idea of ‘sameness’—the seemingly benevolent notion that ‘down deep’ we are all the same—could counter-intuitively be used as an instrument of oppression rather than liberation. In this connection, multicultural feminists reflect in particular upon the works of feminist theorists such as Spelman (1988) who pleaded with feminists not to make the mistake historian Kenneth Stampp made by asserting ‘that innately Negroes are, after all, only white men with black skins, nothing more, nothing less.’ Why, asked Spelman, is it that black men are really white men ‘down deep’ and not that white men are really black men ‘down deep?’ Could it be that white people still think ‘white’ is definitely the best way to be—the ‘gold standard’ for all people? Fearing the presence of some well-intentioned ‘Kenneth Stampps’ within the circle of feminist theorists—most of whom are white, relatively-privileged, and heterosexual— Spelman warned that ‘If, like Stampp, I believe that the woman in every woman is a woman just like me, and if I also assume that there is no difference between being white and being a woman, then seeing another woman ‘‘as a woman’’ will involve seeing her as fundamentally like the woman I am. In other words, the womanness underneath the Black woman’s skin is a white woman’s, and down inside the Latino woman is an Anglo woman waiting to burst through a cultural shroud’ (Spelman 1988). If feminist theorists really value equality, insisted Spelman, then they must take care not to use themselves as the measure of ‘womanhood.’

In addition to multicultural feminists, so-called postmodern feminists emphasize women’s differences. For example, Julia Kristeva, a postmodern feminist, notes that feminism has neglected multicultural diversity. Oliver, author of an article entitled Julia Kriste a’s Feminist Revolutions, explains:

Feminists in the United States are struggling with this very issue. The feminist movement has had to realize that it is a white middle class movement that has worked to exclude women whose interests and needs are somehow different. Paradoxically as soon as feminism defines ‘woman’ it excludes all sorts of women (Oliver 1993).

Inspired by a variety of antifoundationalists, especially the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, postmodern feminists resolve the old philosophical debates about the nature of reality—is it ‘one’ or ‘many’?—decidedly in the direction of ‘many-ness.’ Along the way postmodern feminists such as Helene Cixous challenge Western dualistic thinking itself (reason/emotion, mind body, male/female) as the primary cause of human oppression, seeking to liberate human beings from a rigid conceptual grid that privileges some of society’s members over others (Cixous and Clement 1986). Insisting that not being one of society’s favored members (white, rich, heterosexual, male) is an advantage, postmodern feminists stress the advantages of being rejected, unwanted, shunned, frozen out, disadvantaged, unprivileged, abandoned, dislocated, and otherwise marginalized. They claim that precisely because women have not been socially favored, women can lead the revolution to let human differences flourish.

Reconsidering their emphasis on the idea of differences as the ‘essential’ description of the human condition, some multicultural and postmodern feminists now wonder whether they might have gone too far in their rejection of the idea of sameness, thereby endangering feminism’s ability to speak on behalf of the best interests of women in general. After all, if women have nothing more in common than two X chromosomes, it is conceivable that women share few, if any, interests in common. If women do not share common interests, then it makes little, if any, sense to insist, for example, that pornography degrades women or that female genital mutilation harms women or that confining women to the domestic sphere limits their human development. If women are essentially different, if they are more different from each other than similar to each other, then ‘issues’ affecting women in general do not exist.

Increasingly convinced that, like the idea of sameness, the idea of difference can become destructive, many multicultural and postmodern feminists have cast aside or at least modified their perspectives in order to join hands with so-called global feminists and ecofeminists. Although global feminists are well aware that women in the US are very different from women in Kenya or Thailand, for example, they are nevertheless inclined to believe that the women in these countries share enough common interests to become each other’s political allies and moral supports. In a recent article, feminist theorist Okin (1998) reminds ‘First World’ feminist theorists that feminist activists, particularly those in the ‘Third World,’ are finding that women across the world do have a lot in common. Okin stresses that at several international meetings, women attending from countries throughout the world acknowledged ‘that women (everywhere) are greatly affected by laws and customs having to do with sexuality, marriages, divorce, child custody, and family life as a whole;’ that they ‘are much more likely to be rendered sexually vulnerable than men and boys;’ and that their ‘work tends to be valued considerable less highly than … men’s work’ (Okin 1998). First World women, insists Okin, should work with Third World women to achieve for all women the kind of freedom and well-being some women already have. To do so is not an exercise in cultural imperialism, but a simple response to a call for assistance.

Okin’s case for cooperation between First World women and Third World women is a cogent one. But feminists who are sincere about eliminating all forms of human oppression, beginning with gender oppression, will need to do more than talk about the need to help all women achieve all that is rightfully theirs as women. Privileged feminists must, as many global feminists have suggested, be prepared to give up some of their material luxuries so that women far more oppressed than they can attain all of their necessities (Mies 1993a). Stressing that there is only so much of any one material good to be distributed among the world’s population, global feminists claim that feminists must take the lead in living more simply so that life on earth can continue through the next millennium and more. Bluntly put, global feminists maintain that if feminists are really serious about ending all oppression, beginning with gender oppression, they must stop being oppressors themselves.

Of course, it is not easy to stop being an oppressor, particularly if one intends to actively carry out the theories of ecofeminists. According to ecofeminists, human beings are connected not only to each other, but also to the nonhuman world: animal and even vegetative. Unfortunately, we do not always acknowledge our responsibilities to each other, let alone to the nonhuman world. As a result, we deplete the world’s natural resources with our machines, pollute the environment with our toxic fumes, and stockpile weapons of total destruction. In so doing, we delude ourselves that we are controlling nature successfully to benefit ourselves. In point of fact, says ecofeminist King (1995), nature is already rebelling, and each day the human self is impoverished as yet another forest is ‘detreed’ and yet another animal species is murdered to extinction. The only way not to destroy ourselves, insist ecofeminists, is to strengthen our relationships to each other and the nonhuman world by refusing to engage in acts of violence, particularly warfare; refusing to eat animal flesh; and refusing to lead luxurious lifestyles. The question remains, of course, whether all feminists are required to lead lives of self-restraint so that not only gender equity but human equity is achieved; or whether, instead, ecofeminist are feminist ‘saints’ and ‘heroes’ that all feminists need not follow.

2. Feminist Theory And Other Disciplines

Many of the feminist theories described above center on political or social sciences and systems. Although most work has been accomplished in the social sciences, and much of the feminist movement in the past 200 years has emphasized these areas, feminist theory impacts every discipline and particularly impacts the increasingly important areas of science, medicine, technology, religion, ethics, education, as well as philosophy.

Since it is impossible to describe in a few pages the ways in which feminist theory has transformed the entirety of human knowledge, I focus here only on the way it has affected two of philosophy’s many subfields: epistemology and ontology. Feminist theory challenges the traditional ontological assumption that the more separate the ‘self’ is from others, the more autonomous, unique, successful, and superior that self is. Traditionally, philosophers have portrayed ‘autonomous man’ as a biological male—an independent self geared toward maximizing his self-interest effectively and efficiently. Such a self is always on guard against the ominous ‘other’ who many interfere with his life projects. Even when the ‘other’ convinces him to establish cooperative relations in a community, autonomous man proceeds cautiously, always seeing every individual he encounters as a potential threat and competitor for resources. Feminist theory, however, offers a different interpretation of how people come to understand their ‘selves.’ According to feminist ontologists, including Whitbeck (1989), people come to understand their selves through others, not against them. We are historical creatures, shaped by our relationships with other people, our parents, siblings, friends, and colleagues. Although we differ from one another, we relate to each other reasonably well because we also have much in common. This different ontology would result in a different view of the world—one in which we work together for a common good instead of competing against each other in order to secure the best only for ourselves.

Similarly, feminist theory impacts the field of epistemology. As described by Code (1998), ‘the issue is less of doing philosophy ‘‘in a feminist voice’’, or even ‘‘in a different voice’’—as some feminists propose— than of discerning whose voices have been audible, and whose muffled, in the articulation of prevailing theories …’ As with the impact of feminist theory on other disciplines such as history, literature, or art, we find that the story has been told from the male point of view, using a male’s voice, and using the experiences of males. At least in the Western world, philosophers and other theoreticians (mostly men until relatively recently) have claimed that the only way to achieve true knowledge is by distancing one’s self from the object of one’s inquiry and subjecting it to the powers of dispassionate reason. This style of knowing is in estimation of many feminists ‘masculine’ or ‘male.’ Because men tend to conceive of themselves as separate, autonomous selves, they favor ways of thinking that permit them to keep their study subjects at arm’s length. Keller (1983, 1985) notes that in science, for example, objectivity has been defined in terms of the separation of the subject (the scientist) from the object of study. She believes it is more than coincidence that the men developing science conceived their methodology in terms of what was emphasized as ‘masculine’—separative autonomy. Emotional connections with one’s subject matter were seen as contaminating knowledge—as subjective, biased, ‘feminine.’ Keller insists, however, that emotional connections sometimes yield useful insights. Indeed, some of our deepest insights come from the ability to empathize and to connect with those whose behavior we study; and because women typically understand themselves as intimately and intricately connected to others, it stands to reason that women might be able to see, or first see dimensions of reality to which many men are initially oblivious (Keller 1983, 1985).

3. First, Second, And Third Waves Of Feminism

Feminist theory, in sum, is an evolving set of ideas. Feminist theory—or ‘academic feminism’ (Nussbaum 1999) in America—historically has been ‘allied to the practical struggle to achieve justice and equality for women. Feminist theory has been understood by theorists as not just fancy words on paper; theory is connected to proposals for social change’ (Nussbaum 1999). As a discipline or philosophical approach to other disciplines, feminist theory may not be separated from the very real struggles of the feminist movement. At this point, the beginning of the twenty-first century, the feminist movement has accomplished great equality in many areas, including politics, the workplace, and the legal system. However, there is much more work needed for true equality in all spheres of life. Feminist theory—understood here as the scholarship or thinking behind such practical feminist actions such as the reform of rape, domestic violence, or sexual harassment laws, for example—changes according to the position of women in society and the world. Just as the feminist movement is often described as having three waves—we are in the midst of the third wave now—feminist theory has evolved similarly. The first wave of US feminism is rooted in eighteenth and nineteenth-century liberal thought as articulated by Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor Mill, in particular. As described above, liberal feminism emphasized the equal rational and moral abilities of men and women, and the fact that women must be able to leave the domestic realm and enter the public realm if they are to use these equal abilities. One of the major issues of first-wave feminism in the US was securing for women the right to vote, that is, the right to participate as equal members in our political society.

Second-wave feminism centered on the fact that suffrage would never make women equal to men unless women had the same educational, occupational, and professional opportunities that men had. In addition to participating in the public realm, women must be freed from obligations in the domestic world, including sexual and reproductive obligations. Major issues in second-wave feminism included birth control and abortion, and attacks on the images portraying women as sex-objects or baby machines.

Third-wave feminism is very similar to the global and ecofeminist theories described above. In particular, third-wave feminism emphasizes that the feminist movement in the US does not represent feminism all over the world. Third-wave feminism is aware of women’s differences, including race, class, and national origin; but it is also aware that women across the world have much in common, and that women can work together as equals to achieve the particular forms of freedom and well-being that mean the most to them. Like first and second-wave feminists, third-wave feminists hunger for justice. However, their vision of justice is exceptionally large and demanding for it is based on the assumption that oppression, including gender oppression, will continue to define the human condition unless feminists and other like-minded theorists and activists take it upon themselves to convince humankind as a whole that in order for each person to have enough, no person can ‘have it all.’ According to ecofeminist Mies, this thought was best expressed by Kamla Bhasin, an Indian feminist. Bhasin stated that:

sustainable development … is not compatible with the existing profit-and-growth oriented development paradigm. And this means that the standard of living of the North’s (First World) affluent societies cannot be generalized. This was already clear to Mahatma Gandhi sixty years ago, who, when asked by a British journalist whether he would like India to have the same standard of living as Britain, replied: ‘To have its standard of living a tiny country like Britain had to exploit half the globe. How many globes will India need to exploit to have the same standard of living?’ From an ecological and feminist perspective, moreover, even if there were more globes to be exploited, it is not even desirable that this development paradigm and standard of living was generalized, because it has failed to fulfill its promises of happiness, freedom, dignity and peace, even for those who have profited from it’ (see quotation in Mies 1993b).

Emerging between the lines of Bhasin’s words is, it would seem, the profile of the ideal third-wave feminist, a feminist for a truly new millennium.

4. Conclusion

Feminist theory includes many ideas, and may be frustrating for someone seeking a one-sentence answer to the question ‘what makes a view feminist?’ However, this characteristic of feminism is not new or particular to contemporary, third-wave, global feminism or ecofeminism. In 1913, a woman wrote: ‘I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is … I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute’ (Gibbs 1992). In essence, feminist theory is a set of ideas originating with the belief that women are not subordinate to men or only valuable in relationship to men (servant, caretaker, mother, or prostitute), and that the disciplines, systems, and structures in place in our world today may be changed for the better if infused with a feminist point of view. But it is more than this. Feminist theory sets an agenda for action, the aim of which is justice and equality for women everywhere and, of course, also for the men and children to whom they are inextricably linked.

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