Women's Studies 101 Exam 1

Front 1

What are the defining features of Liberal Feminism?

Back 1

-reforming the current system to expand educational, political, and economic opportunity for women

-generally included only white women

-"first wave"

Front 2

What are the defining features of Radical Feminism?

Back 2

-fundamental transformation of all institutions is needed to change the complex structure on which gender inequality rests

-gender is the foundation for the unequal distribution of a society’s rewards and privileges

-promotes "lesbianism" as one of the solutions to inequality

-using the term “the personal is the political” and the strategy of “consciousness-raising”

Front 3

What are the defining features of Socialist Feminism?

Back 3

-sometimes also called “materialist feminisms”

-consider male/female relations the result of exploitive economic system of Western capitalism

-equality is not possible within the existing organization of private property and class division, which form the basis for female oppression
(falls under radical feminism)

-deriving from Frederick Engels and Karl Marx’s theories, consider women the first oppressed social class

Front 4

What are the defining features of Intersectional/Multiracial Feminism?

Back 4

-spearheaded by women of color in the United States in the 1970s
-characterized by its international perspective, attention to interlocking oppressions
-support of coalition politics
-revised two important tenets of the women’s movement of the 60s and 70s: “sisterhood is powerful” and “the personal is the political”
-may also be called “women of color feminisms.”

Front 5

What are the defining features of Decolonizing Feminism?

Back 5

-extending analysis of gender, race, and class to include the negative effects of Western colonization/imperialism
-includes third world feminism, postcolonial feminism, and transnational feminism, and continues to place important emphasis on intersectionality, positionality (or social location), and the necessity of solidarity and coalition

Front 6

What are Identity Politics?

Back 6

The black feminist belief that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics come directly out of her own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression

Front 7

What is "The Personal is Political?"

Back 7

-a well-known principal of second wave feminism/women’s movement that was first used by civil rights and New Left activists

-abortion, battery, unemployment, birth, death, and illness are actually deeply political issues

-used this principal to validate individual women’s experiences and recognizing and understanding discrimination against women as a group

-reworked by Black Feminists to be "The Political is Personal"

Front 8

What is Biological Determinism?

Back 8

The theory that a group’s biological or genetic makeup shapes its social, political, and economic destiny.

Front 9

What is Social Constructionism?

Back 9

The theory that behavior is learned through childhood socialization, every day experience, education and the media
-differences among women’s and men’s roles are taught not innate, and variations in gender roles differ from one society to another and change over relatively short historical spans

Front 10

What is the Sex/Gender Binary?

Back 10

The social definition of biological sex categories and gender behavior categories as dichotomies, male and female for sex, and boy/man or girl/woman for gender
-extends to sexuality, which is conventionally understood in the narrow, dichotomous terms of heterosexuality/homosexuality
-sets up “good” versus “bad” or “normal” versus “abnormal” standards

Front 11

What is Sex?

Back 11

Different biological characteristics identified at birth and customarily assigned to “male” or “female” categories.

Front 12

What is Gender?

Back 12

The cultural definitions given to physical differences assigned to categories “male” and “female.”

Front 13

What is Intersex?

Back 13

“A general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male”

Front 14

What is Ideology?

Back 14

A system of ideas or beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious. Feminist political goals challenge dominant ideologies, especially prevailing ideologies of gender, race, sexuality, class, and nation.

Front 15

What is Hegemony?

Back 15

The process by which people come to accept the dominant social structure (hierarchies and inequalities) or the “status quo” as appropriate, inevitable, or even natural.

Front 16

What is Social Location?

Back 16

-refers to the social features of one’s identity incorporating individual, community, societal, and global factors
-how we are classified by larger societal institutions

Front 17

What is Privilege?

Back 17

According to Roxane Gay, privilege is “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor” (16).

Front 18

What is Patriarchy?

Back 18

-“A family, social group, or society in which men hold power and are dominant figures. Patriarchal power in the United States plays out in the family, the economy, the media, religion, law, and electoral politics”

-male supremacy

Front 19

How are systems of inequality maintained?

Back 19

-using the values of dominant group as supposedly neutral standard or norm
-using terms that distinguish subordinate from dominant group (e.g. “non-white,” “minority”)
-stereotyping
-exoticizing and romanticizing, including cultural appropriation

Front 20

What are some other types of feminism?

Back 20

Transfeminism, Queer feminism, Ecofeminism, Black Feminism, Chicana Feminism, Asian American Feminism, and Indigenous, Tribal , and Native American Feminism

Front 21

What is Transmisogyny?

Back 21

Is an intersection of two forms of oppression that transgender women are subjected to: transphobia and misogyny

Front 22

What is Non-binary?

Back 22

Is a catch-all category for gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine

Front 23

What is the Cult of Domesticity/Cult of True Womanhood?

Back 23

A view about women in the 1800s. They believed that women should stay at home and should not do any work outside of the home. There were four things they believed that women should be:1. Piety

2. Purity

3. Submissiveness

4. Domesticity

Front 24

What is the "First Wave?"

Back 24

-first wave of feminism from 1840-1920

-started at an international anti-racist conference where the female delegates weren't allowed to speak

Front 25

What is the "Second Wave?"

Back 25

-1960's-1970's

-not historically accurate in the timeline and excludes WOC

-

Front 26

What is the "Third Wave?"

Back 26

-1990's

Front 27

What is Intersectionality?

Back 27

The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage

Front 28

What is the Matrix of Oppression?

Back 28

A sociological paradigm that explains issues of oppression that deal with race, class, and gender, which, though recognized as different social classifications, are all interconnected

Front 29

What is "Sisterhood is Powerful?"

Back 29

-assumes that all women have the same experiences
-coincided with "personal is political"
-attempted to unite women feminists

Front 30

What is Cisprivilege?

Back 30

Defined as the "set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity"

Front 31

What are the Oppression Olympics?

Back 31

A term used when two or more groups compete to prove themselves more oppressed than each other

Front 32

What are the Politics of Respectability?

Back 32

Refers to attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as being continuous and compatible with mainstream values rather than challenging the mainstream for its failure to accept difference

Front 33

What is Racial Bonding?

Back 33

-the unspoken "bond" between people against other races(racist)

Front 34

What are the Paths of Least Resistance?

Back 34

-going along with the "the system" rather than fighting it

Front 35

What is Rape Culture and the Predator/Prey Mindset?

Back 35

-cultural idea that men's role is sexual predator and women's is sexual object

Front 36

What is Whiteness?

Back 36

-the cultural ideal

Front 37

What is White Supremacy?

Back 37

-the dominance of white culture which is believed by some to be deserved and elite

Front 38

What is White Privilege?

Back 38

-unearned privileges of white people as the dominant race

Front 39

What is Normativity?

Back 39

-means relating to an ideal standard or model, or being based on what is considered to be the normal or correct way of doing something

Front 40

What is White Guilt?

Back 40

-the individual or collective guilt felt by white people for harm resulting from racist treatment of ethnic minorities by whites both historically and currently

-lacks action or call for change

Front 41

What is Racial Formation?

Back 41

-used to look at race as a socially constructed identity, where the content and importance of racial categories are determined by social, economic and political forces

Front 42

What are the main points of "Who is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism" by Gunn Allen?

Back 42

-white feminism stems from Native women
-around 1600 tribal women boycotted lovemaking and childbearing in order to reclaim control over warfare
-tribes were gynarchys
-if America embraced Native traditions women would become central, distribution of goods and power would be egalitarian, the elderly would be protected, ideas of beauty would broaden, and destruction of nature would stop

Front 43

What are the main points of "Declaration of Sentiments?"

Back 43

-modeled after the declaration of independence

-established the demands for social and political equality of women by those in attendance of Seneca Falls in 1848

-radical opposition to the "Cult of true womanhood"

Front 44

What are the main points of "A Black Feminist Statement" by the Combahee River Collective?

Back 44

-established the ideals of Black Feminists of the 70's
-rejected lesbian separatism
-argues that true freedom for women of color would mean true freedom from oppression of all

-also focus on racismand classism

Front 45

What are the main points of "Multiracial Feminism" by Thompson?

Back 45

-traditional "second wave" feminism ignores women of color and suggests their movements happened only after white women
-period most historians identify as the decline was actually the height of WOC feminism
-feminism should be trying to free ALL women

Front 46

What are the main points of "The Social Construction of Gender" by Lorber?

Back 46

-"That which is defined, separated out, and isolated from is 'A' and pure. 'Not-A' is necessarily impure, a random catchall, to which nothing is external except and and the principle of order that separates it from 'Not-A'."
-white middle class is A, all others are A and considered "other"
-defines Not-A as somehow lacking the valuable qualities of A

Front 47

What are the main points of "Identities and Social Location?"

Back 47

-social location establishes how you are categorized by institutions

-while identity is how you personally identify in your world

-global, macro, meso, and micro levels of institutions

-how dehumanization and marginalization happens through usisng a dominant group as the standard, terms that distinguish between dominant and other, stereotyping, exoticizing, and romanticizing

Front 48

What are the main points of "Patriarchy, The System" by Johnson?

Back 48

-everyone takes part in shaping the system of patriarchy and in turn influenced by it through socialization and paths of least resistance
-one cannot be "outside" the system, only strengthen or challenge it

Front 49

What are the main points of "A Question of Class" by Allison?

Back 49

-there is a huge disparity in the working class in experiencing poverty
-it is not romantic, but rather violent, shameful, and stubborn

Front 50

What are the main points of "Peculiar Benefits?"

Back 50

-nearly everyone in the developing world has something someone else doesn't, we don't have absolute poverty
-we resent accusations of privilege because it implies a lack of struggle
-we need to knowledge our privilege and understand the consequences to move foreward

Front 51

What are the main points of "The Politics of Respectability?"

Back 51

-it is often suggested that if people of color just "act white" they won't experience racism

Front 52

What are the main points of "The Racism We All Carry?"

Back 52

-there are unwritten rules about how to "be racist" that cross cultural lines at times

Front 53

What are the main points of "Women's Sexuality?"

Back 53

-categorized as either the virgin or the whore
-white is the ideal so all else is "other" and fetishized
-even among these fetishized groups, there is still variations of the virgin and the whore

Front 54

What are the main points of "What We Hunger For?"

Back 54

-we like stories that offer hope to those of us who struggle
-there are unwritten rules about sexuality that include the double standard as well as not talking about women's sexuality or experience, that a man's story or opinion isn't questioned, and that it's the victims fault

Front 55

What are the main points of "The Trouble With Prince Charming?"

Back 55

-Christian Grey is an abusive dick hole
-we want fairy tales that suggest a boring man that is "perfect" that we must be willing to sacrifice ourselves and desires for

Front 56

What are the main points of "A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories?"

Back 56

-people want to put each other into categories even if it's none of their business and private
-meanwhile people want to stand up and "be counted" into these groups
--it's easier to digest the "perfect gay"

Front 57

What are the main points of On the Complications of Negotiating Dyke Femininity" by Somerson?

Back 57

-there is a distinct difference between butch and femme
-it comes back to the categories we "need" to put people into
-femininity is a construct

Front 58

What are the main points of "Why Nice Guys Finish Last" by Serano?

Back 58

-predator/prey mindset is perpetuated by men and women
-men are "supposed" to be sexual aggressors while women sexual objects

Front 59

What are the main points of "Skirt Chasers" by Serano?

Back 59

-trans women are depicted as either deceptive or pathetic
-trans women are stereo typically depicted as feminine while still considered "really a man"