How was women’s work perceived in North American Indian societies? How is this different
from Western society today?What are some of the reasons why a man might desire a relationship with a male gender variant?Why does the author believe that Judeo-Christian societies are more likely to have a gender/sexual dichotomy vs. North American Indians?
Constructing Femininity in Western SocietyMernissi comes to the conclusion, in paragraph 13, that “size 6” is a more violent restriction on women than the Muslim veil. What are her reasons for thinking this?Please explain the following quote: “But how does the system work? Why do women accept it? Of all the possible explanations, I like that of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu the best…he introduces a concept he calls la violence symbolique. ‘Symbolic violence is a form of power which is hammered directly on the body, and as if by magic, without any apparent physical constraint. But this magic works only because it activates the codes pounded in the deepest layers of the body… Women relinquish what Bourdieu calls the ordinary signs of sexual hierarchy, such as old age and a larger body. By so doing, he explains, they spontaneously accept the subservient position. Bourdieu calls this spontaneity ‘the magic enchantment’.Know the history of trends for Black women’s hair, including wigs, weaves, scarves, and perms and how they’ve been associated with slavery, social class, and Eurocentric/hegemonic beauty norms.What does hegemony mean?
Feminism
→liberal feminism/1″ wave (late 19th to early 20th centuries)
The Enlightenment
Abigail Adams
Doctrine of Coverture
Grimke
The Declaration of Sentiments
Cult of Domesticity
“Free Love” advocates (Woodhull specifically)
Voluntary motherhood
Rosie the Riveter
Friedan and the Feminine Mystique
→radical feminism/2nd wave (60s→→90s)
Focus on the body (rape, sexual harassment, battered women, domestic violence, birth control, abortion)
“The personal is political”
Women’s oppression as the earliest and most fundamental form of oppression
→→Marxist feminism
Oppression based on social class is the earliest and most fundamental form of oppression
Lenin: Women as domestic slaves
The key to women’s equality is the abolition of private property. Why?
The industrialization and socialization of housework and childrearing,
