Both writings from Rory Dicker and Gay talk about what it means to be a feminist and what society has required in order to fit the appearance of a feminist. The definition of feminism and a woman’s role is one that needs to belong in the hands of the people who are constantly feeling the ‘shackles’ of a White, heterosexual male dominated world.
Because of the feminism of the 1920s, I am able to go to school, own a credit card, and hold property. I also can thank the feminists of the 1960s and 70s because of them, I am able to call a rape crisis hotline and get an abortion in select states (thanks Alito). What else could I, a White woman in 2024, still possibly need? Well, in a Post-Roe era, pregnant people are imprisoned for miscarrying after a Catholic hospital told her to go home. We live in a day in age, where native women are assaulted and murdered at a higher rate than any other women. Black and Brown women face medical racism and are never taken seriously over life-threatening symptoms. Since we are talking about never being taken seriously, a 5’6” man went on TikTok to tell his audience he could ‘dog walk’ the 6’0” point guard of the Iowa Hawkeyes Caitilin Clark. Every day, I go into my minimum wage job to argue with male coworkers how I love being single and could not possibly imagine myself in a relationship. Yet, “I just haven’t found the right man yet”. However, the single men are living out their bachelor years, where I am just waiting for someone to ‘wife me up’. Feminism has come far, but in terms of ‘equality’, women have barely scratched the surface of potential.
Rory Dicker has her Doctorate in English from Vanderbilt University and in her novel A History of U.S Feminisms, she highlights and analyzes the three major waves of feminism from the exclusionary women’s suffrage movement to the contemporary riot grrls of the 90s. The social inequalities discussed previously suggest that feminism is still urgent. However, feminism according to the American Heritage Dictionary is flat and lacks the true meaning of feminism. Women aren’t looking for equality in an androcentric space (who built that system of constant economic and social equality?). Dicker highlights two definitions, one being from Barbra Smith stating, “Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women… Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement” (Dicker 7). Being transparent, I had no idea what female self-aggrandizement meant at the time of reading as well. Female self-aggrandizement is drawing attention to your own importance, which is a main critique of White feminism in this fourth wave of feminism. This idea of self-aggrandizement questions whether women as whole are even qualified to have the same interests and desires. By understanding this, most would find it almost impossible to liberate all women as a Black women may not have the same desires as an Asian Pacific Islander Queer woman. However, Dicker seems to dance around the cause behind this impossibility as patriarchal White supremacy. Now, I can’t blame all my problems on White, heterosexual men; however, I can blame the system of oppression that we continually uphold. This power dynamic between man and women has been around since Adam and Eve or why we see Medusa as a monster but never Poseidon.
This definition is what our author seems to favor about power dynamics and feminism. “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination” (Dicker 8). Our author concentrated on the domination of the female sex that has frequently shackled women into places of domesticity and obedience. The idea of domination, not just of the sexes, but the domination of one group upon another. This definition delineates that imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism are all notions that feminists should reject. Dicker travels through time by critiquing and analyzing how power dynamics can play when it comes to identifying oneself as a “feminist”. Feminists at the time encompassed more than just the right to vote for women, it encompassed “civil rights as well as opportunities for professional work, economic self-sufficiency, self-expression, and sexual freedom” (Dicker 12). This important idea was further conceptualized in the second wave of feminism during the 1960’s and 70’s. It was less about where ‘White middle-class women should fit into society’ and more about social and gender reconstruction of society. These second-wave feminists such as Shulamith Firestone, “understood women’s status as separate from their biology” and pushed towards a movement that women are not just babymakers (Dicker 13). These stereotypical power dynamics forced on women, such as domestication, are side effects of the social power systems that men dominate. Susan Doughlas thought that “the personal is political” meaning that the restriction on a women’s freedom from the power dynamic is meant for public discourse (Dicker 14). Those who are in power, husbands and bosses, are the ones that make gender-based assumptions that continually haunt women. Feminism pushes this ideology away and emphasizes the need for public action in order to work towards liberation.
As Dicker discussed in the first few pages of her chapter, society places these depictions of what a feminist and a women’s role is supposed to look. However, Gay returns the conversation back into the hands of feminist themselves. Feminists aren’t supposed to be these individual celebrities placed on a “Feminist Pedestal” (Gay). Feminism is what the individual makes of it. It’s not a singular definition found in the Oxford Dictionary, but a “collective of individuals working towards liberation in a patriarchal society” (Gay). Due to power relations in a patriarchal society, there are several bad connotations that come with the word feminist. As Gay points out, many reject calling themselves feminists because all they see is the “bad figurehead”. By focusing on the individuals in a public discourse, we can see feminism as what the people are, flawed (Gay). In the era of reclaiming words, feminism is one that needs to be reclaimed to the imperfect, flawed individual working with other imperfect, flawed individuals towards the liberation from patriarchal shackles.
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
titsay
kaledo-art
