Textuality and

Gender. From
Feminism to
Queer Writing
Feminism
• One of the fundamental “minority” fronts in
postmodernity.

• Generally, feminism is a series of struggles,

extended in time, for the recognition of the
equality of women in all areas of life.

• Encompasses both political and social mobilization

AND intellectual work (in history, literature,
philosophy etc).
• Not a 20th Century Phenomenon alone:
• 15th century: Querelles des femmes, Christine de Pizan)
• 17th century: Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

- Feminism: a reform movement in 19th Century USA:

- Margaret Fuller, Women in the 19th Century, 1842

- 1830-1864: Abolitionist Feminism (Grimké sisters, Sojourner Truth).

 Feminism: usually historicized in (3) Waves
• 1st wave: Female suffrage struggles

• Demand for the vote is constant throughout the 19th

Century, but the “suffragette” moment lasts from the turn of
the Century to 1920

• 1920: 19th Amendment of the US Constitution passed:

women granted the vote.

• Leaders: Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

and Susan B. Anthony.
• Adjacent feminist struggles: equal contract and
property rights (women’s property ought to
remain theirs, instead of passing automatically to
their husbands).

• Suffragism: accompanied by rise of the “New

Woman” (independent, sportive, often self-
supporting, at least part of her life).

• And followed by the flapper era: two styles of

women empowerment.
Second Wave Feminism: 1960s to 1980s
(roughly)
• Arises as a response to a setback in women’s progress
towards equality and emancipation.

• From relative independence in the interwar period

(1920s-1940s) to gradual retreat to the home, the
family, husband, children etc after WWII.

• 1920s-1940s: rise in number of women in the

professions, social and political activism, art, research
. . . But there is a post-war backlash.
• Return of veterans: men seek / need to repopulate a
productive apparatus temporarily dominated by women.

• Coercion of women back to the house: by means of

ideological work.

• (Remember: “postmodernity” is the time of the societies

of control: run by coercion, not by open prohibition or
“discipline”).

• The “feminine mystique”: an ideology of femininity

dominant in the post-war years analyzed by Betty Friedan
in the book of the same name.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
(1963)
Friedan: influenced by Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
(1946; 1953 English translation)
Feminine mystique:
• Women fulfil themselves as wives and mothers (not
through education or work).

• Too much education makes women unsuitable for

their true role and place in society.

• Careerism makes women neurotic, lonely, and bitter.

• Plus: the home is a lovely place. Made attractive by

the media, advertisement, and a huge industry of
appliances, TVs, etc etc. (War industries recycled).
• Withdrawal to the house: linked
to “suburbanization” of the US.

• White flight: city centers are

seen as undesirable; the
suburbs are healthier and more
pleasant.

• Yet Friedan discovered that

suburban middle-class life was
not a paradise.

• Suburban bliss was often a flop.

• Friedan studied women who followed the path of
suburban bliss / the feminine mystique (had given
everything up for husband + children + lovely
suburban home).

• She often found depression, agitation, nervousness,

use of tranquilizers or amphetamines (downers or
uppers, or both), use of alcohol, indulgence in sex
affairs, at times suicidal tendencies.

• She called it “the problem with no name.”

• One of Friedan’s interviewees (a PhD in
Anthropology turned housewife): “I wash the dishes,
rush the older chilren off to school, dash out in the
yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in
to make a phone call about a committee meeting,
help the youngest child build a block house, spend
fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers so I can
be well-informed, then scamper down to the
washing machines where my thrice-weekly laundry
includes enough clothes to keep a primitive village
going for an entire year. By noon I’m ready for a
padded cell. Very little of what I’ve done has been
really necessary or important.”
• Then why do all this? Be the frantic housewife? The perfect mother? The
sexy housewife? Have the best garden in the neighborhood …?

• . . . and, in the meantime, NOT do anything that you need (intellectually,

emotionally) or want to do for yourself?

• The answer is—again—because of the effect of an ideology.

• The struggles of 2nd Wave Feminism are largely
ideological.

• They consist of an examination of the functioning of

the mind-set, convictions, prejudices etc etc that
underpin patriarchy.

• Ideas have social effects. Society is the effect of

ideology. (Remember Louis Althusser?)

• Women are not “forced” to live in certain ways as

much as expected to and they internalize these
expectations.
• Patriarchal (anti-feminist) ideology is presented as “the natural thing”.

• “Things have always been this way. Women have always . . . .”

• (Roland Barthes: ideology works by turning history into nature.

• Temporary states of affairs are presented as unmovable, natural

arrangements).
• Feminists engaged in their own ideological struggle, aimed at
empowering women. How?

• Through community organization: consciousness raising

groups, women’s associations, women’s reading groups,
women’s spaces.

• And through cultural feminism: women-centered culture:

women’s music festivals; women’s art, film, literature.

• Part of this: recovery of women’s history, women’s literature,

women’s art, women’s crafts (considered minor and
forgettable). . . .
. . . Feminist mainstream magazines: Ms.
• Ideological work is important HOWEVER,
patriarchal oppresion remains also physical and
economic:

• Women were still subordinated in almost all

aspects of life (absent from high professional
positions, discriminated in all areas of
employment, paid less, seen as accessories with
no life of their own, etc.)

• And violence against women is not exactly a thing

of the past in the 1960s (or now . . .).
Second Wave Feminism: two “branches”

• Equal Rights Feminism:

• (merely) against discrimination
• basically “assimilationist”: to incorporate women into the mainstream of
American life”.

• Radical Feminism:
• links feminism to broader forms of oppression
• not to assimilate into the mainstream but to TRANSFORM the mainstream
• Equal Rights Femism’s most visible organization:
N.O.W. (National Organization of Women), founded in
1966 by Friedan (first president).

• “The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring

women into full participation in the mainstream of
American society now, exercising all the privileges and
responsibilities thereof . . . .”

• Focus: education, employment, political

representation, positive media images of women.
Radical Feminism
• Did not have a national organization but several collectives:
Redstockings (NY), Cell 16 (Boston), The Feminists (NY), NY Radical
Feminists (NY), The Furies (D. C) etc etc

• Not assimilationist: not “move” women into the mainstream but to

revolutionize all aspects of life.

• For radical feminists: women’s oppression is the root of all

oppressions—economic, racial, cultural.

• Nothing could be changed unless one changed sexual-gender relations.

• They questioned all institutions and practices for their patriarchal bias:
institutions, culture, family structures, the practice of sex . . . .
Main debates in RF
• Relation of feminism to leftist politics: Feminism inside or
outside the Movement?

• Traditional family and relationships with men: in or out?

• Femininity (and masculinity): result from nature or nurture?

• Lesbianism: culmination of feminism or a cop-out?

• Sex: good or bad for women? (Liberate women from sexual

liberation?)
Radical thinkers
• Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1970): on the unspoken mysoginy in
culture and literature

• Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectics of Sex: The Case for Feminist

Revolution (1970)

• Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975): on sexual violence as a

form of male control

• Anne Koedt, “The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm” (1968): rethinks

women’s sexuality
• Radical 2nd Wave Feminism: not a unified front à
self-divided and conflictive; numerous splinter
positions.

• Some: morphs into slightly conservative positions:

anti-pornography campaigns, “anti-sex” feminism.
(Andrea Dworking, “Pornography: The New
Terrorism,” 1977)

• Some connected with minority concerns: Third World

Women’s Alliance (1970-1980)—against imperialism,
racism, sexism
Literature of the 2nd Wave

• Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

• Poet and essayist

• Of Woman Born (1976)

• On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
(1979)
• Blood, Bead, and Poetry (1986)
Grace Paley (1922-2007)

• Little Disturbances of Man

(1959)
• Enormous Changes in the Last
Minute (1974)
• Later the Same Day (1985)
• Long Walks and Intimate Talks
(1991)
Erika Jong (1943-)

• Fear of Flying (1973)

• How to Save Your Own Life

(1977)

• Fanny, Being the True History of

the Adventures of Fanny
Hackabout-Jones (1980)
Joanna Russ (1937-2011)

• Science-Fiction writer

• The Female Man (1975)

• The Zanzibar Cat (1983)

• The Hidden Side of the Moon

(1987)
Margaret Atwood (1939)

Canadian novelist

• Surfacing (1972)
• Lady Oracle (1979)
• The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
• The Blind Assassin (2000)
3rd Wave Feminism (1980s forward)
• Grew out of Radical Feminism and of minority criticism of 2nd Wave
feminism. What was the trouble?
• 2nd Wave Equal Rights Feminism was
• simplistic in the representation of women as a unified, homogeneous group.
• It was mostly white, middle class, and heterosexist. (N.O.W: was homophobic)
• Did not take into account differences of class and race in women’s experience.

• In 1981 African American critic bell hooks wrote:

“Black women have felt forced to choose between a black movement

that primarily serves the interests of black male patriarchs, and a white
women’s movement which primarily serves the interests of racist white
women” (Ain’t I a Woman 9).
• Third wave feminism integrated the perspectives of feminists of color:
bell hooks, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Gloria Anzaldúa,
Cherríe Moraga . . .

• Claimed that sexism and patriarchy intersect with racism and

imperialism.

• Sexuality must be thought within these wider frames.

• Against the “Puritanism” of some 2nd Wave Feminisms, it is “sex-

positive.”

• Sexual pleasure: may be empowering and is frequently a disruptive force

against normality.

• Open discussion of S&M, prostitution (sex work), and pornography.

• Barnard Conference, April 24, 1982, on women’s sexuality.

• Tempestuous confrontations between pro- and anti-sex feminists.

• Proceedings published as Vance, Carol S., ed. (1984). Pleasure and

Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• 3rd Wave feminism: more open than 2nd wave feminism to non-
conventional sexual options—like queer politics and queer theory and
writing later on.

• Embraces derogatory terms such as “bitch,” “slut”: empowerment from

misbehaving—from being “bad women” who do refuse to do what they
are told.
Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2007)

• Borderlands / La Frontera (1987)

• Light in the Dark/Luz en lo

Oscuro: Rewriting Identity,
Spirituality, Reality (1985)
Ana Castillo (1953-)

• The Mixquiahuala Letters, 1986.

• Sapogonia, An Anti-Romance in
3/8 meter, 1990.
• Massacre of the Dreamers:
Essays on Xicanisma, 1995
Alice Walker (1944-)

• The Color Purple (1982)

• In Search of our Mothers’

Gardens (1983)

• Possessing the Secret of Joy

(1992)
Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

• The Cancer Journals (1980)

• Zami, A New Spelling of My

Name (1982)

• Sister Outsider (1984)

Much feminist writing (2nd or 3rd wave) took the form of
essays, manifestos, public statements, letters, historical
writing.
• One of the most important literary legacies of feminism: expands the
range of “literature.”

• Much of the best feminist writing: unclassifiable, or multi-generic—

combines the essay, autobiography, narrative, and political analysis.

• (E.g. Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde).