Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, ecology, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Feminism involves a wide range of social issues, not only the discussion of gender rights, but also the reflection on the structure of human civilization. Thinking and practicing from a feminist perspective can be extended to explore a wider range of topics.
Feminist theories first appeared in publications such as Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, "The Changing Woman," "Ain't I a Woman," "Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting," and others as early as 1794. "The Changing Woman" is a Navajo Myth that credited a woman with populating the world in the end. Sojourner Truth addressed women's rights issues in her 1851 publication, "Ain't I a Woman?" Sojourner Truth addressed the issue of women's limited rights as a result of men's erroneous perceptions of women. Truth contended that if a woman of colour can perform tasks that were previously thought to be reserved for men, then any woman of any colour can do the same. Susan B. Anthony delivered a speech in court after being arrested for illegally voting, addressing issues of language in the constitution, which was published in 1872 as "Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting." Anthony questioned the constitution's authoritative principles as well as its male-gendered language. She questioned why women are held accountable to be punished by the law but are unable to use the law to protect themselves (women could not vote, own property, nor themselves in marriage). She also criticised the constitution for using male-gendered language and questioned why women should be required to follow laws that do not specifically mention women. Nancy Cott distinguishes between modern feminism and its forerunners, particularly the suffrage movement. In the United States, she places the turning point in the decades preceding and following women's suffrage in 1920 (1910–1930). She contends that the previous woman movement was primarily concerned with woman as a universal entity, whereas it transformed itself over this 20-year period into one primarily concerned with social differentiation, attentive to individuality and diversity. New issues focused on the condition of women as a social construct, gender identity, and relationships within and between genders. Politically, this represented a shift from a right-wing ideological alignment to one more radically associated with the left. While Susan Kingsley Kent claims that Freudian patriarchy was to blame for feminism's low profile during the interwar period, others, such as Juliet Mitchell, believe that this is overly simplistic because Freudian theory is not entirely incompatible with feminism. Some feminist scholarship has shifted away from establishing the origins of family and toward analysing the patriarchal process. Simone de Beauvoir stood in opposition to an image of "the woman in the home" in the immediate postwar period. With the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) in 1949, De Beauvoir added an existentialist dimension to feminism.
However, the second wave of feminism, which emerged in the 1960s as one of the first academic fields to respond to the public's growing awareness of modern Western transgender practises, called into question the "female" ontology. Since the mid-1970s, gender has been articulated as a phenomenon distinct from but related to biological claims of natural sex difference between men and women. The latter viewpoint is a byproduct of reproductive physiology science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which identified sex differences in male and female anatomy (Schiebinger 1989[1], Laquer 1990[2]).
[1] Schiebinger LL. 1989. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
[2] Laquer T. 1990. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
The Second Sex
In the discussion about the ontology of "feminism", the development of feminism theory has entered a new stage. Lesbian feminism and queer theory have appeared in the research scope of feminism one after another. The discussion on the ontology of "feminism" gradually went out of the scope of physiological gender.
The 1960s was a watershed between the two historical periods of "feminism" and "feminism", which corresponded to two changes experienced by the feminist movement: one was the social and political movement, and the other was the construction of the theoretical system. In the West, it originally refers to the struggle for the right to vote and equality between men and women. Early feminist political struggles focused on winning basic power for women and enabling them to gain the complete subjectivity that men had already obtained.
The awakening of feminism can be traced back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Western countries generally pursued women's rights And it was accompanied by political movements, striving for social and political power. This kind of women's liberation movement began to appear as early as the French Revolution, and in the middle of the 19th century, the feminist movement emerged one after another. The development of liberal capitalism led women to actively work in society, and a large number of women flocked to the textile industry. They demanded certain rights of men, such as political freedom, property rights and a series of equal rights with men. By the 1920s, this goal was basically achieved.
Although women in western countries basically strive for equality of political rights, the superiority of men is everywhere in social life and people's ideas. Feminists recognize the issue of gender power in gender relations, so the feminist movement turns to an incisive analysis and transformation of gender relations.
In his opening speech at the University of Tokyo, Chizuko Ueno said, "Feminism is about enabling the weak to survive as the weak".
This is the so-called more incisive analysis and transformation of gender relations, which is a questioning of the social power distribution system from the perspective of gender.
In the contemporary feminist system, the demands of theories about defending power have expanded, and their demands include seeking fairer social power for women and all sexual minorities.
This can also be understood as contemporary feminism's opposition to the centralization of power based on gender as the standard of hierarchical distinction, that is, decentralization of gender power.