Talk:Feminist movement in the United States/Archive 1

Archive 1

"Feminism" is a modernity

I have some problems with the portion on "Prior to 1850". The term feminism is a modernity, and to call any person in history retroactively a feminist is questionable. I think that it invests in these long dead individuals too many qualities associated with modern feminists. More over, many of those qualities which make up modern feminist discourse were not even an a possible thought in the pre-1850s mind. I digress; the fact remains that a modernity should not be used to describe any historical thought. Any thoughts? I will wait to edit until I get some more opinions on the matter Cyclonus0102 04:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• What about retitling it something like "The Roots of Feminsm" or "The Roots of the Women's Movement"? While I agree that calling Christine di Pizan a feminist when she wrote centuries before the term was coined is a bit of a stretch, it's not a stretch at all to assert that she was writing in favor of women's rights, or even that her work was a precursor to the modern feminist movement. Basically, i think this section belongs in the article, but I agree that it could be phrased better. —This unsigned comment is by 68.161.105.25 (talk • contribs) 9 March 2006.

• • Concur with the anon reply, especially because Women's rights is basically a disambiguation page. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Dismissive of radicalism

The lead is written in such a way as to exclude radical feminists from the movement, embracing only reformism. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Other problems

I'm not ready to plunge into this one, but here are a few other problems I see:

• "Some feminists would argue that there is still much to be done on these fronts, while third wave feminists would disagree and claim that the battle has basically 'been won'." This strikes me as an inaccurate description of third wave feminists, or at least of some third wave feminists. Is there a citation to back up this claim?
• There should be more of a contrast between, on the one hand, non-sexist and gender-inclusive language, and, on the other, rhetorical figures that deliberately gender language, as in "herstory".
• "There is a so called third wave, but feminists disagree as to its necessity, its benefits, and its ideas. Often also called 'Post-Feminist,' it can possibly be considered to be the advancement of a female discourse in a world where the equality of women is something that can be assumed—rather than fought for. However, many women cite that this belief is oppressive in itself, as it assumes an equality which, to a certain degree, does not exist. Women still must face a host of issues including unequal pay, the lack of child care, the glass ceiling, sexual inequality in government programs such as social security, the burdensom assumption as to women's responsibility for the family even when working, and continuing gender stereotyping that hinder a younger generation of women from realising their abilities in math and the sciences." This reads like people arguing with each other. It does not read like an encyclopedia article.

Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

POV?

I edited "In more or less all areas of the world, women are still paid less than men for equivalent work, hold much less political and economic power, and are often the subject of intense social pressure to conform to relatively traditional gender expectations." This is stated as fact, while the article's purpose should be to describe what the feminist movement believes, and not to validate these beliefs. I changed the text above to mention that those are the beliefs of feminists, to avoid POV. --Popsicle stick 10:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

BUT THESE ARE FACTS. Facts do not become POV because you find them inconvenient. However, they do require citation and don't seem to have any here. The "social pressure" part is arguably POV, because it is not readily measured, but the rest of it? Someone should track down citation and restore it. - Jmabel | Talk 01:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

What you SCREAM to be "facts" is actually a matter of much controversy. What is "equivalent work"? Rulatir (talk) 04:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• On incomes, an excellent study for the U.S.: Daniel H. Weinberg, "Evidence from Census 2000 About Earnings for Detailed Occupation by Men and Women" (PDF). (272 KiB), May 2004, Census 2000 Reports, U.S. Census Bureau

Just why would an employer be ready to pay man more and not try to recruit more women? Doesn't make business sense to me. --41.14.61.40 (talk) 16:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• Simple chart of income by gender for Canada: [1]
• Looks like there are a ton of related materials at [2]
• But probably thisis the goldmine: the UNECE Gender Statistics Website, which includes an extensive online database of worldwide statistics.

So does someone want to sort through some of these? If not, I guess I'll eventually get there. - Jmabel | Talk 02:16, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a much more positive article than anti-feminism. That's to say, the opening section on this is "Achievements" and on anti-feminism it is "claims". "Claims" is a very negative term. For example 'FLDS claims that'. This makes this article sound accepted, whereas the other sounds fringe. While this might be the case, it is not the job of a reference to sway or convince people one way or another. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.170.169.218 (talk) 04:17, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Integration

There is a lot of overlap, and duplication between this and History of feminism, on which I am in the middle of a doing a major rewrite (currently up to 1900). There will need to be some major rationalisation, at least eventually. Similat considerations apply to a lot of the feminism topics. Mgoodyear 04:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Odd statement

"Christine de Pizan, a late medieval writer, was possibly the earliest feminist in the western tradition. Indeed she is believed to be the first woman to make a living writing."

Wouldn't it make more sense for her to be the first known or recorded woman to make a living writing in Europe or France? Regardless of how sexist either of these areas may have been in the 15th century, there had to have been some women who were able to sustain themselves through writing. If not then, perhaps in a very different past. Kennard2 04:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Islam

In his July 2, 2007 article in Slate.com, Christopher Hitchens claimed that "The most noticeable thing about all theocracies is their sexual repression and their directly related determination to exert absolute control over women." ([3]) Have the adherents of Women's Liberation made public their opinion of the theocratic religion of Islam?Lestrade 00:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Lestrade

It's worth remembering that on Wikipedia, we can all see each other's contributions. Your question, as you know, was asked and answered [[4]] a couple of days ago.KD Tries Again 15:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)KD

I assume that Women's Liberation and Feminism are two completely different concepts because they have two totally different names or designations.Lestrade 16:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Lestrade

Early Achievements

Feminists are often proponents of using non-sexist language, using "Ms." to refer to both married and unmarried women, for example, or the ironic use of the term "herstory" instead of "history".

This "herstory" example (incorrectly) gives the impression that the English word "history" is an amalgam of the English words his and story. "History" is derived from the Greek (h)istor ("knowing, learned"); the "his-" in "history" is completely unrelated to the "his/her" possessive pronouns in English.

My point: It seems odd to demonstrate a push for "non-sexist language" by changing a gender-neutral word ("history") into a word that pointedly references gender ("herstory").

This reference should be removed or replaced with a better example.

Fubla 17:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

link to third wave

In the first paragraph, with the link to third wave feminism, the sentence states that third wave feminists disagree that there is more to be done. The linked article on third wave feminism states what more there is to be done. The claim that third wave feminism claims that there is not more to be done is a falsehood. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thebewilderness (talk • contribs) 02:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

June 25th rewrite

This is a big change and I'm concious of it so please WP:BRD if you have substantial issues.

The rewrite was done inorder to address:

1. Poor sourcing and citation
2. Over use of lists (ie notable feminists and further reading) - see WP:LIST
3. Disconnection from other Feminism sub-articles

The page is now beginning to function within WP:SUMMARY. It's now 90% sourced (if any of the tagged material can't be sourced soon it will have to go too BTW - it has only been retained as a "stop-gap measure"). The detailed but unsourced history section is available here if any body wants to develop this I suggest they source it and add it to History of feminism.

Some expansions and developments are necessary here - especially in regard to feminism and language, civil rights, relationships etc.

This rewrite is envisaged as a starting point not an ideal version. Please help improve the article by adding sourced and relevant material--Cailil ^talk 19:23, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Social Changes

Are these redundant? The feminist movement has effected change in Western society, including women's suffrage; the right to initiate divorce proceedings and "no fault" divorce; and the right of women to make individual decisions regarding pregnancy (including access to contraceptives and abortion); and the right to own property. and Feminism has effected many changes in Western society, including women's suffrage, broad employment for women at more equitable wages, the right to initiate divorce proceedings and the introduction of "no fault" divorce, the right to obtain contraception and safe abortions, and access to university education. If they aren't there needs to be a clearer explanation of the differences between the feminist movement and feminism. JCDenton2052 (talk) 19:51, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Article in need of copy-editing

I've added the standard template alerting editors that this article needs proper copy-editing and proofing. At present there are too many lumpen or illiterate sentences, such as: "The second wave (1960s-1980s) dealt gender inequality in laws and culture."; or "The feminist movement reaches far back before the 18th century, feminist movement were planted during the late part of that century." Alfietucker (talk) 12:30, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

The fifth paragraph of the History section needs urgent attention. These opening sentences are in turn illiterate and hopelessly vague.

"The feminist movement reaches far back before the 18th century, feminist movement were planted during the late part of that century. Christine de Pizan, a late medieval writer, was possibly the earliest feminist in the western tradition. She is believed to be the first woman to make a beautiful piece of writing."

Unless someone who is familiar with the relevant history can tidy these up within the next week, I propose cutting these sentences - or at the very least the first and third of these - altogether. Alfietucker (talk) 11:54, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I've just spent considerable time tidying up those sentences and in the process discovered they were the remnants of vandalism from late in 2008 and early 2009. Do none of you feminists out there care enough about this article to look after it? Alfietucker (talk) 10:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

This is an important article, so I have started with some copyediting. Something is needed to break up the enormous chunks of text. I will move through the article attempting to streamline the prose, and experimenting with a variety of subheadings and other mechanisms to make the article a bit more reader-friendly. Zujine (talk) 23:41, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I welcome any feedback on my changes. I have temporarily paused working due to real-life commitments, but I hope to resume as soon as possible. I would like to turn this article into something the Wikipedia community can be (even more) proud of. Zujine (talk) 00:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I am going to move on from this for now. The article is still in need of much more work. The prose is still highly undisciplined and lacking in structure and purpose; the progression of the article still needs work; some of the sections still need serious trimming; much of the obscure material needs to be summarised. These and similar problems seem to extend across many of the articles on feminism, which could be a shame. Zujine (talk) 15:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Removed from theology section

I removed all of the following. I think it should be integrated into the Feminist theology page, but I'm not sure where. On this page it was seriously too long and detailed. A Most Interested Person may present themselves to figure something out. Zujine (talk) 14:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

---

In the view of Ruether, ‘the recovery of female qualities, along with the use of appropriate female language for God, would help correct the improper hierarchical social structure of male over female". William P. Alston asks the question, in his article "Speaking Literally of God", of whether it is possible to form subject-predicate sentences to be asserted truly of God conceived as an incorporeal being. His analysis is important to the area of feminist God-talk, because it questions whether inclusiveness is even possible when talking about an incorporeal God. Alston concludes that further work remains to include analysis of timelessness, immutability, and other classical divine attributes to see if they constitute a bar to speaking literally of God.

Ruether continued her argument with the idea that male monotheism perpetuates the social stratification of patriarchal rule, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as demonstrated by the portrayal of males as positive-neutral figures and females as negative. Men are seen as representatives of God and "responsible partners of the covenant with him" Yet, women do not traditionally have a direct connection with the Divine; theirs is derived from marriage to men. "Thus the hierarchy of God-male-female does not merely make woman secondary in relation to God, it also gives her a negative identity in relation to the divine. Whereas the male is essentially seen as the image of the male transcendent ego or God, woman is seen as the image of the lower, material nature" Christian feminists identify these connections as problematic in creating inclusive religious language because they not only deprive women of a place to involve themselves in religion, but also support the notion that males are the only ones in touch with surrounding reality.

The prominence of patriarchy in male monotheism indicated a certain systematic depreciation of femininity in relation to religion. There is no God and Goddess power dynamic in traditional Judeo-Christian male monotheism as it existed in older Greek religious traditions. Further, the Judeo-Christian tradition does not represent a true male-female duality. Male monotheism maintains that God is essentially male and that men represent his image. Through marriage women are supposedly able to have a positive connection to the Divine, but this relationship implies that women must remain subservient to and subordinate to their male husbands and male God. "Yahweh is depicted as the angry and threatening husband who will punish his unfaithful bride with summary divorce. But he is also described as winning her back and making her faithful to him by drawing her out into the desert wildness."

Though some made the argument that males can also be subject to the punishment of an angry God, others saw this language as something that reduces women to roles as wives to be subservient instead of independent and subordinate instead of dominant like their male counterparts. "By patriarchy we mean not only the subordination of females to males, but the whole structure of Father-ruled society: aristocracy over serfs, masters over slaves, king over subjects, racial overlords over colonized people. Religions that reinforce hierarchical stratification use the Divine as the apex of this system of privilege and control"

Modern Judeo-Christian theists proclaim that their tradition is against oppressions of all kinds. However, many of their teachings cannot simply be interpreted as being against all systems of oppression, while in most of the language a certain degree of patriarchy remains. "The Davidic monarchy… established at the heart of Biblical religion a motif or protest against the status quo of ruling-class privilege and deprivation of the poor. God is seen as a critic of this society, a champion of the social victims" . While the Judeo-Christian tradition is seen as a movement of revolution, it has not traditionally been opposed to gender oppression. "Although Yahwism dissents against class hierarchy, it issues no similar protest against gender discrimination"

One question answered in feminist theology is the following, "Is tradition, here, a roadblock in making (male) monotheism inclusive and free of gender discrimination?" "Is religious text sexist in the Judeo-Christian tradition primarily may be the result of the tunnel-vision of those prophets in power, or in direct connection with God. While male prophets may have been aware of the class oppression they might have been experiencing it might have been difficult for them to also realize the conditions of many women on their side. Fighting for gender equality might have been incredibly uninteresting or unimportant to those male prophets. The class hierarchy male prophets contended themselves with protesting cannot be equalized with a protest against gender oppression, because an anti-class structure reality need not also be an anti-gender subjugation reality. "Those male prophets who were aware of oppression by rich urbanites or dominating empires were not similarly conscious of their own oppression of dependents – women and slaves – in the patriarchal family"

Feminists argued that knowing that fighting single systems of oppressions alone cannot possibly end all oppressions is important, because it recognizes the ways in which these systems interpenetrate each other to maintain male patriarchy.

Feminists also questioned "Why does there seem to be a lack of anti-patriarchal use of God-language in the Judeo-Christian tradition?" Reuther suggests that it may be due to the infusion of some women into roles of power. It would have been difficult to identify the oppression of women as systematic problem and address it in relation to religious language, because some women did not need liberation and were in fact also oppressors. "… In its protest against Canaanite urban society it would have known powerful females, queens, priestesses, and wealthy landowners who functioned as oppressors. It would have been difficult to recognize women as an oppressed gender group when the primary social stratification integrated some women into roles of power"

They would next question how can gender discrimination be tackled by religious language, if women themselves were involved in oppressing namely members of their own gender social group. One suggestion was to totally deny and revolt against the totality of structures that maintain oppressions of all kinds. However, they deemed this as difficult, and recognized that by examining individual relationships within these systems of oppressions may position a person in one or more potentially privileged groups. Feminist theists recognized that no one of these structures is more essential than another and that each work to maintain another is important, because it calls them to create of a multi-faceted front of resistance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zujine (talk • contribs) 14:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Another cut - because as it stands it's illiterate, but perhaps someone who knows what this paragraph is trying to say can consider whether it should be tidied up and reinstated.

---

Within Christian feminist theology, there are many branches of prominent religious thought. After these Christian feminists fought for suffrage rights, they concentrated their efforts ethics and the meaning of injustice and justice. The following quote demonstrates the intention of this switch of concentration as an attempt "to thematize and scrutinize such terms we need a somewhat indirect, oblique, mode of approach to the use of justice"

---

Alfietucker (talk) 21:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Good work. Zujine (talk) 13:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Studies like this are "passable"?

I mean, really? This line:

"Although research suggests that to an extent, both women and men perceive feminism to be in conflict with romance, studies of undergraduates and older adults have shown that feminism has positive impacts on relationship health for women and sexual satisfaction for men, and found no support for negative stereotypes of feminists."

is justified? I can name several problems with this...

1. The study itself says it uses "self-reported feminism and perceived partners’ feminism as predictors of relationship health". IE people make up whatever they feel qualifies as "feminism" and report how they feel it has affected their relationship. Far too broad.

2. No indicator for how militant or relaxed their "feminist" partners are. There is quite a difference between a woman who makes feminist causes her life, and one who perhaps just has issue with one or two things.

3. "Relationship health" is really, really vague and opinionated. Feminist women feel they have "healthier" relationships. And this should be surprising why? I'm sure many men in countries who subjugate women feel their relationships are "healthier", should that be reported also? Does this survey honestly trust feminist women to make an objective determination that their relationships are "healthier" because of feminism? And sexual satisfaction? What? Are they honestly trying to suggest that having a feminist partner is for some reason more sexually satisfying than non feminist partners? Why? How do they know their feminism was the determining factor in the improvement of their sexual satisfaction? This is especially ludicrous when, as previously stated, feminism's definition is entirely subjective in this study.

4. A little over 500 self-reporting participants. The number is a little small and self reporting is never good but I suppose better than nothing. See: Self reported penis length surveys. Subject bias may also be an issue as I can't seem to find how they went about finding their samples. If they are only interviewing men who have had feminist girlfriends, this would obviously cater to people who are open to or like the idea of a feminist woman as opposed to men who find an aversion to it and thus are not likely to date a feminist woman to begin with.

5. It's not "studies", it's a single study. "Research" is undefined. If common conception or common scientific study indicates that feminism is problematic for romance, and one small study is at odds with that, it seems odd to me to word it is if the one study outweighs "research".

Just seems a bit odd to me to allow such a...faulty and clearly unbalanced self-reported survey to be passed off as scientifically valid. BeardedScholar (talk) 01:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Interesting critique, though I wonder what other criteria could be used for a study of this sort. My suggestion would be to identify the parameters of the study (as you so ably point out above) in the article, and perhaps cut the length or emphasis it is given. Particularly if it makes more sweeping generalisations than its data grants it warrant. In any case, the page needs continued heavy work. I will return to it at a later time. —Zujine|talk 08:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no Criticism section!

This must be the only political Wikipedia article I have ever seen without a Criticism section near the bottom. This needs to change, as the Feminists have inflicted the most dramatic changes in society of any group, and I am sure the worlds male population has plenty, to put it mildly, to say about it all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.165.150 (talk) 22:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

This page is not a forum please cease from using it as such (see our guidelines for use of the talk space). Secondly we do not encourage criticism sections on wikipedia rather we incorporate critical material where the information is reliably sourced, duely weighted and as long as it does not constitute original research--Cailil ^talk 01:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

"The feminist movement is a series of Jewish-funded ...."

I just came across this page and was surprised to see the first sentence indicate that the entire feminist movement was "Jewish-funded" which sounds like a conspiracy theory or maybe antisemitic/philosemitic statement with no basis in reality and no evidence in the rest of the article to support "Jewish" funding for the entirety of women's lib.

I took that out. I hope everyone is okay with that, or will provide textual support to the contrary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.225.33.215 (talk) 09:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

merge into Feminism, July 2010

Should this article be merged into the Feminism article and this title turned into a redirect to that article?

At first glance, it appears it'll be a lot of editorial work, to ensure no loss of content. Content that is of too little weight for an introductory or overview article should be moved into specialized articles, e.g., the article on a particular wave, or deleted from here if already there. Content includes references; if the feminist movement article has a reference not in one of the other articles, it should be copied.

I'm not volunteering to do the hours of work it almost certainly requires. Does anyone have the time? Or does the article have utility as a standalone?

The Feminism article is in the process of being trimmed. This merger should be done afterwards, to simplify processes.

Thoughts? Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:39, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

third wave started later and not ended

Based on the U.S., as far as I know, the third wave did not start in 1975 or the 1980s and did not end in the 1990s or 2000, as two recent edits claimed (Sep. 10, 2010, 4:32a and Sep. 11, 2010, 11:36p). There is virtually no fourth wave and feminism is still active.

I think the starting date is more likely early 1990s, possibly late 1980s but early '90s sounds more likely, and with no closing date (probably defined as either the end of contemporary feminism or its replacement by a new wave, and previous waves were defined largely by generation or changes in goals, strategies, or alliances, and I don't think that's happened lately).

If I'm wrong, please cite a source. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 06:30, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Archive 1