Term
| Compulsory Heterosexuality |
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Definition
| 1.Compulsory Heterosexuality- from Adrienne Rich’s 1980 article “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” Compulsory heterosexuality is the assumption that women and men are innately attracted to each other emotionally and sexually and that heterosexuality is normal and universal. This institutionalization of heterosexuality in our society leads to an institutionalized inequality of power not only between heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals, but also between men and women, with far reaching consequences. Within a patriarchal society structured by compulsory heterosexuality, women are exploited (sexual slavery i.e. because there is no choice). Heterosexuality and the binary gender system are mutually constitutive. In Clarke and Wright’s article- “Sport, The Media and Compulsory Heterosexuality”- ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’ acts as a form of social and sexual control through the naturalizing and normalizing of heterosexual relations. Homosexuality is both defined and constructed as a stigmatized, abnormal and marginal identity that is socially threatening to the normative constructions of sexuality and gender. For eg: In sports, the equation of athletic strength and power with masculinity requires a constant surveillance of female athletes’ sexuality and the denial of the lesbian presence in sport. Woman’s participation in contact sports like rugby fundamentally challenges what it means to be male and female. |
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Term
| Feminist Standpoint Theory |
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Definition
| 2.Feminist Standpoint theory- Rather than try to ‘observe’ women’s lives, a feminist standpoint attempts to explain how women see the world and tries to explain the relations of power that produce the positions from which women experience the world and how women experience those positions. The goal is to make a shift from women as object to women as subject. Rather than look at women as isolated objects of inquiry, a feminist standpoint methodology tries to reflect the experiences of women in the context of their community and the world they live in, and under definite material conditions. Standpoint theory constructs women as ‘knowers’.Knowledge comes from the lived experience of people “The actualities of our everyday lives". The Standpoint perspective is that people in marginal positions have a unique vantage point from which to view & understand ‘the ruling class.’ Dorothy Smith in her article “ The Everyday World as Problematic : A Feminist Methodology is working through the problems of how to be a feminist sociologist; how to research women’s lives, positioning women at the centre of inquiry, making them subjects of knowledge rather than objects of observation. She is developing a feminist methodology. |
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Term
| Poststructuralist Feminism |
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Definition
| 3.Poststructuralist Feminism- Signifier + Signified = Sign, that is, Sound or written image+ meaning = signified concept. What matters in structural linguistics is the “relationship that signs have to each other and their position within the system.” Structural linguistics – understands language to be structured through a system of binary relations, beginning with the Signifier/Signified binary. By showing that there is no one-to-one ratio between the signifier and the signified, and thus that the signifier/signified relationship is not a binary Post-Structuralism throws all binary relationships into crisis. There is nothing natural or essential about the connection between the signifier and the signified, and words or symbols do not have intrinsic meanings, but rather meanings which are come to be agreed upon in a particular society in a particular historical moment. Meaning is thus constituted within language and is not guaranteed by the subject who speaks it. Each sign derives its meaning from its difference from all the other signs in the language chain. Weedon uses the difference between “whore” and “virgin”. These words do not intrinsically mean anything, but have come to be associated with particular meanings through cultural language practice. This makes language a site of political struggle. In Chris Weedon’s article “Principles of Poststructuralism” Feminist Practice and Poststructaralist Theory, the meaning of the signifier ‘woman’ varies from ideal to victim to object of sexual desire, according to its context. The important thing about post-structuralism is that it understands that power operates throughout all aspects of society. Domination happens as a relation of power, and power is diffused. A post structuralist feminism, committed as it is to the principles of difference and deferral, never fixes meaning, once and for all. |
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Term
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Definition
| 4.Drag Performance- Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of the other gender. Judith Butler in her article “Bodily Inscription, Performative Subversions” discusses Drag as a way to talk about how gender is performed – it is a putting on one’s body the appropriate behaviors, clothes, actions, energy, etc. She spends the first part of the article setting up the philosophical framework for her main argument, which is that gender is performative, that is, there is no truth of gender but rather that it is produced through the performance of gender appropriate behavior (which we are disciplined through and by which we discipline others). Conforming to gender norms is to produce them, to repeat them is to make them stronger, more disciplinary. The practice of drag is to de-stabilize the boundaries set by society for a gender”. But gender in drag, she says is not the copy of an original because there is no original gender: rather, Drag is a Simulacrum – a copy for which there is no original. Thus, all gender performance is a drag. Drag denaturalizes gender – shows how gender is a performance. Drag can be theatrical, comedic, or grotesque, and female-identified drag has been considered a caricature of women by second-wave feminism. |
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Term
| Ideological State Apparatus |
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Definition
| 5.Ideological State Apparatus- Ideology is a set of beliefs and social practices, often which seem invisible because they pervade every aspect of a culture. The dominant ideology can be conceptualized as the ideological positions and frameworks that support a dominant group in a particular society at a time in history. They reflect these values so consistently that they seem natural and indeed invisible. The Ideological State apparatus consists of the schools, the church, the family, the law, the political system, trade unionism, the media, advertising, etc. All of these institutions “back up” sexist ideology, racist ideology or homophobic ideology, or an ideology which oppresses poor people (all which support the dominance of white, moneyed, heterosexual, men). Dorothy Smith, in her article “The Everyday World As Problematic” defines the ideological state apparatus (ruling state apparatus) as the familiar complex of management, government administration, and intelligentsia, as well as the textually mediated discourses that coordinate and impenetrate it”. The ruling apparatus of this loosely coordinated collection of varied sites of power has been largely if not exclusively the sphere of men. Women’s lives have been outside or subordinate to the ideological state apparatus. |
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Definition
| 6.Hegemony- The supremacy of one group in society. Antonio Gramsci discusses the dominance of the bourgeoisie is based on two, equally important, factors: Economic domination and Intellectual and moral leadership. Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups. In a hegemonic society, a class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values. The concept assumes a plain consent given by the majority of a population to a certain direction suggested by those in power; however, this consent is not always peaceful, and may combine physical force or coercion with intellectual, moral and cultural inducement. Chris Weedon discusses ‘Hegemony’ in the context of the domination of women by an institution that mostly, if not exclusively, favors men. |
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Definition
| 7.Third Wave Feminism- Contains elements of second wave critique of beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power structures; it understands the pleasure, danger and defining power of those structures, and sometimes performs topsy-turvy critiques of these issues through the use of parody, pastiche, play, popular culture, music, etc. Acknowledges that oppression exists, but does not locate oneself in the ‘victim’ seat: rather works to end oppression through a radical critique of the status quo with the goal of dismantling racist, sexist, classist power structures. While Second Wavers were often understood to be humourless, anti-sex, anti-fun women, Third Wavers tend to come in across the board on sex, sexuality, pornography, etc. Rebecca Walker, a 23-year-old, bisexual African-American woman born in Jackson, Mississippi, coined the term "third-wave feminism" in a 1992 essay. Walker is in many ways a living symbol of the way that second-wave feminism has historically failed to incorporate the voices of many young women, non-heterosexual women, and women of color. Third wave feminism unites several diverse strains of feminism with the recognition that women are of “many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and cultural backgrounds”. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake in their article Introduction to Third Wave Agenda describe third-wave feminism as embracing ambiguity and messiness. Its emphasis on multi-polarity and diversity is perhaps its greatest strength. |
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Definition
| 8.Anti-Racist Feminism- Feminist intellectual and activist work which understands the necessity of connecting race, class, and gender, ability and sexuality in order to understand the complex matrix of racist, capitalist, patriarchal oppression. As the name suggests, anti-racism is implicitly based on the rejection of the multicultural approach which overwhelmingly focuses on the celebration of ‘difference’ and culture without challenging power and injustice. By asking us to tolerate differences, the multicultural approach is incapable of going beyond the assumption that human beings can be assigned to discrete groups which posses a natural set of different characteristics. Some of the anti-racist feminists/activists include Sojourner Truth, who was a slave and the author of the phrase "Ain't I a woman", bell hooks, kim Anderson and others. The article White Privilege ‘Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh is another example of Anti-Racist Feminism, since it explores, the ways in which white people enjoy more freedom and get the bigger halve of power sharing in society. She says that “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks”. In this way she explores the ways in which white people occupy a superior position in society which constantly favors (skin privilege) them more than people of color- i.e. a culture of oppression exists. In Kim Anderson’ article “Construction of a Negative Identity”- discusses “The Triangle of Oppression” in which aboriginal women are stereotyped as ‘easy’/ ‘dirty squaw’ by white people (mostly men) and develop self-hating attitudes towards themselves. |
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