What is Feminist Theory?

"[Feminist Theory and Education are] an effort to bring insights from the movement and from various female experiences together with research and data gathering to produce new approaches to understanding and ending female oppression"

-Charlotte Bunch
Not by Degrees: Feminist Theory and Education

Entries are written in response to excerpts found in
Feminist Theory: a Reader (2nd Edition), written by Wendy K. Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. Published by McGraw-Hill, 2005.

5/1/09

Continued Reflections on the Handmaid's Tale...

In Maneuvers: The Internal Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, Cynthia Enloe writes "[In Three Guineas] Woolf not only points to the continuing masculinized culture of the government's civil service, for instance, but warns readers that even supporting women's colleges or backing efforts to promote women in law and medicine could serve to make women complicit actors in militarism if those young women adopted uncritically those professions' masculinized norms of hierarchy and competitiveness" (562).

I'm unsure of how I feel about Woolf's statement that women in law and medicine could contribute to a militarized society. In part it makes alot of sense. However, I think the most important part of her argument is the addition of the word"if." Woolf is obviously saying that women's presence in these disciplines is only progressive if they questions the norms of their professions.

In a way I feel like Enloe's argument about the militarization of women's lives also relates to the growing tension between the East and the West and The Handmaid's Tale. Hasn't it been hypothesized that the Third World War will be between religions (I think by Fareed Zakaria)? Anway, the fact that there is ongoing military conflict in the Middle-East and the plot of The Handmaid's Tale is set against an insurgency makes it easy to envision the theory Enloe writes about.She describes militarization by saying "There is nothing automatic about militarization. None of the items listed here [laundry, girdles, feminine respectability, democracy, marriage, fashion, security, liberation, feminitity, to name a few] will inevitably be militarized. Militarization is the step-by-step process by which something becomes controlled by, dependent on, or derives its value from militaristic criteria" (562).

One example of women organizing against militarization that is happening on local, national and international scales is the Women in Black campaign. Women in Black hold vigils to protest the manifestion of violence, militarism and war in not just the lives of women, but in the lives of all people. Often a group of women--dressed in black--meets in downtown Meadville to protest the war and make a feminist statement. To put theory behind praxis, this excerpt from Enloe's piece reflects the Women in Black campaign "...feminists concerned about the masculinized privileging effects of militarization on society have become convinced that monitoring and responding to the militazion of women and of feminity are necessary activites during even what looks on the surface to be peacetime, or 'the postwar era'" (564). She concludes "A major stumbling block on the road to ongoing militarization--between and within states--could take the form of feminist curiosity" (568).

Feminist curiosity--in the form of questioning and protesting the status quo--seems to be a valuable tool in dismantling patriarchy, the underlying structure of militarization.

No comments:

Post a Comment