It actually refers to social and cultural differences between men and women, instead of biological differences. Gender criticism refers to a form of literary criticism that is based on gender studies. It explores how gender influences the creation and reception of literary work. In fact, the basis of gender criticism is the concept that gender is a social construct, and that is reflected in our culture and social, political, economic, educational, and religious institutions. Although gender criticism began as an offshoot of feminist criticism, it is not only limited to feminist theories.
Unlike feminist criticism, gender criticism includes masculinist approach as well as queer theories. Masculinisim or masculinist approach basically deals advocacy of the rights or needs of men and boy. Thus, their media strategies are straightforward: women should create their own means of communication. Technological developments in media have actually aided in proliferating feminist writing and other types of media texts.
Radical feminism's main point of media criticism is that the media are in the hands of the male owners and producers, and they operate for the benefit of a patriarchal society. The main focus is against pornography. On television, the radical feminist critic is concerned with the depiction of the traditional family as the unchang-ing, sacred social structure that offers solutions to all ills.
The nuclear family is presented as the norm. The critic points out that heterosexuality and male dominance are presented in most narratives as "natural," but in reality there is a gap between images of marriage in popular culture and marriages in real life. Radical feminism's assumptions, however, that all women are good and are able to work without competition and hierarchy, proved to be an illusion.
There has been internal conflict among radical feminists, and power differences, differences of opinion and interests appear to exist among women as much as among men. Another problem was their inability to attract a wide following for their media texts. Radical feminist media criticism does not appear to have gained much ground in its pure form. However, many of its elements are found in other frameworks, which propose that the solution for women's position cannot be found by isolating women from the larger culture, but through the creation of new and legitimate spaces for the feminine voice.
Socialist feminists are among those who have incorporated the radical feminists' concept of patriarchal ideology. But unlike radical and liberal feminists, socialist feminists do not focus exclusively on gender to account for women's position.
An analysis of class and economic conditions of women is a central element. There are two important issues: the reproduction of labour and the economic value of domestic labour.
The nurturing, moral, educational and domestic work that women do in the family is seen as indispensable for the maintenance of a capitalist economic system. Socialist feminists advocate the abolition of class and gender. Women must enjoy reproductive rights and must take up paid labour, while women and men must share nurturing and domestic responsibilities. Socialist feminism has recently tried to incorporate other social divisions along the lines of race and ethnicity, sexual preference, age, and physical ability and disability to reflect the experience of racially and ethnically marginalised women such as Blacks and Third World women in theNorth as well as lesbians, old women and others.
Like radical feminism, socialist feminism regards the media as ideo-logical instruments presenting the capitalist and patriarchal society as the natural order. However, socialist feminists are more concerned with the ways in which ideologies of femininity are constructed in the media, and who benefit from such a construction.
Much of their criticism consists of ideological analyses of media texts, using the ana-lytical tools offered by structuralism and semiotics.
Socialist feminists combine the objectives of liberal and radical feminisms, which are to reform the mainstream media while producing separate feminist media. Then there is the type of feminism that is influenced by poststructuralism and cultural studies. Writers often group these two together not because they are one but because they share many assumptions. Often we hear these approaches spoken in the same breath as what has come to be known as postmodernism.
The cultural studies and post-structuralist views reject the dichotomy between masculine and feminine as metaphysical or biological, or a "natural" given. Gender is socioculturally constructed through the patriarchal language order. Human beings are born and learn to accept and practice the culture of their society when they acquire language.
In other words, language is what defines reality, and it follows that because the language order is patriarchal, our notion of what is real, our notion of the "truth," is patriarchal. The process of language articula-tion, or discourse, produces knowledge.
And society has implicit rules or conventions for organising discourse. For example we are taught as children not to question the wisdom of our parents; girls are taught to respect the masculine voice; in the academe some disciplines get more research funding than others such that they dominate the production of new knowledge; in the media certain issues are emphasised while others are ignored. Thus, discourse is an exercise of power. Who controls discourse in society defines that society's truth.
However, societies vary according to particular cultural settings and historical periods. This means that truth varies from culture to culture, from era to era, and is constantly subject to discursive struggle and negotiation. The differences in cultural definitions of reality should not be a problem if cultures remain more or less static and isolated from each other.
But cultures are never static as they continually go through an historical process of change. Ecofeminism From Encyclopedia of Environment and Society Ecofeminism posits that the same masculinist habits of thinking and behavior that devalue, oppress, and exploit women also do so to nature; and are mutually reinforcing hegemonic processes pivoting around artificial Western binary oppositions interpreted by religion, science, government, and other androcentric agencies.
Feminist Political Philosophy From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , this page discusses both the historical context and developments of feminist political philosophy and a number of contemporary approaches, including radical feminism, poststructuralist feminisms, and more. More Feminisms and Feminist Theories Feminist Art From Encyclopedia of American Studies Feminist art was not regarded as a movement per se but a revolutionary strategy intended to challenge received assessments of modernism, formal values, and stylistic hierarchies.
Feminist Literary Criticism From The Reader's Companion to US Women's History Feminist literary criticism can be defined as the study of literature by women, or the interpretation of any text written with an attention to gender dynamics or a focus on female characters. Feminist Social Theory From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology In general terms, feminist social theory is concerned to understand and explain the subordinate position of women in society by reference to gender differences and specifically in terms of a theory of patriarchy.
This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: " Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of commonality.
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