Psychoanalytic Feminism

Tong criticizes psychoanalytic and other sub-groups that they do not provide an explanation to why women are oppressed.  She says that they also have not came to a conclusion as to how women should be liberated.  Psychoanalytic feminists believe children are taught women are subordinates when they are young and follow Freudian theory.

Socialist Feminism

Socialist feminism is similar to Marxist feminism except that socialist feminists believe that oppression is based in social norms and the psychology of people.  I think of this like men have been nurtured to oppress women and women have been taught that being inequal is normal.

Marxist Feminism

Marxist feminism is based on the ideas of Karl Marx.  Which leads me to believe it is all about social policy, which it isn't.  Tong says that Marxist feminists reject materialist explanations of women's oppression totally.  This is different than socialist feminism.  In summary, social feminists focus on changing capitalism for equality.

Radical Feminism

Radical feminism, sounds bad right?  Radical feminism is unlike liberal feminism because radical feminism seems to be more politically and dare I say emotionally charged?  Liberal feminism seems to be more intellectual.  Radical feminists think that womens inequality is the ultimate form of inequality. The book mentions things like when there is sex between a man and woman in a patriarchial society, the man is using an instrument to control the woman.  In summary, radical feminism thinks that women are being treated unfairly in about everthing that includes women and men.

Liberal Feminism

Our book, Feminist Thought is not an easy read.  To read a chapter is long and confusing because they introduce people, eras, and ideas.  The conclusions can be persuasive and lack a definition.  I want to define the types of feminism outlined in the book as I can understand out of the book and research.  The first chapter is liberal feminism.  Tong says it used to be critisized as a white woman's movement.  She says it now encompasses all people.  Summarized, I think a liberal feminist would believe all women can assert themselves to get equality in the society that already exists.

Human Trafficing Presentation

The presenters for the human trafficing presentation were very well prepared and set a high standard for the rest of the presentations.  I think their powerpoint and discussion was great but their homemade game was fantastic and fairly witty for a small time period to make it.  It is scary to think about how much money is made in human trafficing and how that is occurs so much in America.

Sex Education Presentation

This presentation was somewhat familiar to me because we used to debate on this in an education course.  The discussion flowed more toward birth control and abstinence only policy and the presenters brought up the many flaws with not informing young students about sex and birth control.  This was a solid argument and I agree with their stand on it.

Gender and Culture Presentation

I have a hard time remembering a residual message from this presentation but I do remember a number if interesting things about this presentation.  The Ugly Betty article and discussion was interesting and somewhat fun.  The clips were pretty good but the other article about Christians and Gays in Africa was very hard to read.  I think something was wrong with the site because the paragraphs were out of order or something.  Anyway it was a shame to hear about because I did not know about this scandal.

Gender Roles Presentation

Phil and Joey did a good job of making a light and fun presentation.  I really liked when they used the class/college survey to show what people thought about their roles as women and men.  I thought they did a good job taking something we talked about all year and making it uunderstandable in a personal setting. 

Gender and War Presentation

This topic was interesting to me and that is why I became a part of it.  We looked at rape, women soldiers, and women in the military.  It was a serious topic so it was difficult to be excited about it but I think my favorite part was examining how women soldiers are different in different cultures.  That is part of my lit review.

Transgender Presentation

This presentation was very good because this topic was close to home for the presenters and guest speaker.  They were in the midst of the topic and were able to present on it well.  I appreciated the diagram that they invented that was seemingly much more in depth than the current standard diagram.  Overall this was well presented and the guest speaker was a great idea.

Difference that makes a difference

In the conclusion of chapter 8 of Tong's Feminist Thought, she shares a qoute from Christine di Stephano.  I love this quote pertaining to gender.

"Gender is basic in ways we have yet to fully understand,...it functions as a 'difference that makes a difference,' even as it can no longer claim the legitimating mantle of the difference..."

I think this is the best way I will understand and remember about gender from this course.

Care-Focused Feminism

Chapter 5 of Tong's Feminist Thought is about care-focused feminism.  The first few sections are about the morals of women.  Nodding's and Gilligan's theory was that men and women think differently about moral decisions.  Woman tend to think about others wants and men think about justice and fairness.  Then there are the critics who say that men and women approach moral decisions simalarly.  This is like the question of biology determining gender roles.  One side says that we are a little different biologically, but thats ok; the other side says we are the same until culture influences us.  There seem to be two be many approaches to feminism and that they fight each other more often than for the same thing.

different and equal vs. the same and equal

"Better than I am"

Someone that I sometimes think about is a person named Holly Mangold.  She is a girl from Ohio who's loves football.  She plays and her dream is to go pro.  She has the strength and size but many people say she is too slow.  Do you think a woman should be allowed to play in the NFL?  Here is the link from the today show.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20583116/

thoughts?

I think this really relates to the point Hubbard was trying to make in that reading.  She argued that men and women are mostly the same athletically.  This is a good exapmle: Holly can squat more than I ever could as a football player and my best bench press was about the same.  She is stronger than I am and the article says she could be attracting college scouts.

Dependency

What do women feel about spousal dependency?  I am sure there are different opinions but a wife's dependency on a husband, is it a thing of the past?  In her book, Tong has a quotation section where a woman is describing her dependency on her husband as painful.  I think an independant woman is great but will this create a new type of marriage?

Catfight!

In class today I got a funny image when we talked about physical fights between two women.  If that happens it becomes like a spectator sport.  No one really intervines when there might be a serious injury.  I remember seeing a video of two girls in a nasty fight and being like wow this is enertaining.  I also said in class that if that fight happened between two men, I would have attempeted to seperate them because I took the probability of injury seriously.

Social Change

Today in class we talked about social change. One thing that I thought was interesting is the statement that to make a social change, men just take action.  For women to get social change, they have to start a movement and in the end it will most likely be a man who decides to make the change.

Valenti

I think Valenti, in chapter 1, wrote a nice argumentative piece by explaining that any woman can be a feminist and it is more about being for equality than dominance or being an extremist.  Feminism has seemingly become a bad thing and to be honest I have viewed it as a bad thing in the past.  I not sure that every woman is a feminist, but if it wasn't for the stereotype then there would be more self-proclaimed feminists.

Criticism

After that stimulating discussion on Thursday there is one thing that I thought of after looking at the boxes and participating in discussion.  The one thing is that women seem to be much more scrutinized and criticized in our culture.  Women seem to be held to a higher standard of physical appearance among other things.  I know to not be critical of anyone (although I really need to be better at it) and I really appreciate constructive criticism but looking at the media's view of an ideal woman, it is not constructive at all.