Abstract: What is currently in flux in feminist politics is feminist identitywhat feminism is and what it means. The ‘subject’ of feminism is,
ostensibly, women, and its aim to improve the lives of women.
This notion of improvement has been based on the argument that
the ways in which women have been understood in western
culture have denied many possibilities to women because men
generally exercise power over them.1 In this analysis, western
culture deems women, at best, creatures fundamentally different
from, and naturally inferior to, men, whose identity is determined
by a relationship of subordinated complementarity with men. At
worst, western culture identifies women as inferior or abnormal
men and, in order to maintain ‘quality control’, seeks to ‘fix’ as
many of the defectives as possible and annihilate the rest.
Feminists, from the 1960s, have identified and criticised, in
different ways, dualistic, patriarchal, heterosexist models of gender
identity in western culture, in which men are taken to be the
active, strong and moral half of a human whole which has and
needs two parts. Women are the other half: evils necessary for
reproduction and other male needs (Elshtain 1981:15-16).
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-11-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 23
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