WMST 100 Unit 2

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• The Rights of Man ReadingRWL 23-28
• 29-46)
• Introduction
• The Enlightenment, a philosophical
• movement of the 18th century.
• question of human nature
• human nature sexually dimorphic
• hermaphrodite (Mollies, Sapphists and
• Tommies)

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• Enlightenment, The French Revolution, and the
  Woman Question
• mans claim to be recognized as an adult,
  responsible being, who would take the risk of
  discovery, exercise the right of unfettered
  criticism, accept the loneliness of autonomy
• desire for humanity to transcend nature to arrive
  at the perfect state

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• teleological and linear movement away from
  savagery toward perfect human civilization
  continuation of polarity or dichotomous thought

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• nature------------------------culture
• woman-----------------------man
• physical----------------------metal
• mothering-------------------thinking
• feeling and------------------abstract knowledge
• Superstition and thought
• country-----------------------city
• darkness--------------------light
• nature------------------------science
• immanence----------------transcendence

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• Sexuality in Enlightenment Principles
• Definition is made by contrast
• Valuation of one side of the dichotomy over the
  other
• complex - both negative and positive poles
• dialectical relationship between dichotomies -
  binaries
• order/chaos

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• Social Chaos and the French Revolution
• locate women in nature and men in culture
• women in the private and men in the public realm
• woman as citoyennes

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• a possible threat - irrational, and alien
• altered social body - women as rational beings
• threat to order - the revolution as social chaos

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• Reassertion of Order and the Woman Question
• revolution as time of change and uncertainty
• enlightenment ideals logically basis that of
  natural order
• colonialism

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WMST 100 Unit 2

• alien within and without
• challenge to limitations placed on enlightenment
  ideals

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WMST 100

• Organized Feminisms in the West 1850-1920 (a.k.a.
  1st Wave Feminism)
• Introduction The rise of feminism
• production of enlightenment of 18th century
• prior challenges made by individual women
• shift into modernity - early as mid-16th century

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WMST 100

• Individual feminists and the Challenge of
  Epistemology
• enlightenment ideals - Mary Wollstonecraft -
  Vindication of the Rights of Women - 1792
• rejection of women as irrational
• 19th century rise of feminist movement
• Mary Shelley 1797-1851 - Frankenstein (1818) -
  challenge to biological theories re women and
  production of knowledge less women

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WMST 100

• Women Organizing
• mid-nineteenth century - women to en-gender
  discourse of intelligentsia
• articulate and contribute womens viewpoint
• Germany - Gleichheit by Clara Zetkin 1891
• Generva -La Solidarite - Marie Goegg Puchoulin
  (1868)
• La Donna Anna Maria Mizzoni (1868)

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WMST 100

• Image of the New Woman
• autonomous
• self-reliant
• intelligent

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WMST 100

• Science as a legitimating Discourse to the
  oppression of peoples
• re-silencing of women - 19th century
• science - esp. medicine used
• natural inferiority of the female
• women hysterical - hystera - Gr. Womb

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WMST 100

• William Withers Moore - Address to British
  Medical Ass. 1886 - more educated a woman - the
  more sex-less - brain develops - womb dries up
• Religion - Christianity - 2nd Genesis Story
• proof of divine legitimization of male dominance
  and female subordination

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WMST 100

• Religion as a legitimating Discourse toward the
  oppression of peoples
• Elizabeth Cady Staton - Womens Bible - 1895
• practical ways to address the woman problem
• white womens Christian temperance Union
• antislavery congress 1837

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WMST 100

• African Canadian/American Christian women re
  racial attitudes
• sojourner Truth at the Womens Rights Convention
  Akron, Ohio 1851
• Arent I a Woman
• the national Association of Colored Women
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett - Black womens suffrage
  organization

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WMST 100

• Christian Religions - women use bible to counter
  negative views of women
• feminist hermeneutics
• re-reading of bible to demonstrate God and Jesus
  re justice - justice means equality
• e.g., Miriam, Deborah, Ruth and Naomi, Mary and
  Martha (Luke 10 38-42)

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WMST 100

• 1st Wave Feminist Goals and Issues
• 1850 solidly off the ground - 1910
• two world wars (1914-1918 1939-1945) slow things
  down - call for national loyalty, solidarity and
  support of women
• context of 1st wave - industrial revolution
• rise of unions
• anti-slavery movement
• notion of social progress

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Child labour early 20th century(e.g., Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory)
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146 women immigrants all died either leaping
to their death or burned to death
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International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
(ILGWU) and the Womens' Trade Union League (WTUL)
fought for better working conditions and
protective legislation. 
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WMST 100

• focused on several issues - but all within the
  primary concern of womens emancipation - related
  to emancipation two positions
• equal but different (complementarity)
• equal both man and female fully human
• (Sameness)

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WMST 100

• Issues
• 1. Womens rights under the law
• 2. Access to education
• 3. The vote or enfranchisement
• emancipation of women symbolically represented in
  and by suffrage movement
• 1. Force the enfranchisement
• 2. Persons under the law

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WMST 100

• 3. Significant symbolic import - women as
  autonomous citizens
• non-feminists and the vote

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WMST 100

• Two Kinds of Feminism in 1st Wave
• Equality feminism
• (Sameness)
• based on ideology of enlightenment
• maternal Feminism
• (difference)
• based on notion of values of female culture

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WMST 100

• Underlying ideological Position
• A. Sameness (Equality) and Difference (Maternal)
• sameness - Aristotelian view of humanity
• difference - separate sexual spheres
• natural sexual dimorphism
• Galenic view of humanity

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WMST 100

• B. Individualism vs. socialism
• Equality Feminism - women as functioning
  individuals in society
• persons identity formulated on individual
• Maternal Feminism -society precedence over the
  person
• persons identity derived from social boundedness