A good (not perfect) feminist rule of thumb is that if patriarchy likes it, we shouldn’t. Which is perhaps one of the reasons why accusations of essentialism go off like a bomb. It’s true that sometimes, feminists are either or both of sex or gender essentialist. The idea that “gender is real” is probably the norm in most circles. But more nuanced arguments made by both ’sides’ can sometimes be overlooked.
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Stopping at gay: holding the closet door ajar?
The social right’s worst nightmare: from assimilist gay to out-and-out queer. But what is it to the gay community?
ShareHumanitas Visiting Professor in Women’s Rights 2011
Professor Nancy Fraser (Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics, The New School for Social Research, New York)
Lecture 1: ‘A Polanyian Feminism? Re-reading The Great Transformation in the 21st Century’ (5-6.30pm, 8 March 2011)
Karl Polanyi’s 1944 book ‘The Great Transformation’ rejected economism and instead analysed the previous crisis of capitalism [...]
In Search of The Middle Ground.
When discussing sex and gender with my step mother, I tend to try and tread pretty carefully. My brothers, Jack 3 and Edward nearly 1, always get drafted in as the main examples during these debates which become increasingly more heated, not to mention absurd, as they progress. “Your brothers just like tractors, they have since day one” is a [...]
ShareThe Frightening Manipulation of Young Girls by the Media
I have realised Natasha Walter is completely right about the strange doll-like emphasis of femininity in the media, but to the extent it is targeted at girls aged 2-16, has absolutely horrified me.
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SharePutting the “Institutional” back into “Institutional Sexism”
One of the first steps in fighting oppression is to acknowledge its presence within the institutions we are a part of, yet far too often injustice is outsourced and framed as something that other people do. Racism in our society is distilled down to groups like the BNP, whose ideologies and practices are so indisputably [...]
ShareMen, Children and Patriarchy
For a man to work with children, he must acknowledge that he is ‘marked’ and will be subject to far greater scrutiny, suspicion and supervision than would a woman in exactly the same role. Somewhere between men and children there is a line, and for those men who choose to cross it, for whatever reason, [...]
ShareDualism Dilemmas
The binary functions of our brains lead us to powerful box-ticking tendencies, which are the real enemies of feminism. What happens when you read Lévi-Strauss with gender theory on your mind?
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