Sarah Grimke’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women contained an abundance of references to power systems (particularly patriarchy or male subjugation of women/their wives); descriptions of social and economic class positions of women outside of the America and England; and justified arguments for women’s equal value through her reading of Genesis, refusing to place blame solely on Eve for humanity’s knowledge of sin. Given that Grimke’s Letters were written before the formal beginning of any western feminist movement, she speaks less explicitly about theories of feminism and more about theories of social relation and equality. An abolitionist, Grimke provides a more rounded, intersectional view of liberation than other suffragettes or feminists from the mid 19th century.
Manifestations of Christian philosophies (and Grimke’s identity as a Quaker) are tied inextricably to her concept of American patriarchy. She insists on a disrupted ‘natural order’ of equal value and potential between men and women, that both sexes are guilty of corrupting. As equal beings with equal autonomy, she does not remove the responsibility of self-actualization from women, but does principally focus on the ways that women's potential has been limited through legal and social avenues, both spearheaded by men but upheld by complacent (and often upper class) women. Though a religious focus may be considered less progressive today, at the time her faith allowed her arguments to ‘guilt’ the white Christian American populace into seeing the flaws in the current dominant social order.
In much of these selected Letters, Grimke chooses to describe her perceptions of the living conditions and social positions of women in countries outside of the Anglosphere. Informed again by her faith, Grimke professes that a good Christian could not allow the subjugation of women to continue, and a good American woman (Christianity implied) can not be absolved from considering the plight of enslaved women. Although her assumptions about cultures outside of those she is not personally familiar with can be inaccurate and display a degree of racialized bias (particularly a more dramatically critical analysis of women’s conditions in “Oriental” countries), she was an ideological abolitionist and tied the liberation of women from the tyranny of men’s laws to the liberation of all people from their oppressive class.
no more Miss America: Atlantic City is a town with class, they raid your morals and judge your ass is an article reporting on the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. During this event, New York Women's Liberation protestors created chaos and interrupted the pageant using various forms of protest. Their aim was to bring light to the objectification and demeaning nature of the pageant. There were many hostile reactions to the demonstration from both spectators and the police, showing the tensions surrounding the feminist movement at this time.
There was a young woman who swallowed a lie is a poem based off the children's rhyme, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. This poem contrasts the rhyme scheme and reference to children's media with a condemnation of the societal treatment of women. Meredith Tax critiques beauty standards, obedience, marriage, motherhood, and male approval, portraying them as lies. The poem ends with the woman rejecting these societal expectations, presenting liberation as the only alternative to self-destruction.
The Furies: Lesbian/Feminist Monthly is the first volume of what was a radical lesbian/feminist journal. This first edition explains why the magazine chose its name by retelling the greek myth of the furies with an emphasis on male supremacy and the patriarchy. It argues that sexism is the root of all oppresion including racism and classism and claims that lesbianism is a necessary political movement that all feminists must partake in to dismantle male supremacy. These claims showcase that within the second wave intersectionality was still not fully developed.
AFTER THE DEATH OF GOD THE FATHER Women's Liberation and the transformation of Christian consciousness is an essay that challenges the patriarchal nature of Christianity and the way that religion has been used to justify the oppression of women. Daly is still a Christian herself and does not argue for the dismantling of Christianity but male supremacy. She claims that this will open the possibility for new, non-patriarchal understandings of God. This shows how religion was beginning to be critiqued much more within this wave of feminism.
The Feminine Mystique is a foundational piece of theory within the beginning of second-wave feminism. In this specific excerpt from Chapter 5, Freidan examines the work of Sigmund Freud, particularly how his views and beliefs on women have shaped the current culture surrounding the psychology of gender. Friedan explains how, despite the proof of equal intelligence and capability that women possess, these beliefs are still rooted in outdated, even at the time of her writing, antifeminist theories. “Today, when women’s equal intelligence has been proved by science, when their equal capacity in every sphere except sheer muscular strength has been demonstrated, a theory explicitly based on woman’s natural inferiority would seem as ridiculous as it is hypocritical. But that remains the basis of Freud’s theory of women, despite the mask of timeless sexual truth which disguises its elaborations today.” When \bringing this to light, Friedan discusses both radical feminist ideas as well as the Freudian ideas that she is contesting.
The Second Sex, like The Feminine Mystique, is a foundational, and debatably the cornerstone text, of the second-wave feminist movement. In this excerpt from chapter 1, de Beauvoir examines the so-called “natural” differences between men and women. To do this, she utilizes examples of supposed natural gender interactions, such as insects and wild beasts. Women were perceived at this time as totally passive beings, having action done on them and never (if they are to be respectable) acting outwardly. This passivity and subordination have become the basis that defines women, the very basis that de Beauvoir looks to contest in The Second Sex.
Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin explores how various representations and narratives of women and female sexuality have become ways to control and dictate women. In the excerpt from chapter 3, Dworkin examines The Story of O, a book about a woman who entirely and willingly submits herself to sexual servitude for a man. The Story of O, Dworkin argues, serves as an example for the natural belief held by many at the time that women were naturally submissive towards men, particularly sexually submissive. Man’s power over women, such as the man’s power over O, equates to the definition of his manhood and her subsequent un-womanhood, or dehumanization. This text serves as an in-depth exploration of patriarchy and men’s control over women.
The excerpt from Punk Planet 29, as referenced before, centers on women in the realm of rock music. The original text in the archive of the magazine is displayed in interview format. For the “structure” element, the researchers separated the block of text at each break into paragraphs. Instances of identity elements in the annotations center on gender specifically: “Men in Rock,” “the cliche of the girl keyboard player in the mini skirt,” and “women who play music.” These orientations of gender are strictly binary, which is a significant consideration once the researchers consider how feminist theory is incorporated in the dialogue of the interview. In the interview, there is a clear overarching wage in social power systems between rock music and mainstream music. The girls of Sleater-Kinney operate within the social sphere of rock music. Patriarchy, an additional power system, has norms that operate within this sphere. Members of the band, specifically Carrie, express their reaction to the power system of patriarchy by stating that they do not wish to be a part of the history of men in rock. In itself, this statement sounds feminist. The researchers theorize that the feminist theories that motivate this desire may be rooted in trans-exclusionary radical feminism due to her preceding statements that criticize consumers/critics who “think they’re paying [the group] a compliment by taking [them] out of the ‘girl group ghetto’ and saying [they’ve] transcended gender.” Carrie further inquires, “how could [the girl group] possibly transcend something that’s so experiential and part of who [they] are?” This can be speculated as rooted in trans-exclusionary radical feminist ideology, not only because Carrie does not clarify how she defines gender, but also fosters a stigmatizing attitude towards the transcendence of gender.
The excerpt from Punk Planet 52 is structured in paragraphs in its original form, and therefore each block of text is categorized as in the “paragraph” attribute of the “structure” element. Instances of identity elements with the attribute of gender depict males and females within the visual aesthetic of early Y2K punk/goth. The feminist theories at work in this text are radically feminist. The production and consumption of pornography in the age of internet porn has been engulfed by large corporate offices that, according to the annotations made in this text, are rooted in class consumption. In plain terms, in order to access exclusive pornography in the age of the internet, you must bring money to the table. This is less common in porn produced by big studios. There is one instance of the class element appearing in these annotations, and that is the mention of the “DIY” element that punk porn brings to the table. Punk porn creators often offer free pictures, which the researchers classified the mention of “free” as an economic attribute of the class structure. However, this same attribute is clarified further in an earlier part of the text through the statement that “if [one] wants to see more, [they] better get out [their] credit card.” The sexuality attribute of the identity element aims not only to classify certain types of sex mentioned in this excerpt, but also to group descriptions of images of the sexual body together in order to create a portrait of the aesthetic of the content of this type of pornography depicted in punk porn. An important limitation of the researcher to consider is the fact that some scholars may argue that pornography is anti-feminist, while some scholars think it is best classified through theories of radical feminism. Some radical feminisms despise pornography, and this is one of the only areas where they agree with anti-feminists.
The excerpt from Punk Planet 62 mainly grapples with the power system of patriarchy in specific regard to consent. The concept of “blue balls” is an inherently patriarchal one, and is referenced as “nothing more than a sad excuse for guys to pressure girls into having sex.” This sense of coercion that is often inflicted on women drove the author to start exercising political lesbianism, which is a feminist theory outlined in the schema. The researchers utilized the identity element and the sexuality attributes to categorize words that reference genitalia and motions of sex, such as the orgasm or the act of masturbating. The excerpt is largely a discussion of what physically happens in the male body during “blue balls,” in order to express the fact that the only process taking place in the biological male body is increased blood flow to the genitals. Joking about the term “purple pussy’ is a decision by the author that can be classified as a radical feminist ideology in the feminist theory attribute. What makes the play on words with “purple pussy” juxtaposed to the common phrase “blue balls” so radical is the fact that this same process of increased blood flow to genitals occurs in the female body as well upon reaching orgasm. However, it can be argued that this explanation has gender essentialist undertones because not all women have bodies that are biologically female, and they do not experience the sensation of increased blood flow in the biological female body. Discussions of how the patriarchal and coercive concept of “blue balls” is strictly limited to how cisgender women are affected, with specific biologically essentialist references to sexual identity.