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Study Cards on gender, women, feminists

What is equality feminism?

Highlights legal, political, social and other advantages that men enjoy but which are denied to women. Quest for gender equality

Although most feminists have regarded the sex/gender distinction as a source of empowerment, others have attacked. What are these attacks?

- Difference feminism: form that holds that there are deep and possibly ineradicable differences between women and men.

- Postmodern feminists have questioned whether sex is as clear-cut a biological distinction as is usually assumed. Not all women can bear children, not all women are attracted to men. Concepts fo sex and gender become entangled.

How has contemporary feminism become more radical?

Instead of just emphasizing that women are different men, greater attention has been given to differences between women.
No longer just focus on middle-class, white women, but greater awareness of intersectionality (contemporary women's movement characterized by diversity).

What is intersectionality within a feminist framework?

Women do not just have a straightforward gender-based identity but rather on in which race, class, ethnicity, age, religion etc can overlap or intersect with gender.

This implies that women may be subject to interlocking systems of oppression and discrimination, as sexism becomes entangled with racism, xenophebia, homophebia etc.

What is the defining theme of trans politics?

Rejection of the binary concepts of gender, with a stress, instead on gender and sexual ambiguity, sometimes based on the idea of a gender continuum (neither man or women). Gender is based on inner feelings.

Why has this been viewed as problematic by traditional feminists?

Because of the importance they played on culturally defined gender in explaining the oppression of women.
But over time, there has been a greater willingness by feminists to take on board issues raised by the trans movement.