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From: travis@douglass.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Definition of Feminism
Message-ID: <6463@columbia.edu>
Date: 22 Aug 89 15:21:48 GMT
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Reply-To: elroy!ames!douglass.cs.columbia.edu!travis (Travis Lee Winfrey)
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In article <6882@bunker.UUCP> elroy!decvax!bunker!garys (Gary M. Samuelson) writes:
>In article <46655@oliveb.olivetti.com> jan@Arezzo.orc.olivetti.com (Jan Parcel) writes:
>>The definition of feminism is to desire that society treat people
>>according to their individual traits, as you recommend, rather than
>>their gender.

Well, let's call that a definition of feminism.  The term means many
things to different people.

>Then why is it called "feminism" (from the Latin "femina," woman)?
>Why isn't it called "egalitarianism," for example?

Because "egalitarianism" implicitly refers to the equality of
citizens, where "citizens" is a term that has almost always,
implicitly or explicitly, been defined as "male."  The celebrated
equality in post-revolutionary America was given directly to the
males, without changing the unequal status of females, slaves, native
Americans, and non-land-owning white males.  All the praise for the
queen of the household did not change the fact that women were not
allowed to vote, appear on juries, or hold jobs that had the same
status as men.  The same rhetoric praising the domestic goddesses
appeared in other countries undergoing the Industrial Revolution.

Equality in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union seemed different,
since women were said to have equal status, but rhetoric did not
change societal roles, and so the women were left to do their old
domestic tasks in addition to their new professional tasks.
Professions that became dominated by females, such as the medical
profession, lost their status.  The same thing has happened in the
American and West European states with many professions, e.g., nursing
and secretarial work.  It's just another pattern.

The mingled histories of the feminist and abolitionist/civil rights
movements in America are no accident.  They are both fighting for
equal rights, but before that, the necessary understanding that equal
rights have not been given.  What began as a struggle for political
power over a century ago (some will say centuries) has become a
powerful means of analysis of patriarchal systems and gender bias,
systems and biases that appear in various forms: as obvious as the
lack of women in construction work, as subtle as the tendency of
scientists to insist on looking for hierarchical structures in
holistic systems like the human immune system, or as outrageous as the
lack of funding for "women's issues" such as child care.

As the t-shirt says, "same shit, different day."

t

Arpa:	travis@cs.columbia.edu	Usenet: rutgers!columbia!travis