Feminism (pronounced fem-uh-niz-uhm)
(1) A doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
(2) In both its structured and ad hoc forms, a movement for the attainment of such rights for women (sometimes used with initial capital letter).
(3) Feminine character (obsolete except for historic references).
1851: From the French féminisme, ultimately from the Classical Latin fēminīnus, the construct being the Latin fēmina (woman) + ism. The first known use in French dates from 1837. The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up -ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done). It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc). It seems first to have been used in in English in 1851, originally as a neutral term meaning "the state of being feminine". The sense of "advocacy of women's rights" began in 1895 ("political feminism" often traced from here although given the history that is misleading) and the word came soon to be used as a "loaded" descriptor of the female character, a kind of informal measure of the patriarchal view of femininity, often in criticism of artistic performance or literature. So productive has the word feminism proved that there are literally more than a hundred derived forms including the: geographical (Afro-feminism; Euro-feminism), political (anarcho-feministic, radical feminism), humorous (femocrat; femnazi), structural (post-feminism; lipstick feminism; postmodern feminism) and contested (male-feminism; trans-feminism). Feminism & feminist are nouns, feministic is an adjective and feministically is an adverb; the most common noun plural is feminists but given the proliferation of terms created with modifiers, feminisms are often referenced even if the word is not used.
Feminism is a widely used word with an accepted definitional range but there’s no universal understanding pattern of use and, like words such as “academic” or “liberal”, the meaning conveyed widely can vary, the senses ranging from the chauvinistically aggressive to the contemptuous. That of course transfers to “feminist” which while procedural as an adjective (relating to or in accordance with feminism), as a noun it really means what the user wants it to mean because it’s not like many other “–ist” creations (physicist, scientist etc) which are understood as simple descriptors. Even “artist” is uncontroversial at the linguistic level (one who creates what they claim to be art) although whether what they produce can be considered “art” might be disputed. The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix). It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive). Feminists have noted the issue, the journalist & author Rebecca West (1892–1983) once remarking: “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or prostitute.”
Feminism & Language
Écriture féminine (feminine writing) was a concept proposed by the French feminist and literary critic Hélène Cixous (b 1937). It denoted writing characteristically feminine in style, language, tone and feeling; it was wholly different from (and opposed to) male language and discourse although in The Laugh of the Medusa (1976) she acknowledged in this there was no biological determinism; women often writing in “male discourse” while men can write in a “feminine way”. She cited the “source” of écriture féminine in the mother-child relationship before the child acquires “conventional” language and suggested this potential language, when eventually used in writing, (whether by men or women) subverted logic, the rational and any element which may constrain the free play of meaning. In certain feminist circles, this was intoxicating stuff.
Because of the overlap of terms and labels, it’s important to emphasize Cixous meant something different by “conventional language” than did linguistics theorist & public intellectual Noam Chomsky (b 1928), their intellectual traditions (mostly) separate. According to Cixous, “convention is a social, cultural, and ideological phenomenon”, her concern being how language reproduces power, (especially that of the patriarchy) and her purpose an intention to disrupt existing constructs of “conventional language”. By contrast, Chmosky was interested in mechanisms and structure (much of his analysis is gender-neutral). In his model, “convention” was largely a surface property of particular languages, his interest the innate cognitive system underlying language and his goal an explanation of the way speakers unconsciously acquire the syntax and vocabulary of language. This was less the “nuts & bolts” of language than how people learn to use them to assemble and convey meaning with “conventional language an outcome of process.
Cixous was thus a critic of “conventional language”, seeing it as a collection of constructs which made up the established forms of discourse inherited from Western culture (most of which was created or propagated by the infamous “dead white males”). That construct was culturally hegemonic and included (1) accepted literary styles & canonical works, (2) accepted rules of syntax & logic, (3) a limited range of socially sanctioned meanings, (4) binary oppositions that tended to map onto masculine / feminine orthodoxy (reason / emotion, activity / passivity, strength / weakness etc) and (5) linguistic habits operating to maintain or reinforce patriarchal authority. Obviously, none of that could be thought politically neutral and because language is a unique form of communication, being standardized after having been shaped by masculine structures of thought, “conventional language” tended to reproduce existing hierarchies. Écriture féminine was thus writing exceeding or disrupting the conventional linguistic order, achieved through non-linear structures, ambiguity, excess & rhythm; while those devices and techniques have widely been adopted by many seeking to be disruptive of “something”, what Cixous emphasized was a particular content: bodily imagery & associative movement rather than the rigid logical progression long imposed by the patriarchy. In other words, Cixous defined “conventional language” as something effectively synonymous with institutionalized discourse or the dominant symbolic order.
Chomsky’s work in structural linguistics predated his “second career” as critic of socio-economic structures and US foreign policy and although highly controversial, was little known outside the relatively small community of academics working in the field of linguistics. In producing his polemical work that was more accessible, he reached a much wider audience and managed to become a “celebrity academic”, a reasonable achievement given he was effectively black-balled by all of the mainstream US media (both “liberal” and “conservative” outlets). Chomsky’s early work was highly technical (and frankly difficult fully to understand without the requisite training) but it’s clear he viewed “conventional language” as an external social system with the parameters of “convention” understood as the “surface properties” and what really mattered was the innate cognitive system underlying language (the means by which speakers unconsciously acquire conventional languages). At that point his analysis got really dense and one of the few easily digestible concepts he offered to illustrate things was the distinction between I-language (internal language): the mental grammar possessed by an individual speaker and E-language (external language): English, French, Japanese, etc, viewed as public conventions. For many of us, it was a rare moment of clarity.
So the use by Cixous and Chomsky of the term “conventional language” is just an example of the way language must in its context be deconstructed for meaning to be understood. That’s not new and is something that’s been required as soon as words or phrases came to capable of carrying more than one meaning but what can’t be denied is that at some point in the twentieth century, deconstruction became fetishized and once postmodernism taught us even meaning must inherently be thought uncertain, it’s little wonder the factions girded their loins and feminist literature was part of the battle. Cixous (in translation) and Chomsky of course shared vocabulary, linguistic conventions and sometimes even patterns of argument but their work on language was not even parallel streams but more lakes fed by the same tributaries. Cixous was there to oppose and Chomsky to explain but he later would discover the joy of discontent.
There have of course been many forks of feminist thoughts and Belgian-born French feminist psycholinguist Luce Irigaray (b 1930) wrote of a “woman's language” that was multiple, fluid, diverse and heterogeneous, evading the male phallocentric monopoly (a theory with a morphological basis associated with the structure and shape of the genitalia). A not unrelated view was proposed by Bulgarian-born French feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (b 1941): a “language” that was pre-Oedipal, pre-linguistic and fundamentally semiotic (associated with the chora, from the Ancient Greek χώρα (khṓra) (location, place (but used here in the sense of “womb”))) as opposed to male-controlled language which she described as symbolic. That one really disturbed some male critics. Nearly a half-century on, the classic discussion of these matters (and other competing theories) remains Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1981) by the Norwegian Professor of Literature Toril Moi (b 1953).
Feminism's Waves
The notion of feminism being not a fixed manifesto but a process in incremental waves is from a 1968 piece in the New York Times Magazine by journalist Martha Lear (b 1932). The context was to note the appearance a decade earlier of second-wave feminism, focusing now on unofficial inequalities, unlike the first wave which was essentially structuralist. While lineal, there’s overlap between the waves and, in both popular culture and academia, some resistance to change. Whatever its other implications, feminism needs to be considered a political construct and it operates, as does politics, through cross-cutting cleavages; in the same way the formation of the G8 (the Group of 8, an assembly of advanced industrial economies created when Russia was added to the G7) didn’t mean the G7 ceased to exist, the successive waves in feminism both absorbed and operated in parallel with earlier waves.
First-wave feminism (1895-1950s): In this “de jure” period, the focus was on legal issues such as women's suffrage, property rights and political candidacy.
Second-wave feminism (1960s-1980s): Even before equality in legal rights wholly was achieved, the movement broadened the debate to include sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights and other de facto inequalities. Attention to first-wave issues focused on child custody and divorce law.
Third-wave feminism (1990-2000s): Although there were cultural links, the intellectual origins of 3WF lie in a 1992 article by feminist Rebecca Walker (b 1969) and although never exactly defined, it was said to emphasize an interest in individualism and diversity (which hadn't yet become DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)). Controversial even at the time, with strains of libertarianism now competing with the historic collectivist model, it sought to change the parameters of feminism. Some argue that by now men had surrendered and the opposition to the notion of 3WF cam mostly from those feminists who had built sometimes lucrative careers on the framework of 2WF.
Fourth-wave feminism (circa 2010-): Regarded as a least partially technologically deterministic, 4WF is thought to have emerged circa 2008-2012 as social media gained critical mass. It focuses on intersectionality and examines the interconnected systems of power that maintain the marginalized of certain groups in society. 4WF advocates for greater representation of these groups in all places within the power-elite, arguing equality for women will become possible only if policies and practices incorporate all groups. There were those who argued 4WF was really 3WF 1.1 while others suggested the need for a 5WF but no coherent work has yet been published.
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