...The women’s right movement is an ongoing campaign to abolish inequality between the sexes on a multitude of platforms. The movement has been a prevalent part of history around the world, with origins as early as the 1500s with literature sprinkled with the mention of women having mind, reason and a voice that is equal to that of a man. This fight for women to be placed on the same level as men has seen much struggle and oppression that is still prevalent in today’s world. However, the fight for women in today’s world is labeled as feminism, which quite literally means the social, political, and economic rights of the sexes. Rebecca Lewin depicts feminism as a “model for a social state – an ideal, or a desired standard of perfection not yet attained in the world”. Lewin expressed this in 1983, and still today’s society has failed to reach this goal. Feminism has transformed into the second “F” word, where society labels feminism as a harmful, extremist movement. The feminist movement has become synonymous with man – hating, bra – burning, lesbians who engage in radical protests to ultimately eliminate men from society and become a female dominated world. Which, is why this world needs a continued women’s rights movement to eradicate the ideology that fighting for the equality of women is obscene or unnatural. Feminism eventually inspired the term “Herstory”, which emerged in the 1960s, a very exciting time in American history full of social change. Herstory aims to look at history...
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...Sojourner Truth’s speech, delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention was originally an answer to White men doubting the ability of women to partake in politics due to stereotypical images of White womanhood (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 153). The speech perfect-ly introduces the problem of intersectionality as early as in 1851. Since then changes have been made, the situation of Black people in the United States now differs greatly from the Post-civil war period of the 19th century and even from the 1950s, which were marked by Jim Crow and wildly accepted racism of that time, as well as an atmosphere of violence and oppression. For women as well things have changed, the suffragette movements of Europe and the United States established political...
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...time when women did not have the right to vote, Sojourner Truth was a champion of women’s suffrage as well as black men’s right to vote. From the National Women’s History Museum, “A formerly enslaved woman, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century.” (Michals) So important was the work that she did that in 1864 she invited personally to the White House to meet the President, Abraham Lincoln. Michael Truth is famously remembered for her speech “Ain’t I A Woman?” but the version most people know is a reinterpretation published more than a decade after her original performance. Right down to the refrain which comprises the informal title, the entirety of the most well-known version of the speech is not in her own words. In this way, her self-narrative was quite literally rewritten by a white woman and has been immortalized in this altered format ever since. In studying Sojourner Truth’s story, it is important to honor her self-selected words and narrative as best as we...
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...Feminism refers to political, cultural, and economic movements aimed at establishing greater rights, legal protection for women, and or women's liberation. It includes some of the sociological theories and philosophies concerned with issues of gender difference. Nancy Cott defines feminism as the belief in the importance of gender equality, invalidating the idea of gender hierarchy as a socially constructed concept. Feminism has earned itself a bad reputation, but it never undermined gender differences that exist between males and females. A man can never be as good a mother as a female can. Similarly, a woman can never be as good a father as a male can. While accepting these anatomical and physiological differences between the two genders, feminism seeks for both genders to be equally respected. They are both human and as a species, humans cannot progress without either one of them. Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker divide the history of feminism into three waves. The first wave transpired in the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s, the second occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. In each wave of the movement, though men have taken part in significant responses to feminism, the relationship between men and feminism has been complex. Historically, a number of men have engaged with feminism. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham demanded equal rights for women in the eighteenth century. In 1866, philosopher John Stuart Mill presented a women's...
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...though the event was centered on white women with vaginas and not on all women with any type of genitalia. Even worse yet, she confessed that she felt as though she would be accused of infighting and sabotaging the movement if she would have voiced her concerns that this event catered to cisgender white women who overwhelmingly do not show up in support of...
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...Over the years gender studies and the women’s rights movement have changed history and with the either plateauing or large progress, revisions of previous works take place. Along with revisions, with such a large issue there are bound to be differing opinions and viewpoints, with that there have been many critiques of books, articles, and ideas as the gender issue moves forward. In this introductory gender class we have read a variety of pieces some that critique one another; Beauvoir critiques Freud, Stanton critiques or revises the Declaration of Independence and in return Davis critiques Stanton’s work, the Declaration of Sentiments. Although there are many critiques it’s important that all of these documents exist because they have all...
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