Rabbit's Feminist Support Pages

 

Rabbit's Feminist Support Pages   

    

WHAT IS FEMINISM?

"Dictionaries usually define it as the advocacy of women's rights based on a belief in the equality of the sexes, and in its broadest use the word refers to everyone who is aware of and seeking to end women's subordination in any way and for any reason."
-Encyclopedia of Feminism (By Lisa Tuttle)

A feminist is a person who answers "yes" to the question, "Are women human?" Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men.  And it's certainly not about trading personal liberty--abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression--for social protection as wives and mothers,
as pro-life feminists propose.  It's about justice, fairness, and access to the broad range of human experience.  It's about women consulting their own
well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It's about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, the "family," men.
- Katha Pollitt

(More quotes on feminism: Feminism Quotes , Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance's Feminist Quotes)

Patriarchy has labelled men as "self" and women as "other"

Patriarchal society positions people to view the world from a male point of view. People are conditioned to view the male psyche as self and female psyche as "other" from when they are children. The majority of films and texts are androcentric featuring male protagonists facing archetypal male problems. People are positioned to sympathise with the male self and encouraged to empathise with difficulties men face in daily life.There is little encouragement given to people to empathise with women's problems,hopes and dreams in life. Women's reality and "self" (including the existence of "herstory" rather than "history") is often marginalised and viewed as being less important by many authors, film makers, and the patriarchy in general. Androcentric texts and films typically position women as only  significant in relation to men's needs and wants and not as complex human beings who have their own dreams and desires independent of men. Women are often frustrated with the lack of strong female protagonists in texts and films. Some women question the belief they should adopt a male perspective on the world and some women believe the construct of male "self" and female "otherness" undermines the female "self" and they believe women's "self" is often ignored in almost all mediums of communication throughout life. Feminist author Adrienne Rich offers an insight on how women feel when their achievements go unrecognized:

When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard".

-Adrienne Rich

FEMINIST RESOURCES


FEMINIST MESSAGE BOARDS
FAVOURITE FEMINIST LINKS


HOT TOPICS-

LACK OF FEMALE CARTOONISTS

Interesting articles:

The rare female cartoonist: If only she wore khaki  - a humorous perspective on why there are so few female editorial cartoonists.
Includes statistics such as 9.85 out of every 10 editorial cartoonists in America are male.

Cartoonists Bring Wit to Cultural Exchange - two prominent female cartoonists lecture on their work at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Friends of Lulu - Friends of Lulu is a national nonprofit organization whose purpose is to promote and encourage female readership and participation in the comic book industry.

THE BIAS AGAINST FEMALE COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

  • In 1990, only 13% of PhDs in computer science went to women, and only 7.8% of computer science professors were female. Additionally, the percentage of female computer science students appears to be increasing at only a slow rate or even decreasing.
    -Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists? -a paper by Ellen Spertus, Ph.D; assistant professor of Computer Science at Mills College, USA.

  • 69% of computer scientists are men; 31% of computer scientists are women
  • "If we (as a society) don't allow women to move up in this very crucial profession, which may become the dominant profession in the next century, we are relegating them to second-class status," -Paula Hawthorn, vice president of product development at Illustra Information Technologies
    -High-tech industry zipping along, but women often are left behind- article By Ilana DeBare, The Sacramento Bee

  • "Will the best jobs of the future be in the world of computers? And, if that's the case, will women be left out of these opportunities?"
    -Logged on or Left Out? -The Sacramento Bee Special Report on Women in Computing, 1996.

  • Visit the Women and Gender Studies Science and Technology Web Sites at MIT University,USA, for more information about women and computer science.

Visit Voices: Women In The Computer Industry for interesting quotes from women in the computer industry.
 

QUOTES
"My gender is interesting but really not the subject of the story here."
-Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard Co., President and CEO and the first woman to head a Dow 30 company.


POETRY
"Privilege" - a poem by D. A. Clarke, feminist and software engineer.



INTERESTING FEMINIST TERMS

-Extracted from the Encyclopedia of Feminism, by Lisa Tuttle.

Androcentric -Male centred. Androcentric theory is the �view that the male sex is primary and the female secondary�.

Phallocentric - Term, like androcentric, which points out the masculine bias of our culture. Phallocentrism...is the belief that maleness is the centre and the norm against which everything must be judged.

Patriarchy- The universal political structure which privileges men at the expense of women; the social system which feminism is determined to destroy.

Phallocracy - Social, political, ideological system which perpetuates the domination of men and the subordination of women. Another term for patriarchy, it literally means �rule of the phallus�, thus emphasizing that... patriarchy is based on penis worship.

Double standard -Patriarchal moral code which sets different rules for behaviour according to gender. Under the double standard, behaviour condemned in a woman is accepted or even applauded in a man.

He/man language - Term used to describe the most obvious and pervasive instance of sexism in LANGUAGE: the use of the masculine PRONOUN (he, him) as a generic, and the use of the words MAN or mankind for the whole human race.

Herstory- Term used for women�s history, and to point up to the fact that what is presented as our history is all too often simply �his story�.

"I�m not a feminist but" syndrome -Mental state of women who have become aware that sexism exists, that they suffer from it, and that feminism - or something exactly like it but preferably with a different name - must be necessary, yet are afraid of being mistaken for one of the ugly, humourless, dogmatic, man-hating lesbians who are labelled feminists.

Objectification -The term describes the process of viewing women not as individual, complex persons, but as sexual objects which exist only in relation to male desire. This is done by identifying women solely with their bodies, either whole, or fragmented and fetishized as parts...

Social constructionism -The idea that the status of women, and the apparently natural differences between male and female, are not directly attributable to biology, but rather to the way that biology is interpreted within a given society; that sex roles are constructed and women and men made rather than born. The opposite to this point of view is called biological determinism or essentialism.


RECLAIM THE NIGHT (RTN) '2000


EXCERPTS FROM RTN ENEWS LETTER OCTOBER 1999:

(1)Escaping domestic violence

Are you a victim of emotional or physical abuse? The following pages may help you work out how to deal with your current situation and how to escape if you are in a crisis situation. Please remember you are not alone and there are those who will support you if you are in a crisis situation. There are safe houses and refuges for immediate escape and there is counselling to help you work out what to do about your future.

The following pages are from an Australian advocacy support plan but are equally useful to abuse victims from other countries.

Please also remember that if you are a victim of emotional abuse and you feel you cannot talk to anyone about the abuse you are suffering, you are not alone. Emotional/psychological abuse is sometimes worse than physical abuse because you have no scars or bruises to prove the abuse. However, the psychological abuse you suffer can cause great damage to both yourself and any children involved. If you are the victim of psychological abuse you should seek help just as if you had suffered physical abuse.

HUMOUR- SMART WOMEN AND DUMB MEN JOKES

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart
woman with a dumb guy.
-Erica Jong

I think-therefore I'm single.
-Lizz Winstead

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which
answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog that growls every
morning, a parrot that swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late
at night
-Marie Corelli

In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything
done, ask a woman.
-Margaret Thatcher

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his
house.
-Zsa Zsa Gabor

What's the difference between government bonds and men?
Bonds Mature.

What did God say after creating man?
I can do better

A woman of 35 thinks of having children. What does a man of 35 think of?
Dating children.

How does a man show he is planning for the future?
He buys two cases of beer instead of one

Why do bachelors like smart women?
Opposites attract.

Why are dumb blonde jokes so short?
So men can understand them.

Did you hear about the man who won the gold medal at the olympics?
He had it bronzed

What's the difference between an intelligent man and a UFO?
I don't know, I haven't seen either one.

Why is psychoanalysis quicker for men than for women?
When it's time to go back to childhood, he's already there.
 



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