Friday, March 14, 2014

Feminism, Post-Feminism, Queer Theory: Super Condensed

Feminism arose in order to even out the binary relationship between the male and female genders.

2nd-wave French feminism is the genre therein with which most people are familiar, earning the movement its bad name for bra-burning and refusal to shave, etc. The idea was that because women could do anything that men could and certain things that men couldn't (i.e. carry children), then women were better and should therefore take the top spot in a gender binary. Therefore, instead of evening out the binary, they just went to flip it and put themselves on top.

Post-feminism came along and looked at all this and said "No, no no. That's not right, either." And went back to setting out to even the binary again. This time, however--at least in terms of literary criticism, with which I am most familiar (imagine that)--they looked not only at the way that women have been represented and shoe-boxed into particular roles, but also the way that men have been. Just like women, men have expected cultural roles and are berated when they neglect to live up to their set expectations. Post-feminism decided that both genders were equally important and therefore worked to examine both of them throughout history and the modern period.

Queer theory is more of a literary criticism method than anything else, at least as far as I'm familiar with it. It looks at literary relationships between characters or even just particular characters on their own and questions whether there might be something not-quite-hetero about them or their motives, and that's what's influencing the play out of plot. Etc. Etc. Whether it's ever accurate or not isn't really the point; it's merely a lens through which to examine literature, and I think it's particularly interesting (although I must admit I never did fully get the hang of it).

So now you know!

Cheers!

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