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Mothers and Infants

Sudhir Kakar

in The Inner World: A Psychoanalytical Study of Childhood and Society in India

This chapter suggests that infancy is the foundation for all later psychological experience. Moreover, the nature of an individual’s first relationship—with his mother—profoundly influences the ... More

This chapter suggests that infancy is the foundation for all later psychological experience. Moreover, the nature of an individual’s first relationship—with his mother—profoundly influences the quality and ‘dynamics’ of social relations throughout his life. The infant’s development and the relationship with the mother which nurtures it are optimal only when that relationship becomes a kind of psychological counterpart to the biological connection of pregnancy. The discussion considers the psycho-social matrix of infancy, feminine identity in India, the ‘good mother’, the ‘bad mother’, infancy and ego, and the origins of identity in a patriarchal culture.Less

Unexpected Heroes of Feminist Cinema

Terri Murray

in Studying Feminist Film Theory

This chapter challenges critics' readings of films as ‘sexist’, looking at two illustrative examples: Paul Verhoeven and Spike Lee. Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992) was widely regarded as ... More

This chapter challenges critics' readings of films as ‘sexist’, looking at two illustrative examples: Paul Verhoeven and Spike Lee. Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992) was widely regarded as misogynistic and ‘lesbophobic’. Basic Instinct is a neo-noir film that scandalously refuses to conform to the patriarchal rule of ‘compensating moral values’. Moreover, its visual pleasures are deliberately constructed against the grain of male voyeuristic pleasures and offer women (especially lesbian women) a rare opportunity to dissect and ridicule male sexism, homophobia, and voyeuristic power. Verhoeven's Elle (2016) is a much more subtle and complex critique of how women's self-image is ‘mediated’ by patriarchal culture, and the film makes explicit or oblique references to tabloid journalism, the gaming industry, and religion in the construction of a total culture that presents women as ‘others’ not only to men but also to themselves. Meanwhile, Spike Lee has been a frequent target for the ‘sexist’ label. The chapter argues that this is unfair, given Lee's relatively frequent attempts to make films about female sexual empowerment (or the causes of female sexual disempowerment). The three examples of She's Gotta Have It (1986), She Hate Me (2004), and BlacKkKlansman (2018) suggest that Lee has in various ways attempted to represent females as empowered sexual agents, and to address social double standards erected by men to possess women through the possession of their bodies.Less

Conclusion

Sal Renshaw

in The Subject of Love: Hélène Cixous and the Feminine Divine

This text highlights Cixous's notions and thought, which offer to an individual a very different picture of the subjects of divine love from that which derives from the concept of mutuality that is ... More

This text highlights Cixous's notions and thought, which offer to an individual a very different picture of the subjects of divine love from that which derives from the concept of mutuality that is currently favoured in many feminist theologies. It has noted that mutuality undoubtedly challenges the underlying hierarchical power structures which have informed inter-subjective possibilities within patriarchal cultures and retains a commitment to dualism which undoes the very assertion that subjectivity itself is a relational concept. On the other hand, Cixous's attention to the epistemological conditions of subjectivity, that is, to the relationship between knowledge, self and other, and to the phenomenal conditions which open the category of knowledge to ways of living, provides an alternative foundation for rethinking the structure of self/other relations. For Cixous, as the text suggests, everything happens in the instant, and it is in a feminine approach to the instant that we find the passage to divinity which is truly paved with the love of the other as other.Less

Introduction

Wang Zheng

in Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1964

Starting with a brief history of feminism in China and women in the Communist Revolution to contextualize the emergence of socialist state feminists, the chapter introduces key findings of the book, ... More

Starting with a brief history of feminism in China and women in the Communist Revolution to contextualize the emergence of socialist state feminists, the chapter introduces key findings of the book, highlights a politics of concealment and a politics of erasure, explains how “anti-feudalism” served as a coded phrase for socialist feminist agendas developed by the gender-based mass organization–ACWF from its paradoxical position of both being a part of the state power and a subordinated group in the power structure of the male-dominated CCP. The chapter emphasizes the cultural front as an important arena of feminist engagement with a patriarchal culture, and explains the two-part-structure of the book that examines the relationship between the ACWF and the CCP, and the relationship between a socialist feminist revolution of culture and the Cultural Revolution.Less

Fashioning Socialist Visual Culture: Xia Yan and the New Culture Heritage

Wang Zheng

in Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1964

Xia Yan, the underground leader of the left-wing films in the 1930s and top official of the film industry in the PRC since 1954, embodied the cultural history of the CCP. A brief biography of this ... More

Xia Yan, the underground leader of the left-wing films in the 1930s and top official of the film industry in the PRC since 1954, embodied the cultural history of the CCP. A brief biography of this Communist feminist artist leader disrupts the reductive dichotomy of the Party vs. artists in film studies and illuminates a tension-ridden history of socialist filmmaking that constituted a highly contentious site in the socialist revolution. Situating his politically engagingartistic creativity inside ashiftingpolitical process, this chapter traces Xia Yan’s major role in transmitting the New Culture agenda of transforming a patriarchal culture in socialist cultural production and delineatesdiverse and contradictory politicalpositions and artistic preferences in artists’ innovative experimentsofcreating a socialist new culture. It also analyzes his films that continued the paradigm of revolutionary heroines.Less

“Quarrelsome” Men: Violence and Clerical Masculinity

Michelle Armstrong-Partida

in Defiant Priests

This chapter shows that employing violence to resolve disputes, uphold authority, and exert male privilege in a patriarchal culture was key for clergy to demonstrate their masculinity in the parish ... More

This chapter shows that employing violence to resolve disputes, uphold authority, and exert male privilege in a patriarchal culture was key for clergy to demonstrate their masculinity in the parish community. Much of this clerical violence centered on the public nature of personal honor, which dictated that men had to avenge and restore their reputations. The conflict-ridden interactions between parishioners and their priests was a product of how fully integrated clerics were into village life, particularly when these hostile interactions were based on personal animosities and hatreds. Moreover, a great number of priests were reported to be belligerent, quarrelsome men who acted violently against parish villagers. They used violence to intimidate parishioners, a strategy that worked to bolster their control over villagers and parish affairs. Parish clergy used their status and clerical authority to establish a hierarchy in the parish that allowed them to subordinate their parishioners.Less

Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution

Nona Willis Aronowitz

in The Essential Ellen Willis

This chapter examines sexual revolution from a feminist perspective, with particular emphasis on how sexual morality in a patriarchal culture becomes a primary instrument of social control. It ... More

This chapter examines sexual revolution from a feminist perspective, with particular emphasis on how sexual morality in a patriarchal culture becomes a primary instrument of social control. It considers the debate between feminist sexual radicals and conservatives concerning a wide range of sex-related issues, including pornography, the definition of sexual consent, the nature of women’s sexuality and whether it is intrinsically different from men’s, and the meaning of heterosexuality for women. Each of these issues, in turn, became a focus of deeply felt disagreement over the place of sexuality and sexual morality in a feminist analysis and program. In one way or another, they raise the question of whether sexual freedom, as such, is a feminist value, or whether feminism ought rather to aim at replacing male-defined social controls over sex with female-defined controls.Less

Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution

Ellen Willis

in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays

This chapter examines sexual revolution from a feminist perspective, with particular emphasis on how sexual morality in a patriarchal culture becomes a primary instrument of social control. It ... More

This chapter examines sexual revolution from a feminist perspective, with particular emphasis on how sexual morality in a patriarchal culture becomes a primary instrument of social control. It considers the debate between feminist sexual radicals and conservatives concerning a wide range of sex-related issues, including pornography, the definition of sexual consent, the nature of women’s sexuality and whether it is intrinsically different from men’s, and the meaning of heterosexuality for women. It also explores how each of these issues became a focus of deeply felt disagreement over the place of sexuality and sexual morality in a feminist analysis and program, arguing that they raise the question of whether sexual freedom is a feminist value, or whether feminism ought rather to aim at replacing male-defined social controls over sex with female-defined controls.Less

The Unusual Moso Gender Syste

in Quest for Harmony: The Moso Traditions of Sexual Union and Family Life.

This chapter explores the unusual Moso gender system. Looking at ethnographic data, as well as legends and cultural idioms, this chapter shows how the Moso deem females superior to males and how they ... More

This chapter explores the unusual Moso gender system. Looking at ethnographic data, as well as legends and cultural idioms, this chapter shows how the Moso deem females superior to males and how they twist cultural concepts and social practices borrowed from patriarchal cultures such as the Tibetan and the Han to fit their superior-female ideology. It also describes the Moso gender system with depictions of child care in household life and of gender division of labor in agricultural work, particularly during the People's Commune period.Less

Heroines and emancipation

Andrew Kahn, Mark Lipovetsky, Irina Reyfman, and Stephanie Sandler

in A History of Russian Literature

The chapter builds on historical research to elucidate the social and legal status and the everyday lives of women of all classes, aspects that informed fiction about women and their representation, ... More

The chapter builds on historical research to elucidate the social and legal status and the everyday lives of women of all classes, aspects that informed fiction about women and their representation, and influenced women who wrote (or did not write) fiction, poetry, and diaries. The chapter examines the interrelation of fictional models/behavioral types and historical and fictional actors. With changing educational opportunities, sexual norms, and social roles, women in literature respond differently to patriarchal norms of society, and the chapter compares gendered identity formation of heroes and heroines and surveys types of heroines, such as mothers, wives and mistresses, fallen women and temptresses. Political novels and novels of adultery, with their sense of freedom and punishment, show women testing boundaries, from extreme cases such as terrorists down to the quotidian yet surprisingly ambivalent role of the mother in Russian nineteenth-century literature.Less

An Overview of Marital Rape Research in the United States: Limitations and Implications for Cross-Cultural Research

Raquel Kennedy Bergen

in Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Bergen provides an overview of the history of marital rape law and the concept of irrevocable consent, pointing to the impact of British common law on the legality of spousal rape in the United ... More

Bergen provides an overview of the history of marital rape law and the concept of irrevocable consent, pointing to the impact of British common law on the legality of spousal rape in the United States. Following the feminist activism of the 1970s and 1980s, rape laws in the United States were changed and the spousal exemption largely eliminated. Still, forced sex in marriage is largely condoned in the United States and is legal in much of the world. The chapter then provides a review of the sociological research that has been conducted on marital rape to date. Evidence that it is widespread—affecting 10%–14% of married women—and traumatic for its victims is summarized. Finally, Bergen considers public health and human rights approaches for addressing the problem.Less