An Overview Of Transfeminism And Indigenous Feminist Movements

Despite oppression women have always resisted. Women have resisted oppression in many ways. Women have responded to their multiple sources of oppression of sexism, racism, heterosexism and colonialism. Women resisted oppression by standing up for their rights. Women have been left out of the discussion of oppression for centuries. In a patriarchy society where males are the narrators and voices being heard, one is rarely educated on women struggles. In the Western world gender is a construct made to keep one group superior and the other inferior. Gender concerns what it means to be women or men in society. The traditional notion of gender is acknowledged to not be defined the same all over the world. The general concept of gender is challenged

The Chicana feminist is not widely accepted, or even recognized. At its best, Chicana writers and artists take to paper and other mediums to share the message. Writers, such as Andzaldua, comment on the necessity for writing. The Chicana expression of creative thought, otherwise unnoticed by the majority of people, is important in that it allows people to show the struggle, emotion, and wisdom surrounding personal experience (Andzaldua). Poetry, for instance, can be described as a political act, which enables further thought and understanding between people. Additionally, these stories reveal the great diversity among women.

Within societies, culture plays a huge role in shaping who a person becomes. What values they consent to and what would make them content and satisfied with life, otherwise said, happy. In a patriarchal racist community woman as a double minority suffer twice the burden of proving herself, defining her values, and finding what defines her. Some of these women choose to obey and submit and live life as given to them. Just a few stand up for themselves, speak up, fight toward their freedom and independence against all cultural norms and social constructions including race and patriarchy. Some people may suggest that in Zora Nelson Huston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God the main character Janie is in a continuous search for a true love. However,

Looking in from the outside, the journey of Women’s rights was a lengthy one, and it has come a significant way from what it began as. It was a long road to freedom that started with just a few women protesting together for change in the mid 1800’s to the large movement it is today. What started only as an effort to put women on equal footing with men in the voting realm blossomed into a full on fight against gender norms and independence through protesting, speeches, and gatherings. Gender norms or ‘roles’ are (as defined by Webster’s dictionary) “a set of societal norms dictating what types of behaviors are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on their actual or perceived sex” and they are one thing that modern feminist have set their sights on to change for the better. Traditional gender roles have continued to exist for hundreds of years through perpetrators such as religion, government and society, and its effects have been felt by every woman, whether they realize it or not.

"I raise up my voice—not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard...we cannot succeed when half of us are held back" (Yousafzai, 1). It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change because a woman’s silence will not protect her. Throughout society today, the idea of feminism stirs up many different types of emotions and views of exactly what feminism is. A lot of people think that women's rights have already been accomplished. For example, yes, we've earned Title IX and laws against gender discrimination. But people fail to understand that there are still so many forces against women's rights, such as reproductive

Today, gender inequality in the workplace still remains a popular discussion within institutional and social realms. In Just One of the Guys? by Kristen Schilt, through a variety of methods she shows how transmen are susceptible to systemic gender inequality even if they go through different experiences. Schilt performs in-depth interviews with transmen in the workplace to show how the types of experiences transgender people go through, good or bad, can be influenced on what race or social class they are in. She uses informational tables showing yearly statistics, real life examples of transmen’s stories, and her own observational data to provide an explanation of how individuals participate in the reproduction of gender inequality within

How is oppression defined? Oppression, as defined by Cambridge Dictionaries, is “a situation in which people are governed in an unfair and cruel way and prevented from having opportunities and freedom.” While this definition is surely inclusive of a broad scope of experiences that constitute oppression, it verges on being too open to occurrences that are not conventionally considered oppression. Marilyn Frye and Iris Marion Young both seek to challenge the standard dictionary definition of “oppression,” redefining it to be inclusive of the experiences of all oppressed people, and exclude circumstances that may involve suffering or prevention of opportunities but

Feminism is described as the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. The suffrage movement began in the mid-1800s, and has continued to impact our lives ever since. Women wanted the right to vote, but they also wanted what came after the right to vote. Women expected the right to vote transform their social standing with men.

As an activist, Chicana, and lesbian, Gloria Anzaldúa bring a interesting point of view to the conversation on Feminism. If not already ready hard to be colored in America, could you imagine having other identities that aren’t accepted? Yes, through In Borderland: La Frontera The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa questioned the idea of borderlands creating obstacles in people’s lives. However, through the idea of the “New Mestiza” one can defy the binary categories that society has placed in us. By emerging beyond limits that society tries to place on you, one will be able to be the voices of people that have no voice. Not in the way for speaking for them, but in the way of understanding and bringing their

Cisgender and heteronormative privileges challenge those that do not fit into these categories, yet dare to be different which I will discuss throughout this paper. Since transgender people have begun to come out and talk about their gender identities, death rates have risen greatly. It is sad that we live in a society in which people have to live in fear for being different than others and expressing who they are. A difference should not get someone killed because we are not objects and should not be categorized as such. We do not all fit into the binary categories that have been opposed on us, why should those who standout be punished for what they have no control over. We are all humans, yet we are acting like savages over such a little

American history repeatedly contradicts itself by placing superior value on certain groups more than others. Intersectional Feminism is the understanding of how women’s overlapping identities--including race, class, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation--impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination. Anyone who possesses identity privilege share a difficult time including feminism for women who cannot determine which identities are in most dire need of liberation from inequality. Without intersectionality, feminism is only an academic jargon disconnected from the real world. Consequently, the concept White Feminism allows the further exclusion of issues that specifically affect women of color. Thus, society cannot truly

In this essay, I will be examining the women as well as Douglass himself in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The women and Douglass in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass have a major lack of control over their material circumstances. This is due to the fact that they are slaves and have nothing of their own to begin with. They have no physical possessions, no access to education and no say in their day to day lives. Douglass specifically falls into a feministic category because as a slave, he has lost all of his manhood. This text’s portrayal of men and women and their material circumstances supports Woolf’s theories.

We all enjoy the freedoms we have as American citizens and part of it is expression of oneself. Today we are so busy with self image and politics one may forget how fortunate and privileged one might be. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the society is misogynistic and women are oppressed. The sexism and misogyny within the society has pressured women to internalize the and truly believe in an unequal society. When analyzing the characters of the Handmaid's Tale and the Scarlet Letter through the feminist lense, sexism has become so internalized that women work to maintain the system through prejudice and belittling one another for not fulfilling orthodox gender roles.

In the "Feminist Standpoint Theory" by Julia T. Wood postulates, “a feminist standpoint grows out of encountering oppositional knowledge” (Wood). In Shah’s piece, she maintains a standpoint understanding of the subjective disposition of her parent’s cultural perspective construct of her sister’s social choices as compared to her own and her parent’s oppositional expectations. Additionally, she is critical of the disproportionate significances of her sister and parent’s standpoint of the culture of India and one in the United States in regard to her sister’s choice of clothing, her attitude, and sexuality. Shah expresses her viewpoint regarding her culture, her sister’s openness to be “western sexy” through having a feminist boyfriend, being

In this article, we will be discussing how feminism is still needed as there is a lack of gender equality. Till this day there are still women that are not given the opportunity to be educated like men, females’ salaries are less than males’ salaries and women are treated as if their job is to serve men. Women and men should have equal rights because no one is more superior to the other gender. Sexism is still a struggle in our society that has to be tackled as it makes us as women feel unworthy and not capable of things that we can actually do. We are all human beings therefore we all have the same abilities as well as we all have goals we want to achieve but it is a struggle for women more than it is for men.