Transcript Theoretical Perspectives File


SOCIAL JUSTICE =
› The full participation and inclusion of all
people in society, together with the
promotion and protection of their legal,
civil, and human rights.

THE AIM/GOAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE =
› To achieve a just and equitable society
where all share in the prosperity of that
society.
› Pursued by individuals and groups
through collaborative social action.

THEORY =
› The analysis of a set of facts in their
relation to one another.
› Abstract, rational thought.

CRITICAL THEORY =
› Is a school of thought that stresses the
reflective assessment and critique of
society and culture by applying
knowledge from the social sciences and
the humanities.

EPISTEMOLOGY =
› The study of how we know or gain
knowledge (how we know what we
know).
› Example: Feminist epistemology refers to
the way feminists as a whole have
constructed alternative forms of
knowledge and self-expression.
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

RACISM =

1. A belief or doctrine
that inherent
differences among the
various human beings
determine cultural or
individual
achievement, usually
involving the idea that
one's own “race” is
superior and has the
right to rule others.

2. A policy, system of
government, etc.,
based upon or
fostering such a
doctrine;
discrimination.

3. Hatred or
intolerance of another
race or other races.

ANTI-RACISM =
› Includes beliefs, actions, movements, and
policies adopted or developed to
oppose racism.
› The concept of anti-racism is based in
theory and practice or action.

ANTI-RACISM =
› In general, anti-racism is intended to
promote an egalitarian (equal) society in
which people do not face discrimination
on the basis of their racial identity,
ethnicity, and/or heritage however
defined.
ANTI-RACIST THEORY/
 CRITICAL RACE THEORY =

› Anti-racist Theory analyzes/critiques
racism and how it operates, and this
theory provides a basis for taking action
to eliminate racism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE UNDERSTANDINGS =
› Understanding race and racism is rooted in
understanding the experience of racialized
people.
› This does not mean looking at difference or
"the other," which often happens in a
multicultural approach where we celebrate
difference with song, dance, and food.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY:
THE UNDERSTANDINGS =
› Understanding racism involves becoming
aware of how "race" and racism affects
the lived experience of people of colour
and Aboriginal people, as well as
becoming aware of how white people
participate, often unknowingly, in racism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE ACTIVE PROCESS =
› Anti-racism is the active process of
identifying, challenging, and changing
the values, structures, and behaviors that
perpetuate systemic racism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: “BIRTHDAY” =
› Emerged in a response to feminist and
civil rights movements around 1960s1970s.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: ITS CRITIQUE =
› It critiques traditional (white) feminists
who constructed "race" as one category,
assumed women's experiences were
universal, ignored the individual
experiences of women, and did not look
at the interconnection of racism and
sexism.

ANTI-RACIST THEORY: THE CHALLENGE =
› For anti-racist feminists/activists the
starting point was challenging racism
instead of challenging patriarchy.

A FEW KEY THEORISTS =
› bell hooks
› Sherene Razack
› Himani Bannerji
A Video from Australia =
 'The Invisible Discriminator' - Stop. Think.
Respect.

› https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvTyI4
1PvTk (1:26)
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM QUEER? =
› Think of queer as an umbrella term for ...
› Anyone who:
 a) wants to identify as queer
 b) who feels somehow outside of the societal
norms in regards to gender, sexuality or/and
even the politics of identify.

WHAT IS QUEER? =
› Therefore, this could include/queer is:
 Anyone who identifies with in the realm
of LGBTQIA+

WHAT IS QUEER? =
 the straight ally who marches during
pride
 the conservative lesbian
 the trans person who highly values
queer theory concepts and would
rather not identify with any particular
label

QUEER INLCUDES/IS =
 the gender fluid bisexual
 the gender fluid heterosexual
 the questioning LGBTQIA+ person
 the person who just doesn’t feel like
they quite fit in to societal norms and
wants to bond with a community over
that

QUEER THEORY: “DATE OF BIRTH” =
› A brand-new branch of study or
theoretical speculation; it has only been
officially named as an theoretical area
since about 1991.

QUEER THEORY’S LGBT + FEMINIST ROOTS =
› It grew out of gay/lesbian (LGBT) studies a
discipline which itself is very new, existing
in any kind of organized form only since
about the mid-1980s.
› Gay/lesbian (LGBT) studies, in turn, grew
out of feminist studies and feminist theory.

QUEER THEORY: FEMINIST CHALLENGES =
› Builds both upon feminist challenges to
the idea that gender is part of the
essential (biologically-based) self.
› Gender, according to feminist theorists, is
an unequally created social construct
which is shaped by other factors such as
"race", class, heterosexism, etc..

QUEER THEORY: FEMINIST CHALLENGES =
› According to many Queer and Feminist
Theorists gender is performative =
produces a series of effects; consolidates
an impression of being a man or being a
woman through how you behave, dress,
+ other ways you “act out” your gender.

QUEER THEORY: FEMINIST CHALLENGES =
› Gender is not an internal/biological
reality = it is a phenomenon being
produced and reproduced.
› Gender norms are established and
policed/monitored; gender is culturally
formed in regards to ideal gender norms.

QUEER THEORY: LGBTQIA+ EXAMINATIONS =
› Also builds upon gay/lesbian studies close
examination of the socially constructed
nature of sexual acts and identities, that
is, it challenges the social constructs
which define the idea of sexuality as an
act and as an identity.

QUEER THEORY: “NORMAL” VS. “DEVIANT” =
› Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its
inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural"
behavior with respect to homosexual
behavior, Queer Theory expands its focus
to encompass any kind of sexual activity
or identity that falls into normative and/or
deviant categories.

QUEER THEORY: MISMATCHES =
› Focuses on mismatches between sex,
gender, and desire.
› It has been associated most prominently
with lesbian and gay subjects, but
analytic framework also includes such
topics as cross-dressing, intersexism,
gender ambiguity, and gendercorrective surgery.

WHAT IS QUEER THEORY: DEBUNKING THE
“NORM” =
› Queer Theory's debunking
(deconstruction/disproving) of stable
sexes, genders, and sexualities develops
out of the specifically lesbian and gay
reworking of the figuring of identity as a
constellation of multiple and unstable
positions.

QUEER THEORY, in other words,
DECONSTRUCTS =
› Looks at anything that falls into normal
and/or deviant categories specifically
sexual activities and identities and how
they function in the world and how they
are socially constructed and labeled as
normal or deviant.

A FEW QUEER THEORISTS =
› Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
› Judith Butler
› Gloria Anzaldúa
A Video =
 Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your
Gender

› https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7
o2LYATDc (3:00)
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

FEMINISM(S) =
› The belief in and the movement for the
social, political, and economic equality
of all men, women, and other genders =
of all human beings.
› The movement for social, political and
economic change, and access to
information to achieve these goals.

FEMINIST(S) =
› Each and every politically and socially
conscious women, man or another
gender who works for equality within or
outside the movement, writes about
feminism, or calls herself, himself, theirself
a feminist in the name of furthering
equality.

TYPES OF FEMINISMS
› Maternal feminism
› Postcolonial
› Liberal feminism
› Cultural feminism
›
› Eco feminism
›
› Anti-racist
feminism
› Marxist feminism
› Socialist feminism
›
›
feminism
Radical feminism
Psychoanalytic
feminism
Conservative
feminism
Etc.

FEMINIST THEORY =
› One of the major contemporary critical
theories, which analyzes the status of
women, men, and other genders in society
with the purpose of using that knowledge
to better women’s (and men’s + other
human’s) lives.

FEMINIST THEORY: THE EMERGENCE =
› Roots in Canada go back to the early to
mid-1800s (Suffragette Movement – First
Wave Feminism).
› Roots in the USA go back to Sojourner Truth
(abolitionist, women’s right activist) in the
1850s.
› The ideas behind Feminism began in the
Western Europe in the 1400s.

FEMINIST THEORISTS: THE QUESTIONS =
› Question the differences between
women, including how class, racialized
identity, sexual orientation, ability, and
age intersect (interact) with gender =
intersectionality/intersectional feminism
(more about this later).

FEMINIST THEORISTS: SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› Focus on situated knowledge(s) = is
knowledge specific to a particular situation;
coined by feminist theorist Donna Haraway.

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› As asserted by Sandra Harding, the term
"offers a more adequate, richer, better
account of a world, in order to live in it
well and in critical, reflexive relation to
our own as well as others' practices of
domination and the unequal parts of
privilege and oppression that makes up
all positions."

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› Situated knowledge(s) is the idea that
there is no one truth out there to be
uncovered and, as a result, all
knowledge is partial and linked to the
contexts in which it is created.

SITUATED KNOWLEDGE(S) =
› “Representation of the world, like the
world itself, is the work of men; they
describe it from their own point of view,
which they confuse with the absolute
truth.”
– Simone de Beauvoir. The Second
Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New York:
Vintage Books, 1989, p. 143.

There are four main components of feminist
theory that attempt to explain the societal
differences (inequality) between women,
men, and other genders:
› Gender Difference
› Gender Inequality
› Gender Oppression
› Structural Oppression

GENDER =
› "Gender" refers to the socially
constructed roles, behaviours, activities,
and attributes that a given society
considers appropriate for the binary
categories of "men" and "women."

SEX =
› "Sex" refers to the biological and
physiological characteristics that define
men and women; more or less our
primary sex characteristics (our parts).

GENDER VS. SEX =
› "Male" and "female" are sex categories,
while "masculine/man/men" and
"feminine/woman/women" are gender
categories.
› Aspects of sex will not vary substantially
between different human societies, while
aspects of gender may vary greatly.

OPPRESSION =
› The exercise of authority or power in a
burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner
› An act or instance of oppressing
› The state of being oppressed

Four main components of feminist theory
that attempt to explain inequality amongst
the genders defined:
› Gender Difference
› Gender Inequality
› Gender Oppression
› Structural Oppression
› Gender Difference =
› The gender difference perspective
examines how women's location in, and
experience of, social situations differ from
men's.
› Gender Difference Examples:
› Cultural feminists look to the different values
associated with womanhood and femininity
as a reason why men and women experience
the social world differently.
› Gender Difference Examples:
› Other feminist theorists believe that the
different roles assigned to women and men
within institutions better explain gender
difference, including the sexual division of
labor in the household.
› Gender Difference Examples:
› Existential and phenomenological feminists
focus on how women have been
marginalized and defined as the “other” in
patriarchal societies; women are thus seen as
objects and are denied the opportunity for
self-realization.
› Gender Inequality =
› Gender-inequality theories recognize that
women's location in, and experience of,
social situations are not only different but
also unequal to men's.
› Gender Inequality Examples:
› Liberal feminists argue that women have the
same capacity as men for moral reasoning
and agency, but that patriarchy, particularly
the sexist patterning of the division of labor,
has historically denied women the opportunity
to express and practice this reasoning.
› Gender Inequality Examples:
› Women have been isolated to the private
sphere of the household and, thus, left
without a voice in the public sphere. Even
after women enter the public sphere, they
are still expected to manage the private
sphere and take care of household duties
and child rearing.
› Gender Inequality Examples:
› Liberal feminists point out that (traditional)
marriage is a site of gender inequality and
that women do not benefit from being
married as men do. Indeed, many married
women have higher levels of stress than
unmarried women and married men.
According to liberal feminists, the sexual
division of labor in both the public and private
spheres needs to be altered in order for
women to achieve equality.
› Gender Oppression
› Theories of gender oppression go further
than theories of gender difference and
gender inequality by arguing that not
only are women constructed as different
from or unequal to men, but that they
are actively oppressed, subordinated,
and, in many situations, abused by men.
› Gender Oppression Examples:
› Power is the key variable in the two main
theories of gender oppression: psychoanalytic
feminism and radical feminism.
› Gender Oppression Examples:
› Psychoanalytic feminists attempt to explain
power relations between men and women
by reformulating Freud's theories of the
subconscious and unconscious, human
emotions, and childhood development. They
feel that conscious calculation cannot fully
explain the production and reproduction of
patriarchy.
› Gender Oppression Examples:
› Radical feminists argue that being a woman is a
positive thing in and of itself, but that this is not
acknowledged in patriarchal societies where
women are oppressed. They identify physical
violence as being at the base of patriarchy, but
they think that patriarchy can be defeated if
women recognize their own value and strength,
establish a “sisterhood” of trust with other women,
confront oppression critically, and form female
separatist networks in the private and public
spheres.
› Structural Oppression
› Structural oppression theories posit that
women's oppression and inequality are a
result of capitalism, patriarchy,
heterosexism, and racism.
› Structural Oppression Examples:
› Socialist feminists agree with Karl Marx and
Freidrich Engels that the working class is
exploited as a consequence of the capitalist
mode of production, but they seek to extend
this exploitation not just to class but also to
gender.
› Structural Oppression Examples:
› Intersectionality theorists seek to explain
oppression and inequality across a variety of
variables, including class, gender, “race”
/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. They
make the important insight that not all women
experience oppression in the same way. White
women and black women, for example, face
different forms of discrimination in the workplace.
Thus, different groups of women come to view
the world through a shared standpoint of
"heterogeneous commonality."
ALL GENDERS

Published on Jul 8, 2014

What is Feminism? By Laci Green

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJP
T_U97lNs&list=PLTXiNEUzXWKT9xrbU3aUxq
YloEL_W-8rr (4:28)

Published on June 9, 2014

High school boys New York City reflect on
their experience taking a feminism class
and the impact it made on their lives. They
unanimously declare that they are feminists.
Are you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vh60
p4p2QM (6:02)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a
renowned Nigerian novelist

Published on Apr 12, 2013
Video: 30:15 minutes (watch on your
own)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg
3umXU_qWc

› A FEW KEY THEORISTS =
› Betty Friedan
› Gloria Steinem
› Naomi Wolf
 Anti-Racist
 Queer
Theory
Theory
 Feminist
Theory
 Intersectionality

INTERSECTIONALITY has become one of
critical theory’s (feminist, critical race/antiracist, + queer theory) most generative
concepts.

INTERSECTIONALITY is a feminist sociological
theory (sociology = the study of human
society) first highlighted by Kimberlé
Crenshaw (1989 – “birth date”) to explain
how racialized oppression and gender
oppression interact in Black women’s lives.

INTERSECTIONALITY DESCRIBES =
› Is a concept often used in critical theories to
describe the ways the formation of our
social identities are informed by multiple
oppressive institutions (i.e. racism, sexism,
homophobia, transphobia, ableism,
xenophobia, classism, etc.) and are
interconnected (“interlocking systems of
oppression”) thus cannot be examined
separately from one another.

INTERSECTIONALITY, in other words, can be
seen in two ways:
› 1) Look at it from the point of view of the
intersections in peoples lives in terms of
the different positions they hold in relation
to gender, racialization, class and other
social categories.
› 2) Looking at intersections is not so much
a question of finding out what inequalities
exist and for whom, but to understand
the processes involved in creating
inequality.

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY:
THE CENTRAL ISSUE =
› The central issue is the understanding that
women (and men and other genders)
experience oppression in varying
configurations and in varying degrees of
intensity.

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY
THE VARIATION EXPLANATION =
› The explanation for that variation is while all
women potentially experience oppression
on the basis of gender, women are,
nevertheless, differentially oppressed by the
varied intersections of other arrangements
of their social identity.

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY
THE ARGUMENT =
› The argument is that it is the intersection itself
that produces a particular experience of
oppression, and one cannot arrive at an
adequate explanation by using an additive
strategy of gender plus racialization, plus class,
plus sexuality, plus etc = no one singular force
causes the injustice; they (class, “race”, gender,
etc.) all come into play.

INEQUALITY functions on three levels:
› Personal/Individual
› Groups/Community
› Structural = Institutions/Societies

According to Patricia Hill-Collins (1990), at
all three levels one must look at all the
domination (“the matrix of domination”)
that is occurring.

FOR EXAMPLE, many black women
frequently experience discrimination in
employment because they are black
women, but courts routinely refuse to
recognize this intersection of discrimination
– it is a case of what is considered general
discrimination, “sex discrimination," or "racial
discrimination."

THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY OF BEING
Male/Man
White
Heterosexual
Middle-Upper Class
Capitalist (often)
Young-Middle Aged-Old
Able-bodied/minded
Christian (often)
European/North American

Verses all the OTHER social categories:
Female/Woman/Transgendered
People of Colour
Queer
Young-Middle Aged-Old
Middle to Lower-Working Class
Capitalist or non-capitalist
Able bodied/minded or Differently Abled
Christian or Non- Christian
Non-European/North American
Etc.

IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS #1:
› Just because you are a women, or man,
or a person with a disability, or a person
of colour, does not mean that your
experiences of sexism, ableism, or racism
are an exact match for experiences of
other kinds of oppression or even exactly
like sexism, ableism or racism for someone
else, of course.

IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS #2:
› And it does not mean that you are
doubly, triply or quadruplely oppressed.

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY
› Intersectionality is like a multi-lane
highway with numerous roads meeting,
crossing and merging in chaotic and
complicated ways.

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY
› There are many different types of roads:
paved and gravel roads, roads with
shoulders and those without and roads
with low speed limits, high speed limits
and even no speed limits.

INTERSECTIONALITY: AN ANALOGY
› There is no map. The most important
feature of these intersections, though, is
that they look very different depending
on your location (Chris Bell, 2010, P100).

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› Intersectionality is like traffic in an
intersection, coming and going in all four
directions.
› Discrimination, like traffic through an
intersection, may flow in one direction,
and it may flow in another.

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› If an accident (incident) happens in an
intersection, it can be caused by cars
(discrimination) traveling from any
number of directions and, sometimes,
from all of them.

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed
because she is in an intersection, her
injury could result from sex discrimination
or racial discrimination or . . .

INTERSECTIONALITY: ANOTHER ANALOGY
› But it is not always easy to reconstruct an
accident: sometimes the skid marks and
the injuries simply indicate that they
occurred simultaneously, frustrating
efforts to determine which driver caused
the harm (Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw,
1989, P149).

INTERSECTIONALITY ANALOGY EXPLAINED
› Intersectionality helps us to understand
how gender, class, racialization, and other
factors in our experience fit together.
› It helps us come up with better critical
politics that seek the emancipation of all
people.

INTERSECTIONALITY VIDEO =
THE INTERSECTIONS
› https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxgd
yKIeBqk (0:26)

INTERSECTIONALITY + LIBERATION
› If feminism and other critical theories are
to be truly liberatory politics seeking the
freedom of all oppressed people, they
have to recognize this important insight:

INTERSECTIONALITY + LIBERATION
› That I am not free while any woman [or
man or another gender] is unfree, even
when her shackles are very different from
my own - that I am not free as long as
any oppressed person remains chained.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: PWF
› Many Privileged White Feminists (PWF)
involved in the feminist movements in USA
and Canada often failed to realize this in
the past, and instead continually overgeneralized their own specific experience
as the experience of ALL women.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: PWF
› They fell prey to “divide and conquer”
strategies that distracted them from
realizing what is the real source of their
oppression, and how the privileges they are
granted in virtue of their racialization, class,
heterosexuality and national status, are
based on the oppression of other women not just an élite minority of privileged
women.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
A SHARED OPPRESSOR
› It helps us understand that some
problems we share and others we don’t
share.
› But what we all share as oppressed
people is a common enemy: a shared
oppressor.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: IDENTITY
› Intersectional approaches to feminist
theorizing and activism can help us
overcome the “Oppression Olympics”
problem and the problem of having to
focus on one aspect of one’s identity at
the expense of ignoring another.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT IS SHOWS US
› Intersectionality can help us understand
feminism as a much broader project than
it has been construed by several
Privileged White Feminists in the USA and
Canada.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT IS SHOWS US
› It can show us that as feminists we need
to be anti-racists and queer minded, we
need to oppose colonialism (starting with
internal colonialism in Canada and the
USA of Aboriginal Peoples), imperialism
and corporate globalization, and to
defend the rights of workers to determine
the conditions of their labour.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT WE NEED
› As critical theorists, we need to imagine
alternatives to capitalism/consumerism
for organizing how we produce/purchase
things to meet needs in our society.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT WE NEED
› We need to recognize that war and
violent domination are the flip side of
“business as usual,” and that we will never
see true peace until we see justice
enacted in our society.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM: WHAT WE NEED
› Intersectionality can show us the connections
between the imperialist wars on Iraq and
Afghanistan, the war on Indigenous people
struggling for self-determination by the
Canadian and US state, the war on women,
waged here and elsewhere through
gendered and racialized violence, poverty,
and exploitation.

INTERSECTIONALITY + FEMINISM:
WHAT WE NEED
› And it can help us create critically and
social justice based politics that embody
our aspirations for a completely different
world.

A FEW KEY THEORISTS =
› Kimberlé Crenshaw
› Patricia Hill Collins
› Audre Lorde
AN INTERSECTIONAL VIDEO =
 WTF is Intersectional Feminism???

› https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znmxnmt_XU (4:05)

12 Books to Keep Your Feminism
Intersectional

http://www.bustle.com/articles/143803-12books-to-keep-your-feminismintersectional?utm_source=facebook&utm_
medium=owned&utm_campaign=feminism
bustle

50+ Films About Women That Will Inspire
Your Perspective on Social Change

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/activi
st-films-about-women/