In Conclusion

Through this blog I wanted to look at every aspect of Feminist Criticism and analyze so that my audience would have a better understanding of it. With every blog entry I tried to communicate to my audience what feminist criticism was, how it was used, and the effects of it. With the information given in this blog and the articles and books recommended, i hope that they can get a full understanding of this criticism and learn about other criticisms as well. My main objective was to convey to my readers that women’s impact on literature has shaped the way that readers read and analyze a literary text. Through women’s struggles, hardships, and dedication to change the literary canon to make it equal and inevitably changed the way readers digest literature. The impact that women had on literature can be said to be the most influential impact that literature has ever had in analyzing literature. The drastic change in the literary criticism was because of the women’s movement in literature and the change in the canon. Feminist criticism made lasting effect on both literary analysis and the validation of women’s writings which initially prompted further types of literary criticism. Readers focus on the humanist approach to literature now and how the authors view of world from the way the author writes. Through the impact of feminist criticism, readers read the texts that represent male and female, black and white, and gay and straight views. These criticisms can represent these minority groups in a way that haven’t been represented before in literature and its all due to feminist criticism.

 

Vocabulary for Feminist Critcism

Gendersphere: The entire field of philosophy, discourse, and activism that attends to gender, including, but not limited to feminism, antifeminism, Men’s Rights Activism, and Feminist Criticism.

Feminism: A self-defining segment of the Gendersphere. A feminist is a person who is recognised as a feminist by other feminists.

Pro-feminism: Men who are unwilling to call themselves feminists (or who are not recognised as such by some feminists) because they are male, even though their views are indistinguishable from feminism.

Contrafeminism: That part of the gendersphere that is broadly in disagreement with or opposition to feminism.

Antifeminism: Extreme contrafeminism. An essentially oppositionist stance.

Men’s Rights Activism: A movement devoted to improving the position of men in society. While this is basically a positive stance, the movement is infested with antifeminism.

Feminist Criticism: My term for my own philosophical position, and for the similar views of other people. The phrase is deliberately ambiguous: A feminist critic could be a critic of feminism or a feminist who criticises. I want to carve out a position within gendersphere independent of of the other -isms, overlapping with both feminism and MRA, and critical of both. Arguably the phrase “feminist criticism” is obnoxiously gendered (see below), because feminist critics are also critics of antifeminism, however given the hegemonic position of feminism within the gendersphere I think it is justified. The word “criticism” should be taken in its constructive sense, there are many aspects of feminism that feminist critics will agree with. Feminist Critics accept the tools of feminism (gender analysis, etc.,) and apply them to feminism itself.

Typical: I use this word as a term of art, meaning behaviour, etc., which (a) is common among feminists (or some other group), (b) is unlikely to be challenged by other feminists, (c) if someone with otherwise good feminist credentials does challenge it, they are likely to have their status as feminists challenged by other feminists, and (d) those without feminist credentials who challenge it are likely to be regarded as antifeminists/MRAs (or the equivalent opposition group).

The ‘Bird in your Garden’ Test: A test for typicality. If all you need do to see a particular kind of bird is look out the window, that’s an indication that those birds are typical of where you live. If you have to travel 200 miles to visit a nature reserve to see them, then they’re not typical. Similarly if you can easily find an example of a particular argument or behaviour passing unchallenged among the usual suspects within the blogosphere, then that’s an indication that it is typical. If you can’t, then it probably isn’t.

The Avuncular Arm: A typical pro-feminist response to male victimisation. An avuncular arm slides around the survivor’s shoulder, and he is invited to “consider how we oppress women”. A collective form of self-flagellation, this is victim-blaming at its worst because it casts the survivor into the role of perp. It is one of the reasons why feminism is toxic to many male survivors.

The Odious Comparison: Typical feminist practice of unjustifiably or inappropriately comparing male oppression, suffering, etc., unfavourably with female suffering. If a feminist or pro-feminist wishes to discuss male oppression etc., within feminism, then it is de rigueur to genuflect to the Odious Comparison.

Selective Focus: Typical feminist practice of looking only at those oppressions which (according to the feminist) affect women worse, in order to justify the Odious Comparison. For example, in a discussion about violence, only sexual and domestic violence will be considered. (Note that I do not object to a focus upon these issues. It is the exclusive and frequently innappropriate focus which is problematic.)

Denial, Dismissal, Minimisation, and ignoring of male oppression, suffering, etc.: I really need a catchy phrase to describe this quadrumvirate of discourses. (The ‘four discourses’?) Note that this is not limited to feminism, but is characteristic of the mainstream. Hence it is an example of feminism embracing and extending a previously existing gendered discourse.

Subordination: The typical feminist practice of presenting men’s oppression and suffering as subordinate to women’s.

The Three Techniques, also Displacement, Incidentalisation, and Exclusion: Mainstream rhetorical techniques used to minimize male victimization, 

Lachrymosity: The tendency within both feminism and mainstream media to use tear jerking emotive language to describe female suffering and comparatively perfunctory language to describe male suffering.

Instanciation Not to be confused with “incidentalisation, which would be a better word for it, which is already taken. By “instanciation” I mean to portray instances of male victimization as incidents rather than as systems of oppression.

Holocaust Denial: How male victims and male oppression are rendered invisible by these techniques and discourses.

How Feminist Criticism that Effected other Criticisms

Through feminist criticism, when readers started to look at the roles of women in literature, readers started expanding to other minorities and races. Readers started analyzing other roles in literature and what impact and analysis other groups had on literature instead of the common, white male literature. All literary criticism helps the reader look at the literary context in a different perspective. When women were introduced to the literary canon readers started looking at others in that perspective. Racial and ethnic criticism, gay and lesbian theory and others have all become different ways in which readers analyze because of women. Through the knowledge of looking through texts through the lens of feminist criticism readers can use those same techniques when looking at other group criticisms.

During the 1970’s African American criticism flourished and readers started becoming interested in African American works but African Americans have always have had their own culture in art and history and their way of writing is very unique. African American writers focused their writing on the “interaction with their culture and issues of nationalism and the exposure of the unjust treatment of African American- a suppressed, repressed, and colonized subculture- at the hands of their white conquers.”  Through their struggles African Americans write about their oppression politically, socially and economically and their triumph time and time again. Like Women, African American writers are very new to the literary canon and their writings are new to the literary community. African Americans writing struggled to become recognized like feminist criticism because again the literary canon was made up entirely of  white American males. Through the African American Criticism readers understand their culture more and their struggles more. The main theme in African American culture is their struggle. Through their struggle come unique themes and motifs in their writing. African American criticism emphasizes the struggle, just as feminist criticism focused on the daily struggles of women and how they view the world and their morals. These two criticisms are a lot alike because they let the reader learn about their culture and their way of life. African American criticism is new to the literary community and due to its impact on literature readers analyze it differently and learn of different cultures. This criticism is a lot like feminist criticism because readers read it the same way.  For example when reading a literary text through the lens of feminist criticism readers are going to look at the role of women has in the story in comparison to men and the other characters and how women take care of certain issues, in the same way readers read African American criticism readers look at the criticism in the same way. Readers look at African American’s role in the story and how other characters and races in the story react to them. These two criticisms are a lot alike because they have struggled to be incorporated into the literary canon and had a major impact on it.

Feminist criticism was a leeway to gender criticism. Readers started to look at feminist criticism and seeing women’s roles in literature and wanted to look at the men’s role in literature. Readers look at “what it means to be a man and women and how men and women look at ethics, truth, personal identity, and society and how their opinions differ.” Gender studies came about after feminist criticism because readers look at women and how they viewed the world and what women thought were right and wrong,  “The goal of gender studies is to analyze and challenge the established literary canon. Women themselves, gender specialists assert must challenge the hegemony and free themselves from the false assumptions and the long-held prejudices that have prevented them from defining themselves.” Men and women both are very prominent themes in literature and understanding the way literature views men and women can let the readers analyze the literary context more and understand the authors view of the world. This criticism came right after feminist criticism became popular. These two criticisms are very similar because both criticisms copy off of each other and a lot because the characteristics of feminist criticism are similar to gender criticism. Looking at the role of women and men in stories is the main idea of gender criticism, the only difference from gender criticism and feminist criticism is that gender criticism focuses more on what makes a man a man and a woman a woman and how society views them and how society thinks that men and women should behave and the morals and values they should have, when readers read through the lens of gender criticism readers must look at the men’s role equally as much as the women’s role because this criticism is all about the equality between the two genders. A reader must look at how the characters and how they relate and interact with each other through the texts and initially how the author views the characters and their role in the story. With this criticism readers are able to learn about women’s struggles as well as men’s struggles and a reader can learn of the stories underling meaning and understand the text more, and because of feminist criticism, gender criticism made its way to the literary community and readers can learn more about them.

Gay and lesbian criticism is a new form of criticism. It has been adopted in the literary canon just of twenty years, it started in 1990 with such works “as Bonnie Zimmerman's The Safe Sea of Women (1990), Robert K. Martin's The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry (1979), and John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) have looked at history, either in its "true" form or in the form of texts, and have elaborated how homosexuality has been a topic or theme within it.” Gay and lesbian criticism is related to gender theory due to the examination of men in women’s roles in the story but it brings an element of sexuality into that comparison and gay and lesbian rely on gender identification and those stereotypes in order to formulate its ideas. It takes the sexuality and looks at literature through the lens of both homosexual and heterosexual ways, “Both gay and lesbian studies began as liberation movements, in parallel with the feminist and African American movements” . Gay and lesbian criticism can be linked with African American criticism and the feminist criticism because just as African Americans and women had to cope with prejudices and hardships in order to have rights, lesbians and gays go through the same prejudices with in our society and in literature. With lesbian and gay criticism readers can look at text through the same perspective as feminist criticism because of the similar themes that are in both criticisms, such as sexuality, relationships between men and women and ultimately the prejudices gay and lesbian writes went and go through still. Through the themes and motifs that gay and lesbian criticisms bring to the readers, readers are able to understand more fully the author and his intentions for his or her context and through this knowledge; readers can also know more of feminist criticism and look at it in a different context.

Queer theory is also a new type of criticism to the literary community. “The term queer, designates the combination of gay and lesbian studies as well as the theoretical and critical writings that concern all modes of variance, such as cross-dressing, from the normative models of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual desires” It is very similar to gay and lesbian criticism in that it focuses on the sexuality of men and women but it also focuses on the identify of men and women who are gay and their role in society and how society views them. A popular author who was known for incorporating these themes was Ernest Hemingway. “Through Ernest Hemingway’s life he wore feminine clothing and/or a feminine hairstyle and his sister Grace Hemingway dressed and treated the two children as twins of the same sex--sometimes male and sometimes female and in his fiction, it portrays sexually passive men and romantic situations in which sexual identity shifts and is unclear.  Furthermore, he offers a woman's point of view as few male authors can, giving uncommonly perceptive voices to female experiences”  through this example his writing can have the themes in queer theory. Because queer theory and gay and lesbian criticism are so similar they share the same similarities with feminist criticism, like prejudices and the need to change the literary canon to include all authors of all races, sexualities, classes, and gender.