14.1 Feminism Core Ideas - Sex and gender

Question 1

SEX

Answer 1

SEX

Question 2

What does sex refer to?

Answer 2

Biological differences between men and women

Question 3

What are the 2 main debates in feminism concerning sex?

Answer 3

• Difference feminism vs equality feminism
• Transfeminism v transfeminist sceptics

Question 4

What is difference feminism?

Answer 4

Perceives women as biologically and culturally different from men

Question 5

What difference feminist argued that biological differences affect the way that men and women think?

Answer 5

Carol Gilligan

Question 6

What do equality feminists argue about sex and nature?

Answer 6

That a women’s ‘nature’ is socially constructed - determined by society rather than biology

Question 7

What does transsexual refer to?

Answer 7

Those whose gender identity differs from the biological sex that they were classified at birth

Question 8

What does transfeminism argue about sex?

Answer 8

Transfeminists argue that sex is socially constructed

Question 9

What do most feminists argue?

Answer 9

That sex is a biological fact

Question 10

What did radical second-wave feminist Germaine Greer state about transgender women?

Answer 10

That transgender women are ‘not women’

Question 11

What did Sheila Jeffreys assert about feminism?

Answer 11

It should only be for ‘womyn-born-womyn’

Question 12

What radical feminist did support the socially constructed definition of sex?

Answer 12

Andrea Dworkin

Question 13

What country passed legislation in 2014 that allowed individuals to change their identified sex without court approval?

Answer 13

Denmark

Question 14

GENDER

Answer 14

GENDER

Question 15

What is gender used to explain?

Answer 15

‘Gender roles’ of men and women

Question 16

What do the majority of feminists argue about gender roles?

Answer 16

They are socially constructed and form gender stereotypes

Question 17

What did Simone de Beauvoir argue about biological differences between men and women?

Answer 17

They had been used by a male-dominated state and society as a justification for predetermining the gender role of women

Question 18

What was de Beauvoir’s ‘otherness’?

Answer 18

Men had successfully characterised themselves as the norm whereas women were the other, and this ‘otherness’ had left women subordinate to men in society

Question 19

What did de Beauvoir believe male domination had created?

Answer 19

Men were the ‘first sex’ while women were the ‘second sex’

Question 20

What did Charlotte Perkins Gilman (CPG) argue about gender roles?

Answer 20

They are socially constructed from a young age, subordinating women to the will of men

Question 21

What did CPG believe women were socialised into thinking?

Answer 21

They were naturally frail and weaker than men

Question 22

Where do both bell hooks and Kate Millet both believe social construction as beginning?

Answer 22

In childhood with the family unit

Question 23

FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER

Answer 23

FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER

Question 24

How did first-wave feminism extend classical liberal ideas?

Answer 24

That extended classical liberal ideas about human nature and freedom of the individual so that they explicitly included women

Question 25

What did Mary Wollstonecraft argue about women?

Answer 25

They were just as rational as men and should receive the same educational opportunities

Question 26

What did CPG conceptualise the idea of?

Answer 26

Economic independence for women

Question 27

SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER

Answer 27

SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM - SEX AND GENDER

Question 28

Who wrote ‘Sexual Politics’ in 1970, a key text of second-wave feminism?

Answer 28

Kate Millet

Question 29

What key second-wave feminism book did Sheila Rowbotham write in 1973?

Answer 29

‘Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World’

Question 30

How did liberal feminists (1W) want women’s problems to be solved?

Answer 30

By the state reforming society and the economy

Question 31

How do liberal feminists and radical feminists differ on how they wanted society to change?

Answer 31

Radical feminists saw the state as part of the problem and wanted radical changes to the public and private sphere of society.
Liberal feminists wanted the state to reform society

Question 32

How did socialist feminists want change?

Answer 32

They want a socialist feminist revolution that could solve the problem of capitalism and female oppression

Question 33

What was second-wave feminism united on?

Answer 33

That women were being oppressed by men, a concept that became known as the patriarchy