Cultural feminism, the view that there is a "female nature" or "female essence", attempts to revalue and redefine attributes ascribed to femaleness. It is also used to describe theories that commend innate differences between women and men. Cultural feminism diverged from

radical feminism Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a Political radicalism, radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are al ...

, when some radical feminists rejected the previous feminist and patriarchal notion that feminine traits are undesirable and returned to an essentialist view of gender differences in which they regard female traits as superior.

Origins of the term

Unlike

socialist feminism Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles ...

, cultural feminism was not an ideology widely claimed by proponents but was more commonly a pejorative label ascribed by its opponents. In 1975, Brooke Williams was the first to describe the "depoliticization of radical feminism" as "cultural feminism". However, the term had surfaced as early as 1971, when Frances Chapman, in a letter printed in ''

Off Our Backs ''Off Our Backs'' (stylized in all lowercase; ''oob'') was an American radical feminist periodical that ran from 1970 to 2008. It began publishing on February 27, 1970, with a twelve-page tabloid first issue. From 2002 the editors adapted it ...

'', condemned the literary magazine ''Aphra'' as having "served the cause of cultural feminism". Socialist feminist Elizabeth Diggs, in 1972, used the label "cultural feminism" to apply to all of

Ideas

Although the term "cultural feminist" is generally applied to individuals in the 1970s, similar lines of thought have been traced to earlier periods.

Jane Addams Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...

and

Charlotte Perkins Gilman Charlotte Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, advocate for social reform, and eugenicist. She w ...

argued that in governing the state, cooperation, caring, and nonviolence in the settlement of conflicts society seem to be what was needed from women’s virtues.Ritzer, George. Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Josephine Donovan Josephine Donovan (born 1941) is an American scholar of comparative literature who is a professor emerita of English in the Department of English at the University of Maine, Orono. Her research and expertise has covered feminist theory, femini ...

argues that the nineteenth century

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

, and

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

activist,

Margaret Fuller Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movemen ...

, initiated cultural feminism in ''

Woman in the Nineteenth Century ''Woman in the Nineteenth Century'' is a book by American journalist, editor, and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller. Originally published in July 1843 in ''The Dial'' magazine as "The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women", it w ...

'' (1845). She stressed the emotional, intuitive side of knowledge and expressed an organic worldview that is quite different from the mechanistic view of Enlightenment rationalists.Donovan, Josefine. ''Feminist Theory''. 3d ed. (New York: Continuum, 1985. However, it was

Alice Echols Alice Echols is Professor of History, and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Retrieved March 17, 2013 Education Echols received her bachelor's degree from Macalester College, Minne ...

' article, "Cultural Feminism: Feminist Capitalism and the Anti-Pornography Movement", that led to the widespread adoption of the term to describe contemporary feminists, not their historical antecedents.

Linda Martín Alcoff Linda Martín Alcoff is a Latin-American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York. Alcoff specializes in social epistemology, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, decolonial theory and cont ...

claims cultural feminism places women in a position overdetermined by patriarchal systems. She contends that:

Man has said that woman can be defined, delineated, captured, understood, explained, and diagnosed to a level of determination never accorded to man himself, who is conceived as a rational animal with free will.

Alcoff makes the point that "the cultural feminist reappraisal construes woman's passivity as her peacefulness, her sentimentality as her proclivity to nurture, her subjectiveness as her advanced self-awareness". Motherhood and child-bearing is another popular topic in cultural feminist theory.

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "th ...

theorized motherhood as an institution, constructed to control women, which is different from authentic, natural motherhood. Cultural feminists declare the relationship between mother and daughter, and therefore all women, has been destroyed by patriarchy and must be repaired. Cultural feminists identify women as the most important and most marginalized group.

Mary Daly Mary Daly (October 16, 1928–January 3, 2010) was an American radical feminist philosopher and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing ...

asserted that other categories of identify including ethnicity and class are male-defined groups, and women who identify them are being divided from other women. Adrienne Rich declares the “social burden” placed on women is greater and more complex than even the burden of slavery. Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp have argued that critiques of cultural feminism are often an attack on

lesbian feminism Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logica ...

.Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp, "Women's Culture and Lesbian Feminist Activism: A Reconsideration of Cultural Feminism" ''Signs'', 19, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993): 32–6

Suzanne Staggenbourg's case study of

Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County, Indiana, Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the List of municipalities in Indiana, seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside ...

led her to conclude that engagement in activities labeled as cultural feminist "provides little evidence that cultural feminism led to a decline in political activity in the women's movement."

Theory

Cultural feminist theory appeared in the 1970s to explain how male-defined constructions of “woman” devalue female traits. Mary Daly, a cultural feminist theorist, linked "female energy", or her term Gyn/Ecology, to the female "life-affirming, life-creating biological condition" that is victimized by male aggression as a result of "male barrenness" Adrienne Rich asserts that female biology has “radical” potential that has been suppressed by its reduction by men. Some cultural feminists desired the separation of women-only, women-run centers and spaces to “challenge negative gendered constructions.” This form of separatism within cultural feminism was criticized for ignoring structural patriarchy to instead blame men as individuals for women’s oppression. In addition to physical separation, cultural feminists called for “separation from male values.” In her exhaustive study of

Second-wave feminist Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. W ...

theory, ''Love and Politics : Radical Feminist and Lesbian Theories'', Carol Anne Douglas (long-time critic at ''

off our backs ''Off Our Backs'' (stylized in all lowercase; ''oob'') was an American radical feminist periodical that ran from 1970 to 2008. It began publishing on February 27, 1970, with a twelve-page tabloid first issue. From 2002 the editors adapted it ...

'') included the influence of Susan Griffin's popular book ''Woman and Nature : The Roaring Inside Her'' as central to the development of this strain of theory. Notably, this chapter of Douglas' book is titled ''Male biology as a problem'' and the analysis of Griffin's ideas is subtitled ''Woman the Natural''.

Criticisms

In a 2004 article for the ''Journal of Women in Culture and Society'',

Kristen Ghodsee Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee (born April 26, 1970) is an American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is primarily known for her ethnographic work on post-Communist Bulgaria as well as ...

notes several forms of criticism coming from women of color and women of developing countries, who believe that "the idea of a global sisterhood erases important differences in power and access to resources among women of varying races, ethnicities, and nationalities". A common concern, particularly among women of color and women of developing countries, is that cultural feminism only includes white, upper class women, instead of taking into account women of different color and status. This concern is reflected by

Audre Lorde Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who ...

in “An Open Letter to Mary Daly” in which Lorde expresses disappointment that Daly excluded the heritage and herstories of Lorde and other non-European women in her cultural feminist book, while selectively using non-European women’s words out of context to prove her points and to describe “female victimization”. Another concern is the belief that cultural feminists "have not challenged the defining of woman but only the definition given by men" and therefore perpetuate gender essentialism This

biological determinism Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether i ...

is the topic of multiple criticisms. When cultural feminists claim issues like patriarchy and rape are inherent products of male biology and behavior, the opportunity to critique and challenge the structures behind these issues disappears. Furthermore, essentialist definitions of “woman” reinforce the oppressive requirement for women to live up to “an innate ‘womanhood’ they will be judged by.” Historian

stated that cultural feminists believe in order to combat “male lasciviousness,” women should demand respect by repressing their sexualities and proposing a conservative "female standard of sexuality". She critiques this concept for attempting to control women’s sexual expression to hold women responsible for perceived problems with male sexuality. Cultural feminism has also been criticized for engaging in

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

, a practice which some feminists consider contradictory to feminist values and counterproductive to the feminist movement. To highlight problems with feminist capitalism, Echols analyzed the implementation, practices, and outcomes of the Feminist Economic Network (FEN), a feminist business that intended to use capitalism to help women overcome patriarchal barriers by lending money from feminist credit unions to feminist owned businesses. She found the network exploited employees, rejected democracy, collectivity, and accountability, and justified hierarchies of power within the business by claiming sisterhood ensures individual empowerment leads to collective empowerment for women. Echols’s findings can be expanded upon by a critique of cultural feminist business practices in ''

''. The authors explain that the “feminist” businesses cultural feminists advocate for depoliticize feminism, are inherently hierarchal, have minimal access to political economic influence, and are implicitly reformist. Additionally, the authors point out the flaws in cultural feminists’ attempts to counter oppression through membership in an oppressive economic system, use of bootstrap theory, and turning feminism into both a commodity and market which ultimately serves “male” capitalism. Another criticism regards cultural feminists' opinions of

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

women. Echols describes cultural feminist attribution of transgender women to male rapaciousness as inappropriate and explains that cultural feminists dislike transgender women for accusations that they “undermine the salience of gender, and erase the boundaries between genders,” appropriate the female body (which cultural feminists regard as a kind of rape), and threaten to bring the “residual heterosexuality” out of lesbians in lesbian-feminist spaces.

Origins of the term

Ideas

Theory

Criticisms

See also

References

Further reading