Introducing Feminism: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides)

by Cathia Jenainati

Patriarchy is responsible for constructing a social system which ascribes a particular sexual status, role and temperament for each gender, hence ensuring the sex/gender hierarchy. As a result, “masculine” traits are attributed to dominant social roles while “feminine” is associated with submission and dependence.

In the 1970s, many feminists such as Firestone, Friedan and Millet castigated Freud for his theory of penis envy, which claimed that a girl’s perception of herself and all those like her is that of “inferior castrates”.

The answer lies in the pre-Oedipal stage when the infant boy develops conflicting feelings towards his mother’s body, which he sees as the source of pleasure and pain. The grown-up man wants to avoid this dependence on the female body by controlling it. For her part, the girl deals with the power of the mother within her by seeking to be controlled by men. This results in a mis-shapen set of six gender arrangements which determine all human relations.

Mary Russo argues that any practice which is seen as grotesque can be read as a “feminized”

practice because the female body has traditionally been seen as corrupt and impure.

This part made me giggle a bit I have to say.

body, which has been associated with blood, amniotic fluids and milk secretion, is often identified as the ul...

The Athenaeum, 27 April 1895, defined a feminist as a woman who “has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence”.

“Feminism asks the world to recognize at long last that women aren’t decorative ornaments, worthy vessels, members of a ‘special-interest’ group.” (Susan Faludi)