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Thursday, 23 March 2017

Paper-8 Cultural Studies

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Name: Komal Shahedadpuri M.
Course: M.A English
Sem: 2
Batch: 2016-2018
Enrolment No: 2069108420170027
Submitted to: Smt. S.B Gardi Dept. of English MKBU
Paper No: 8 Cultural Studies
Topic : Eco- Feminism, Post- Feminism and Cyber-Feminism

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Feminism

    Imagine that you get an  admission in international engineering collage/ university. On the first day you found that there are majority of boys , you  found only one girl there. You notice something strange that why more boys are in this field, you wonder for reason of absence of girls. You ask someone about that and he ask you that “what are you , some king of feminist? If this happened to you. Would you be offered by the implication that you are feminist? What exactly feminism? First, let’s define Feminism in general. The global idea of feminism refers to the belief that men and women deserve equality in all opportunities, treatment, respect, and social rights. In general, feminists are the people who try to acknowledge  social inequality based on gender and stop it from continuing. Feminists point out that in most cultures through  the history men have received more opportunities than women.

      While this basic idea of feminism seems simple enough, there are many people who misunderstand what the goal of feminism is. Some people imagine that feminists are angry, bitter women who only want subjugate men of course, this stereotypes offends actual feminists. Why there such a big difference between stereotype and reality. when it comes to feminism? One of this discrepancy might be because there are lots of different, specific types of feminism.


Eco- Feminism
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      Any of a wide range of theories, some of which argue that feminism is no longer relevant to today’s society or that feminism needs to be extended  to fit the changing expectations and experiences of women since feminism’s inception. Eco- Feminism is a special lance of viewing Feminism. The earth is matriarchal and Nature also called Mother Nature, a word ‘Her’ used for Nature. However the society is driven by Men. While in agriculture women are backbone of  the development of rural and national economics. In Africa, 80% of the agricultural production comes from small farmers, who are mostly rural women. Though, phallic symbol that  Farmer (men) known as Father(destroyer), Earth consider as  mother and farmer(men) destroy the land.(women)

‘Eco-Feminism is a philosophical and political  theory and movement which combines with feminist ones, regarding both as resulting from male domination of society.’  

Nature and Femininity

       Ecofeminism was  a term coined in the 1970s that links feminism with ecology. Its advocates say that paternalistic/capitalistic society has led to a harmful split between Nature and Culture. Early eco feminists propagated that split can only be healed by the feminine instinct for nurture and holistic knowledge of nature’s processes. Modern Eco feminism focuses more on international questions, such as how the nature-culture split enables the oppression of female and nonhuman bodies. There is one article on this, ‘Is Female to male as Nature is to Culture?’ by Sherry Ortner, in which  she offers us an explanation to why women have been universally considered to be second-rate to men throughout the history, by arguing that women’s subordinate status is a result of the human mindset that human culture is superior to nature, that culture subduing nature. Ortner theorizes that women’s body and psychology are perceived as symbolically identifiable with nature, while men are more associated with  culture, thus resulting in the women being considered inferior to men.  

Environmental Exploitation and Gender oppression

Image result for image of female  who don't have hair on headImage result for image of female who have moustache and beard
         Dr. Vandana Shiva is a woman whose work is focused on embracing not only the principles of feminism but also the principles of ecology. In Hindi chipko means ‘to embrace’, chipko movement in India is one of the most successful environmental activism struggles in the world, in which local women put their bodies between machinery and the forest  that provided their livelihood, literally hugging the trees.  As an eco feminist, she sees these two movements as interconnected and believes that worldview  that  causes environmental degradation and injustice is the same worldview that causes a culture of male dominance , exploitation and inequality for women.  Like if women naturally have mustache or more hair on body and head.its not ok with women but if male have its ok with them. Now a days women accepted that thing and represent them as they are in front of society.

Post-Feminism 

    With the 1980s and 1990s, we have a Post-Feminist phase that addresses questions of technology. The term Post Feminism is used to describe reactions against contradictions and absences in feminism, especially Second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism. Post feminism is sometimes confused with “4th wave-feminism and “women of color feminism”. Postfeminism seeks multiplicities and varieties rather than singular and unified subjects positions. Contemporary feminism moves away from the Eurocentric and heterosexual biases of early feminism and develops into Black feminism, ‘Third World’ or postcolonial feminism, and lesbian feminism in which the focus is turn towards themes like differences of class, race, sexuality and geographical location, analysis of colonial history and relationship between colonialism and patriarchy. Over a tears meaning of Postfeminism has became broader in scope, encompassing many different meanings, as is the case with feminism. Within feminist literature, definitions tend to fall into two main categories: 1) “death of feminism”, “anti-feminism”, “feminism is irrelevant now” and 2)  the next stage in feminism or feminism that intersects with other “post” philosophies/theories, such as postmodernism, postcolonialism and post-structuralism.

      In 1919, a journal was launched by which “female litearary radicals” stated “ we’re interested in people now – not in men and women”,  that “moral, social, economic and political standards ‘should not have anything to do with sex’ that  it would “be ‘pro-woman without being anti-man,” that is called Postfeminism.

     Postfeminism, the theory that feminism has already achieved and the movement is no longer necessary.  It has caused a wide- spread questioning of the validity of modern feminism, even making our culture hesitant to define things as “feminist”. A good example would be from feminist science studies, Sandra Harding’s ‘Is Science Multicultural?’(1998) looks specially at the women whose lives are affected by technologies, but who have no role in the knowledge-progress that create these technologies.

                        However, Is Feminism really Dead?
                        Has equality really been achieved?

Cyberfeminism

      The term first came about in 1992, according to Carolyn Guertin, “at a particular moment in time, 1992, simultaneously at three different points on the globe”. In Canada, Nancy Paterson, wrote an article entitled “Cyberfeminism” for EchoNYC. In Australia, a four person collective called VNS Matrix used the term to label their radical feminist acts “to insert women, bodily fluids and political consciousness into electronic space and aims to employ female arts for the construction of libidinal pleasures in a feminized and Postfeminist erotics of technocultural production.  Cyber feminism, is a term coined in 1994 by Sadie Plant, director of cybernetic culture Research unit at university of Warwick in Britain, to describe  the work of  feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general. Cyberfeminism is considered as predecessor to networked feminism. Cyberfeminism also has a relationship  to the field of feminist science and Technology studies. The dominant Cyberfeminist perspective takes a Utopian view of cyberspace and internet as a means of freedom from social constructs such as gender and sex differences. Cyberfeminism views technology as vehicle for the dissolution of sex and gender as well as a means to link the body with machines. In cultural studies, feminist theory examines the gendered use of media and rhetoric to reinforce patriarchy.

Representation of Women in cyberspace

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         The ‘text’ (meaning, cinema, poetry, theatre, advertisement) naturalizes oppression of women through its stereotypical representation of women as weak, seductress, obstacle, sexual object of male’s desire, similarly in social media or cyberspace how the women are represented? In most of the social media like on  Face book and   Google+, girls don’t put their own picture as their own profile but they use pictures of heroines or natural scenes. There are some reasons behind it that if they use their own picture, it may be misuse by someone or perhaps they want to hide their selves because they can’t aloud to use social media specially FB, and so they put their back photo or another one.

Feminist Frequency in Video games

       It’s both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy media and any video games , while also being critical of its more problematic aspects. Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American feminist media critic, blogger, and public speaker. She is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. She examines and criticize that how the women are represented in all video games. Games are dealing with a new army of critics ,gender activists and hipsters with degrees in cultural studies. These critics are concerned that gaming is a largely hetro-patriarchal capitalist. They ask ,

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Why must there always be male heroes?  

Why are the few females always portrayed as either     
Damsels in distress or sex objects?
    
      Critics want to end the male video game culture. Because almost video games dominated by patriarchy and women represented as minor in more sensual ways. All women characters in video games dressed with very short clothes.
Here is one video of this 
    
      Like this on Youtube ,on various sites and on online shopping how the women are represented, that is the part of Cyberfeminism.
     
      Thus, these are some types of feminism which are examine feminism in different ways and in different fields.


References
A book, An introduction to cultural studies by Pramod K Nayar



                                                                           


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