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Paper-8 Cultural Studies
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
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
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
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
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 ,
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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