Content area
Full Text
Feminism, in general is a belief that women are and should be treated as potential intellectual equals and social equals to men. Though the ideology is commonly and perhaps falsely associated mainly with women, a feminist can be of either sex. There are different strands of feminism that have resulted as a response to both the times and challenges women have been faced with from the pre-colonial to post-colonial eras or for as long as humankind has been. Radical feminism as opposed and set aside from the other strands, takes off from a premise that the basic division in all societies exists essentially because men are the oppressors of women. Patriarchal relations underlie all forms of oppression-class, colour, and imperialistic oppression. This discussion seeks to examine the repudiation and subversion of male symbols and what they stand for in various forms of literature and its effect.
Keywords: Feminism, Radical feminism, Male Symbolic Order, Difference, Patriarchy, Oppression, Women's Recan
'To be born a woman is to be "born branded" & "cursed": The Story of an African Farm
The paper shall examine the repudiation and subversion of male symbols by feminists. It shall also take into account the tendency of radical feminists to equate women freedom with the total overhaul of the whole system of patriarchy as it stands, and therefore, taking a complete condemnation of the male and everything which is a semblance of male-domination as a prerequisite for the liberation of women.
Radical feminism may or may not be anti-capitalist. They see the basic division in all societies as that between men and women and clearly state that men are the oppressors of women. Patriarchy is often used here to describe a systematic and universal form of oppression. For many radical feminists, patriarchal relations underlie all other forms of oppression-class oppression, colour oppression and imperialist oppression. Women's role in reproduction becomes both a motivating and enabling fact for men to take power over them. This common oppression makes women a common group that must struggle in unison to overthrow patriarchy, and change gender relations fundamentally-sometimes expressed as eliminating male power, sometimes as eliminating male values in favour of female values.
In their efforts to find an alternative to the system of patriarchy, radical feminists...