Prominent Feminist Research Articles

Moral market compliance: How a logic of activism is used to ‘fem wash’ market violence against women in the user-generated pornography market

In turning to the user-generated pornography market and its mainstreaming sexual violence against women, this paper looks to uncover why women are increasingly participating as self-producing content creators. Specifically, we ask how the institutional logics perspective can help uncover more disguised market dynamics encouraging and coercing women to (re)produce their own abuse through self-produced pornographic content creation. With an institutional logics analysis of archival data from five user-generated pornography websites, our findings uncover how social logics act to disguise market logics. We show that a logic of activism is mobilised through two prominent feminist, social justice imperatives of: (i) the representation of diversity and (ii) appeals to environmentalism, which function together to construct a compliant and duty-bound imperative for women’s content creation. In doing so, this paper introduces a concept of moral market compliance: a dark market dynamic that functions to fem wash and (re)produce market violence against women.

Western Feminism and Indian Feminism: A Comparative Study

Feminism is a comprehensive movement that aims to address diverse manifestations of injustice and promote the rights of women. Despite their diverse nature, women's movements around the world express shared concerns regarding reproductive, political and legal rights. The primary objective of feminism is to emancipate women from various forms of mistreatment and foster global collaboration among women. However, there remains a substantial discrepancy in the quality of life experienced by women in economically impoverished nations in the Global South compared to those in economically prosperous countries in the Global North. Women residing in the economically developed regions of the world known as the Global North tend to benefit from capitalism and the global economy. Conversely, women living in the economically disadvantaged regions of the world known as the Global South typically encounter poverty and challenging working conditions. Indian feminism highlights the equal significance of economically exploitative behaviors, racism and gender discrimination as key issues. Indian feminism is considered more comprehensive than other forms of feminism since it places equal importance on both reproductive and productive responsibilities. The objective of this research is to examine the discrepancies between Western and Indian feminist ideology specifically focusing on the challenges associated with the adoption of Western ideals in India particularly the concept of essentialism. This research also examines the impact of increasing inequality on systems that depend on male involvement as well as the philosophical concerns associated with feminism in both Western and Indian settings. In order to illuminate the intricacies and subtleties present in these two prominent feminist traditions, the study employed a qualitative comparative analysis to emphasize discrepancies in the objectives of feminist groups regarding gender equality and women's empowerment.

Features of Feminist Approach to Scientific Research

Feminist philosophy is one of the leading areas of contemporary philosophy. It has been actively developing over decades and has significant contributions in various areas of theoretical and practical philosophy. Feminist philosophy of science is particularly interesting, as it is primarily responsible for feminist formulations of basic methodological statements of feminist approach to scientific research. The goal of this article is to determine the main features of feminist approach to scientific research. In order to achieve this goal, the article analyzes the main ideas of feminist philosophy of science regarding the criticism of the ideal of value-free science, reviewing and rethinking the meaning of objectivity, and reflections on feminist methodology. Accordingly, the article consists of an introduction, three parts, and conclusion. The first part is dedicated to the causes and effects of feminist criticism of the value-free ideal of science. In the second part, feminist reflections about objectivity are outlined, drawing on the views of such prominent feminist philosophers as Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Elisabeth Lloyd, and Heather Douglas. The relevance of these reflections for feminist historiography of philosophy is also noted. The third part addresses the question of whether there is a feminist method and explores the traits and typical properties of a feminist methodology. In conclusion, the main features of feminist approach to scientific research are formulated. These include attention to the role of values in producing and applying scientific knowledge, a preference to explanations that account for details and complexity over simplification and generalization, consideration of women’s experience, consideration of usefulness of diversity within scientific communities to mitigate assumptions and prejudices, belief is compatibility of objectivity and value-ladenness, openness to criticism, and self-reflection.

The Problem of Sacrifice in Mary Gordon’s Final Payments

Abstract: This article examines how Mary Gordon’s Final Payments (1978) represents a transition in the portrayal of sacrifice in Catholic fiction from pre-1965 works by Mauriac, Greene, and O’Connor to more contemporary ones. Further, when read in dialogue with the concerns of prominent feminist theologians, the novel’s uniqueness comes into sharper focus. Against this backdrop, Final Payments prefigures more recent contemporary Catholic novels that also explore the theme of sacrifice, but with even greater ambiguity. Final Payments thereby both responds to earlier Catholic fiction as well as foreshadows the works of subsequent decades.

Debunking the Maternal Myths and Re-Interpreting Motherhood

This paper interprets the fundamentals of motherhood with a particular emphasis on matricentric feminist viewpoints. It delves deeply into the complex aspects of motherhood, shedding light on its intricate structure with the help of feminist perspectives. Through a critical analysis of various viewpoints, the paper reveals how gender roles, cultural norms, and power dynamics interact to shape how mothers perceive and experience motherhood. It references the challenges mothers face in patriarchal systems and draws from the works of prominent feminist researchers. It also highlights how feminist ideas provide an alternative perspective for examining prevalent stereotypes and challenging binary notions of motherhood. Through this, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how feminist viewpoints influence conceptions of motherhood and reshape the discourse on women's roles and identities. The abstract underscores the importance of considering social roles and gender issues in this investigation, highlighting their pivotal roles in shaping mothers' experiences in society.

Mother-Child Relationship in Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove: A Fragile Landscape

British-Jordanian novelist Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove is a story of an Arabian girl from a Bedouin tribe in the Levant, who is punished by death for flouting social norms of the tribe. Her tribe believed that dishonour can only be wiped off with blood. Apart from a covert advocacy of feminist ideals and women’s emancipation, the novel offers a window to the strong mother-daughter relationship, which in itself is viewed by prominent feminist critics as a form of rejection of patriarchal oppression. In the present paper, mother-child relationship depicted in the novel has been explored through a character analysis of the leading as well as minor female roles in the book, such as the protagonist Salma, her mother Hajjeh Amina, and her friend Noura and Madam Lamaa. The study concludes that in the novel mothers are depicted to forge a strong relationship with their children, especially daughters, in a continuum of motherline.

Essential Workers of the Palais-Royal: Prostitution and the Public Good in French Revolutionary Drama

Abstract: From 1789 to 1792, the issue of prostitution was absent from parliamentary debates, policy agendas, and journalism in France. This article looks to theater and pamphlet literature instead for examples that break the silence around prostitution, with special emphasis on the play, Le Serment civique des demoiselles fonctionnaires publiques du Palais-Royal (1791), in which prostitutes debate their status and duty in relation to a new Revolutionary decree on public workers. Using print and performance to intervene in public discourse and promote their interests, prostitutes of the Palais-Royal are shown as crafting a notion of citizenship based not on a discourse of natural rights, as prominent feminist activists of the period did, but rather based on their contribution to the public good as essential workers for the nation.

A Patriarch of One’s Own Clutching the Chains That Bind: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind

History has been the tool of patriarchy to establish and perpetuate its hegemonic hold on society by presenting the male narratives and marginalizing, often excluding, female and minoritarian perspectives and experiences. War history, likewise, has been the record of victories and failures of men. It seeks to idealize the figure of ‘war-hero’ who for the sake of nation or community had abjured personal desires and comfort and devoted himself to one goal alone, that is to protect and serve his country. Margaret Mitchell employs one such war, namely the American Civil War (1861-65) as the backdrop of her famous novel Gone with the Wind (1936) presenting itself to be the narrative of popular romantic story and attempts to foreground the history of female experience that is excluded from the official records of public history. This paper, therefore, intends to show how in spite of set against the backdrop of a war history the novel, that is chiefly dominated by female characters, does not engage in idealizing a male narrative rather brings to the fore the story of a changed nation traced through the female struggle. Mitchell shows how before the birth of any prominent feminist movement the domestic life of America that was ravaged by the Civil War was not protected and run by any ‘hero’, rather by women chiefly. This thesis, thereby, intends to explore how the domestic life, which is relegated at the back in any history of war, is chiefly handled and brought to normalcy by the women of the society and how the women being desperate and instrumental, became the entrepreneur in time of need and though not given any praise became the shaping force of the new social order as the nurturer, much unacknowledged even by themselves and the two manifestation of the spirit of women which is pushed to the margin in the male narrative of war. This thesis will bring into account the critical perspectives of Dianna Wallace, Linda Hutcheon, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Gerda Lerner in order to establish how Mitchell’s novel present a counter narrative through its appropriation of patriarchal hegemonic historical meta-narrative.

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire by Emily Baughan

<i>Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire</i> by Emily Baughan

A Note on Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Katharine Hepburn

Though separated in age by nearly half a century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) and the actress Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) were friends and allies. Both were natives of Hartford and they were distantly related by ancestry and marriage.1 Gilman was well-acquainted with Katharine Houghton Hepburn (1878–1951), the mother of the actress and a prominent feminist, and she occasionally visited the Hepburn residence in the Nook Farm neighborhood of the Connecticut capital—the very house, in fact, where her brother Thomas Perkins had once lived.2 Gilman closely followed Hepburn's acting career, praising her performances in the films Terms of Divorcement (“She was better than John Barrymore in it”)3 and Little Women to her friend Grace Ellery Channing (“I'm pleased that you agree with my high opinion of Katharine Hepburn. . . . It is a delight to have someone like that to count on”).4 In November 1933, soon “The Yellow Wall-paper” was reprinted in Golden Book, Gilman considered adapting it for the stage. “Perhaps Kate Hepburn would consider [acting in] it,—though she's pretty young,” she mused in a letter to her cousin Lyman Beecher Stowe.5 At the time, ironically, Hepburn was twenty-six, older than Gilman when she endured the “rest cure” prescribed by S. Weir Mitchell and the same approximate age as Gilman when she wrote the story. A year later, Katharine Stetson Chamberlin, Gilman's daughter, hosted a reception in her Pasadena home for her mother, who had recently moved to California. Chamberlin invited Hepburn, who could not attend but responded in a kind note: Dear Mrs. Chamberlin:Due to the va[g]aries of the delivery service in California, your invitation to tea arrived after the tea. I should, however, have been unable to come as I am working all day, every day, on “Little Mi[n]ister.”6 Thank you so much anyway for asking me.I should love to see Mrs. Gilman again and shall try to get hold of her on the completion of this picture. Please give her my warmest regards.Sincerely yours,Katharine Hepburn7Gilman and Hepburn met personally on at least one other occasion. In January 1934, Katharine Houghton Hepburn accompanied Gilman “to see her wonderful daughter again” in a performance of “The Lake” in New York. “It is a paltry play; paltry,” Gilman reported to Katharine Chamberlin, “and it's like putting a quart measure in a pint cup to see [the young Kate] try to crawl into a namby-pamby girl like that, but she does it.”8 In the course of my own research on Gilman over fifty years later, I came across this letter and sent a copy of it to Kate Hepburn, who immediately replied: XII – 15 – 1987Dear Gary Scharnhorst—How fascinating—and how very good of you to take the trouble to send it to me—Thank you very very much—Katharine Hepburn9

Feminist Çeviri Aktivizmi: Türkiye’de Cinsiyet Eşitliği Anlatılarının Alıntısallık Üzerinden Yeniden Çerçevelendirilmesi

The feminist movement that flourished in the 1980s in Turkey was widely influenced by the Western second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. As a matter of this influence, translations/translators played an essential role in importing feminist epistemes mostly from the Western context into Turkish. Women’s Circle’s translations and the translated articles that were published in periodicals such as Yazko Somut the 4th Page catalyzed the dissemination of feminist ideas that would enable the transformation of hegemonic notions of women’s rights, gender roles and gender equality that were prevalent in the society at the time. However, aside from full-text translations, feminist activists often opted for more implicit ways of cross-cultural exchanges by making citations from foreign sources in the indigenous texts that they wrote for a local readership in Turkey. This study aims to problematize the translated citations embedded in indigenous feminist texts published in the 1980s from Mona Baker’s socio-narrative perspective (2006a), disclosing that feminist activists contested and reframed the hegemonic narratives on women and gender roles in Turkey by bringing in subversive counter-narratives, elaborated by prominent feminists, through these translated citations in a much more covert yet no less effective way than full-text translations. In this regard we examine Fatmagül Berktay’s article “Eşitliğin Ötesine…” (1985) that was published in the heyday of the new feminism in Turkey, contesting the long-established notion of gender equality through the translated citations it makes use of. Regarding citations as a mode of “translation activism” (Baker, 2006b; Tymoczko, 2010), we argue that these citational chains are shaped by and shape in turn the feminist positionality of the translator/writer to the past narratives and the newly emerging feminist narratives in Turkey.

Ukraine's Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1911–2011

Ukraine's Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1911–2011

ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI AND THE POLITICAL MEANING OF LOVE

In the given article I analyze the contribution of the prominent socialist feminist thinker and politician Alexandra Kollontai to the development of conceptual vision of a just society, that would be based on the equality of the sexes, and to the formation of contemporary views onto the problem of the of the political, intellectual and emotional autonomy of women . In my view, the rethinking of Kollontai's views in regards to the issues of love, sexuality and the role of emotional life under socialism and capitalism may be helpful for better understanding of the complex relationship between gender and class identities, collisions of public and private lives, and the emancipation of women (politically, economically, emotionally and symbolically). I also argue that Kollontai's legacy is relevant for the contemporary scholarship on political , gender-specific aspects of emotional life as well as the affective dimension of the politics.My analysis is based on three types of sources: theoretical works and literary texts by Alexandra Kollontai, in which she developed her views on love relationships and women's autonomy; selected works of other Marxist and feminist thinkers of the early XX century (V.I. Lenin, I. Armand) that dealt with the questions of free love and sexual mores; the works by contemporary gender scholars and feminist thinkers, that engage with the texts of Kollontai and debates on love and sexuality in the Soviet 1920s.

The Language of Flowers in Selected Poems by William Blake: A Feminist Reading

The study aims at analyzing the meanings and symbolic implications of flowers in selected poems by William Blake (1757-1827) from a feminist perspective. This paper analyzes the themes and symbolism of different kinds of flowers to explain how William Blake tries to expose the situation of women in the patriarchal nineteenth-century society. The study discusses the language of flowers from a feminist perspective relying on three prominent feminists. First, the study relies on Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) who rejected the patriarchal role of women as submissive and weak. Second, the study applies Virginia Woolf’s feminist perspective about rejecting the role of women as the angels of the house. Third, the study applies Simone de Beauvoir’s rejection of categorizing women as subjective and inferior. William Blake is an early feminist who rejected the submission of women and used his poetry to comment on the situation of women in the nineteenth century. He expresses many issues related to women. He believed in women’s ability to be independent and strong and he refutes the traditional social stereotyping of women as being inferior and weak and therefore they are in constant need of the support of men. Blake stresses the beauty and strength of women through describing women in floral imagery.

(Anti-)feminism and cisgenderism in sports media

ABSTRACT In this article we explore how anti-feminist and cisgenderist media logics are intertwined, particularly in the context of sports media. We examine these issues through focused analysis of a recent case reported in 2018–2019 predominantly in the British media. The sequential unfolding of media events surrounding Martina Navratilova’s intervention into the debate about trans inclusion in the female sporting category is explored with regard to key markers in the case study: @Martina intervenes; Self-censorship and loss of control; Legitimisation by status; Legitimisation by history; and Privileging and disciplining women in the media. As a prominent feminist and lesbian activist who asserted cisgenderist arguments on this topic, the events of the Navratilova case study show how feminist voices are complexly fragmented. Moreover, we demonstrate too how feminist perspectives are controlled by a media system that uses them in the substantiation of cisgenderist projects of discrediting trans athletes and actors.

Metaphors and Metamorphosis:

Ismat Chughtai, a prominent feminist writer of twentieth century India, has often been criticized for her iconoclastic stand on the treatment of female sexuality in her stories though she has always used strong metaphors to subtly express such boldness in her heroines. In “The Homemaker,” she presents the characters, Lajo and Mirza, in a relationship that involves a certain pattern of sexual politics. Mirza, driven by Lajo’s sexuality, falls in love with her, and, bugged by his sense of religiosity and patriarchy, attempts to make a “decent” woman out of her. Chughtai’s brilliant narrative establishes here two strong metaphors, lehnga (a long skirt worn by Indian women) and pyjamas (trousers worn by Indian women), to capture two phases of metamorphosis that Lajo goes through from being a maid to becoming a homemaker first, and then from a maid to a wife, followed by a retreat to being a homemaker again. Drawing from Simon de Beauvoir’s theoretical reflections on sexual politics, this paper will show how Lajo’s journey from lehnga to pyjamas, and her retreat from pyjamas to lehnga metaphorically tell the story of her metamorphosis within the sexual politics of her relationship with Mirza.

The Conflation of Single Mothers and Prostitutes in Morocco

The Conflation of Single Mothers and Prostitutes in Morocco

Esaretten Özgürlüğe: Sarah Daniels’ın The Devil’s Gateway Oyununda Öz-farkındalık Çerçevesinde Kadınların Değişimi

The years beginning with 1960 witnessed several alterations in the thoughts of the women identified as ‘second-wave’ feminists with regard to both social and political perspectives, which was led by the influence of women’s movements. The women of that period directed their attention more to such matters like discrimination, gender, inequality, and violence whereas they were still interested in domestic issues. Women’s new interests were fundamental sources of the works of such prominent feminist playwrights like Sarah Daniels displaying tendencies towards second-wave feminism. In this study, one of the debatable plays of her, The Devil’s Gateway (1983) is analysed in terms of the gradual transformation of the female characters through self-awareness, regarding their positions in both domestic and public domain as well. In the light of the background of Daniels’ period, with hermeneutic analysis and feminist criticism, the study also aims to observe triggering factors for the women’s awakening in detail from the very beginning to the end of the play. The evaluations of the study are revealed in the conclusion part.

An Intersectional Feminist Reading of Bapsi Sidhwa's Water

Intersectionality has been recognized and widely taken by interdisciplinary fields that include Cultural studies, American studies, and Media studies to demonstrate a range of social issues. It focuses on the experiences of people in a different social and political context. The intersectional framework confronts significant social division axes that include race, class, gender, and disability that function together and influence each other. These social axes operate the power structures of a particular society that can cause inequality and discrimination. In literary studies, women's representation is no more confined to European and American academic writings. Within the feminist framework, the South Asian fiction writers also demonstrate a feminist approach in their works. Pakistani authors have indicated religion's exploitation as one of the central intersectional tropes in their literary work. Bapsi Sidhwa is one of the prominent feminist voices from Pakistan in diasporic English Literature. One of her novels, Water (2006), is based on Deepa Mehta's award-winning film, explores the life of the marginal and subaltern Hindu widows in India. The novel provides an insight into the intersectional nature of the Indian Hindu widows in a patriarchal society of a subcontinent where different power domains hold and impose dominant hierarchies. The paper's objective is to highlight the intersection of religion, gender, caste and politics against the backdrop of the Indian anti-colonial movement. It shows how power relations can manipulate cultural norms and use religion as a powerful tool to establish its hegemonic control over these marginalized widows who suffer as silent victims.