Politics & International Relations
Kate Millett
Kate Millett was an influential feminist writer and activist known for her groundbreaking book "Sexual Politics," which critiqued the patriarchal power structures in society. She was a prominent figure in the second-wave feminist movement and advocated for gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. Millett's work continues to inspire feminist scholars and activists around the world.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
5 Key excerpts on "Kate Millett"
eBook - PDFBeyond Identity Politics
Feminism, Power and Politics
- Moya Lloyd(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
Radical feminism, of course, went further: it questioned the very idea that politics could be equated solely with public level, governmental, activity. Authors such as Kate Millett (1977) charged that the realm of the state was a bastion of patriarchal power. Co-opting women into formal politics (as liberal feminists proposed) would do nothing to alter the structure of patriarchy as it spread its tentacles through every aspect of life. Moreover, treating politics as confined to the public sphere obscured the fact that the private realm, far from being immune from politics as introduction the subject and politics 3 conventionally argued, was saturated with gendered power relations, and thus with politics. As the radical feminist slogan put it: ‘The personal is political.’ In place of the kinds of political activities championed by lib-eral feminists, radical feminists advocated instead politics as direct action targeted at grassroots power relations. This included, among other things, surrounding army bases believed to contain nuclear weapons (as at Greenham Common, in the UK); establishing rape crisis centres and shelters for survivors of domestic violence; refusing sexual services to male partners and taking up lesbianism as a political stance. Radical fem-inism not only re-envisioned the sphere of politics (extending it to the private realm). Equally significantly it contested and transformed what could be thought of as a political issue. It politicized sexual relations (including prostitution and pornography), sexual orientation, the body, abortion, and reproduction. 4 The effect of this feminist rethinking of pol-itics was to shift the terrain of what could be counted as political. And, of course, Marxist feminism and socialist feminism too added to this con-testation of mainstream politics. The significance of these developments cannot be underestimated.
eBook - ePub- Valerie Bryson(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
Politics:25). It was, however, only the first of these principles that she explored, and she did not distinguish between male power within the family and in society as whole. Despite the efforts of some writers either to restrict the term to strictly family-based power (see Randall, 1987:20; Cocks, 1989), or to substitute the term ‘male domination’ when referring to social relations more generally (Thompson, 2001), its use as a shorthand for a social system based on male domination and female subordination soon became widespread amongst feminists.Millett’s central claims were simple, and they essentially represented a formalisation of the ideas that were already current in the new women’s movement. She argued that in all known societies, relationships between the sexes have been based on power, and that they are therefore political. This power takes the form of male domination over women in all areas of life; sexual domination is so universal, so ubiquitous and so complete that it appears ‘natural’ and hence becomes invisible, so that it is ‘perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power’ (Politics:25). According to Millett, the patriarchal power of men over women is basic to the functioning of all societies and it extends far beyond formal institutions of power. It overrides class and race divisions, for economic dependency means that women’s class identity is a ‘tangential, vicarious and temporary matter’, while ‘sexism may be more endemic in our society than racism’ (Politics
eBook - PDFWomen, Gender, and World Politics
Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects
- Peter R. Beckman(Author)
- 1994(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
I call this combination "Critical/Feminist Theory," or a "gender-in-International-Relations" per- spective. Liberal feminists have underscored the absence of women from both the practice and study of international relations. This absence has been used in the past to defend the supposed gender neutrality of the study of world politics. Criticizing it is therefore important. Liberal feminists challenge that claim and effectively give voice to women scholars and previously si- lenced practitioners of world politics, as well as expand the boundaries of the field. Similarly, Radical feminism not only challenges the assumption that mainstream International Relations theory has been produced in a value- neutral way, but also points to the importance of expanding the arena of legitimate inquiry in world politics beyond its traditional focus on war and peace. Along with other critics of this tradition, Radical feminism insists on exploring the constitutive elements of all international activity, not merely the surface appearance of interstate rivalry, which has been privi- leged through Realism. Finally, Feminist Postmodernists have emphasized the ways in which identity and meaning are contingent and socially constructed. This is im- portant in International Relations because it underscores the ways in which the topics that are considered important, the ways of posing questions, and the approach to studying them, are created rather than natural. A Critical/Feminist account of world politics that is sensitive to gender relations should attempt to incorporate many of the insights of the above types of feminist theorizing while overcoming their limitations. Like Lib- eral feminists, we are interested in documenting the underrepresentation of women in particular spheres, or describing the unfair burdens borne by women as a result of particular legislative practices.
- B. D'Costa, K. Lee-Koo(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
2. For an excellent discussion see, Mary E. Hawkesworth, Globalization and Feminist Activism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc. 2006), 25–28. 3. Jill Steans, “Engaging from the Margins: Feminist Encounters with the ‘Main- stream’ of International Relations,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5, no. 3 (August 2003): 435. 14 ● Bina D’Costa and Katrina Lee-Koo 4. Katrina Lee-Koo, “Feminism,” in An Introduction to International Relations: Aus- tralian Perspectives, ed. Richard Devetak, Anthony Burke, and Jim George (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 75–77. 5. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora, 1989). 6. J. Ann Tickner, “You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 4 (December 1997): 616. 7. V. Spike Peterson, “Feminist Theories Within, Invisible to, and Beyond IR,” Brown Journal of World Affairs X, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2004): 39. 8. J. Ann Tickner, “Feminism Meets International Relations: Some Methodological Issues,” in Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, ed. Brooke A Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 25. 9. Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, Gender and International Relations (Buck- ingham: Open University Press, 1991); J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: A Feminist Perspective on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); V. Spike Peterson, Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1992); V.
- Jane Bayes(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Verlag Barbara Budrich(Publisher)
security studies and interna-tional political economy, and probed feminist interventions. There are other important areas where internationally oriented feminist scholars have made important contributions. In particular, there is a proliferating literature on de-mocratization both at the state level and at the international level. Literatures on global civil society, the role of international advocacy networks and of women’s movements fit into this body of literature, as do writings on femi-nist strategy. They are a central part of contemporary feminist International Relations and my lack of attention to these writings here should not distract from their centrality to the field ( e.g. Jaquette 2003; Naples and Desai 2002; Molyneux and Razavi 2002; Braig and Wölte 2002; Liebowitz 2002; Eschle 2001; Kelly et al. 2001; Ackerly 2000). The purpose of this essay is to document the considerable richness of feminist scholarship in International Relations. It is a self-confident scholar-ship that has moved from talking at the mainstream to constituting itself as a distinct body of knowledge that the mainstream ignores at its own peril. Fem-inist analyses of masculinity, war- and peace-making provide trenchant an-swers to understanding IR’s classic question – why war? Feminist studies of women’s work in all economic sectors and in reproduction complete the par-tial picture of globalization offered by liberal economics. And feminist explo-rations of gendered, racialized, and sexed messages in economic conduct help answer questions about the causes of poverty and inequality. Feminist Inter-national Relations thus has emerged as a field of scholarship central to under-standing the pathologies of our global world. Feminist International Relations – The State of the Field 189 References Abood, Paula, 2003. “The Day the World Did Not Change.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 29, 2: 376-578. Ackerly, Brooke, 2000. Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
