Feminist Criticism Of Feminism

Why has this book become so popular in rapid time? Why are women flocking to buy the book and why are they talking about it with their friends? More importantly, why was I a part of the craze? These are all valid questions I would like to find answers to. In my opinion, the book negatively portrays women, and yet women, and some men, are still reading it. It is alarming that so many readers are blinded by the message of the book because they are so wrapped in the content. This is why I find the book worth studying. In order to find answers to my questions, I will look to feminist criticism to better understand my topic.

Feminist Criticism

Feminism has negative connotations in popular culture. When people think about feminism or feminists, they envision angry women who absolutely hate men. This may be true for some feminists, but not all. It may surprise a few people that feminism is integral in all facets of life. Its roots lie in a social and political movement, the women’s liberation movement, aimed at improving conditions for women. Feminism has many definitions, but one common definition features the concept of equality, such as the belief that women and men should have equal opportunities. Feminism also examines women's social roles, experiences, interests, and politics in a variety of fields. Common themes explored in feminist theory are discrimination, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, patriarchy, stereotyping and so forth. These themes have developed over time and have created feminist theory. This section of paper will describe the three waves of feminism, the feminist rhetorical pioneers and their critics, and will explain how to use feminist criticism.

Waves of Feminism

Feminist critic...

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...ant because it claims that feminism transforms rhetorical constructs and theories.

Kramer/Kramarae’s Evaluation of Women’s Speech

Kramarae’s work is also foundational. She believes that there has been little research on the way men and women use language. She seeks to understand not only the possibility of differences in grammatical, phonological, and semantic aspects, but also possible differences in the verbal skills, instrumental use of language and the relationship of non-verbal uses to verbal behavior. Her research also looks for differences between the sexes in their linguistic competence and performance. She discovered that it is easier to see differences of language between the sexes in other cultures. There is, she writes, “linguistic evidence that in at least some scattered instances, the existence of these distinctions is associated with an assertion of