Sexist Oppression Summary

There have been many different feminist approaches to understand the sources of oppression. Early theorists sought to understand sexist oppression from analyzing woman as a broad category. Queer theorists, Women of Color Feminisms and Decolonial Feminisms troubled that methodology by questioning: What women are represented in these analyses? All perspectives rejected the identity of woman as a location of analysis because of the failure for this identity to represent and understand the experiences of all marginalized people. To resolve these failures, Queer Theorists and postmodern theorist concluded to move away from rigid categorical analyses of oppression; Women of Color feminisms championed intersectionality; Standpoint theorists use the

Though De Beauvoir recognizes that the categories of gender/sex exist beyond a binary, she is still uses woman and man as reference points to define these “other” categories, “In nature nothing is ever completely clear: the two types, male and female, are not always sharply distinguished…” (De Beauvior, 38). With this approach she reifies a gender binary by establishing the naturalness of biological sex. The way De Beauvoir alludes to nonbinary genders through the ways that the deviate from binary genders reconstitutes a binary.This approach establishes two natural biological sexes, two culturally created genders and then their deviations, “Some women demonstrate virile characteristics: too many secretions from the adrenal glands gives them masculine characteristics.” (De Beauvoir, 40). The use of two genders as default categories shifts the analysis of the experiences of nonbinary people from their unique experiences, to how their experience is different than that of cisgendered people. Queer theory attempts to resolve this problematic approach by dissolving binary categories as reference for

“What is problematical about this kind of use of ‘woman’ as a group, as a stable category of analysis, is that is assumes an ahistorical, universal unity between women based on a generalized notion of their subordination.” (Mohanty, 31). The universalist approach of mainstream feminism assumed that all women experienced oppression in the same way. The assumption that all women face the same type of oppression and seek the same type of liberation is extremely problematic for the voices of Women of Color and Third world women. This approach “ends up constructing monolithic images of ‘Third World women’ by ignoring the complex and mobile relationships between their historical materiality on the level of their specific oppressions and political choices, on the one hand, and their general discursive representations, on the other” (Mohanty, 37). To expand the category of woman, Women of Color and Decolonial feminisms used an intersectional approach. With intersectionality, woman is constructed through the understanding that women have many identities; not a default and its deviations. To be intersectional and reject universalist categorizations, Women of Color feminists make efforts to be inclusive and to be attentive to all situations of oppression, “The