The Pros And Cons Of Gender Feminism

“Sexual Politics, “For it is precisely because certain groups have no representation in a number of recognized political structures that they 're position tends to be so stable, their oppression so continuous” (191). For this reason, theory, among various other structures, should become more inclusive, recognizing nonbinary genders and facing issues that affect the people who identify with them. Nonbinary gender has largely been left out of feminist discourse, as well as queer theory and even trans studies. Even pivotal works on gender fail to recognize and account for the existence of non or multiple genders.

In viewing and defining feminism non-essentialism, or antifoundationalism, is vital to understanding gender and sex theory. Antifoundationalism

In the researching of this paper there was a lack of scholarly works that referred to feminism in terms of “gender liberation.” One scholarly journal notes “gender liberation” verbatim but it is in the context of fathers taking on household duties, hardly a delve into the wide spectrum of gendernonconformity. (Glass 1) Another of the only two that remotely mentioned gender liberation in terms of feminism only mentions it in the equated sense of men and women in political spheres without actually speaking to nonbinary or gendernonconforming identities. (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 13) From the extensive research it is clear that the general movement to make feminism a gender liberatory one is absent or largely underground. For these reasons alone we can see that gendernonconforming issues do not get their due representation or research simply for the fact that they’re not a noticeably mainstream interjection into feminist theory.

The feminist movement has been faced with backlash arguing that including gendernonconformity in feminism will dilute the movement, cause a weaker front, and feminism is just plain a women’s movement. While the latter is not mainstream today because of third wave feminism and its frontier into intersectionality it can still be seen that with the need to cleanly define identities in order to identify intersectionalities, individuals that are in grey areas are being left

Seeing gender in terms of femininity and masculinity and their respective relationship to submission and dominance in today’s society is key to understanding the more insidious underpinnings of the patriarchal system and its dehumanization of femininity and masculinity that does not fit within the cisnormative gender binary. Seeing feminism through the lens of fuzzy spectrums of existent or nonexistent intersectionalities is a more cohesive way of understanding oppression and hierarchies of power in which individuals are born into. The allowed passivity on nonbinary issues by individuals in the feminist movement, though not intentionally harmful, leads to severe marginalizations. In an attempt to be seen as equals the marginalized are using the master’s tools to marginalize. Antifoundationalism is a major theory in moving society toward building a foundation of discourse that is not only sound but also one that does not limit the possibility of always learning and adapting with time (where essentialism fails massively). To erasively ignore the needs of the few is to adhere to the same patriarchal stereotypical steamrolling that causes so much systematic sexism and pain. Gendernonconforming individuals have been prevalent and in existence far before the language of intersectionality came to be and thusly forcing feminism into the small