Feminism Blog

 5/1

I define feminism as a means of expressing the reactionary female experience in the writer’s unique voice. The experiences of several of our writers demonstrate that feminism is not necessarily based on a gender war, but rather is a reaction to societal pressures and cultural norms. While some authors from our class demonstrate an outspoken feminist ideal that militates for societal change, other authors simply delineate their natural reactions to small-minded and patriarchal systems that demean or diminish the role of women in society.

Audre Lorde is an example of strong, revolutionary feminism that advocates for activism. As a child of West Indian immigrant parents, Lorde describes her lack of acceptance by her mother and sisters in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. During her life, she longed for meaningful connections with women. As a black lesbian intellectual in white academia, she earned her place through sheer mental strength. Education was her great equalizer. Despite feeling rejected in her home and in society, she found success professionally as well as a political platform to trumpet the tenets of outspoken feminism.

The experience of Onnie Lee Logan, the author of Motherwit, contrasts with the feminist advocacy of Lorde. Nevertheless, Logan, a midwife in the deep South, lived out a version of feminism simply because she valued women and helped them at the apex of their physical vulnerability. The medical establishment vilified Logan and other midwives as “less than” and uneducated, yet Logan consistently overcame this criticism through her tender and competent care for women. While society de-valued women, ignored postpartum depression, and placed all emphasis on the baby, Logan’s care for women’s health earned her a reputation as a sought-after and skilled medical practitioner.

One writer whose work does not meet my definition of feminism, through neither Lorde’s overt activism nor Logan’s quiet competence, is anthropologist Marjorie Shostak. In the words of Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Shostak studies and transcribes the oral history of a young African woman who demonstrates the negative effects of female oppression in her tribal society. Nisa, Shostak’s subject, has no opportunity to change her culture, which engages in beating children, forced marriage, and complete ignorance of and lack of preparation for the sex act. Because Nisa voices no possibility of opposing her circumstances, Shostak delivers a fatalistic female experience rather than a reactionary perspective. 

Two feminist authors from our readings exemplify unhomeliness, or the idea of being out of place and clashing against another culture. Karen Blixen, whose pen name was Isak Dennison, lived her feminism through her natural reactions to stifling societal expectations. As an outsider in Africa, Blixen’s open and loving spirit transitioned her into her new surroundings and allowed her to make connections with natives and animals despite her feelings of loneliness and abandonment. 

Similarly, Maxine Hong Kingston describes the clashing of two opposing cultures, Chinese and American, in her work The Woman Warrior. Born to first-generation immigrants, Kingston constantly questioned her cultural identity. Kingston juxtaposes her natural understanding of 

American traditions against her parents’ often-conflicting Chinese customs. She describes her confusing and turbulent attempts to maintain respect for a distant Asian culture in obeisance to her parents, while recognizing their disdain for permissive American values.

The writers of our class readings prove that feminism can be loud and outspoken, as with Lorde. It can also be patiently competent, as with Logan. Feminism can also express otherness and unhomeliness or feeling out-of-place in a setting, as with Blixen and Kingston. What feminism cannot encompass is a lack of reaction against a stifling and oppressive environment. Shostak’s anthropological writing about Nisa, provides an honest perspective of a young woman who has no hope for the positive societal changes that feminist thought could bring.