Typology of feminism

[altariel]

So, in undergraduate textbooks and so on, you tend to see feminism taught as being one of "three types": liberal feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminism. Does anyone have any idea where this typology came from? Rough date, origin(ator), etc.?

Comments

Re: Hmmm

[(Anonymous)]

Found it: Feminist Politics and Human Nature. She goes through four types of feminism: liberal, traditional Marxist, radical, and socialist.

That's from 1983, and in the introduction, Jagger claims that her taxonomy derives from the basic presuppositions about human nature that various feminist theorists use in order to identify the nature of the oppression women suffer, and so also what would count as liberation. She notes that the language of "oppression/liberation" itself is relatively recent, coming out of the sixties when the language of "equality" and "rights" was eclipsed by other vocabulary deriving from prominent social movements.

It's not clear whether she takes herself to be making the first formal attempt to give a classificatory survey of various feminist stances or not. If the terms were available in the 70s, then she may be drawing on them, but trying also to link them up in a more careful fashion than perhaps the practitioners of self-styled Marxist, radical, socialist, and liberal feminists did, to the philosophical presuppositions of whatever philosophical position the theorist has claimed for herself or himself.

Anyhow, so for Alison Jagger. Word from my friend who specializes in this area is that the labels were always highly contested, especially (apparently) the label 'liberal' (which seems somehow logical to me--if liberal is associated with the classic liberal conception of human nature, then its vocabulary was for a time the only vocabulary in use, so it would have moved from being the 'catholic' feminist position to something sort of left behind according to other feminists and in need of some new, special label to identify it where previously it would have needed none other than just 'feminism'). She says she'll make a quick check of her sources to see if she can find anything more specific about the origin of the terms.

Dwim

Re: Hmmm

[altariel.livejournal.com]

This is all tremendously useful, thank you very much - and thank you also to your friend for her contributions. The 'liberal' label makes sense to me too, not least because of Mill (I have On Liberty and The Subjection of Women in the same volume!). I feel a lot better about using it as a teaching tool if I can point people to a source and say, "You may like to use this taxonomy, but it's not the only one, and you may decide you like something else better."