Women's Oppression and Racism: Critique of the "Feminist Standpoint" (From Women, Crime and Culture: Whores and Heroes, P 151-178, 1998, Stephanie McMahon, ed. -- See NCJ-182071)

• NCJ Number: 182074
• Author(s): Marlee Kline
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 28 pages
• Sale Source: Centre for Police and Security Studies
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

This analysis questions the contemporary feminist assumption that women have a common experience of oppression and argues that this assumption serves to focus attention on the concerns and priorities of white middle-class women and obscures the forms of oppression experienced by minority women.

Abstract

Nancy Hartsock is a major proponent of the idea of a feminist standpoint. Hartsock argues that the different life activities and material experiences of women and men generate different world views. However, Hartsock’s insistence on the existence of a feminist standpoint arising from women’s universal experience of oppression caused by the sexual diversion opens her to the same charge of false generalization that she has raised against Marx from the perspective of gender. The perspectives of race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexual identity, physical ability, and other factors make a feminist standpoint appear limited and essentialist in the same way the proletariat perspective appears limited from a perspective attentive to gender considerations. Analysis of race and racism demonstrates the limitations of the feminist standpoint. Therefore, the assumption of a feminist standpoint is an insufficient basis for feminist theorizing and is ultimately an impediment to women’s solidarity. Notes and 54 references