Contributions of a Great Feminist Theorist

Virginia Woolf focused on how gender affects morals and values. Through her feminist writings, she aimed to increase women's education, advocate for women in the professions, encourage the importance of motherhood, and prevent war.

Woolf underwent different traumatic experiences during her youth. First, her half-brother, Gerald Duckworth sexually abused her. In 'Sketch of the Past' (1939) she wrote: "I can remember the feel of his hands going under my clothes; going firmly and steadily lower and lower, I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But he did not stop." Virginia felt numb to this experience. She felt powerless, helpless, weak, and subservient among all things. This event was significant enough that it led her to think about gender roles and power in a society later in her life.

Soon after, Virginia experienced the sudden death of her mother in 1895, when she was 13, and her half-sister Stella's death two years later. These events also led to Virginia's emotional breakdowns. Moreover, her father died in 1904, and this fully exacerbated her mental illness and led to her brief institutionalization. At this point in time, she was experiencing severe depression, mood swings, headaches, physical ailments, and other symptoms.

Her writings reflected her inner conflicts so to speak. Woolf attemped to relay very important messages about women's experiences and men's domination in a patriarchal society. She believed that "as women entered the public sphere, they should not forget the lessons forged within the private home, where they had learned to fight patriarchy" (Freedman, p. 70). Another goal of hers was to work further to unsilence sexual abuse and the manipulation associated with it. She didn’t want to feel suffocated anymore by hiding from the reality of the abuse even though she knew that regardless of admitting her sexual abuse, she would be affected by it for the rest of her life (along with her other early childhood experiences). Unfortunately, Woolf committed suicide due to her unbearable internal pain. She loaded her pockets with many stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse on March 28, 1941.

Woolf's feminist ideas are most evident in A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN (1929). One of her most famous quotes exists in this book: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." In her book, Woolf touched the on obstacles and prejudices that have women writers have faced and have struggled to overcome. For instance, most men wrote books for their own needs and their own uses. Women were usually the inferior objects in these books. In her book, she made a clear distinction between women as certain objects of representation and women as authors of representation and was adamant about a change that had to be made in literature to reflect this distinction. In the last chapter of her book, Woolf spoke of the possibility of an androgynous mind (The definition of androgygnous according to Merriam-Webster dictionary reads: 1 : having the characteristics or nature of both male and female, 2 a : neither specifically feminine nor masculine, b : suitable to or for either sex, 3 : having traditional male and female roles obscured or reversed). Woolf referred to a great mind as being androgynous and having reached its fullest potential.

Here are some of her most famous quotes. How do you think they relate to her personal experiences and her messages conveyed in her professional writing?

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."

 

"All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are sides, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side."

"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size."

"As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

The Perfect Wedding

I am very interested in the way the media portrays stereotypes and “rights” and “wrongs” in society. For instance, on one of the web links on our Blackboard page, I clicked on an article called Lifetime's royal made-for-TV fairy tale: "William and Kate.” The caption underneath it reads, “Everybody wants a piece of the royal action. Lifetime makes a movie. Murdoch considers airing the wedding in 3-D.” I think from just reading these last two sentences, you can probably guess what I am going to say next: This is pretty ridiculous. I mean the movie could be cute and sweet, but a wedding in 3-D?! This seems a little much; these producers and Amy Steinberg (author of the article) seem like they are trying to lure people in and believe that weddings are amazing and perfect for everyone. In reality, this is not true at all. A few weeks ago I remember I asked a question in class that involved the question of, “How many of you want to get married? If you don’t want to, how many of you want to have children?” The number of people who still raised their hand to my second question was surprising. Contemporary thoughts and feelings on the topic are obviously changing, but why isn’t the media reflecting this change in thought? Why are movies like this one trying to convince people to get married through their luxurious 3-D images of beautiful and flawless bridal dresses and weddings cakes and decorations galore? Again, it’s as if we didn’t already get the point of the movie the first time. WE GET IT. We don’t need 3-D images to changes our minds if we’re not totally fans of the traditional, classic wedding picture. Don’t get me wrong, I would like to get married someday, but this is just a bit silly in my opinion. It’s sad that other people unlike myself and probably unlike you (who is a well-educated student engaged in a Women’s Studies class at the moment) would fall into the media’s traps and actually believe that a wedding is just full of utmost and pure joy, beauty, and happiness. It’s sad that still so many girls even our age already have their dress picked out or at least have elaborate ideas of the perfect dress. If marriage isn’t always about glamor and perfection, why do we as a society try to portray it that way? Why can’t there be movies of people who get married, but choose not to have extravagant weddings, or of those who don’t get married, but are happy with their children? Let’s go back to this question from before: Why can’t these ideas be more prevalent in the media if our thoughts are changing anyway? What do you think?

I'll leave you with a final quote from the article, "If you don't make the royal guest list and you miss the Lifetime original movie -- which will no doubt air at least 50 times between now and the nuptials -- you still may be able to catch a 3-D broadcast of the wedding  from your very own living room. According to one report, Robert Murdoch is considering airing the April 29 event in 3-D, "a medium usually reserved for premium soccer, ATP tennis finals and avatars."

On that note, you better not miss out on this life-changing premier! :P

Women in Sport

I just read an article called "Women's Sports Coverage Still Lacking" by Jose Alfredo Flores. It reconnected me with the discussion we had the other day in class about women in sport. In this article, it touches on the increase of popularity in women's sports, but the lack of coverage on tv, in magazines, on the internet, etc. "Many female sports writers say editors who oversee their work tend not to cover women's athletics because the majority of their readers are businessmen, who have only recently shown any interest in these stories," says Flores. So the question is: why are more men interested in reading about or watching men's sports? Does anyone beg to differ and say that men are just as interested in women's sports as well? I guess it depends on the individual, but generally, I believe it is true that men are interested in men's sports more than women's sports. How about women? Are they more interested in women's sports too? This is more questionable because many women like myself routinely watch men's basketball, football, soccer, baseball, etc. They may indeed watch women's sports more than men watch women's sports; however, the emphasis is on MEN IN SPORTS for both sexes. That is what is covered in the media, and this is what is popular. 

"What many editors don't realize is that girls are interested in sports, and if they can't read about the WNBA or the U.S. women's soccer team in the newspaper, they'll find that information on the Web or elsewhere. In a time of dwindling circulation, newspapers cannot lose these potential readers," says Susan Bischoff (deputy managing editor of the Houston Chronicle). So then how can we change the media to support and act on more feminist viewpoints? I definitely think polls should be taken and interviews should be completed in order to see what society really wants to read or watch in the media. If media coverage was more split between sexes, maybe more males would be more interested in female sports and vice versa. But this is difficult to process (as spoken about in class) due to the idea that sports were originally male-dominated and male-played. It was hard to break the trend and allow women on the athletic grounds. I feel like society has came a long way, but more opinions need to be addressed on the subject matter. For society to become more feministic in its thinking, it needs to start giving more credit and coverage to women, applauding them for their hard work and achievements. But let's face it, even at IC, more men and women go to men's basketball games than women's. They are just a bigger hype and advertised ALL over the place. Advertisements, as we all know, can convince people to unconsciously or consciously make favorable decisions about certain people, things, and situations. Therefore, if more advertisements were used for women's sports, maybe both men AND women would be more interested in succumbing to the general "right" thing to do, which is support women and watch/read about more of their achievements. But we NEED to make a much greater effort to ask for more women's coverage in sports or else it sadly just won't happen.