Pages

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Politics

Kate Miller defined politics as any power-structured relationship in which one group of persons is controlled by another. Contemporary feminists refuse to use traditional political concepts (for example, the concept of political delegation, or vicarious politics) and prefer a concept of personalized politics. See Mies (1983).
Liberal feminism is based on a politics of antidiscrimination and opposes laws that establish different rights for women and for men. Liberal feminism accepts that many established political procedures such as universal suffrage, free elections or freedom of assembly, are adequate to eradicate discrimination. The goal of socialist feminist politics, on the other hand, is to abolish these socially constituted categories and develop a form of political with the political practice which can link the personal with the political. Socialist feminism criticizes the ways centralized forms of political organization replicate sexual and other divisions in the larger society. One alternative to centralized politics is participatory democracy where decisions are made by everyone. However, Sheila Rowbotham, and others, suggests that this form of politics is problematic unless everyone has a respect for the other’s experience. See Rowbotham (1979).
Structural functional analysis shows that political socialization, or the process by which a person acquires a political repertoire, occurs through sex roles and childhood experiences with father figures and authority patterns. Hence the goal of radical feminist politics is for women to deconstruct this past and gain control over our own bodies. A radical feminist politics will build a feminist culture in a new society of women-dentered spaces. However, the politics of separatism, Black feminist claim, ignores the way working-class and Black women political interest in common with men. See Combahee River Collective (1981).

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Counter for Unique user

Powered by Blogger.