Categories: uncategorized
Date: 12 April 2007 07:44:18
I've been here again and before the summer's out no doubt I'll be here again but I am becoming more and more frustrated with feminist texts and academic literature in general.
The majority of it is simply so pretentious and is based around the agendas and interests of either faint hearted liberals, bitter and twisted radicals or those who are living so far in the academic bubble they are not just maintaining the classics but living them. Ok, perhaps I exaggerate but........
As you can probably tell I've been to the uni library again (thought when I was handing the essay in I'd better get some books for the dis as that is all there is left to complete now). This time I thought I'd find some secular books on lone parents (well I did, but yet again they are not stories or reflections but "self-help books" shelved in the social work section with other invisible or patronised sections of society). Anyway I decided to do an indepth search of the womens studies section and you know what I found that there - not alot that would be useful or related to the lives of women I know.
We need to rediscover feminist theory to make it once again properly rooted in woman's experience. Note that the idea of feminist theory was to give everyday women a voice (not just to have a go at men / patriarchy). In the past there have been accusations of the voice of women not being heard due to ethnicity or class and so much theory has sought to redress that. However, within all this the voices of the middle class women outside of academia or the women without "issues" or "a battle to be fought" has been lost. That is not to dis all current feminist literature, much of it is still useful (for example the growing body of work on the link between body image and the media) and a vast amount of it does feed into issues which impact on women's lives.
However, as I say something is being lost. Whilst the market in cheap autobiographical paperbacks is growing the academic theory looking at "real lives" outside of sink estates (and other areas where funding for research is more readily available) is decreasing.
In terms of Christian feminist texts, as I've said before, very little gets beyond debates about women and the priesthood and hears the voices of the flower arranger, the worship leader, the sunday school teacher, the coffee maker, the faithful bum on the pew; finding out what their experiences are as women; as people.