d

Feminism: The Complete Documentation

• This category contains 7 Papers
• The last paper was added on 2007-03-26 (YYYY-MM-DD)

Abortion: It's every Womans Right to Choose

Published on 1992, by Patricia McCarthy, ©Workers Solidarity Movement.

Anarchists believe that every woman has the right to choose an abortion when faced with a crisis pregnancy irrespective of the reasons for the abortion. At least 4,000 Irish women have abortions in England every year at present. Women worldwide have always sought to control their fertility through abortion no matter how difficult it is for them to get access to abortion and they probably always will. This is because it is essential for women to be able to control their own fertility and not to be reduced to the level of their biological function as child-bearers only if they are to achieve true equality and liberation.

Anarcho-Feminism: Two Statements

Published on 1971, by Siren - A Journal of Anarcho-Feminism, ©Siren - A Journal of Anarcho-Feminism.

We consider Anarcho-Feminism to be the ultimate and necessary radical stance at this time in world history, far more radical than any form of Marxism.

We believe that a Woman's Revolutionary Movement must not mimic, but destroy, all vestiges of the male-dominated power structure, the State itself - with its whole ancient and dismal apparatus of jails, armies, and armed robbery (taxation); with all its murder; with all of its grotesque and repressive legislation and military attempts, internal and external, to interfere with people's private lives and freely-chosen co-operative ventures.

The world obviously cannot survive many more decades of rule by gangs of armed males calling themselves governments. The situation is insane, ridiculous and even suicidal. Whatever its varying forms of justifications, the armed State is what is threatening all of our lives at present. The State, by its inherent nature, is really incapable of reform. True socialism, peace and plenty for all, can be achieved only by people themselves, not by representatives ready and able to turn guns on all who do not comply, with State directives. As to how we proceed against the pathological State structure, perhaps the best word is to outgrow rather than overthrow. This process entails, among other things, a tremendous thrust of education and communication among all peoples. The intelligence of womankind has at last been brought to bear on such oppressive male inventions as the church and the legal family; it must now be brought to re-evaluate the ultimate stronghold of male domination, the State.

Breaking the Waves: Continuities and Discontinuities Between Second and Third Wave Feminism

Published on 2002, by Jenn Frederick, ©Jenn Frederick.

Third Wave feminism emerged in the 1980s, the 1990s, or has not yet emerged, depending on whom you talk to. While some may not see the legitimacy of the Third Wave, the very fact that there are so many young women claiming that identity makes it a very real phenomenon. However, this has led to a fair amount of hostility between feminists of different ages and ideological stances, and this hostility has led to bitter divisions between feminists.

Equality for some women?

Published on 1992, by Aileen O'Carroll, ©Workers Solidarity Movement.

LAST SEPTEMBER the Bank of Ireland was, according to the 'Irish Times', 'basking in an unadulterated glow of approval' from the Employment Equality Agency, the Council of Status for Women and the Joint Oireachteas Committee on Womens Rights among others. What the Bank of Ireland had so progressively managed to do was to provide one creche which will cater for up to 45 children.

Feminism As Anarchism

Published on 1974, by Lynne Farrow, ©Aurora.

Feminism practices what Anarchism preaches. One might go as far as to claim feminists are the only existing protest groups that can honestly be called practising Anarchists; first because women apply themselves to specific projects like abortion clinics and day-care centres; second, because as essentially apolitical women for the most part refuse to engage in the political combat terms of the right or the left, reformism or revolution, respectively.

But women's concern for specific projects and their a-political activities constitute too great a threat to both the right and the left, and feminist history demonstrates how women have been lured away from their interests, co-opted on a legislative level by the established parties and co-opted on a theoretical level by the Left, This co-option has often kept us from asking exactly what is the Feminist situation? What's the best strategy for change?

The first impulse toward female liberation came in the 1840's when liberals were in the midst of a stormy abolition campaign. A number of eloquent Quaker women actively made speeches to liberate the slaveholding system of the South and soon realised that the basic rights they argued for Blacks were also denied women. Lucy Stone and Lucretia Mott, two of the braver women abolitionists, would occasionally tack some feminism ideas on the end of the abolition speeches, annoying to an unusual degree their fellow liberals. But the women were no threat so long as they knew their place and remembered which cause was the more serious.

Riot Grrrl

Published on 2002-11-14, by Sarah Maitland, ©Sarah Maitland.

Riot Grrrl was a young feminist movement mainly within the punk rock and alternative music scenes beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Olympia, Washington, and Washington, D.C. Due to the media scrutiny in the mid-1990s and other factors within the actual movement, Riot Grrrl stalled. It still exists today, but on a much smaller scale, and chapters that are started now, if they ever even get off the ground, usually disband within a year, if not less.

Scratching the Surface: Zines in Libraries

Published on 2004-05-01, by Annie Knight, ©Annie Knight.

The way zines are treated in different library settings were examined and compared. Briefly, the more general characteristics of zines and a perspective on historical phenomena relating to and leading up to the creation of modern day zines were outlined. To follow, zines were demonstrated to be valid research sources as they include voices independent of mainstream and commercial media and literature. The more practical ways in which zines are and have been implemented into library collections was explored by analyzing other libraries’ collection development policies and strategies in regard to their treatment of zines, touching also on more specific issues such as the cataloging of zines, the acquisition of zines, patron access to zines, the physical location of zines within libraries, the online access of a library’s zine collection, and how zine collections help libraries reach out to more factions of their communities.