Three stages of feminist development and their representative figures
The development of feminist theory has gone through three stages. The first stage emphasized the equality between men and women, demanding equal rights in work, economy and law, with the famous Simone De Beauvoir as the representative. The second stage emphasizes the differences between men and women, with Tory Moi in Britain, Elena Sisu in France, Ruth Eligery and Adrijana Ritchie in the United States as the representatives. They believe that taking gender equality as the goal of women's liberation is actually repeating and strengthening an established language, rather than creating a new language. In practice, the actual differences between men and women are ignored, which makes women subordinate to a structure defined by men, dominated and centered on men. This reminds people of China. Although China itself has no feminist movement in the western sense and no corresponding feminist theory, it does not rule out that the development of women since the founding of the People's Republic of China has formed some similarities and isomorphism with the West in practice. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), under the guidance of President Mao Zedong, "Times are different, men and women are the same", the majority of women in China have made progress on the road of socialist construction. The right to work, economic rights and legal rights, which were acquired by western women after launching the feminist movement, were given in China without women's own struggle, which is the luck of women in China. But this is only one aspect. On the other hand, the direct consequence of "what gay men can do, lesbians can certainly do" is that the iron girl follows the young men to shoot mountains and move stones regardless of physical differences and physical weakness. They also jumped into the cold rice fields to work during the holidays and eventually got sick of women. Fang in the revolutionary modern Beijing opera "Harbour" is only a single party branch secretary, which makes him the thinnest and palest figure in the model opera. At that time, the value standard of women in China was men, and their ideal women were actually just masculine women. Cultural reflection since the new period has awakened women's gender consciousness. People realize that taking men as the standard is only the alienation of women, and women should find themselves, so women embark on the process of finding their own characteristics. However, the extremes of things must be reversed and overcorrected. This trend developed in the 1990s, and it merged with the commercial culture that rapidly developed into a rolling wave due to social transformation, which made women go to the other extreme: emphasizing women's natural physiology and gender characteristics. The most prominent manifestation of this tendency is the female image created by mass media. Open newspapers and magazines, turn on the TV screen, not to mention surfing the Internet. As a cloud, beautiful women are everywhere, cosmetics and medicines … advertisements package women from hair, eyes, nose, lips and nails to skin, chest and buttocks … and so on. Of course, in addition to spirit and soul (what time is it, but also say two words, which is really old-fashioned). The "female mystery" criticized by betty friedan, an American writer, was unexpectedly staged in China decades later. Although it is impossible for women in China to be "happy suburban housewives" and replace them with the model of "wife and mother+consumption" (Wang Zhengyu), their spiritual essence is the same, that is, to highlight women's natural physiological gender and move towards a biological determinism. Whether it is to eliminate the differences between men and women or to highlight the characteristics of women, it is actually a distortion and alienation of women. The former makes women want to be like men under the slogan of equality, while the latter makes women the object of men's desire-the so-called food has become the most attractive commodity in the consumption era. Both of them make women lose their subjective consciousness. So how do women develop? After the first stage of emphasizing equality and the second stage of paying attention to differences, the western feminist theory has developed into the post-modern feminist stage. The basic strategy of postmodernism is to constantly deconstruct the central power structure from the edge and explain and define the world and history based on the binary opposition of metaphysics. Men/women belong to the object of deconstruction. Julia Chris Tiva of France is a representative of postmodern feminism. Chris Tiva believes that there is no "woman" or "female" that can be clearly defined: "Feminist practice can only be negative and will not compromise with what already exists. We can say' this is not' and' that is not'. " There are two problems here. First, will this strategy of dispelling everything even dispel the original intention of the feminist movement of "women's liberation"? Or is the slogan of "women's liberation" as problematic as "gender equality"? Second, can this western-style model be applied to China and China's national conditions? Some critics have pointed out that the deconstruction of western feminism is fruitful and the construction is relatively insufficient. So, where are we China women going today? In fact, Li Xiaojiang answered this question when he talked about "equality between men and women" in the book Questions and Answers about Women: "Today's women should be equal to men but still different from men." This is consistent with the ideal spiritual essence of harmony between men and women mentioned by many people. Although it is not easy to realize this ideal, the course of "women's liberation" is bound to be full of hardships and bumps, but it is not a distant and beautiful unattainable myth. As long as everyone works together, women's efforts are especially needed in the initial stage.