Third Wave Of Feminism - Feminism Theorizing About Queer Human Beings

A movement among academics to reclaim the term "queer" from its negative connotation. 

• Queer theory advocates for a radical kind of liberation. 

• Making all those things that are identifications of what is ‘normal' queer - odd, surprising, and unpredictable – is what ‘queering norms' implies. 

• Everything is susceptible to performativity and parody, from self-identity to conduct to physicality. 

• Gender and sexuality are also separated by queer theorists. 

• Both are socially created in different ways and may change over time. 

• All sex and gender dichotomies, as well as all identity ascriptions, are challenged by queer theory. 

• The differences between woman and man, as well as female and male, heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual, and gay and lesbian, are all irrelevant. 

Because queer theory opposes identity politics, it differs from lesbian ethics and other gay rights groups. 

• Traditionally, gay rights activists make claims on behalf of a specific community. 

• However, ‘queering the norm' undermines the group since there is no coherent or consistently held identity to make claims about. 

• Take the topic of transgender marriage, for example. 

• In most cultural settings, the dominant political environment is slightly equivocal regarding same-sex marriage. 

However, transgender marriage presents an intriguing issue. 

• Transsexuals do not identify with their biological sex at birth, and they often undergo medical procedures to change their biological sex. 

• Some people just change a portion of their biological sex. 

How can we decide who counts as a man and a woman if marriage is defined as a union between one man and one woman? 

• If genders and bodies are not rigidly determined by biological sex, or if a transsexual chooses to only undergo a partial sex change (for example, a woman who wants to be a man but only has top surgery, keeping her female genitals), determining who is that one man and one woman for the purposes of legal marriage becomes more difficult. 

• According to queer theory, sex may take many diverse forms and take place in many different places, not simply heterosexual genital intercourse in a private house. 

• As a result, sex is neither a simple biological binary difference between male and female, nor is it reducible to heterosexual or gay relations. 

Intersexual, transsexual, transgendered, old, young, multiracial, wealthy, poor, and each of these in various ways at different times, the sexed body may be intersexual, transsexual, transgendered, old, young, multiracial, rich, poor, and each of these in different ways at different times. 

• No type of sexuality is favored as "good sex," while others are condemned as "perverse," and people who aren't usually thought of as having sex do have sex (elderly, sick, mentally ill, etc.). 

• Importantly, queer theorists do not confine themselves to the study of sex, gender, and sexuality. 

• All sorts of conventions and identities, including race, class, and country, are destabilized by queer theory. 

• The dominant culture's norms and identity are visible. According to queer theory, liberation implies a complete rejection of such identities. 

Unsurprisingly, some feminists see queer theory as a natural extension of feminism, while others believe it is anti-feminist. 

• When a transgendered individual, for example, embraces conventional notions of femininity, at least some feminists see this as problematic rather than liberating. 

• Allowing males to be more like women, to put it bluntly, does not seem to be a benefit. 

• Some feminists believe that feminism's (and vice versa's) use of queer theory is androcentric. As the experiencing subject, it largely depends on the self-determining person. 

However, at least one major school of feminism rejects the idea of the self-determining person in favor of relational self-conceptions. 

Nonetheless, both queer theory and feminism agree that strict gender standards — and most other kinds of norms – hurt the most vulnerable.

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Second Wave Of Feminism - Lesbian Morals

Other feminist ethical theories are more openly political than care ethics. They may be founded on existentialism, political solidarity, postmodernism, or radical feminist principles, for example. 

I only address one other clearly feminist ethics here - ‘lesbian ethics,' although existentialist feminist ethics was represented with ecofeminist ethics, and global feminist political solidarity. 

There are many articulations of lesbian ethics, such as an ethics of caring and an ecological feminist ethics. 

• However, all lesbian ethics theorists believe that lesbian views expose the advantages of heterosexuality because of their place on society's periphery. 
• Lesbian ethics is recognized for emphasizing the necessity for a feminist ethic to investigate the institution of heterosexuality, as well as the family, marriage, work environment, and other ethical topics. 

Lesbianism is generally thought of as a sexual preference or orientation that is unique to a person. 

• This perspective is enriched by the inclusion of lesbian ethics. 
• As a result, lesbianism may be seen as a political commitment, i.e., a commitment to prioritize women above males, which may or may not include same-sex sexual interactions. 
• Although contentious when originally suggested in the mid-1970s, this is an essential element of the women's movement. 
• Some extreme lesbian feminists believed that to be a feminist, one had to be a lesbian. 

Other feminists, on the other hand, believed that include lesbians and lesbianism in the feminist movement would harm it. 

(They were probably also worried about perpetuating the notion that all feminists are lesbians.) 

Challenges to the assumption of heterosexuality are seen as beneficial to feminism since they concurrently question gender norms, according to the more moderate lesbian ethics viewpoint. 

• Women do not have to draw their identity from males, according to lesbianism as a political commitment. 
• Women may seek emotional assistance from other women and be free of the stigma of being men's "second sex." 
• Lesbians suffered invisibility as a group for a long time since lesbianism was rejected by Western society. 
• The ideas of feminist lesbian ethics are born out of this experience of invisibility or marginalization. 
• Traditional ethics, as well as parts of the feminist movement, may be criticized by both sexual and political lesbians for failing to examine the oppressive systems of what Adrienne Rich refers to as "compulsory heterosexuality." 

According to Rich, women have been taught to be heterosexual in a patriarchal society (a quick look at the toys, books, and movies targeting young girls supports this claim). 

• Rich claims that patriarchal indoctrination conceals our real identities and promotes female rivalry. 
• To break free of these repressive prescriptions and learn to be woman-identified, women must establish women's spaces or cultivate a women-centered society. 
• Only in this setting, a woman-identified context, can one really be free to make moral choices, according to lesbian ethics. 
• Heterosexuality is not in and of itself a problem; but, heterosexuality's dominance and assumption, as well as the societal advantages that come with it, are. 

According to lesbian ethics, patriarchal training solely toward heterosexuality prevents women from being free. 

Certainly, awareness-raising organizations and sisterhood initiatives may be seen as attempts to establish women's spaces. 

To ease the transition away from patriarchal indoctrination, several lesbian ethicists created retreat centers and communes. 

The criticism of feminist ideas that unintentionally presuppose a heterosexual paradigm is one of lesbian ethics' many significant contributions. 

The intersections and linkages between sexism and heterosexism as forms of oppression are shown by lesbian ethics and third wave queer theory. 

These kind of movements inside and outside of feminism will continue to be extremely essential in driving us to a better awareness of oppression in general as society grows more comfortable with social change and a nonexclusionary vision of social participation.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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