FEMINIST WRITING: A Brief Description

What is feminist writing? While it would be difficult to find a straight forward definition of feminist writing, one could describe feminist writing as a practice of writing that is undertaken by looking at the world through a feminist lens and by employing a gender-conscious alternative manner of writing. However, we will not dwell on definitions here. Instead, this article provides a description and some examples of feminist writing.

Representations of Feminist Writings

To start, let’s look at some of the work written by feminist authors and the themes or main ideas put forward and how it is written. To simplify things, some forms of feminist writings are listed below.

1. Women-specific experience: Many themes can be discussed in this category, but many among them are about violence against women, in the form of sexual violence, physical violence, and state violence. Aside from depicting women’s subjective experience of violence, many works also present arguments of how violence against women sustains male dominance. The classic Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Susan Brownmiller, 1975) is an example. Many also discuss specific laws or policies for women or those that affect women. Andrea Dworkin's and Catharine Mackinnon's work, Pornography and Civil Rights (1988) is one example. Self-help books for survivors or those on women’s health are also examples. For the latter, Our Bodies, Ourselves which was first published in 1971 is considered as a feminist classic.  
2. Historical analysis: This form of writing looks at women's situation throughout different historical periods or at a given time and cultural setting, paying attention to the political environment, economic institutions, as well as class, race, and gender relations. One example is Marilyn French's historical examination of patriarchy in Beyond Power (1985), which uses a variety of disciplines to investigate transformations and power struggles which led to patriarchy being the dominant mode, and another is her four-volume work, From Eve to Dawn: a History of Women (2002, 2003, 2008). One other example is historian, Joan Wallach Scott's critical evaluation of history in Gender and the Politics of History (1988).
3. Biographical: This includes the writings about the life and times of noted individual women who lived a life struggling against traditional gender norms or those who contributed to the advancement of women's status. Subjects of interest include women who made innovations in certain fields but were never given recognition. Life stories of women living under repressive governments or in conflict regions are also commonly written as biographies. Feminists are known to use a particular feminist method of biographical writing that acknowledges the subjective experience of the author. This is apparent in the work of Liz Stanley, The Auto/Biographical I (1992).
4. Feminist criticism: Here, literary texts are read from a feminist perspective revealing gendered relations, social construct, and the social, political, and economic structure at a given context. Feminist literary criticism was particularly made famous by post-structuralist French Feminists like Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. "Reading" writings by women are also undertaken to uncover women’s marginalized voices or to represent women of a particular cultural period as well as to explore a female tradition of writing. In her book Laugh of the Medusa (1976), Cixous goes further to say that there is a feminine style of writing.
5. Feminist philosophical analysis: It analyzes traditional ideas of rationality, knowledge, ethics, human nature, and moral arguments which are seen as being male biased and part of phallogocentrism (privileging masculinity in constructing meaning and understanding social relations). Philosopher and mother of contemporary feminism, Simone de Beauvoir, pioneered work in this field. Putting the sex/gender distinction into philosophical perspective, that one is not born a woman, but become one, was Beauvoir’s important legacy for feminist theory (The Second Sex, 1949).
6. Feminist reinterpretation of religion and spirituality: In feminist theological writings, some feminist theologians see that the Bible contains equality and peace, but suffers from androcentric (male-centered) interpretations, while others see it as justifying women's oppression and perpetuating patriarchy (www.theologynetwork.org/ theology-of-everything/an-overview-of-feminist-theology.htm). As a response to the latter, feminist theologians, such as Mary Daly, develops a theology to become the basis for the theory of women's spirituality and feminist practice. Other writings that deconstruct traditional religious interpretations are found in the works of feminist Muslims such as Nawal El Saadawi, Riffat Hasan, Fatima Mernissi, and Irshad Manji.
7. Analysis of social, economic, political and cultural institutions: This analysis examines women's role and status in society’s institutions and observes structures that support and perpetuate discrimination and oppression. Such studies can be found in the work of second wave feminists, including socialist anthropologist, Evelyn Reed and sociologist, Kate Millett.
8. Feminist theory: This includes writings which develops grand theories and theses on women's oppression and its root causes and sometimes showcase debates on women's oppression between schools of feminism. Examples include the book Women and Revolution (Lydia Sargent and Heidi I. Hartmann, 1981), Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970), Sheila Rowbotham's Beyond Fragments (1979), and Shulamith Firestone's Dialectic of Sex (1970).
   
9. Feminist fiction: Feminist work of fiction usually tells a story of a female protagonist's struggle in challenging values and norms that confine women to certain roles and are sometimes believed to be based on the personal experiences of the author. Classic works include Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room (1977). A notable futuristic and utopian fiction is found in the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Herland (1915).
10. Feminist studies uncovering marginalized voices within the movement: These works uncover white supremacy, class bias, and heterosexism in the feminist movement as well as its lack of awareness of issues concerning women with disability. These works include writings of black feminists, such as Patricia Hills Collins; third world feminists, such as Gayatri Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty; and feminist disability scholars, such as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (http://disabilitystudies.syr.edu).

The Purpose of Feminist Writing

While the general goal of feminism is to gain women’s equality and end all forms of oppression, there are several purposes for writing a feminist piece or for incorporating a feminist perspective into one’s work.

1. To empower readers, especially female readers, such as by raising their awareness or breaking the silence about a certain gender issue and by providing options for remedy or advocacy.
2. To change an existing policy or law which has undesirable implications for women and recommend options to be adopted.
3. To present a social critique contributing to the aim of deconstructing existing value systems, particularly those which regulate gender.
4. To expose women's experience and to make women's voices visible, however, recognizing that there is diversity among women.
5. To provide or fill gaps on data on women because facts and truth are seen to be partial, to distort and not capture women’s reality; thus impairing planned actions designed to increase equality or for community development.
6. To explore existing styles of writings by women and/or employ one.

Characteristics of Feminist Writing

Based on the above description we can come to a conclusion on some of the essential characteristics of feminist writing. Feminist writings:

1. question how reality is constructed;
2. legitimize facts which are derived by subjective methods of truth collecting;
3. are critical of androcentrism in knowledge production;
4. challenge existing values and norms;
5. reflect on women's and men's experiences when constructing the truth;
6. view gender as socially constructed and being used to legitimize women’s subordination;
7. recognize the heterogeneity of women in regard to class, race, ethnic, sexual orientation, and ability;
8. openly acknowledge the political nature of feminist writing;
9. advocate for social change; and
10. employ unconventional styles of writing.

Ending this article that turned out to be full of lists, I would just like to add that feminist writing is a form of conscious resistance which shapes human history and our weapon to transform the future.