Biography as Method: Lesbian Feminism, Disability Activism, and Anti-Psychiatry in the Work of Seamoon House

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (108) ◽  
pp. 399-416
Author(s):  
Rachel Corbman
Keyword(s):  
Lesbian Feminism

Bechdel’s Men and Masculinity

2019 ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Judith Kegan Gardiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Environments ◽  
Lesbian Feminism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Men And Masculinity ◽  
Future Visions

In both Fun Home and Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel draws avatars of herself as a butch lesbian who has an admiration for “masculine beauty,” while preferring the company of women and the politics of Leftist lesbian feminism. In the “Cartoonist’s Introduction” to Dykes to Watch Out For, she describes how as a child she had “a curious fixation with the iconography of masculinity” and drew only male figures until years later she asked herself, “What if I stopped drawing guys and started drawing dykes?” (Essential Dykes viii, xiii). But she did continue drawing men as well, centering Fun Home on the depiction of her father’s dilemmas as a closeted gay man trying to fit American ideals of manhood. So Bechdel gives us sad past and potentially optimistic future visions of masculinity and sexuality. This chapter analyzes Bechdel’s men both externally and internally, first with attention to the ways in which she draws the repressed Bruce Bechdel, Alison’s father in Fun Home, and outgoing Stuart, progressive partner to one of Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, then to considering what she shows us of their thoughts and emotions in the social environments they inhabit.

9. Feminism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Price
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Liberal Feminism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Lesbian Feminism ◽  
Feminist Ideology ◽  
Historical Origins

This chapter examines the evolution of feminism as an ideology using the analogy of ‘waves’, a term that indicates high points of debate and activism followed by more fallow periods. It first traces the historical origins of feminism from the first to the third wave and a possible fourth. It then considers whether feminism is an ideology in its own right and goes on to identify variants of feminism such as liberal feminism, separatism and political lesbianism/lesbian feminism, transfeminism, revolutionary feminism, eco-feminism, and black feminism. The chapter also explores the links between feminism and other ideological perspectives as well as the connection between the national and global dimensions of feminism and the ways in which feminist ideology has been expressed in political movements and shaped the policies of governments and international organizations. Finally, it tackles the question of whether ‘post-feminism’ has rendered feminism obsolete.

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