Monthly Archives: March 2017

In 1983, Alison Jaggar published Feminist Politics and Human Nature where she defined four theories related to feminism: liberal feminism, Marxism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism. Her analysis was not completely new; the varieties of feminism had begun to differentiate as early as the 1960s. Jaggar's contribution was clarifying, extending and solidifying the various definitions, which are still often used today.

Liberal feminism's primary goal is gender equality in the public sphere -- equal access to education, equal pay, ending job sex segregation, better working conditions -- won primarily through legal changes. Private sphere issues are of concern mainly as they influence or impede equality in the public sphere. Gaining access to and being paid and promoted equally in traditionally male-dominated occupations is an important goal. What do women want? Liberal feminism answers: mostly, what men want: to get an education, to make a decent living, to provide for one's family.

What she described as liberal feminism is theory and work that focuses more on issues like equality in the workplace, in education, in political rights. Where liberal feminism looks at issues in the private sphere, it tends to be in terms of equality: how does that private life impede or enhance public equality. Thus, liberal feminists also tend to support marriage as an equal partnership, and more male involvement in child care.

Abortion and other reproductive rights have to do with control of one's life choices and autonomy. Ending domestic violence and sexual harassment have to do with removing obstacles to women achieving on an equal level with men.

Liberal feminism tends to rely on the state and political rights to gain equality -- to see the state as the protector of individual rights.

Liberal feminism, for example, supports affirmative action legislation requiring employers and educational institutions to make special attempts to include women in the pool of applicants, on the assumption that past and current discrimination may simply overlook many qualified women applicants.

The Equal Rights Amendment was a key goal for many years of liberal feminists, from the original women's suffrage proponents who moved to advocating a federal equality amendment, to many of the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s in organizations including the National Organization for Women. The text of the Equal Rights Amendment, as passed by Congress and sent to the states in the 1970s, is classical liberal feminism:

While not denying that there may be biologically-based differences between men and women, liberal feminism cannot see that these are adequate justification for inequality, such as the wage gap between men and women.

Critics of liberal feminism point to a lack of critique of basic gender relationships, a focus on state action which links women's interests to those of the powerful, a lack of class or race analysis, and a lack of analysis of ways in which women are different from men.

Critics often accuse liberal feminism of judging women and their success by male standards.

In more recent years, liberal feminism has sometimes been conflated with a kind of libertarian feminism, sometimes called equity feminism or individual feminism. Individual feminism often opposes legislative or state action, preferring to emphasize developing the skills and abilities of women to compete better in the world as it is. This feminism opposes laws that give either men or women advantages and privileges.

A few key resources:

Link:

Liberal Feminism - What Are Its Characteristics?

New York Times

How Liberal Colleges Breed Conservative Firebrands New York Times Being conservative in liberal institutions, especially on college campuses, has long shaped the intellectual identity of young conservatives who later rise to prominence. Judge Neil Gorsuch, whose confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court begin ...

Excerpt from:

How Liberal Colleges Breed Conservative Firebrands - New York Times

Hollywood has been accused of letting its old McCarthyism shame creep back into the 21st century: driving conservatives into hiding and professional exile, like it once blacklisted communists.

Granted, that analogy goes too far for some. But for others, not far enough.

"You gotta be real careful around here," actor Tim Allen said on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," after stuttering through a confession that he attended President Donald Trump's inauguration. "You get beat up if you don't believe what everybody else believes. This is like '30s Germany."

Allen, who plays a vocal conservative on his sitcom, "Last Man Standing," has been one of few in Hollywood to speak openly about his right-leaning views.

Another 2,500 of his colleagues feel so stigmatized that they have joined a clandestine support group, according to a Los Angeles Times article profiling retribution and secrecy forced upon "the vast majority of conservatives who work in entertainment."

"In 30 years of show business, I've never seen it like this," an unnamed actor told the outlet. "If you are even lukewarm to Republicans, you are excommunicated from the church of tolerance."

Since it premiered several years ago, Allen's show has been hailed as a rare counterexample to Hollywood politics.

"Finally, we have a hero who hunts, fishes, watches sports, and occasionally drives a tank," the Imaginative Conservative wrote.

But Allen himself has complained of network censorship when his protagonist, an alpha-male family man whom the actor has called "an educated Archie Bunker," tries to go after liberal icons.

Allen "admits he has gotten more than one warning to stop calling President (Barack) Obama a 'communist,'" the TV Page reported in 2015.

Allen didn't sound so dire during the Republican primaries, when the Hollywood Reporter asked whether he vented his own political views through his character.

"It's getting more and more comfortable," he said. "These guys know me so well that they're writing stuff that is exactly what I would've said. It's a marvelous thing when you have liberal people writing for (a show like this)."

And he sounded lukewarm about the prospect of a Trump presidency.

"Forget the stupid s-- he says about immigrants," Allen said. "That's just ignorant. But he might be able to do the stuff that really needs fixing."

After the election, on Fox News, Allen compared Trump to an amateur performer with "very bad comic timing."

"I don't want to defend the guy," he said.

But he backed Trump's supporters in his industry.

"What I find odd in Hollywood is they didn't like Trump because he was a bully," Allen told Megyn Kelly. "But if you had any kind of inkling that you were for Trump, you got bullied for doing that. It gets a little hypocritical."

Kelly agreed. "I know many of them who are part of the Hollywood conservative underground," she said.

The industry has become more toxic to conservatives since Trump took office, the Los Angeles Times reported. Workers complained of political shouting matches on set and the professional shunning of those known to hold right-leaning views - although some had enough celebrity to speak out safely.

It's unclear whether Allen feels like one of them.

When Kimmel asked him about his trip to the inauguration ceremony, the actor's eye bugged out and he stammered:

"I was invited, we did a VIP thing for the vets, and went to a veterans ball, so I went to go see Democrats and Republicans," he said.

"Yeah. I went to the inauguration."

Kimmel laughed and said, "I'm not attacking you."

Read the original post:

Tim Allen says being a non-liberal in Hollywood is like being in ''30s Germany' - Atlanta Journal Constitution