Feminist Theory

Feminist thought roams through many topics, philosophies, and cultures, but perhaps one connection between these is paramount: feminist thought has concerned itself with questions of power. "Feminist" insinuates a confrontation of patriarchal power and asks how differently ordered institutions, material and natural resource allocation, symbolic meanings, and cultural practices might lead to less disparity and suffering. Central to this politics is the idea that the division of life into hierarchical categories of social difference has greatly benefited those occupying the proffered universal subject-position. Feminism has extended far from an examination of "women" to consider the dictates of compulsory heterosexuality, sexual difference, racism and ethnocentrism, norms of embodiment and ability, capitalism, colonialism, and masculinist orderings of space. While feminism is no longer merely concerned with "women" or gender alone, it is too often reduced to a gendered approach in contemporary cultural geography.