{"author":"Sheila Jeffreys","author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys","total_quotes":14,"quotes":[{"text":"This condition in which women live is created out of, and defended by, a system of ideas represented by the world's religions, by psychoanalysis, by pornography, by sexology, by science and medicine and the social sciences.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["gender","oppression","pornography","radical-feminism","religion"],"id":20852,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["feminism","masculinity","oppression","power","radical-feminism"],"id":40792,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic to girls and very harmful to their mental health. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that there seem to be some girls baling out and seeking to upgrade their status.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["eating-disorder","gender","radical-feminism","self-harm","self-mutilation","transgender"],"id":48840,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"Fundamental to a radical and lesbian feminist politics is the understanding that 'the personal is political'. This phrase has two interrelated meanings. It means that the political power structures of the 'public' world are reflected in the private world. Thus, for women in particular, the 'private' world of heterosexuality is not a realm of personal security, a haven from a heartless world, but an intimate realm in which their work is extracted and their bodies, sexuality and emotions are constrained and exploited for the benefits of individual men and the male supremacist political system. The very concept of 'privacy' as Catharine MacKinnon so cogently expresses it, 'has shielded the place of battery, marital rape, and women's exploited labor'. But the phrase has a complementary meaning, which is that the 'public' world of male power, the world of corporations, militaries and parliaments is founded upon this private subordination. The edifice of masculine power relations, from aggressive nuclear posturing to take-over bids, is constructed on the basis of its distinctiveness from the 'feminine' sphere and based upon the world of women which nurtures and services that male power. Transformation of the public world of masculine aggression, therefore, requires transformation of the relations that take place in 'private'. Public equality cannot derive from private slavery.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["feminism","gender","oppression","radical-feminism","subordination"],"id":61677,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"Transgenderism depends for its very existence on the idea that there is an ‘essence’ of gender, a psychology and pattern of behaviour, which is suited to persons with particular bodies and identities.This is the opposite of the feminist view, which is that the idea of gender is the foundation of the political system of male domination. ‘Gender’, in traditional patriarchal thinking, ascribes skirts, high heels and a love of unpaid domestic labour to those with female biology, and comfortable clothing, enterprise and initiative to those with male biology. In the practice of transgenderism, traditional gender is seen to lose its sense of direction and end up in the minds and bodies of persons with inappropriate body parts that need to be corrected. But without ‘gender’, transgenderism could not exist. From a critical, feminist point of view, when transgender rights are inscribed into law and adopted by institutions, they instantiate ideas that are harmful to women’s equality and give authority to outdated notions of essential differences between the sexes. Transgenderism is indeed transgressive, but of women’s rights rather than an oppressive social system.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["feminism","gender"],"id":112862,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"Radical feminist theorists do not seek to make gender a bit more flexible, but to eliminate it. They are gender abolitionists, and understand gender to provide the framework and rationale for male dominance. In the radical feminist approach, masculinity is the behaviour of the male ruling class and femininity is the behaviour of the subordinate class of women. Thus gender can have no place in the egalitarian future that feminism aims to create.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["equality","gender","radical-feminism","women"],"id":213830,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["femininity","gender","gender-roles","masculinity","radical-feminism","women"],"id":249096,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"However, as Bordo herself notes, the problem with the adoption of postmodern ideas in general is that they have led some writers to disregard the materiality of power relations.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["beauty","postmodern","postmodernism"],"id":260891,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"...Women's bodies are 'inferiorised, stigmatized . . . Within an overarching patriarchal ideology.For example, biologically and physiologically, women's bodies are seen as both disgusting in their natural state and inferior to men's'' (2001, p. 141).","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["beauty","body","disgust","disgusting","stigma"],"id":272520,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"},{"text":"The bonding of women that is woman-loving, or Gyn/affection, is very different from male bonding. Male bonding has been the glue of male dominance. It has been based upon recognition of the difference men see between themselves and women, and is a form of the behaviour, masculinity, that creates and maintains male power… Male comradeship/bonding depends upon energy drained from women.","author":"Sheila Jeffreys","tags":["feminism","gender","masculinity","oppression","radical-feminism"],"id":316268,"author_id":"Sheila+Jeffreys"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":14,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}