The F Word

My blog for today is on a lecture from a company called “The Modern Scholar”.  I do not know if their site is up at the moment because I wanted to paste a link, but the site was down.  It is a shame because this course called Feminism and the Future of Women is very informative.

The course is presented by Prof Estelle B Freedman and it runs up through to 14 lectures.  I have only listened to lectures on Feminism and Race in U.S. History, Lecture 10 - Reproduction and Sexuality, and Lecture 11 - Violence.  

Feminism and Race in U.S History was quite an eye opener as the audio lecture focused on how the American civil war not only gave African Americans the chance to get their voices heard, but how southern women began to push for rights as well.  We get a chance to hear how the two movements came together to support each other at one moment, and eventually split apart in order to get more rights for their own cause. The two movements continually formed and reformed again during the civil rights movement of the sixties.  I hope to go more into this fascinating lecture in more detail in another blog.

Lecture 10, which looks at Reproduction and Sexuality is quite a deep topic and this lecture will be my main focus for this blog today.  The other lecture on violence is an eye opener and has represented a sad history for women who faced persecution, restriction of movement; restriction of rights and one of the most famous feminist accusations on how gender stereotypes have been forced upon women throughout the ages.  Although later on during the seventies, there have been some feminist philosophers who complained that woman happily accepted these roles.  Feminist of the modern age now feel women must define their own roles.

Well back to this lecture on reproduction and sexuality.  It seems we are posed with a question as to why birth rates have declined in industrial nations. How does this link to the past and to the idea sexuality when basically birth rates were high?  

My first thought on this would be that freedom of choice has empowered women to pursue their goals, although there is a price to pay.  Still technology can always lend a helping hand to those who wish to have children at a much later age, but this can lead to ethical issues.

This lecture will try to answer the question of declining birth rates and look into how feminists protected women’s sexuality time and time again.  We end up with a conclusion that sexuality and reproduction has become separated due to many factors, but surprisingly sexuality has become more commercialised and now many women play up to the roles of sexuality to men, but is this a bad thing? Considering how the lecture mentions how contraception’s were supressed and banned throughout the US around the 19^th century. 

Ida B Wells

The lecture mentions a few figure heads helping to empower women in an age of stereotypes and restrictions on.  We have Ida B. Wells helping to remove the stereotypes enforced on black women to state that they were sexually impure in accordance to white women and thus were open to rape and prostitution.  Such stereotypes are perhaps still circulating today.  

 With feminists fighting another struggle to protect women’s sexuality in the modern age, what are their chances due to the high sexual nature of advertising and mass communication?