Beginnings
In the 1960s, the second wave of feminism began and one major goal was to raise society’s consciousness of the struggles of women. The goals of feminists were largely carried out in university classrooms. Specifically, in the composition classroom, some claimed that the way writing was taught largely favored male writers. Female writers, struggling to strive, felt as if they were not intellectuals (Howe). The task at hand then was to learn how to teach composition to women. Some claimed that women implicitly write differently than men, and that men tended to write in the dominant, most oft taught style.
Mary P. Hiatt argues that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” are applied to styles of writing–that of men and women, respectively–but, instead of describing the style, what is actually described is the male views on both men and women. Her examples include “strong,” “rational,” and “logical” for men, and “emotional,” “hysterical,” and “silly” for women. Thus, the aim of feminism in composition studies was to create a classroom in which women perceived themselves intellectually and in which their voices were relevant in what some feminists perceive to be an androcentric world.
Read more about this topic: Feminist Theory In Composition Studies
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)