Humanist Feminism and Dehumanization

"A basic tenet of feminism is that women as a group face systematic and non-accidental forms of social injustice. Hence, feminism has typically been understood as the political movement to end the sexist and patriarchal oppression of women. One possible way to understand "woman" in this claim is to take it as a sex term: "woman" picks out human females and being a human female depends on some biological and anatomical features."

"In the past, and still, feminists have conventionally understood the term 'woman' in another way: not as a sex term, but as a gender term-a term whose meaning depends on some social and cultural factors and conditions. What those factors and conditions specifically are has generated much debate since the onset of second-wave feminism. Nevertheless, an idea emerged that feminism is politically and theoretically organized around the gender concept woman."

"The story goes (though simplifying significantly): since genders and gender roles depend on social factors and it is the social realm that feminism aims to alter, it became commonplace to treat woman as the concept around which feminist politics and theory is organized, and the term "woman" as picking out the group that makes up feminism's subject matter. This focus on social gender, rather than biological sex, should then facilitate meeting important explanatory and normative demands."

Feminism maintains that women as a group face systematic, non-accidental social injustice and seeks to end sexist, patriarchal oppression. The term "woman" can be read as a sex term referring to biological females or as a gender term defined by social and cultural factors. The sex/gender distinction shifted feminist focus to socially produced gender roles as sources of oppression, enabling social explanations of gendered injustice. Organizing feminism around the gender concept "woman" supports emancipatory aims by identifying social structures to change and by grounding normative claims and political action on behalf of women as a group.

Read at Apaonline