I have real reservations about trying to "define feminism." As we discussed in class, few feminists even agree on definitions. However, college is all about learning to craft your own definitions, however provisional they may be, and I realize that many students come to this class without having thought much about definitions of feminism before. So, I'm including links to a few sites that begin to create preliminary definitions of feminism. Like everything else in this class, however, you should take all of these with a grain of salt. Read even these with a critical eye and see how you can complicate these definitions.

Quotes About Feminism

What I like so much about this page is that you get an overview of some of the very different ways in which feminism has been defined by different people. Some of the quotes are pretty straightforward political platform type statments, others are irreverant bits of humor tht reveal the complexities of how feminism is seen, others are activist calls to action. The variety of these alone is enough to get you thinking.

Feminisms by C. T. Moore et. al

While these aren't quite as clear as the chart I presented in class, the list here includes a few types of feminism I didn't cover. You also get several different people's opinions.

Green Party of Michigan

The Green Party is a fairly leftist political party most famous for running Ralph Nadar for President in the 2000 and 1996 elections. Their Michigan chapter put together a brief overview of several kinds of feminism and a brief history of feminism in the United States. People who've studied feminism and its history in more depth may well find this page reductionistic, but I also know that since this isn't really taught in high schools, many students come to women's studies classes without a textbook level of baseline knowledge, and this seems a perfectly adequate primer of the basics.

Seneca Falls Declaration

We talked in class about the First Wave feminists and their convention at Seneca Falls. Their statement of ideals of platform is known as the Seneca Falls Declaration, and I thought some of you might be interested in looking at the document in more detail.

Women's Rights National Historical Park

Unfortunately, I can't get a direct link to this park to work, so you'll be taken from here to the National Park Service main page where you can search for the appropriate park. The site of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 has been turned into a national park, under the jurisdiction of the NPS. It has monuments and everything. Since Seneca Falls is a long way away from Southern California, I thought some of you might like to take a look around via the website.