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Feminism

Subtypes Anarcha-feminism Black feminism Christian Feminism Cultural feminism Cyborg feminism Ecofeminism Fat feminism Individualist feminism Islamic feminism Jewish feminism Lesbian feminism Liberal feminism Marxist feminism Postmodern feminism Psychoanalytic feminism Radical feminism Religious feminism Separatist feminism Socialist feminism Womanism Topics Feminist movement Pro-feminism Anti-feminism Sex-positive feminism Theory / film theory Feminist sexology Women's rights Feminist economics History Women's history Feminist history History of feminism Suffrage Women's suffrage Suffragette Timeline New Zealand United Kingdom United States Waves of Feminism First-wave feminism Second-wave feminism Third-wave feminism By country Indonesia Iran Latin America Nicaragua Norway United Kingdom United States Lists Feminists Literature Topics

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Difference feminism is a branch of feminism that stresses that men and women are essentially different beings, instead of past feminisms of equality that stress an absolute sameness between men and women. Difference feminisms may have arisen due to issues with legislation - equality feminisms may have assured that women have gotten suffrage for one, as well as other rights, but for more important and influential changes (for example, medical related support), the assertion that women are different was necessary to make. Difference feminisms can stress either the assertion of a fundamental biological difference, or an emotional difference, or both.

Feminisms of difference were popular in the second wave feminism. Difference feminism was important in responding to problems resulting to women not being given proper provision for differing needs that they may have; for example biological reasons such as for childbirth, and others.

Difference feminists subscribe to a 'pro-woman' position, which holds that sex differences do have political and social importance. This is based upon the essentialist belief that women and men are different at a psycho-biological level.

Difference feminists subscribe to the belief of fundamental equality between men and woman, and acknowledge the different qualities between the genders due to biological, cultural, and hormonal differences.

Traditional gender polarity asserts that men, per se, are superior to women. This point of view was espoused beginning with Aristotle through more modern proponents like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Reverse gender polarity asserts that women, per se, are superior to men. This type of difference feminism began in the medieval era with the exaltation of feminine virtue by authors like Heinrich Cornellius Agrippa and Lucrezia Marinelli. It was also prominent in second-wave feminism with women like psychologist Carol Gilligan.

Fractional gender complementarity argues that men and women complement one another as separate parts that together make up a composite whole. It developed from a neoplatonic unisex theory that one sexless soul was incarnated into two different bodies: male and female. Development of this theory began in the late medieval/early modern period through the Enlightenment with scholars like Rene Descartes. The Cartesian dualistic view of sexuality spread particularly among Protestants, with women providing some of the mind's operations (intuition, sensations) and men others (like reason). The two, when added together, formed a single mind.

Integral gender complementarity argues that men and women are each integral, whole beings unto themselves whose result when put together is greater than the sum of their parts. The metaphysical foundation of this theory was developed by Dietrich von Hildebrand and Edith Stein, and later by Personalists like Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain. More recently, the theory was espoused by Pope John Paul II as a foundation for a New feminism.

• Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
• cultural feminism
• Ethics of care
• New feminism