Feminism

For decades, there has been an ongoing struggle to establish women’s rights. Thus, the movement of feminism emerged which aimed at having equal political, economic and social rights, as well as equal opportunities for women.   The main feminist target had been to “establish the centrality of gender as a fundamental category of historical analysis and understanding” (Butler 1994).   This main goal of feminism can be related to the goals of the lesbian/gay studies that have been working towards establishing the individuality of people.   Judith Butler expanded on this very idea in her article Against Proper Objects published in the Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies in 1994. She explains that feminism’s effort to make a gender an object of study is similar to “the claims for the objects of research proper to lesbian and gay studies” (Butler 1994).
Butler begins with introducing the analogy ž“Lesbian/gay studies does for sex and sexuality approximately what women’s studies does for gender” (1).   This analogy implies that the “proper object” of analysis and understanding for feminism has been gender, whereas the “proper object” for lesbian/gay studies has been sex and sexuality. However, Butler explains that the definition of sex pertaining to feminism and lesbian/gay studies differs. Sex in the feminist context refers to the male and female, which are defined by their biological anatomy.   In comparison, lesbian/gay studies define sex as sexual identity, which extends to sensation, acts and sexual practice. To further clarify her argument, Butler explains that the ‘kind of sex one is’ pertains to feminism and the ‘kind of sex one does’ pertains to lesbian/gay studies. She emphasizes that sexual differences are not a proper object of inquiry as people often concentrate mainly on the sexual differences between male and female in the anatomical sense, however they overlook the fact that sexual differences also consists of sexual identity and sexual practice.  
It was... [continues]

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