Reverse Gender Polarity
Reverse gender polarity is the form of difference feminism that asserts that women, per se, are superior to men. It developed as the opposite of traditional gender polarity that asserts that men, per se, are superior to women. Traditional polarity was espoused beginning with Aristotle.
Reverse gender polarity, however, began in the medieval era with the exaltation of feminine virtue by authors like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Lucrezia Marinelli. It became prominent again in second-wave feminism with women like psychologist Carol Gilligan.
Read more about this topic: Difference Feminism
Famous quotes containing the words reverse, gender and/or polarity:
“During the late war [the American Revolution] I had an infallible rule for deciding what [Great Britain] would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)