Studying gender does not require or imply feminist consciousness

Evidence

In her essay, “Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness,” Sandra Bartky makes the point that “to be a feminist, one has first to become one.” She reminds us that just thinking about gender or lamenting the female condition “need not be an expression of feminist consciousness.” Indeed, many black women academics chose to focus attention on gender even as they very deliberately disavowed engagement with feminist thinking. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 225

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bartky’s claim that feminist consciousness must be actively assumed, not inferred from studying gender, is a portable analytical tool.
• XREF: connects to: Black women produced gender scholarship while declining to claim the feminist label — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 228; Gender scholarship that omits feminist framing undermines the very movement it depends on — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 230; Gender content is not exhausted by the powerlessness that shaped it. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 258 (+1 more)