Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. ~Andrea Dworkin

     I was happy to see that when answering the question of "What is Feminine Criticism?" the essay split up the idea by country. I believe that depending on ones country of origin, a feminist critic may have differing ideas about the construction of the feminine gender. Unfortunately, the essay really only described feminine criticism from the point of view of women who were white and from the Western world. There are many other feminists who did a lot in their own countries to further the position of women in their societies, like Urvashi Butalia in India or Uchida Jenko in Japan. Overall, I wish the essay would have focused on a more diverse selection of feminist critics, but it was a good read nonetheless.

     Too see what it was that French, American, and British feminists focused on was interesting. I could see why they chose to focus on the things that they did, as they are of cultural importance for them; for example, in France, words have genders. I know that as someone who has studied French for the past 6 years (with all female teachers), it has been pointed out more than once, and with a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) discontent that words that are feminine gendered are most times abstract, or things that are small or frivolous. For instance, the word "mouse", une souris, is feminine, whereas the word "skeleton", un squelette is masculine. The gender of the word "organ" (orgue) is masculine when speaking of the body part; when speaking of the instrument, it becomes feminine. For French feminist critics to focus their attention on language and deem it "phallocentric" did not really surprise me when I thought about it.

     American and British feminist critics were kind of similar, but they focused on different areas. They worried more about what had been written rather than how, but the Americans tended to focus on rediscovering women's history through the writing of women and the emotion behind it, while the British turned their attention to the more political side of things. When I think about it, it makes sense that American critics were more focused on the emotional side of things, because I believe that as a whole, American society is much ore emotionally demonstrative than our British counterparts. As someone who grew up with a British mother, I know that not every British person is an emotionless bot with a stiff upper lip, but they are very focused on moving forward rather than spending time on displays of emotional incontinence. For them to focus of the political sad of things and criticize American feminists was something I kind of expected.

   I really enjoyed this reading. It was interesting to see each cultures influence on what feminist critics thought to be the most important idea when dissecting the construction of the feminine gender.