ABSTRACT
Contrary to the opinions of many students new to the study of feminist literary criticism, many feminists like men, think that women should be able to stay at home and raise children if they want to do so, and wear bras. Broadly dened, feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women. However, just as the practitioners of all critical theories do, feminist critics hold many different opinions on all of the issues their discipline examines. In fact, some feminists call their eld feminisms in order to underscore the multiplicity of points of view of its adherents and offer ways of thinking that oppose the traditional tendency to believe there is a single best point of view. Yet many of us who are new to the study of feminist theory, both male and female, have decided ahead of time that we are not feminists because we don’t share whatever feminist point of view we have found the most objectionable. In other words, before we even come to the theory classroom, many of us have reduced feminism to whatever we consider its most objectionable element and, on that basis, have rejected it. This attitude reveals, I think, the oversimplied, negative view of feminism that still persists in American culture today. For it is from the culture at large-the home, the workplace, the media, and so on-that we have gathered the antifeminist bias we sometimes bring into the classroom.
