ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns radical and reactionary approaches to gender-role and gender-preference, and takes up some of the questions posed by the 'political correctness' debate. Feminism, as it has come to be known, has been around longer than many people think, but it only received reasonably clear articulation in the last century, and only came to be considered a movement from the 1960s. Initially, it sought equality after what is sometimes termed 'exclusion' by patriarchal attitudes and values. Radical feminism in its many guises takes in 'multiple oppressions such as racism, a ble-bodiedism, heterosexism and classism' and relates these to what it regards as the 'most fundamental of oppressions', the patriarchal social system. The study of personality traits, such as dependency, sociability, vulnerability, being impressionable, temperamental, and the like, can barely disentangle them in respect of any particular individual, let alone the sexes; and this despite the penchant so many psychologists have for personality testing.
