Critical femininities: a ‘new’ approach to gender theory

ABSTRACT Critical femininities examines femininity through a nuanced, multidimensional framework, moving beyond femininity as a patriarchal tool, to instead consider the historical, ideological, and intersectional underpinnings of femininity, particularly those that contribute to femmephobia. While Critical Femininities is often deemed an emergent area of scholarship, this framing is both paradoxical and, conceivably, inaccurate. Rather than being a nascent field, interdisciplinary scholars have contributed to Critical Femininities for over 60 years, whether or not they labeled their research as such. Arguably, Critical Femininities is a field whose emergence can be traced back to the second wave of feminism or even earlier. However, while Dahl (2012) notes that the question of “what is femininity” is as old as de Beauvoir’s (1949) Second Sex, there is a continued lack of scholarly endeavours not only in terms of how the question of femininity has been addressed, but also in terms of how this question is integrated within research. In this article we theorize why Critical Femininities has remained in a continuous state of emerging without recognition for its contributions as a field. We argue that the field’s stalled emergence can be explained by the tendency to view femininity as unidimensional, anti–intellectual, and infantile. Moreover, we see this stalled emergence as a product of the masculine epistemological centre that informs the very fabrics of society. In response, we aim to facilitate the continued growth of the field, and to make visible the taken–for–granted presence of masculinity that remains pervasive within gender theory and epistemological frameworks.