Feminism: Exploring Emotional Labour, Intersectionality, and Sexual Difference

Running head: FEMINISM
FEMINISM
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1FEMINISM
Answer to question 1:
Emotional labour refers to the process of dealing with one’s emotions or suppressing it in
order let it not come in way of one’s profession. First used in 1983 by American sociologist Arlie
Horchschild, emotional labour also means, “having to induce or suppress feeling in order to
sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (Bbc.co.uk,
2019). Emotional labour in nonprofessional’s language means the need to keep a smile on one’s
face especially those working in service industry not considering how one is feeling because the
job demands it.
In the contemporary era, the term has given a fuel to the feminists in raising their voices
against the harassment they face in both online and offline spaces. In the online spaces especially
in the modern era, women are constantly stalked and harassed. The social media platforms have
become the ground for harassing women. In the offline spaces such as the workplace as well,
either their colleagues or their seniors constantly harass women. Emotional labour helps describe
the feeling that women go through during such situations, as they have to maintain a fake smile
to their customers in the workplace and pretend to look happy in the online platform. Therefore,
it is evident that the emotional labour concept has helped the feminists explain the challenges
they face in both online and offline spaces.
Answer to question 2:
Kimberle Crenshaw was the first women to use the word ‘intersectionality’ to describe
the lived experiences of black women and the inability to form a single framework of feminist
movement (Kings 2017). Crenshaw’s intersectionality developed a discourse that focused on the
failure of both the feminist and anti-racist movement to represent and capture the specificity of

2FEMINISM
the discrimination that black women face. intersectionality involves other factors apart from
gender that include race, disability, sexual orientation, and national identity (Lépinard 2014).
Feminist movements or activism has been focused for long on a one-dimensional fight for
feminist rights neglecting the other factors.
To achieve a level of intersectionality in feminist activism in the contemporary era, it is
important to give equal stress to other factors apart from gender identity. The feminists working
in the field must realize that women are not the only ones facing oppression; people face
oppression based on these elements as well. In addition, the women belonging to any minority
race, have different sexual orientation, are disabled and having a different national identity are
further oppressed within their class as well. The contemporary feminist could achieve the best of
intersectionality if they highlight the oppression faced by women belonging to the minority class.
Answer to question 3:
Irigaray states that a certain philosophical issue that deems to be examined thoroughly
defines each age of women and that issue is sexual difference. Her idea of the sexual difference
has been influenced by the ideas of the imaginary body presented by Jacques Lacan. She
understands sexual difference as the difference that has been assigned by language and not
biological or other difference. Irigaray employs the imaginary body concept of Lacan to explain
the bias of western culture against women. She argues that cultures too project the “dominant
imaginary schemes which then affect the way that culture understand and defines itself (Irigaray
1993). According to her, the male body is the imaginary body that dominates on the cultural
level in Western culture. She states that in the western culture, “there has only been sexual
hierarchy, not genuine sexual difference (Irigaray 1993). The main problem with Irigaray’s