Canada in the 1960s and early 1970s was a country that was experiencing a crisis of identity based upon its desire to leave behind traditions and institutions that linked its identity to another country either Great Britain or the United States, and to create a new identity based on its own distinct characteristics. A Canadian literary modernism emerged from this climate of change.
In the early 1970s, second wave feminists began to focus more extensively than previously on the differences between women and men. Many critics describe this move as an intensity of focus rather than a complete change of direction, because a focus on the differences between women and men was a crucial element of the radical feminism of the late 1960s. In many respects, the ‘difference’ or ‘gynocentric’ feminism that began to emerge in the early 1970s can be seen as the logical extension of the growing recognition by many feminists of the importance of gender as an organizing principle of individual identity and social organization. Taking that recognition and applying it
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She defines humanist feminism as the belief that women’s oppression is rooted in the inhibition and distortion of woman’s human potential by men. Gynocentric feminism, on the other hand, defines women’s oppression as the devaluation and repression of woman’s experience by a masculinity culture that exalts violence and individualism. It argues for the superiority of values embodied in the traditional female experience and rejects masculine values. Thus gynocentric feminism, she conclude, is a more radical critique of male dominated society than humanist feminism. While humanist feminism constitutes a revolt against femininity, gynocentric feminism finds women’s bodies and traditional feminine activities as sources of value. It seeks to transform the epistemology that created