[5] However, the term had surfaced as early as 1971, when Frances Chapman, in a letter printed in Off Our Backs, condemned the literary magazine Aphra as having "served the cause of cultural feminism".
[1] Linda Alcoff makes the point that "the cultural feminist reappraisal construes woman's passivity as her peacefulness, her sentimentality as her proclivity to nurture, her subjectiveness as her advanced self-awareness".
Jane Addams and Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued that in governing the state, cooperation, caring, and nonviolence in the settlement of conflicts society seem to be what was needed from women's virtues.
She stressed the emotional, intuitive side of knowledge and expressed an organic worldview that is quite different from the mechanistic view of Enlightenment rationalists.
[1] Adrienne Rich asserts that female biology has “radical” potential that has been suppressed by its reduction by men.
[13] Cultural feminists declare the relationship between mother and daughter, and therefore all women, has been destroyed by patriarchy and must be repaired.
Notably, this chapter of Douglas' book is titled Male biology as a problem and the analysis of Griffin's ideas is subtitled Woman the Natural.
[17] Another concern is the belief that cultural feminists "have not challenged the defining of woman but only the definition given by men" and therefore perpetuate gender essentialism[18]: 11 When cultural feminists claim issues like patriarchy and rape are inherent products of male biology and behavior, the opportunity to critique and challenge the structures behind these issues disappears.
[3] Furthermore, essentialist definitions of “woman” reinforce the oppressive requirement for women to live up to “an innate ‘womanhood’ they will be judged by.”[3] Alice Echols stated that cultural feminists believe in order to combat “male lasciviousness,” women should demand respect by repressing their sexualities and proposing a conservative "female standard of sexuality".