A Study Of Josephine Butler’s Feminism

Josephine Butler(1828-1906)was a Victorian feminist and social reformer in England.Her feminist thought came into being in the social transformation period of England in the latter half of the 19 th century when liberalism was prevailing and calls for reform were rising.Butler’s feminism originates from her deep-rooted Christian belief.Its core is her belief in the sacredness of individual power based on Evangelism,her respect for the doctrines of the Bible,her regard of prayer as a positive force for God to communicate with individuals,and her practice of feminist political principles based on religious belief.Butler redefined “female” by integrating Christian belief with feminist and liberal political views.She boldly advocated feminism’s views on equality,marriage,employment and education,and encouraged individuals to directly communicate with God by praying and quoting religious words,turning the Christian discourse in the 19 th century into a kind of “feminist discourse”,providing theoretical support for the feminist movement,legalizing the feminist theory and spreading it widely to the society.Under the guidance of Liberal Feminism,Butler and his allies actively participated in the feminist movement at that time.On the one hand,they advocated that society should give prostitutes the same human rights and respect,and resisted the double standards of gender politics in the Victorian era;on the other hand,they tried to carry out a field investigation,expose the reality and play the role of public opinion,forcing the British government to restrict the trafficking of women from the legal level.In this movement,the feminists represented by Butler always set out from women’s rights and dignity,through universal education,expanding employment,and other means to improve the bottom women’s cognitive ability of their value,and issued a call to the country and society to establish a more inclusive and victim-centered dual protection mechanism for women.Butler’s Liberal Feminism not only reshapes people’s social awareness of gender,class and sexual behavior in the late Victorian Era,but also provides a new paradigm for the Western feminist theory system.In the 21 st century,the problem of feminism still exists.To promote the formation and development of the cognitive community of feminism,to enable women to realize self-empowerment,and to promote the practical path of feminism to empower women are not only the era issues that need to be solved in the process of modernization,but also the test of a country’s civilization and governance ability.Besides,while promoting the healthy development of feminism,we should also pay attention to balancing the cultural differences between tradition and modernity,between the East and the West,and to distinguish the essence from the dross to avoid bias.