Are men oppressed as men? The evidence given in support of affirmative responses to this question usually consists in examples of harms, limitations, or requirements masculinity imposes on men: men are expected to pay on dates, men must be breadwinners for their families, men can be drafted for war, and so forth. This article explicates three hypotheses that account for the harms, limitations, and requirements masculinity imposes on men and, drawing on the work of Alison Jaggar, seeks to show that (...) these hypotheses collectively are explanatorily superior to the hypothesis the men are oppressed as men. (shrink)

I argue that men can be oppressed by virtue of being men; however, our definitions of men and masculinity must be redefined and reclaimed from the dominant white perspective. My claims are: (1) current arguments on the oppression of men simpliciter are misguided as they fail to encompass the experiences of all men; (2) any question regarding the oppression of men must reject the current static and universal definition of men; (3) the oppression of men is an (...) instantiation of structural oppression that allows for men to be both privileged and oppressed in different, forms, degrees, and dimensions; (4) the oppression of Latino men qua Latino men is an example of men being oppressed as men. Therefore, (5) we must redefine and reclaim the definition of “men” and “masculinity.” Last, (6) this redefinition cannot be done a priori but must use intersectionality as a regulative method to illuminate the oppression of men that remains obscured in other, one-dimensional approaches to the topic of the oppression of men. (shrink)

There can be little sense to claims that living men are responsible for the oppression of women in the past, or that men who have not oppressed women still bear responsibility for such oppression.

Re-reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) in the context of the international politics after the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and before the rise of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 leads to three discoveries in the history of European ideas. First, her reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France was advertised, discussed, and rumoured to be the work of a woman in London papers days earlier in November 1790 than previously (...) documented. Second, Wollstonecraft’s first known instances of public reception beyond Britain were in a major Jamaican newspaper from January to March 1791. Thirdly, and most notably, in February 1791, the Kingston Daily Advertiser published a lengthy excerpt from her Rights of Men that called for the abolition of slavery and the realization of justice for the poor and oppressed. Long before Hegel probably developed his master-slave dialectic in response to journalistic accounts of the independence of Haiti in 1804, there was Wollstonecraft’s actual reception in the international news in Jamaica, amid the spread of reports of the rise of slave unrest in the broader post-revolutionary Caribbean. (shrink)

Men do not want solely the obedience of women; they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more (...) than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.— John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women. (shrink)

Some labor historians and social historians of race are tempted to try to explain Chinese American racial oppression in the US purely by appeal to economic factors, especially the role that Chinese American men played in the US labor market. In this essay, I argue that such reduction is not possible. I briefly describe the history of Chinese immigration to the US, focusing on key changes in US law governing immigration and citizenship as they affected the Chinese. I then (...) refute two economic reductionist views of Chinese American racial oppression. I conclude by suggesting a third, alternative understanding of this oppression that appeals to economic factors among others. (shrink)

BioShock Infinite follows the journey of Booker DeWitt, a reluctant detective from New York City who is transplanted via rowboat and lighthouse‐turned‐rocket to the city of Columbia. Booker is charged with the task of bringing back a girl in order to wipe away his debt. The girl, Elizabeth Comstock, has been locked in a tower since infancy by her father, Zachary Comstock, and is protected by a menacing Songbird. Although the game centers on Booker and his story, this chapter focuses (...) on Elizabeth, looking at her through a feminist lens. Freeing Elizabeth from her tower, one could argue, is in a way freeing her from oppression of men. If we take Elizabeth as her own person, rather than as a mere companion, does Elizabeth's freedom from tower mean real freedom for her? Does Booker treat Elizabeth any differently than Comstock does? And, what really is Elizabeth's role in Booker's drowning?. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 403 Gyanendra Pandey Men in the Home: Everyday Practices of Gender in Twentieth-Century India This article responds to a call by feminist historians of South Asia to attend to the “complex experience of family” as conditioned by age, gender, and class, and the ordinary “daily practices of gender” in the domestic arena.1 My essay focuses on the comparatively (...) neglected aspect of men’s domesticity—their performance of life in the home—as revealed in the writings and practices of prominent nationalist thinkers and activists who lived and worked in an era of militant anticolonial agitation in India. The domestic sphere, with its assigned gender roles and routines, was at the heart of major debates between the colonizers and the colonized about the meaning of culture and enlightenment. “Among rude people, the women are generally degraded; among civilized people they are exalted,” James Mill declared, in his classic statement on domestic manners.2 From Mill, writing in the second decade of the nineteenth century, to Katherine Mayo in the third decade of the twentieth, colonialist 1. Indrani Chatterjee, introduction to Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, ed. Indrani Chatterjee (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 4; Mrinalini Sinha, “A Global Perspective on Gender: What’s South Asia Got to Do with It?” in South Asian Feminisms, ed. Ania Loomba and Ritty A. Lukose (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 359. 2. James Mill, The History of British India, 4th ed. (1817), edited by H. H. Wilson, vol. 1 (London: James Madden, 1848), 309. 404 Gyanendra Pandey writers dredged up the condition of women, familial relations, and domestic life in India to demonstrate the necessity of colonialist-initiated improvement and reform.3 Colonial rule thus provided the impetus for “a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of Indian ‘tradition’ along lines more consonant with [a] ‘modern’ economy and society.”4 Faced with insistent colonial critique, nationalist reformers and thinkers set out to controvert suppositions about the fallen state of Indian women and the oppressiveness of Indian homes. They also further sought to ameliorate conditions where these had deviated from their version of a glorious past. The Hindi/Urdu writer Premchand sums up the nationalist rebuttal in a 1931 essay entitled “Nari-jati ke adhikar” (“The Rights of Women”): “In fact, the Indian woman has always been considered the goddess of the home, and she has a higher status than men in the society.” For a variety of reasons, Premchand suggests, women fell from this preeminent position over time and men began to appropriate the established rights of women. “But,” he concludes, “the [new] wave of nationalism and enlightenment that has arrived now will obliterate all these [gender] distinctions, and our mothers [sic] will be re-installed in the exalted place that is their right.”5 It was in this way that early nationalist thinkers and spokespersons produced an argument about the existence of a sacred and relatively uncolonized “inner” space of Indian society, as contrasted with a more quickly changing, compromised, and negotiated “outer” space. In what is now a familiar precept in South Asian gender history, women were cast as the (predominant) custodians of “tradition” in private and in public life; men were (predominantly) the instruments of national, social, and cultural transformation in the wider, public domain. With this framing came propositions about the need for rapid progress in the “outer” realms of science, industry, and voluntary association as well as the later goals of welfare and development, secularism, and socialism. The push 3. Ibid.; Katherine Mayo, Mother India (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927). 4. Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 88. Mani makes a powerful critique of the so-called “Indian tradition” and of claimed colonial efforts to improve Indian society. 5. Premchand, “Nari-jati ke adhikar,” in Vividh Prasang, vol. 3, ed. Amrit Rai (Allahabad, India: Hans Prakashan, 1980) 249. Gyanendra Pandey 405 for such advancements developed alongside a more guarded approach to change in the “inner” world and its inherited store of spiritual resources— symbolized above all... (shrink)

Masculinity and manhood ideologies remain a serious theological concern in the context of South Africa and the continent of Africa. The masculinity ideology perceives femaleness as a symbol to be lower than maleness and thereby uses this as a strategy to dominate and oppress women. While the oppression and domination of women is experienced in many parts of African society, such experiences also exist within the church walls. The androcentric culture creates an unbalanced theology which then brings the entire (...) discourse of theologisation into question. As this article grapples with these issues, it employs Mercy Oduyoye’s African women theology, particularly the model of ‘partnership between women and men’ in ministry, to reflect and respond to the issues raised. It further argues that as long as African women are subjected to oppression and domination by ideologies that are adiaphora, Oduyoye’s liberative hermeneutics remain relevant and necessary for doing inclusive theology in Africa. Contribution: While the article grapples with African women theologies within a theological terrain, the implications of the outcome are multidisciplinary as they aim to respond to challenges of oppression, masculinity and manhood ideologies that women face in their daily life. (shrink)

Linda LeMoncheck introduces a new way of thinking and talking about women's sexual pleasures, preferences, and desires. Using the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, she discusses methods for mediating the tensions among apparently irreconcilable feminist perspectives on women's sexuality and shows how a feminist epistemology and ethic can advance the dialogue in women's sexuality across a broad political spectrum. She argues that in order to capture the diversity and complexity of women's sexual experience, women's sexuality must be examined from two (...) equally compelling perspectives: that of women's sexual oppression under conditions of individual and institutional male dominance; and that of women's sexual liberation, both in terms of each woman's pursuit of sexual agency and self-definition, and in terms of women's sexual liberation as a class. Loose Women, Lecherous Men sheds crucial new light on such much-debated topics as promiscuity, adultery, sexual deviance, prostitution, pornography, sexual harassment, and sexual violence against women. Her book supports a dialogue that encourages both women and men to take up a feminist perspective in exploring the meaning and value of sexuality in their lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Genealogies of OppressionA Response to Ladelle McWhorter’s Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A GenealogyChloë TaylorLadelle McWhorter introducesRacism and Sexual Oppression inAnglo-America with an account of her experiences during the days between the attack on and the death of Matthew Shepard. On sabbatical near Pennsylvania State University in October 1998, McWhorter describes following these events as they were covered by the media and discussed on a Penn (...) State University LGBT listserv. A day and a half after Shepard’s death, McWhorter attended a candlelight vigil organized by Penn State students. It was raining, only thirty people were present, their voices could scarcely be heard over the sounds of traffic, and the event risked being more disheartening than consoling. An attempt was made to salvage the vigil through song, and someone suggested singing “We Shall Overcome,” but none of the students knew the words. McWhorter realized that she was the only person present who could lead the group in a song that might bring a sense of hope and closure to the otherwise depressing gathering. However, as she describes, she was wary of calling “upon the memory and power of African American movements for justice and freedom in order to further the rights and interests, or at least comfort the fearful souls of nonheterosexual people” (10). She writes,It was important for Matthew Shepard to remain Matthew Shepard and Emmett Till to remain Emmett Till, two separate individuals whose living and dying are different events in human history. I believed it was important [End Page 207] to remember the differences between black and queer struggles, subcultures, and experiences of oppression.(9)McWhorter thus did not sing, and thegathering disintegrated without closure. Each one of us wandered away, carrying with us, not a sense that despite the violence and injustice all around us life can go on and love and respect do still exist—which is, I suppose, what the candlelight shining in the darkness at such vigils is intended to instil in us—but rather with that sense of futility and hopelessness that drizzle and senseless death inspire.(5)Despite her decision to not sing, McWhorter goes on to discuss not only the danger of Sameness that prompted her decision—the danger of homogenizing or identifying oppressions—but also the “twin danger” of Difference. As McWhorter argues, “If we maintain radical distinctions between political events, we may fail to see important overarching patterns and as a result miss opportunities to form and consolidate alliances that might counter the networks of power that oppress so many of us” (10–11).Although there are risks involved in emphasizing either Sameness or Difference, McWhorter notes that she had always been more worried by the dangers of Sameness. She attributes this intuition to her attraction to Foucault. The genealogical method is concerned with revealing discontinuities between experiences in diverse historical periods, undermining histories that impose homogeneity on the past. Pointing out historical disparities kindles hope for a different future and is thus an emancipatory task. McWhorter notes that Foucault is a “splitter” and not a “lumper” like Hegel or Plato. Despite her Foucauldian aversion to lumping, McWhorter writes that in the wake of that candlelight vigil and the more general political climate of the late 1990s in which allegiances between civil rights movements were being disavowed, she came to worry about that other danger, the danger of too much splitting. She wonders “whether, despite all the differences in experience and effect, it might not be the case that somehow these things are joined together, part of the same matrix of power, employing the same means, serving the same ends, shaping the same lives” (11). She notes, “It is that other danger and that other set of possibilities that have moved me to write this book, despite the risks such an enquiry inevitably runs” (11).The dangers of Difference are practical but also factual since, McWhorter argues, there are real similarities between the deaths of Shepard and Till that risk being overlooked. Most significant of these is that both young men were murdered for their sexual deviance: one for his homosexuality, the other for his insistence that... (shrink)

This paper develops a notion of manipulative gaslighting, which is designed to capture something not captured by epistemic gaslighting, namely the intent to undermine women by denying their testimony about harms done to them by men. Manipulative gaslighting, I propose, consists in getting someone to doubt her testimony by challenging its credibility using two tactics: “sidestepping” and “displacing”. I explain how manipulative gaslighting is distinct from reasonable disagreement, with which it is sometimes confused. I also argue for three further claims: (...) that manipulative gaslighting is a method of enacting misogyny, that it is often a collective phenomenon, and, as collective, qualifies as a mode of psychological oppression. (shrink)

Recent studies on colonial discourse have demonstrated that the speeches of freedom activists in colonial Africa served as sites of resistance. One key text type that has, however, been neglected in the critical literature on the discourse of emancipation is the national anthem of colonised states. To fill this gap, the present study examines the discursive enactment of resistance in the anthems of former British colonies in Africa, focusing on the transitivity framework in systemic functional linguistics. Semantic and structural parallelisms (...) across the anthems are identified as evidence of a collective memory, a cultural trauma reconfigured and reconstituted to reclaim a positive identity and project a desirable postcolonial future. They also foreground the motif of freedom and legitimise the African as the owner of the reclaimed territory. These procedures articulate an anti-imperialist and anti-establishment stance that provides hope, strength and encouragement to an oppressed group. This paper extends the scholarship on the discursive enactment of resistance by focusing attention on a context underexplored in the literature. It also illustrates the (re)construction of relevant ideologies in national anthems to stimulate desirable, progressive attitudes among citizenry in African states. The paper is furthermore significant to decolonial research and highlights the role of language in political decolonisation processes. (shrink)

This paper explores evolving treatments for hysteria in the eighteenth century by examining a selection of works by both physician-writers and educated literary women. The treatments I identify—which range from aggressive bloodlettings, diets, and beatings, to exercise, fresh air, and writing cures—reveal a unique culture of therapy in which female sufferers and doctors exert an influence on one another's notions of what constitutes appropriate management of women's mental illness. A scrutiny of this exchange of ideas suggests that female patients were (...) not simply oppressed and silenced by male practitioners; rather, their collective voice, intellect, and expertise helped to form progressive treatments for eighteenth-century hysteria. (shrink)

Linda LeMoncheck introduces a new way of thinking and talking about women's sexual pleasures, preferences, and desires. Using the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, she discusses methods for mediating the tensions among apparently irreconcilable feminist perspectives on women's sexuality and shows how a feminist epistemology and ethic can advance the dialogue in women's sexuality across a broad political spectrum. She argues that in order to capture the diversity and complexity of women's sexual experience, women's sexuality must be examined from two (...) equally compelling perspectives: that of women's sexual oppression under conditions of individual and institutional male dominance; and that of women's sexual liberation, both in terms of each woman's pursuit of sexual agency and self-definition, and in terms of women's sexual liberation as a class. Loose Women, Lecherous Men sheds crucial new light on such much-debated topics as promiscuity, adultery, sexual deviance, prostitution, pornography, sexual harassment, and sexual violence against women. Her book supports a dialogue that encourages both women and men to take up a feminist perspective in exploring the meaning and value of sexuality in their lives. (shrink)

In Huckleberry Finn, a thirteen-year old white boy in antebellum Missouri escapes from his abusive father and befriends a runaway slave named Jim. On a familiar reading of the novel, both Huck and Jim are, in their own ways, morally impressive, transcending the unjust circumstances in which they find themselves in to treat each other as equals. Huck saves Jim’s life from two men looking for runaway slaves, and later Jim risks his chance at freedom to save Huck’s friend Tom. (...) I want to complicate the idea that Huck and Jim are morally commendable for what they do. More generally, I want to explore how oppression undermines the moral agency of the oppressed, and to some degree, the oppressor. In §1 I take a careful look at Jim’s choice, arguing that his enslavement compromises his moral agency. In §2 I show how Jim’s oppression also shapes the extent to which Huck can be praiseworthy for his action. In §3, I consider the consequences for thinking about the moral agency of the oppressed, and in §4 I explore the limitations of the concept of moral worth for theorizing in cases of oppression. (shrink)

In countries like the United States, White people benefit from appropriating Black hair culture, even while Black men and women experience race-based hair discrimination and oppression. One goal of this paper is to raise awareness of hair discrimination and oppression within the philosophical community. Another is to consider whether current theories of appropriation can account for the wrongness of this widespread phenomenon and, if so, how. We are particularly interested in the special case where one minority group appropriates (...) from another minority group—viz. the appropriation of Black hairstyles by Non-Black Persons of Colour. Our paper highlights the complexity of appropriation claims between competing minority groups—both of which have been oppressed, albeit differently, by White people— due to their multi-ethnic, multicultural and, therefore, intersectional, status. (shrink)

Does feminism give a much-needed voice to women in a patriarchal world? Or is the world not really patriarchal? Has feminism begun to level the playing field in a world in which women are more often paid less at work and abused at home? Or are women paid equally for the same work and not abused more at home? Does feminism support equality in education and in the military, or does it discriminate against men by ignoring such issues as male-only (...) draft registration and boys lagging behind in school? The only book of its kind, this volume offers a sharp, lively, and provocative debate on the impact of feminism on men. Warren Farrell--an international best-selling author and leader in both the early women's and current men's movements--praises feminism for opening options for women but criticizes it for demonizing men, distorting data, and undervaluing the family. In response, James P. Sterba--an acclaimed philosopher and ardent advocate of feminism--maintains that the feminist movement gives a long-neglected voice to women in a male-dominated world and that men are not an oppressed gender in today's America. Their wide-ranging debate covers personal issues, from love, sex, dating, and rape to domestic violence, divorce, and child custody. Farrell and Sterba also look through their contrasting lenses at systemic issues, from the school system to the criminal justice system; from the media to the military; and from health care to the workplace. A perfect book to get students thinking and debating, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? A Debate is ideal for courses in gender studies, sociology, psychology, economics, feminist philosophy, and contemporary moral issues. It is also compelling reading for anyone interested in the future of men and women. (shrink)

Written by leading scholars in feminist theory, Feminist Frameworks was one of the first anthologies in its field and, in the third edition, remains on the cutting edge. Comprehensive, the book covers current issues, problems, theory, and historical texts regarding the oppression of women. With the third edition comes a new section, "Why Theory?" in Part II, explaining the value of feminist theory. Also, the emerging areas of multicultural feminism and global feminism are covered in Part IV. Introductions to (...) each major theme expose students to the readings in a meaningful context. (shrink)

South African philosopher Mabogo Percy More has devoted more than four decades of his work to the problem of “being-black-in-an-antiblack-world.” This article interrogates the extent to which More homogenizes the contingencies of black2 existence and black embodiment, as I feel black existentialists do; or subsumes the phenomenology of the lived experience of blackness under a “black universalist” account that does not give an adequate account of the gendered embodied experiences with antiblack racism. By “contingency” I mean More’s concept of the (...) contingency of existence, where he claims that human existence is without necessity, nor is it justified; and so people resort to attempting to justify their existence and to find meaning by trying to assume the status of God or superiority in relation to others. More argues that contingency is the source of antiblack racism, as white people attempt to justify their existence by dehumanizing black people. I claim that contingency does not only play out in the interracial domain, but is also one of the sources of intraracial sexism within the black community. My interrogation aims to extend the reach of More’s work by giving an existential-phenomenological account of “being-black-and-female-in-an-antiblack-antifemale-world.” To this end, I focus on two contingencies—the contingencies of biological sex and the contingency of physical strength—that More discusses in his sole article on intraracial sexism, “Black Attitudes: A Call for Personhood” (1981). I argue that within the black intraracial domain, these two contingencies are ascribed meaning that creates a binary, which elevates black men to superior status, while reducing black women to the inferior. (shrink)

Why Women are Oppressed offers a much-needed radical feminist perspective on the "political conditions of sexual love." Recognizing that "sexual life always exists in definite socioeconomic contexts," Anna G. Jónasdóttir develops a theory that elucidates the question: Why does men's social and political power persist even in Western societies where women have socioeconomic equality? Throughout, Jónasdóttir gives empirical relevance to her theorizing. She cites situations in various spheres of society where men and women compete and where men come out as (...) "winners" for no obvious reason other than their malehood. Her account of women as loving caretakers "for" men, rather than desiring, interested subjects in reciprocally erotic relations stirs debate about women's needs and interests. Author note: Anna G. Jónasdóttir is Research Fellow in Gender Studies and Political Science at the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, University of Örebro, Sweden. (shrink)

The existence of current feminist thought in Africa is tainted by colonialism. Colonial and postcolonial anthropological thought and Eurocentric scholarship have misrepresented Africa as a society where social and gender roles were largely lopsided. Hence, current feminist thought (which are largely Western) on oppression of women, subjugation and suppression were imposed on the historicity of Africans. In this article, we argue that the misrepresentations of feminism of the indigenous societal order in Africa should be ignored. We bring to the (...) fore some ideas that advance the view that precolonial African society was not anchored on biology or ordered by gender, but was organised by age or seniority, and provided both men and women a sense of equality. Furthermore, we contend that embracing indigenous cultural values in the 21st century provides, on the one hand, a valuable tool for solutions to issues that women face currently, and, on the other hand, a viable means of detaching feminism from Eurocentric misrepresentations. (shrink)

This essay explores elements of the relationship between feminist activism and feminist theory focused on language. I examine the autobiographies of two seventeenth century Quaker women who were activists, and then use the writings of Luce Irigaray to interpret their work. For both the Quaker autobiographers and the French feminist philosopher, the concrete oppression of women is connected to the primacy of the word in western culture. Drawing on these sources, I argue that given the masculine economy of language, (...) resisting the dominance of men can be profoundly related to resisting the unrivalled primacy of the written word. The discursive disruption called for by feminist theory can be perhaps most profoundly accomplished with embodied action, while the activist concerns of feminism achieve greater potency when social action is also used to subvert discourse. (shrink)

Black males have been characterized as violent, misogynist, predatory rapists by gender theorists dating back to mid-nineteenth–century ethnologists to contemporary intersectional feminists. These caricatures of Black men and boys are not rooted in any actual studies or empirical findings, but the stereotypes found throughout various racist social scientific literatures that held Black males to be effeminate while nonetheless hyper-masculine and delinquent. This paper argues that contemporary gender theories not only deny the peculiar sexual oppression of racialized outgroup males under (...) patriarchy, but theories like intersectional invisibility actually perpetuates the idea that racialized males are disposable. To remedy the imperceptibility of sexual oppression and violence under the male category, the author gives an historical account of the development of racist (anti-Black) misandry throughout the centuries and proposes a theory of phallicism to describe the seemingly contradictory constructions of Black men as sexually predatory as in the case of the rapist, but nonetheless sexually vulnerable and raped under patriarchy. (shrink)

LTS I.1 We are adversaries, and yet the goal which we both pursue is the same. What is the common goal of economists and socialists? Is it not a society where the production of all the goods necessary to the maintenance and embellishment of life shall be as abundant as possible, and where the distribution of these same goods among those who have created them through their labour shall be as just as possible? May not our common ideal, apart from (...) all distinction of schools, be summarised in these two words: abundance and justice? LTS I.2 Such, none among you can deny, is our common goal. Only we approach this goal by different paths; you proceed along the obscure and hitherto unexplored defile of the organisation of labour, while we proceed along the broad and well known highway of liberty. Each of us is attemping to lead in train a hesitating and groping society that scans the horizon seeking, but in vain, the pillar of light that formerly guided the slaves of the Pharaohs to the Promised Land. LTS I.3 Why do you refuse to follow the path of liberty alongside us? Because, you say, this liberty which we so extol is fatal to the labourers; because it has thus far produced only the oppression of the weak by the strong; because it has give birth to disastrous crises in which millions of men have lost in some cases their fortunes and in other cases their lives; because liberty unbridled, unregulated, unlimited – is anarchy! LTS I.4 Is this not the reason that you reject liberty? is this not the reason that you demand the organisation of labour? LTS I.5 Well then, if we prove to you with sufficient clarity that all the evils which you.. (shrink)

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is (...) deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

Recent discussions in the various circles of feminism, postmodernism, and environmentalism have begun to make clear that ontology and epistemology without ethics is deadly - oppressive to women, oppressive to men, oppressive to the earth. In response to this crisis of reason in modernity, this collection of essays suggests the importance of knowing other-wise, non-rational ways of knowing which are wise to the "other" - a spiritual knowing of the heart with the passionate eye of love. Knowing Otherwise calls into (...) question the Western philosophical tradition of giving pride of place to reason in the acquisition of knowledge. Reasoning is only one of many ways in which we engage, i.e. know, the world. We know more than we think. We know by touch, by feel, by taste, by sight, by sounds, by smell, by symbols, by sex, by trust - by means of every modality of human experience. Philosophy becomes, in the fashion of Levinas, "the wisdom of love at the service of love. Tracing connections between epistemology, ethics, and spirituality - between "knowing" and the "other," between an other and the Other - all the essays serve as points of convergence between postmodern discussions and the Calvinian spirituality which is the home for writers in this collection. In particular, this collection explores the contributions of feminist thought and thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Rorty, Jacqes Derrida, and John D. Caputo to a spiritually and ethically sensitive knowing. (shrink)

The policy of genocide carried out by Armenian nationalists against Azerbaijanis has a history of more than 200 years. The goal of this insidious policy was the expulsion of Azerbaijani people from their historical lands and the creation of a mythical state of “Great Armenia” in these territories. On March 31, 1918, under the leadership of the Dashnaktsutyun party with the help of the Red Army of Soviet Russia, the Azerbaijani population of Baku was subjected to genocide. The corpses of (...) 57 Muslim women, whose ears and noses were cut off, and their bellies were torn open, were found in one of the neighborhoods in Baku. Armenians threw people alive into water wells, burning ovens, and oil wells, ripped apart pregnant women's bellies with bayonets, killed children with bayonets, nailed babies to walls, raped women, young girls, and old women. They hung men upside down by their legs, cut them in half with swords, crucified some of them on wooden beds, wrapped them in carpets and rugs and burned them alive, cut off people's hands and feet, and forced them to eat their own flesh under bayonets. Wild Armenian gangs burned Muslim clerics in the fire of bonfires lit from the Koran, the holy book of Islam. This was the true face of the Armenian nationalists who loudly shouted about “self-determination”, “autonomy” and “genocide”. The cruelty of Andranik, who made “necklaces” from children’s eyes, and other Armenians, knew no bounds. In March 1918, up to 20 thousand Azerbaijanians in Baku, and in 1917-1920 on the territory of Azerbaijan, more than 400 thousand Azerbaijani people were subjected to “genocide” by the Armenians. As the world ignores these atrocities, they are increasing. (shrink)

How does patriarchy affect one’s conception of personal freedom? Patriarchy raises this existential question, not just for women but for other identities such as marginalized men. Using Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts on patriarchy and existentialism, the author argues that an existential framework for patriarchy gives greater insight into the ways patriarchy is interconnected with other oppressions, affects marginalized men and others who do not identify as women, and alters people’s conception of choice as they engage the world.

This article engages feminist critiques of Christology with the views of Christian women living on council estates in the United Kingdom. It explores some of the ways in which the faith of such women connects with and/or contradicts feminist and womanist understandings of Christ. It is demonstrated that Jesus has been thought of in terms of ‘Nan-Nan’, or as a ‘Street Mother’, and that women living in areas of economic deprivation, and elsewhere, might lay claim to such terminology as a (...) way to further articulate identification with Christ, and in order to challenge traditionally androcentric Christology. A series of Christological questions are explored, for example, ‘Who is Jesus?’; ‘Do you think Jesus puts men in charge of women?’ and the anonymised answers are recorded at the beginning of each chapter. It is proposed that feminist Christology may enhance a sentiment already present among Christian women on estates, and, further to this, propel the pursuit of liberation from kyriarchal oppression. In this way, the Christian faith of women on estates is, and can become more and more so, an act of insubordination in the face of oppression of many kinds. Not least, it contributes a fresh and important Christological perspective. (shrink)

In 2008, Dutch anti-Islam Member of Parliament Geert Wilders produced a short video called Fitna to visualize his argument that Islam is a dangerous religion. Thousands of men and women across the globe uploaded their own videos to YouTube to criticize or support the film. In this article, we look at these alternative videos from a feminist perspective, contrasting the gender portrayal and narratives in Fitna with those in the alternative videos. We contend that Fitna expressed an extremist Orientalist discourse, (...) in which women are presented as the current and future victims of the oppression of Muslim men and Islam. In contrast, the YouTube videos give voice to women themselves who come from across the globe, are relatively young and often active Muslims. Second, they express different view points in generically new ways, criticizing and ridiculing Wilders or producing serious and committed explanations of their own understanding of Islam. Third, although relatively few women appeared in the videos, those that did speak for themselves, not only take on Wilders, but also claim their right to speak within Islam. We propose to understand these videos as acts of citizenships through which women constitute themselves as global citizens, in some cases by engaging in ‘deliberation’ as it is understood in feminist political theory, in other cases by taking a ‘voice’ that can be responded to. (shrink)

The economics of female sexuality in India are embodied in the caste system, which allocates women of certain caste groups to the domestic sphere and relegates Dalit/lower caste women to religious/sacred prostitution. The dominance of Shudra (often OBC) castes over religious spaces further marginalized Dalits and vulnerable lower-Shudra castes pertaining to the sexual exploitation of men and women within the institution of sacred prostitution. Shudra (OBC) castes’ hold over religious institutions in contemporary society facilitated the hegemony of the Brahminic ideology (...) of caste and patriarchy even in the lower-caste religious practices like worship of female deities such as Yellamma in south India. This article discusses the religious aspects of the oppression of Dalits (outcastes) shaped by lower-caste religiosity through a study of the conditions of Dalit men and women who are dedicated to the temples of village deities and are varyingly called Jogta, Jogtin, Jogini, Potaraju, Matangi/Matamma, Shivashakti, Basavi, and Murali in different regions of south India. The current study is based on the experiences of Joginis and Jogtas from Telangana and Marathwada region of the state of Maharashtra. This article explores the livelihood aspect of the Jogini system, in other words, the economic vulnerabilities shaped by caste hierarchies that result in the perpetuation of the practice of sacred prostitution; how the caste hierarchies refigure in the reorganization of masculinities through the institutions of Jogini and Jogta; and how the question of Dalit self-respect is construed by Joginis and Jogtas within the paradigm of religious institutions. (shrink)

This semester-long research project examined the use of social studies trade books to thematically teach about six individuals who served as change agents in the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Three of the individuals were African American men, Robert Smalls, Frederick Douglass, and John Roy Lynch, who took civic action to address racial discrimination faced by the Black community in the half century following the U.S. Civil War. The other three indivduals were women women, (...) Ida B. Wells, Clara Lemlich, and Jane Addams, who challenged social inequities and injustices within their communities. Over the course of the semester-long research project, sixth-grade U.S. history students read selected trade books, examined primary sources, completed graphic organizers, and crafted writing assessments about each of the six individuals. Students demonstrated complex historical thinking, integrated economic and civic thinking, and communicated thematic ideas of systemic oppression of minorities, women, and the poor. They struggled to make connections between examples of historic oppression and contemporary examples of societal oppression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 259 Heather Berg Left of #MeToo In her 1949 call to “End the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” Claudia Jones tells the story of Dora Jones, a Black domestic worker enslaved for forty years by her employer.1 Elizabeth Ingalls, a wealthy white woman, had traveled to Dora Jones’s Alabama home as a missionary teacher and (...) persuaded the seventeen-year-old Jones to travel to Boston as her housekeeper in 1907. Ingalls would keep Jones captive until 1947. In the intervening years, Ingalls subjected Jones to routine physical abuse and an endless expanse of intensive, unpaid domestic labor. With no days off and permitted to leave only for errands, Jones was allowed no personal relationships or contact with the outside world. Ingalls’s first husband, the bureaucrat Walter Harman, raped Jones over the course of three years, and Jones became pregnant.2 Ingalls would term this an “affair” and, as court documents showed, pushed Jones to “submit” to an abortion.3 Later, when Jones protested her abusive conditions and attempted to escape, Ingalls blackmailed her, threatening 1. Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” Political Affairs (June 1949): 11. 2. I am inferring non-consent based on Jones’s captivity. On unfreedom and the politics of consent, see Saidiya Hartman, “Seduction and the Ruses of Power,” Callaloo 19, no. 2 (1996): 537–60. 3. United States v. Ingalls et al., Cr. No. 10568-SD (District Court, S.D. California, July 29, 1947). 260 Heather Berg to “commit Jones to prison” for interracial “adultery” and the abortion she had as a result. Jones finally won her freedom in 1947, a year after Ingalls’s adult daughter reported her mother to the police.4 Claudia Jones offers Dora Jones’s story as evidence of the exceptional precarity of Black women domestic workers. Like others in her cohort of “black left feminists” (to borrow Erik McDuffie’s term), Jones focused on domestic work as a field that epitomized the “triple oppression” at which she took aim.5 Sexual violence at work is not exceptional in Claudia Jones’s telling. Instead, it operates alongside a catalog of abuses at the intersection of capitalism, state terror, the degradation of women, imperialism, and white supremacy. An active member of the Communist Party, Jones insisted on thinking these systems together, maintaining that only through collective struggle against them could justice be won. Women would not be comrades in that struggle in any simple way. Jones was sharply critical of the idea that Black women’s oppression could be explained by “the rotten bourgeois notion about a ‘battle of the sexes.’”6 Instead, she urged working-class Black people to fight “against their common oppressors, the white ruling class.”7 Solidarity among women was illusory, in part, because of white women’s roles as employers of Black women’s domestic work. Against a narrative of sexual violence that describes simple dominance by men over women, Dora Jones’s story highlights the ways that systems of domination work together to enable abuse. Her suffering was not the same as that visited on bourgeois white women. Instead, it was perpetrated and enabled by one. There is no sisterhood to be found here. A critique of this framework is now common sense in most feminist circles, and yet the loudest feminist intervention in recent years trades in exactly the “bourgeois notion about a ‘battle of the sexes.’” Some seventy years after “An End to the Neglect’s” publication, the #MeToo movement has brought broad international attention to 4. For an overview of the case and its legal legacy, see Risa L. Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 162–5. 5. Erik S. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 9. 6. Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” 13. 7. Ibid. Heather Berg 261 the problem of workplace sexual violence. In 2006, civil rights activist Tarana Burke founded an anti-violence movement based... (shrink)

This article is an offshoot of a research project on lesbian and gay self-organization in the UK's public sector union UNISON. The site upon which lesbians and gay men ‘work together’ is a complex and contradictory one, located at the juncture of several pathways – women's and men's movements, gendered politics and sexual politics, purist ghettos and queer rainbows. The UNISON group furnishes an ideal site for a case-study of sexual and gendered dynamics in lesbian-and-gay politics by dint of institutional (...) arrangements whereby separate spaces for lesbians and gay men respectively encourage reflexivity in working through these hyphens. While reflections from the lesbian feminist mirror have been active ingredients in the ongoing resocialization of gay men, it is argued that reflections from a gay male mirror will also be necessary if we are to nurture greater wisdom and justice in gender relations. Since the lesbian and gay group co-exists with other self-organized groups for women, black people and disabled people within a broader pro-socialist movement, the potential for working across other sets of differences is also noteworthy. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated that a sustained coalition between lesbians and gay men is not sufficient in bringing about coalitions with other oppressed minorities or majorities, and may even be at loggerheads with them. (shrink)

In this article I analyse two complaints of white vilification, which are increasingly occurring in Australia. I argue that, though the complainants (and white people generally) are not harmed by such racialized speech, the complainants in fact harm Australians of colour through these utterances. These complaints can both cause and constitute at least two forms of epistemic injustice (willful hermeneutical ignorance and comparative credibility excess). Further, I argue that the complaints are grounded in a dual misrecognition: the complainants misrecognize themselves (...) in their own privileged racial specificity, and they misrecognize others in their own marginal racial specificity. Such misrecognition preserves the cultural imperialism of Australia’s dominant social imaginary—a means of oppression that perpetuates epistemic insensitivity.Bringing this dual misrecognition to light best captures the indignity that is suffered by the victims of the aforementioned epistemic injustices. I argue that it is only when we truly recognize difference in its own terms, shifting the dominant social imaginary, that “mainstream Australians”can do their part in bringing about a just society. (shrink)

The evolution of the Ladies’ Circle into the Mother’s Union in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) holds great significance in that circles in Africa symbolize collectiveness and consensual decision-making. The Ladies’ Circle emerged as a response by white women influenced by the Victorian Womanhood Cult with regard to the discontent they felt with patriarchy in the church. Black women supported white female missionaries in leadership roles, when they (black women), continued to face oppression due to (white and (...) black) male resistance to change, as well as fear of losing male-privileges. Empirical evidence in the COCZ suggests that black women in Zimbabwe made significant progress in the secular world compared to their progress in church. This study uses a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a theoretical framework to examine how the transformation of the Ladies’ Circle into the Mothers’ Union empowered African women to deal with their own oppression. It aims to understand how white women overcame restrictive Victorian norms and the Womanhood Cult, which promoted submissiveness and domesticity as defining aspects of womanhood. The study further notes that inconsistencies in addressing race and gender differences in the church perpetuated the dominance of African men on women within the church. This study thus acknowledges that the Women’s Unions, like the Mothers’ Union, have the potential to empower COCZ women and challenge racial and gender oppression within that church.Contribution: The study reveals that denying women’s involvement in church can have debilitating effects on gender equality in Zimbabwe. The Ladies’ Circle, a platform created by the Church of Christ, provides women with a space for social and religious participation. The intersection of gender, race, and religion used by religious and cultural authorities to control women, call for a re-examination of the COCZ’s theological foundations on these subjects. (shrink)

Feminism and Ecological Communities presents a bold and passionate rethinking of teh ecofeminist movement. It is one of the first books to acknowledge the importance of postmodern feminist arguments against ecofeminism whilst persuasively preseenting a strong new case for econolocal feminism. Chris J.Cuomo first traces the emergence of ecofeminism from the ecological and feminist movements before clearly discussing the weaknesses of some ecofeminist positions. Exploring the dualisms of nature/culture and masculing/feminine that are the bulwark of many contemporary ecofeminist positions and (...) questioning traditional traditional feminist analyses of gender and caring, Feminism and Ecological Communities asks whether women are essentially closer to nature than men and how we ought to link the oppression of women, people of colour, and other subjugated groups to the degradation of nature. Chris J.Cuomo addresses these key issues by drawing on recent work in feminist ethics as well as teh work of diverse figures such as Aristotle, John Dewey, Donna Haraway adn Maria Lugones. A fascinating feature of the book is the use of the metaphor of the cyborg to highlight the fluidity of the nature/culture distinction and how this can enrich econfeminist ethics and politics. An outstanding new argument for an ecological feminism that links both theory and practice, Feminism and Ecological Communities bravely redraws the ecofeminist map. It will be essential reading for all those interested in gender studies, environmental studies and philosophy. (shrink)

This book examines feminist philosophical analyses of sexual oppression of women by men, and brings them into conversation with phenomenological, ontological and psychoanalytical accounts of erotic experience and sexual difference.

A critical, philosophical engagement of the psychological structures that propagate the continued oppression of women. In this book, the Italian feminist thinker Lea Melandri argues that systemic violence against women has deep psychoanalytic roots. Drawing inspiration from the work of Freud and the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Elvio Fachinelli, along with feminist practices of consciousness-raising, Melandri demonstrates how male dominance and female subservience are established by society through a binary and oppositional understanding of sex and gender. This understanding—and the (...) class='Hi'>oppression and violence against women that results—is inscribed in the psyches of both men and women, and is replicated anew from generation to generation. Melandri analyzes women in media, politics, philosophy, and literature to show how this plays out, and calls for awareness of these deep psychic structures and expectations formed within the dynamics of society and primary family relations. Lea Melandri is one of Italy’s best-known feminist thinkers and activists. She is the author of many books and continues to write and advocate for women’s rights. In 2012, she was awarded by the city of Milan the Ambrogino d’oro, one of the city’s highest honors. Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College at Western University, Canada. He the editor of Contemporary Italian Political Philosophy and the coeditor (with Inna Viriasova) of Roberto Esposito: Biopolitics and Philosophy, both also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

The history of women has been defined by a world enmeshed in woes, frustration, oppression, maltreatment and inequalities. Feminism as a philosophy of change sought to fight, end and change this woeful scenario of women that denied their self respect, dignity and led to a loss of self confidence. Fundamentally, feminist philosophy sought for explanations and justifications why women were denied a voice and why they were historically not treated as coequals of men. The basis of inequality is historically (...) rooted in cultural and philosophical falsities that were not evidenced based but were used to justify oppression against women. The Universal Declaration of human rights gave women and the world the platform that empowered them with rights and led to fresh processes that sought to end oppression and their underdevelopment inspired by inequality, iniquities, denial of opportunities for growth and empowerment. The millennium development goal of ending inequality and oppression against women should achieve equality and women’s empowerment in Africa. Since the declaration of the MDGS, considerable gains had been made inAfricabut challenges and problems are still identified in the areas of cultural inequality complicated by the weakness of the major governance institutions and corruption. Other challenges centre on women’s lack of genuine empowerment, violence against women, trafficking in women, denial of human rights, lack of participation in policy and governance. Since empowerment is the key to achieving mainstreaming and gender equality, this paper seeks to redefine the concept of empowering women as the platform to ending inequality, social injustice and achieving equality in the context of the unique challenges of underdevelopment facingAfrica. It will identify the policy implications of establishing empowerment structures that address multiple challenges facing gender inequality and how these structures will assist in building the necessary feminine human resources that will make women as partners of sustainable growth and development after 2015. (shrink)

Evidence‐based interventions have been developed and used to prevent HIV infections among black men who have sex with men (MSM) in Canada and the United States; however, the degree to which interventions address racism and other interlocking oppressions that influence HIV vulnerability is not well known. We utilize integrative antiracism to guide a review of HIV prevention intervention studies with black MSM and to determine how racism and religious oppression are addressed in the current intervention evidence base. We searched (...) CINAHL, PsychInfo, MEDLINE and the CDC compendium of evidence‐based HIV prevention interventions and identified seventeen interventions. Three interventions targeted black MSM, yet only one intervention addressed racism, religious oppression, cultural assets and religious assets. Most interventions' samples included low numbers of black MSM. More research is needed on interventions that address racism and religious oppression on HIV vulnerability among black MSM. Future research should focus on explicating mechanisms by which multiple oppressions impact HIV vulnerability. We recommend the development and integration of social justice tools for nursing practice that aid in addressing the impacts of racism and other oppressions on HIV vulnerability of black MSM. (shrink)

I Alderdommen (1970) fremsetter Simone de Beauvoir en filosofisk analyse av alderdom og eldre menneskers situa- sjon, og hevder at behandlingen de får er «skandaløs»; samfunnet «returnerer dem som en vare det ikke lenger er bruk for». Hun tilkjennegir et like stort engasjement mot den urett som eldre utsettes for som hun gjør i Det annet kjønn (1949) når det gjelder undertrykkelsen av kvinner. Likevel påstår Beauvoir at alderdommen først og fremst er et problem for mannen, og det har blitt (...) hevdet at Alderdommen er et verk om aldersdiskriminering hvor mannens aldringsprosess gjøres til norm – ikke et feministisk verk på linje med Det annet kjønn. I denne artikkelen argumen- terer Tove Pettersen for at det nettopp er den feministiske filosofien Beauvoir utvikler i Det annet kjønn som ligger til grunn for hennes undersøkelser av undertrykkelse og diskriminering av eldre. I tillegg demonstrerer Beauvoirs omfattende analyse av alderdommen at hverken alder eller kjønn kan studeres uavhengig av hverandre. Alder og kjønn virker sammen, og må ses i lys av den situasjon disse fenomenene fremtrer i hvor også klasse er av stor betydning. Alderdommen kan derfor leses som et verk hvor Beauvoir viser hvordan ulike former for undertrykkelse virker sammen og bidrar til marginalisering og diskriminering av eldre. Nøkkelord: Simone de Beauvoir, Alderdommen, Det annet kjønn, feministisk filosofi, Den andre, aldersdiskriminering, alderisme******* -/- In The Coming of Age (1970), Simone de Beauvoir presents a philosophical analysis of old age and the elderly’s situa- tion, and claims that the treatment they receive is “scandalous”; society ‘returns them as a commodity that is no longer needed.’ She exhibits the same level of commitment regarding the injustice to which the elderly are exposed as she does in The Second Sex (1949) when it comes to the oppression of women. Nevertheless, Beauvoir claims that old age first and foremost is a problem for men, and it has been argued that The Coming of Age is a work on age discrim- ination where the male aging process is made the norm – not a feminist work on par with The Second Sex. In thisarticle, Tove Pettersen argues that it is precisely the feminist philosophy that Beauvoir develops in The Second Sex that enables her to analyze the oppression and discrimination of the elderly. Additionally, Beauvoir's comprehensive analysis of old age demonstrates that neither age nor gender can be studied independently. Age and gender intersect, and must be be seen in light of the situation in which class is of great importance. Thus, The Coming of Age can be read as a work in which Beauvoir shows how different forms of oppression work together and contribute to the mar- ginalization and discrimination of the elderly. Keywords: Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age, The Second Sex, Feminist Philosophy, The Other, Age Discrimination, Ageism. (shrink)

Research shows people confront social marginalization through work, yet this scholarship largely ignores people working in illicit markets. We address this gap by investigating how and to what end men in street prostitution “borrow” privilege from their more structurally advantaged clients. Drawing from interviews with men of color in street sex work, we show how they “status maneuver” to offset stigmatized identities tied to prostitution and to construct a masculinity that offers a greater sense of social worth within constrained circumstances. (...) These men ironically rely on status differences between themselves and their white, wealthy men clients to undermine their own oppression and to create possibilities for momentary associations with hegemonic masculine privilege. This research shows how barriers between the powerful and powerless are permeable, and how social hierarchies serve as resources to cope with the inequitable conditions and stigma under which some people live and work. (shrink)

For more than two millennia the development of philosophy in what is called the West has been the province of men who trace their intellectual heritage to men in ancient Greece. Within “the development of philosophy” I include the training of philosophers as well as publishing and preserving philosophical work in libraries. Thus I regard philosophy as a very material as well as spiritual enterprise. My focus here is on the spiritual impact, actual and potential, of recent changes in the (...) material base of philosophy and the material impact of recent changes in the spiritual focus of philosophers. Before the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions in the development of Western philosophy were its coming under the domination of Christian religious institutions and then its becoming relatively freed from such domination. Since the advent of the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions may come from the increasing access to academic institutions of the middle and working classes, of people of color with histories of oppression by white societies, and of women from all classes and ethnic backgrounds—people who do not always or only trace their intellectual heritages to men of ancient Greece. What differences might these changes make to, and call for in, the development of philosophy?What I have thought about most are differences made by women and differences that have drawn in women to academic philosophy in Western democracies, such as the United States. Twentieth Century women in these contexts have published substantial bodies of philosophical inquiry with feminist agendas . I want to comment on two features of such inquiry that often make it attractive to women less readily engaged by the traditions defined by privileged men. These features are holism and what I call “historical particularism.” I begin with “particularism.”. (shrink)

In the context of feminist and postmodern thought, traditional conceptions of masculinity and what it means to be a “Real Man” have been critiqued. In Genevieve Lloyd's The Man of Reason, this critique takes the form of exposing the effect that the distinctive masculinity of the “man of reason” has had on the history of philosophy. One major feature of the masculine-feminine dichotomy will emerge as a key notion for understanding the rest of the paper: the dichotomy of reason-feeling, a (...) parallel and a foundational aspect to the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity. In exploring the history of symbolic conceptions of masculinity in ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and the present, one finds that the oppression of women is integrally linked to the traditional tie between masculinity and reason. There have been many efforts in recent feminist philosophy to rewrite or redefine “Woman” in such a way as to alleviate the oppression of women. I argue that the effectiveness of rewriting Woman for this purpose is problematic, primarily because any rewriting of this type must occur in the current historical context of hierarchical dualisms, like Man-Woman, masculine-feminine, male-female. These binary oppositions arguably find their roots in Pythagorean philosophy and can be traced through the Renaissance to our current historical context. It is these dualisms that have traditionally valued the masculine side of the Man-Woman dichotomy more than the feminine. Further, it will be argued that the hierarchical dualism of Man and Woman is so pervasive that if we rewrite or redefine the inferior, deprivileged side of that dualism, we cannot correct its devalued status. Instead, we redefine that which is undervalued but retain its devalued status. This particular aspect of attempts to critique hierarchical dualisms like reason and feeling has been reflected in the writings of many feminists, male and female. This paper will show that in cases where women attempt to redefine the dichotomy by revaluing the traditionally feminine (like feelings and emotions) over the traditionally masculine (like reason) their work is often mistakenly criticized for being purely political; conversely, when men attempt to redefine the same dichotomy in an attempt to allow men to “get back in touch with their feelings,” to be nurturers, their work is described in terms of providing a better epistemology. The current literature on masculinity explores alternatives to rewriting or redefining Woman that try to avoid the problem of status remaining with redefinition. This alternative is rewriting or redefining Man. Through redefining Man, one may be able to reconceptualize the privileged side of the hierarchical dualism in such a way that it is no longer privileged. Deprivileging, as well as redefining Man, is argued by theorists of masculinity to be possible because while the devalued status of the inferior side of a hierarchical dualism tends to keep the same status when redefined, it may be possible to redefine the privileged side of the dualism in such a way that it loses its privileged status. Unfortunately, many of these attempts to rewrite or redefine masculinity have detrimental faults of their own. Finally, this paper will discuss more promising possibilities for new definitions of Man, as well as a vision for better interaction between the work of women and men in general. (shrink)

This paper argues that the slogans “A Woman's Right to Choose” and “The Personal is the Political” typify different traditions within feminist thinking; one emphasizing rights and equality, the other the unconscious and the personal. The author responds to both traditions by bringing together mind and body, and reason and emotion, via the figure of the copula. The copula expresses an alternative model of identity which indicates that value can be produced only in relation.Let us say that the problem is (...) violence. At its most naive: how can the sexual relation, which is supposedly full of love, be violent?I mean the sexual relation in its resonances and ambiguity—to indicate the relation between the sexes, and the relation between lovers. In no way can the relation be confined to love, either heterosexual or homosexual, since it is often a contest. It cannot be reduced solely to a social relation, because in one of its aspects it addresses the most intimate subjectivity.In a certain feminist lifestyle advocacy, those women who are in same sex relations avoid sexual violence by avoiding men, and those who are in heterosexual relationships strive to find the “right kind”—that is, relationships of respectful and supportive love—rejecting all signs of aggression, from sexist disparagement and emotional cruelty to sexual humiliation and physical assault, as “abuse.”Strangely, this dichotomy does not explain the proximity of passion and aggression, whether in love between men and women or in same-sex relationships between feminist women. As rational counsel, it resists the important sense in which the erotic is, and is even valued as, the excess of the rational. And as an analysis of the oppression of women it defeats itself, for to insist on masculinity as violence itself, and/or on the sexual relation as properly governed by reason, seems to miss the point of both love and feminism.Stranger still, feminisms, which set out to address and redress the oppression of women, have become rivalrous themselves. Are these aggressions a legacy of the intellectual world they must take place in. Have we overlooked an aspect of the relation between sisters? Feminism has not addressed the question of aggression in feminism as anything more than contamination.Perhaps, after all, the thing that feminism has not yet successfully addressed is love. The “battle between the sexes” has not rendered the ambivalence of the heterosexual relation. As a species of theory, feminism has relished the rigor of distinction and has not found it easy to tolerate the proximity of opposites.And yet, in evoking the body, some feminisms approach closer to this difficulty. It remains to take up the relation between the body and the concept more thoroughly, in order to find out whether sexual difference could ever be philosophical. (shrink)

Since humankind crossed the threshold to civilization, and up to the moment of the victory of the revolution of the proletariat, being oppressed and being enslaved was the common fate of women down through the ages. Albeit that in different periods and eras, in different societies, countries, or nations, and owing to the impact of different economic, political, cultural, and moral factors, the oppression and enslavement of women was expressed in different forms and to different degrees, such oppression (...) and enslavement existed in every age and place as a common feature of history. For the longest time, the value that women ought to have and deserve, as members of society, as members of the family, and as the object of the affection and intimacy of men, was consistently and maliciously damaged, undermined, and demeaned. (shrink)

For more than two millennia the development of philosophy in what is called the West has been the province of men who trace their intellectual heritage to (some) men in ancient Greece. Within “the development of philosophy” I include the training of philosophers as well as publishing and preserving philosophical work in libraries. Thus I regard philosophy as a very material as well as spiritual enterprise. My focus here is on the spiritual impact, actual and potential, of recent changes in (...) the material base of philosophy and the material impact of recent changes in the spiritual focus of philosophers. Before the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions in the development of Western philosophy were its coming under the domination of Christian religious institutions and then its becoming relatively freed from such domination. Since the advent of the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions may come from the increasing access to academic institutions of the middle and working classes, of people of color with histories of oppression by white societies, and of women from all classes and ethnic backgrounds—people who do not always or only trace their intellectual heritages to men of ancient Greece. What differences might these changes make to, and call for in, the development of philosophy? What I have thought about most are differences made by women and differences that have drawn in women to academic philosophy in Western democracies, such as the United States. Twentieth Century women in these contexts have published substantial bodies of philosophical inquiry with feminist agendas (both philosophy of feminism and philosophy manifesting feminist perspectives in ethics, epistemology, etc.). I want to comment on two features of such inquiry that often make it attractive to women less readily engaged by the traditions defined by privileged men. These features are holism and what I call “historical particularism.” I begin with “particularism.”. (shrink)