Feminism and Power

Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny combines traditional conceptual analysis and feminist conceptual engineering with critical exploration of cases drawn from popular culture and current events in order to produce an ameliorative account of misogyny, i.e., one that will help address the problems of misogyny in the actual world. A feminist account of misogyny that is both intersectional and ameliorative must provide theoretical tools for recognizing misogyny in its many-dimensional forms, as it interacts and overlaps with other oppressions. (...) While Manne thinks subtly about many of the material conditions that create misogyny as a set of normative social practices, she does not fully extend this care to the other intersectional forms of oppression she discusses. After touching on the book’s strengths, I track variations of its main problem, namely, its failure to fully conceive of oppressions besides sexism and misogyny as systemic patterns of social practices, as inherently structural rather than mere collections of individual beliefs and behaviors. (shrink)

After years of activism and scholarship concerning patriarchal social structures, many contemporary societies have made substantial progress in women’s rights. The shortfall, and the work ahead, is well known. Even in societies where the most progress has been achieved, males continue to dominate at key levels of power. Yet, essentialism appears to be widely, although not yet entirely, discounted. In helping to illuminate the social ontology of patriarchy and thereby helping to defuse its injustice, scholars have made proposals of patriarchy’s (...) origins; however, these appear not to be optimally consistent with historical and prehistorical facts. This article offers a different account of patriarchy, arguing that this one can not only explain how such a social condition originated and why it persists, but also point to what may be necessary to do in order to undo it. While I do not contend this ontology of patriarchy is the best possible, it provides a good example of the many issues at stake which an account of patriarchy must explain and points to how we should seek the best ontology as a way of both understanding contemporary societies and suggesting how to rectify a long-standing injustice. (shrink)

Should positional sexual misconduct (sexual advances or interaction where one party is known, or should be known, to have a significant power over the other) be included in the list of morally forbidden behaviours? I explore benefits and costs of this moral reform with the help of J. S. Mill.

In this book, Claudia Leeb delivers a critical perspective on the current traditional as well as feminist aggression research discourse. She challenges the female/non-aggressive and male/aggressive opposition found in these discourses and introduces “direct female aggression” as a positive concept for women. The development of the qualitative research design is based on her argument that aggression is more determined by social group contexts than by gender: after viewing movies that display aggressive behavior of women, different women’s groups discuss their aggression (...) behavior. She uses psychoanalytic textual interpretation (after Leithhauser and Volmerg) to analyze the group discussions. The analysis exposes the unconscious fears, wishes and fantasies in relation to direct female aggression. The results demonstrate that aggression is more determined by social groups’ contexts than by gender. This book is of central interest to scholars in all academic disciplines who study human aggression. (shrink)

Moira Gatens investigates the ways in which differently sexed bodies can occupy the same social or political space. Representations of sexual difference have unacknowledged philosophical roots which cannot be dismissed as a superficial bias on the part of the philosopher, nor removed without destroying the coherence of the philosophical system concerned. The deep structural bias against women extends beyond metaphysics and its effects are felt in epistemology, moral, social and political theory. The idea of sexual difference is contextualised in _Imaginary (...) Bodies_ and traced through the history of philosophy. Using her work on Spinoza, Gatens develops alternative conceptions of power, new ways of conceiving women's embodiment and their legal, political and ethical status. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Is power the ability to influence something or someone? Does power have anything to do with authority or control? Is power given by others or earned by the individual? I begin this article with the word and idea of power because some of the chapters in this book focus on power dynamics and all of the authors in this volume discuss how landscapes are perceived in the past or in the present. In this chapter, I will explore landscapes as more (...) than just places affected by people, but made of living species – plants, trees, birds, animals, fish, and so forth, while recognizing that it is people who bring social and symbolic meaning to these places. Therefore, I see power in who transformed the plantation from a “natural landscape” to “cultural landscape” as the central component in understanding black cultural production in the 19th century. Taking my lead from the work of cultural geographers, landscape historians, and landscape architects, I wanted to examine the transformative process in cultural landscapes and perhaps tease out who ultimately shapes these cultural locations. (shrink)

Iskra Pavez Soto Editorial Forja Agosto 2015, 238 pp. ISBN: 978-956-338-184-9.

Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity is the first full-length study of Beauvoir's political thinking. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir also wrote an array of other political and philosophical texts that together, constitute an original contribution to political theory and philosophy. Sonia Kruks here locates Beauvoir in her own intellectual and political context and demonstrates her continuing significance. Beauvoir still speaks, in a unique voice, to many pressing questions concerning politics: the values and (...) dangers of liberal humanism; how oppressed groups become complicit in their own oppression; how social identities are perpetuated; the limits to rationalism; and the place of emotions, such as the desire for revenge, in politics. In discussing such matters Kruks puts Beauvoir's ideas into conversation with those of many contemporary thinkers, including feminist and race theorists, as well as with historical figures in the liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist traditions. Beauvoir's political thinking emerges from her fundamental insights into the ambiguity of human existence. Combining phenomenological descriptions with structural analyses, she focuses on the tensions of human action as both free and constrained. To be human is to be a paradoxical being, at once capable of free choice and yet, because embodied, vulnerable to injury from others. Politics is thus a domain of complexly interwoven, multiple, human interactions that is rife with ambiguity, and where freedom and violence too often closely intertwine. Beauvoir accordingly argues that failure is a necessary part of political action. However, she also insists that, while acknowledging this, we should assume responsibility for the outcomes of what we do. (shrink)

This is a review and critical commentary on Michael Plaxton's 2015 book, Implied Consent and Sexual Assault, in which he proposes that the legal definition of sexual consent be amended to permit sexual partners to define the terms and conditions of sexual consent in accordance with private "normative commitments" between themselves. The proposed "reform" is intended to permit an individual to agree to be a party to sexual activity that would otherwise constitute sexual assault under Canadian law. For reasons explained (...) in the review, this reviewer concludes that Plaxton's proposal and the rationale he presents in support of its adoption are unpersuasive. (shrink)

Feminists have urged women to take semantic authority. This article explains what such authority is, how it depends upon community recognition, and how it differs from privilege and from authority as usually conceived under patriarchy. Understanding its natures and limits is an important part of attaining it. Understanding the role of community explains why separatism is the logical conclusion of this project, and why separatism is valuable even to those who do not separate.

Iris Marion Young argues we cannot understand others' experiences by imagining ourselves in their place or in terms of symmetrical reciprocity (1997a). For Young, reciprocity expresses moral respect and asymmetry arises from people's greatly varying life histories and social positions. La Caze argues there are problems with Young's articulation of asymmetrical reciprocity in terms of wonder and the gift. By discussing friendship and political representation, she shows how taking self-respect into account complicates asymmetrical reciprocity.

This essay relates scenes from Beauvoir's novels to her views of female eroticism and frigidity in The Second Sex. Expressions of frigidity signal unjust power relations in Beauvoir's literature. She constructs frigidity as a symbolic means of rejecting dominance in heterosexual relations. Thus frigidity need not be interpreted, as it sometimes is, as a form of bad faith. The essay concludes with some thoughts on the relevance of Beauvoir's view of frigidity to contemporary feminism.

Post-Partum Document, a multi-media artwork made by American artist Mary Kelly from 1973--1978, was informed by and contributed to contemporaneous debates in the fields of Conceptualism, feminism, and psychoanalysis throughout the seventies. This dissertation addresses the project's "debate-specificity." The conventional art historical categorization and analysis of an artwork, one based upon its medium specificity, was a mode of modernist criticism that Kelly's work specifically interrogated. What therefore distinguished Post-Partum Document from other artworks of its period was an interrogation of the (...) "discursive site"---i.e. a specific site of debate grounded within a given discourse. ;Within the practice of art, Post-Partum Document begs us to think of the discursive site as a displacement of the "material" site. Its "multimedia" status thus indicates the manner in which it simultaneously addressed questions of aesthetics, semiotics, film, psychoanalysis, and activism within the visual field. Previous studies have engaged Post-Partum Document primarily as an example of psychoanalytically informed feminist art. My dissertation traces its original debate within the broader history of Conceptualism, feminism, and psychoanalysis in Britain, followed by its American reception in the eighties, at which point Post-Partum Document became a model for feminist critical art practice. (shrink)

Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an "expressive-collaborative," culturally situated, practice-based picture of morality, critical of a "theoretical-juridical" picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the "theoretical-juridical" model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.

Learning about martial sex crimes against men has made me rethink some of my ideas about rape as a weapon of war and how to respond to it. Such crimes can be as racist as they are sexist and, in the case of male victims, may be quite simply racist.

Shulamith Firestone's Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution was, upon its original publication, both radicacmen would be freed from the burden of childbirth, in which the nuclear family, gender roles, typical constructions of marriage and parenting are all a thing of the past, still for many seems radical, even forty-five years after its debut in 1970. With Firestone's recent passing, it is a particularly suitable time to reconsider her work in light of the medical, technological, and social changes (...) of the past few decades. Specifically, I wish to argue that the kind of future society that Firestone envisioned, which would be possible only through the use of certain medical technologies, has begun to be actualized within many trans-affirming communities. The greater the recognition of trans identities, trans lives, and trans relationships, the more we will approach the realization of the post-revolutionary society that she describes. In this essay, I consider Firestone's ideas on the issues of biological sex, gender, relationships, and parenthood, after which I will identify how present trans-affirming practices serve to support these Firestonian ideals. (shrink)

We contest each other's memory claims all the time. I am concerned with how the contesting of memory claims and narratives may be an integral part of many abusive situations. I use the writings of Otto Weininger and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation to explore a particular strategy of discrediting women as rememberers, making them more vulnerable to sexual harm. This strategy relies on the presentation of women as unable to maintain a stable enough sense of self or identity to (...) be trustworthy testifiers to their own harm. (shrink)

Bordo argues that the "theoretics of heterogeneity" taken too far prevents us from being able make generalizations or broadly conceptual statements about women. I argue that the political efficacy of feminism does not depend on the capacity to speak from the perspective of "women" and that the insistence on the heterogeneity of the category of women does not imply an opposition to abstraction but rather moves abstract thinking in a self-critical and democratizing direction.

How much power does emotional dismissal have over the oppressed's ability to trust outlaw emotions, or to stand for such emotions before others? I discuss Sue Campbell's view of the interpretation of emotion in light of the political significance of emotional dismissal. In response, I suggest that feminist conventions of interpretation developed within dialogical communities are best suited to providing resources for expressing, interpreting, defining, and reflecting on our emotions.

This dissertation approaches Iris Marion Young's politics of difference as an essential condition for deliberative democracy. It identifies and examines Young's arguments in four areas foundational to the politics of difference namely, inclusion, political equality, reasonableness and publicity. It contends that some of the arguments sustaining these foundations are shaky. Therefore, the dissertation attempts to improve the weak aspects of Young's arguments in order to solidify the basis for the politics of difference and, in so doing, facilitate the development of (...) deliberative democracy. ;To that end, the dissertation argues against Young's understanding of impartiality and proposes combining Thomas Nagel's approach to impartiality with Benhabib's argument for the need for a standard of judgement. As it stands, Young's argument against impartiality makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create an inclusive political community. ;In the discussion of political equality Young dismisses essentialist difference and replaces it with relational differentiation. Thus she keeps cultural relationships fluid so as to facilitate an argument for culturally-based rights to equal citizenship. Building on Young's approach, this dissertation combines Charles Beitz's approach to political equality with Jack Knight's and James Johnson's argument for politically relevant capacities to furnish an adequate response to the charge that the politics of difference makes an unwarranted leap between the equality of people as individuals and that of people as members of cultural groups. ;Further, the dissertation argues that the concept of reasonableness, as used by Young, is too vague for the purposes of the politics of difference. Reasonableness is a disposition. Instead, the politics of difference should concretize this idea by discussing reasonable people. Reasonable people understand that legitimate moral and political decisions do not necessarily reflect all reasons advanced in a deliberation. ;Finally, by adopting James Bohman's distinction between deliberation and dialogue demonstrates, the dissertation demonstrates why and how it is possible for the politics of difference to maintain unity and pluralism simultaneously. Young does not address this seeming contradiction. (shrink)

Hegel’s treatment of Sophocles’s Antigone exposes a tension in our own landscape between religious and civil autonomy. This tension reflects a deeper tension between unreflective, implicit norms and reflective, explicit norms that can be autonomously endorsed. The tension is, as Hegel recognizes, of particular importance to women. Hegel’s characterization of this tension in light of Antigone is, as H.S. Harris argues, both a more developed and a more fundamental moment in the Phenomenology of Spirit than the moment of Enlightenment autonomy (...) (with its powers of reflective self-critique). Indeed, George Steiner has remarked that, for the German idealists, Antigone exemplifies the very “pivot of consciousness,” so fundamental is the tension that it expresses. I argue that, while Hegel demonstrates the necessity of the modern transition to explicit norms that can be autonomously endorsed, explicit norms nevertheless depend on a background of unreflective norms for their force. Moreover, Hegel uses the conflict between Antigone and Creon to illustrate the tension and mutual dependence between these two types of norms. (shrink)

The concept of essence is thought by many political theorists to be a residue of the patriarchal onto-theological tradition of metaphysics that needs to be (or has been) overcome by more progressive aims. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of essentialism in light of the treatment of the concept of essence in Hegel’s Science of Logic, and within the context of recent issues in critical race theory and feminism. I will argue that the role of an (...) essence underlying appearance is a valuable one within a Hegelian framework, and that it is politically important to reassess it. There are reasons that we should want to uphold the distinction between essence and an inessential appearance. We should want to uphold the irreducibility of essence to the Hegelian self-determining concept, and I argue in this paper that there is a basis for doing so in Hegel’s own text. Despite the well established impossibility of claiming that there is a property or set of properties that all women share, to dissolve essence as an illusory side-effect of the show of appearance is both to misunderstand essence, and to relinquish a tool needed in the struggle for justice. Essence cannot be dismissed by claiming that it is an illusory side-effect of the show of appearance because essence and the inessential do not exhibit the characteristic of reciprocity. (shrink)

In this article, Brison extends the analysis of freedom developed in Nancy J Hirschmann's book, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, to an area of controversy among feminist theorists: that of sex work, including prostitution and participation in the production of pornography. This topic raises some of the same issues concerning choice and consent as the three topics Hirschmann discusses in her book-domestic violence, the current welfare system in the United States, and Islamic veiling-but it also (...) raises some distinct ones concerning the social construction of sexuality and possible conflicts between the freedom of some women and the freedom of others. (shrink)

Increasing numbers of young mothers in the work force, more and more children requiring extrafamilial care, high rates of divorce, lower rates of remarriage, increasing numbers of female-headed households, growing numbers of zero-parent families, and significant occurrences of child maltreatment are just some of the social indicators indicative of the family in a changing world. These trends and their consequences for children are described and then examined from the perspectives of microeconomic theory, the relative-income hypothesis, sex-ratio theory, and one form (...) of modernization theory. The paper concludes with a preliminary examination of the added explanatory power provided by evolutionary theory. (shrink)

My response to the preceding commentaries draws on recent events such as the Thomas/Hill hearings to illustrate some of my central arguments in "Feminist Skepticism and the 'Maleness' of Philosophy." I also attempt to clarify frequently misunderstood aspects of my use of gender as an analytical category, and discuss why, in my opinion, we should continue to care about the "maleness" of philosophy.

In this paper I look at the philosophical struggles of one eighteenth-century woman writer to reconcile a desire and obvious capacity to participate in the creation of republican ideals and their applications on the one hand, and on the other a deeply held belief that women's role in a republic is confined to the domestic realm. I argue that Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland's philosophical writings—three unpublished essays, published and unpublished letters, as well as parts of her memoirs—suggest that even though she (...) adopted a Rousseau-style rural republicanism that relies on complementarity of men and women's virtues, she somehow succeeds in proposing a less sexist picture of the republican family, one that makes it possible for men and women to take an equal part in family business and politics. (shrink)

On February 22, 2001, three Bosnian Serb soldiers were found guilty of crimes against humanity. Their offense? Rape. This is the first time that rape has been prosecuted and condemned as a crime against humanity. Appealing to Jacques Derrida's democracy of the perhaps and Judith Butler's politics of performative contradiction, I see this judgment inaugurating a politics of the vulnerable body which challenges current understandings of evil, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.