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Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Nancy Tuana
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Abstract

Lay understanding and scientific accounts of female sexuality and orgasm provide a fertile site for demonstrating the importance of including epistemologies of ignorance within feminist epistemologies. Ignorance is not a simple lack. It is often constructed, maintained, and disseminated and is linked to issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, silencing, and uncertainty. Studying both feminist and nonfeminist understandings of female orgasm reveals practices that suppress or erase bodies of knowledge concerning women's sexual pleasures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 19 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminist Science Studies , Winter 2004 , pp. 194 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Hypatia, Inc.

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