Feminism and Sexuality


Book Description

A comprehensive overview of feminist debates surrounding sexuality identifying the main theoretical positions and trends. Contributors include Judith Butler, bell hooks, Luce Irigaray, Catherine MacKinnon, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Judith Walkowitz and Monique Wittig.




Sexuality, Society, and Feminism


Book Description

"Top feminist scholars apply a feminist lens to the ways American society defines and shapes women's sexuality. Sexuality, while experienced at the individual level, is a social phenomenon: Its meaning is dynamic and emerges from the social context. Power and politics tend to dictate what sexual attitudes and behaviors are considered normal and typical for girls and women, frequently with negative consequences for women's well-being and the well-being of society as a whole. Here is an alternative, more positive approach to understanding an important area of behavior."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics


Book Description

One of a small group of feminist pioneers in the historical profession, Estelle B. Freedman teaches and writes about women's history with a passion informed by her feminist values. Over the past thirty years, she has produced a body of work in which scholarship and politics have never been mutually exclusive. This collection brings together eleven essays--eight previously published and three new--that document the evolving relationship between academic feminism and political feminism as Freedman has studied and lived it. Following an introduction that presents a map of the personal and intellectual trajectory of Freedman's work, the first section of essays, on the origins and strategies of women's activism in U.S. history, reiterates the importance of valuing women in a society that has long devalued their contributions. The second section, on the maintenance of sexual boundaries, explores the malleability of both sexual identities and sexual politics. Underlying the collection is an inquiry into the changing meanings of gender, sexuality, and politics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries along with a concern for applying the insights of women's history broadly, from the classroom to the courthouse.




Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion


Book Description

Feminist theory and reflections on sexuality and gender rarely make contact with contemporary continental philosophy of religion. Where they all come together, creative and transformative thinking occurs. In Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion, internationally recognized scholars tackle complicated questions provoked by the often stormy intersection of these powerful forces. The essays in this book break down barriers as they extend the richness of each philosophical tradition. They discuss topics such as queer sexuality and religion, feminism and the gift, feminism and religious reform, and religion and diversity. The contributors are Hélène Cixous, Sarah Coakley, Kelly Brown Douglas, Mark D. Jordan, Catherine Keller, Saba Mahmood, and Gianni Vattimo.




Gender and Sexuality


Book Description

This new introduction to the sociology of gender and sexuality provides fresh insight into our rapidly changing attitudes towards sex and our understanding of masculine and feminine identities, relating the study of gender and sexuality to recent research and theory, and wider social concerns throughout the world.




Gender and Sexuality


Book Description

About various theories of gender, sexuality, feminism and masculinity including queer theory, transgender theorizing, modernist liberationism and social constructionism.




Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment


Book Description

Sexual harassment is an issue in which feminists are usually thought to be on the plaintiff's side. But in 1993--amid considerable attention from the national academic community--Jane Gallop, a prominent feminist professor of literature, was accused of sexual harassment by two of her women graduate students. In Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment, Gallop tells the story of how and why she was charged with sexual harassment and what resulted from the accusations. Weaving together memoir and theoretical reflections, Gallop uses her dramatic personal experience to offer a vivid analysis of current trends in sexual harassment policy and to pose difficult questions regarding teaching and sex, feminism and knowledge. Comparing "still new" feminism--as she first encountered it in the early 1970s--with the more established academic discipline that women's studies has become, Gallop makes a case for the intertwining of learning and pleasure. Refusing to acquiesce to an imperative of silence that surrounds such issues, Gallop acknowledges--and describes--her experiences with the eroticism of learning and teaching. She argues that antiharassment activism has turned away from the feminism that created it and suggests that accusations of harassment are taking aim at the inherent sexuality of professional and pedagogic activity rather than indicting discrimination based on gender--that antiharassment has been transformed into a sensationalist campaign against sexuality itself. Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment offers a direct and challenging perspective on the complex and charged issues surrounding the intersection of politics, sexuality, feminism, and power. Gallop's story and her characteristically bold way of telling it will be compelling reading for anyone interested in these issues and particularly to anyone interested in the ways they pertain to the university.




Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction


Book Description

Mottier examines the questions around what shapes our sexuality asking if it is a product of our genes, or of society, culture or politics. The changing views of sexual norms are dealt with as are issues surrounding feminism, religion, eugenics, and HIV / AIDS.




Desiring Revolution


Book Description

There was a moment in the 1970s when sex was what mattered most to feminists. White middle-class women viewed sex as central to both their oppression and their liberation. Young women started to speak and write about the clitoris, orgasm, and masturbation, and publishers and the news media jumped at the opportunity to disseminate their views. In Desiring Revolution, Gerhard asks why issues of sex and female pleasure came to matter so much to these "second-wave feminists." In answering this question Gerhard reveals the diverse views of sexuality within feminism and shows how the radical ideas put forward by this generation of American women was a response to attempts to define and contain female sexuality going back to the beginning of the century. Gerhard begins by showing how the "marriage experts" of the first half of the twentieth century led people to believe that female sexuality was bound up in bearing children. Ideas about normal, white, female heterosexuality began to change, however, in the 1950s and 1960s with the widely reported, and somewhat shocking, studies of Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, whose research spoke frankly about female sexual anatomy, practices, and pleasures. Gerhard then focuses on the sexual revolution between 1968 and 1975. Examining the work of Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Erica Jong, and Kate Millet, among many others, she reveals how little the diverse representatives of this movement shared other than the desire that women gain control of their own sexual destinies. Finally, Gerhard examines the divisions that opened up between anti-pornography (or "anti-sex") feminists and anti-censorship (or "pro-sex") radicals. At once erudite and refreshingly accessible, Desiring Revolution provides the first full account of the unfolding of the feminist sexual revolution.




Finding the Movement


Book Description

In Finding the Movement, Anne Enke reveals that diverse women’s engagement with public spaces gave rise to and profoundly shaped second-wave feminism. Focusing on women’s activism in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul during the 1960s and 1970s, Enke describes how women across race and class created a massive groundswell of feminist activism by directly intervening in the urban landscape. They secured illicit meeting spaces and gained access to public athletic fields. They fought to open bars to women and abolish gendered dress codes and prohibitions against lesbian congregation. They created alternative spaces, such as coffeehouses, where women could socialize and organize. They opened women-oriented bookstores, restaurants, cafes, and clubs, and they took it upon themselves to establish women’s shelters, health clinics, and credit unions in order to support women’s bodily autonomy. By considering the development of feminism through an analysis of public space, Enke expands and revises the historiography of second-wave feminism. She suggests that the movement was so widespread because it was built by people who did not identify themselves as feminists as well as by those who did. Her focus on claims to public space helps to explain why sexuality, lesbianism, and gender expression were so central to feminist activism. Her spatial analysis also sheds light on hierarchies within the movement. As women turned commercial, civic, and institutional spaces into sites of activism, they produced, as well as resisted, exclusionary dynamics.