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A Feminist Aspect Theory of the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ann Ferguson
Ann Ferguson*
Affiliation:
Philosophy & Women’s Studies University of Massachusetts/Amherst, Amherst, MA01003, U.S.A.
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Extract

The contemporary Women’s Movement has generated major new theories of the social construction of gender and male power. The feminist attack on the masculinist assumptions of cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and most of the other academic disciplines has raised questions about some basic assumptions of those fields. For example, feminist economists have questioned the public/private split of much of mainstream economics, that ignores the social necessity of women’s unpaid housework and childcare. Feminist psychologists have challenged cognitive and psychoanalytic categories of human moral and gender development arguing that they are biased toward the development of male children rather than female children. Feminist anthropologists have argued that sex/gender systems, based on the male exchange of women in marriage, have socially produced gender differences in sexuality and parenting skills which have perpetuated different historical and cultural forms of male dominance. Feminist philosophers and theorists have suggested that we must reject the idea of a gender-free epistemological standpoint from which to understand the world. Finally radical feminists have argued that the liberal state permits a pornography industry that sexually objectifies women, thus legitimizing male violence against women.

Type
IV—Selves and Integration
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 13: Science, Morality & Feminist Theory , 1987 , pp. 339 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 For a survey of this literature, see Sokoloff, NatalieBetween Money and Love: The Dialectics of Women’s Home and Market Work (New York: Praeger 1980).Google Scholar Also cf. Hartmann, Heidi “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,” in Sargent, Lydia ed., Women and Revolution (Boston, MA: South End Press 1981)Google Scholar and the responses to Hartmann in the same volume; Delphy, ChristineClose to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press 1984)Google Scholar and the articles by Jean Gardiner, ‘Women’s Domestic Labor,’ Batya Weinbaum and Amy Bridges, “The Other Side of the Paycheck: Monopoly Capital and the Structure of Consumption,” Heidi Hartmann, ‘Capitalism, Patriarchy and Job Segregation by Sex’ and Davies, Margery ‘Women’s Place Is at the Typewriter: The Feminization of the Clerical Labor Force,’ all in Eisenstein, Zillah R. ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist-Feminism (New York: Monthly Review Press 1979).Google Scholar

2 Cf. Chodorow, NancyThe Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1978);Google ScholarGilligan, CarolIn a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982);Google ScholarMiller, Jean BakerToward a New Psychology of Women (Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1976)Google Scholar, Miller, Jean Baker ed. Psychoanalysis and Women (Baltimore, MD: Penguin 1973).Google Scholar

3 Perhaps the most original and influential article of the new feminist anthropology is that by Rubin, Gayle ‘The Traffic in Women,’ in Reiter, Rayna ed., Toward a New Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press 1975).Google Scholar Other important contributions are the rest of the articles in Reiter as well as those in Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist and Lamphere, Louise eds., Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1974).Google Scholar See also Sanday, Peggy ReevesFemale Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality (New York: Cambridge University Press 1981).Google Scholar

4 Cf. Hartsock, NancyMoney, Sex and Power (New York: Longman’s 1983);Google ScholarO’Brien, MaryThe Politics of Reproduction (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1981);Google ScholarHarding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Boston, MA: Reidel 1983);Google ScholarHarding, SandraThe Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1987).Google Scholar

5 Cf. Dworkin, AndreaWomanhating (New York: Dutton 1974);Google ScholarDworkin, AndreaPornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Perigee 1981;Google ScholarBarry, KathleenFemale Sexual Slavery (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1979);Google ScholarGriffin, SusanPornography and Silence (New York: Harper 1981);Google ScholarLederer, Laura ed., Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography (New York: Wm. Morrow 1980);Google ScholarDworkin, Andrea ‘Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography and Equality’ and MacKinnon, Catharine A. ‘Pornography, Civil Rights and Speech,’ in Dworkin, and MacKinnon, The Reasons Why (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School 1985).Google Scholar

6 Daly, MaryGyn/Ecology: The Meta-ethics of Radical Feminism (Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1978)Google Scholar

7 Mary O. Brien.

8 Beauvoir, Simone deThe Second Sex (New York: Bantam 1952);Google ScholarHolliday, LaurelThe Violent Sex: Male Psychobiology and the Evolution of Consciousness (Guer-neville, CA: Bluestocking Press 1978); Kathleen BarryGoogle Scholar

9 Rossi, Alice ‘A Biosocial Perspective on Parenting’ Daedulus 106, 2 (Spring, 1977), 1-32;Google ScholarPubMedKonner, Melvin ‘She & He,’ Science (Sept. 1982), 54-61;Google ScholarHolliday, Laurel; Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born (New York: Norton 1976)Google Scholar

10 Chodorow, Nancy; Mitchell, JulietPsychoanalysis and Feminism (New York: Pantheon 1974);Google ScholarRaymond, JaniceThe Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston: Beacon 1979);Google Scholar Carol Gilligan

11 Daly, MaryPure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press 1984)Google Scholar

12 Raymond, JaniceA Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection (Boston, MA: Beacon Press 1986)Google Scholar

13 Nancy Chodorow.

14 Dinnerstein, DorothyThe Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: Harper 1976)Google Scholar

15 Carol Gilligan.

16 Ruddick, Sara ‘Maternal Thinking,’ Feminist Studies 6, 2 (Summer 1980) 342-67;CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Trebikot, Joyce ed., Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory (Toto-wa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld 1984)Google Scholar

17 Cf. my forthcoming book: Ferguson, AnnBlood at the Root: Motherhood, Sexuality and Mule Dominance (Boston: Methuen/Routledge 1988)Google Scholar as well as Ferguson, ‘Motherhood and Sexuality: Some Feminist Questions,’ Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy 1, 2 (Fall 1986), 322.Google Scholar

18 For a discussion of some of these feminist ethical questions, see Ferguson, Blood at the Root, and the articles in Ferguson, Ann ed., ‘Motherhood and Sexuality’ issue, Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy 1, 2 (Fall 1986).Google Scholar