Feminist Claims Research Articles

What's Distinctive about Feminist Analysis of Law?:A Conceptual Analysis of Women's Exclusion from Law

What is distinctive about a feminist analysis of law? Conversely, what does it mean to characterize the law (or a law) as distinctively “male” as a way of criticizing its injustice? It is widely assumed by both feminist scholars and nonfeminists or curious onlookers that a feminist analysis of law must have distinctive features that set it off from mainstream/“malestream” theories of law. Feminist scholars often try to “sell” feminist analysis to interested newcomers and try to break down the recalcitrance of those who seem to want to marginalize and dismiss it precisely by claiming a difference of perspective for feminist analysis of which no well-educated lawyer or legal commentator can afford to be ignorant. Meanwhile, feminist claims are also challenged by those who think they can reach the same conclusion on independent grounds for therefore not beingdistinctivelyfeminist; “What makes that particularly feminist?” the communitarian, for example, will ask, faced with an argument that feminism is critical of the individualistic bias of the legal system.

Fear of rape: its perceived seriousness and likelihood among young Greek women.

This study examines the magnitude and prevalence of fear of crime as a function of seriousness and probability of occurrence among Greek university students aged 17 to 29. The findings show that fear of rape is the greatest fear of almost all young Greek women, greater than the fear of other serious offenses such as murder. This finding is interpreted in light of rape's reported likelihood in conjunction with its reported seriousness. Further, the precautionary measures show an avoidance pattern in Greek women toward crimes requiring them to physically defend themselves. The study's findings are similar to those reported in other countries and in line with the feminist claim regarding the universality of the fear of rape in the daily life of young women. Discussion includes explanations of high fear in terms of physical and social vulnerability and as a possible reflection of hidden violence against Greek women.

Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory

Heidi Hartmann once said of marriage of Marxism and feminism that it been like marriage of husband and wife depicted in English common law: marxism and feminism are one, and that is marxism.' Lesbian theory and feminism, I want to suggest, are at risk of falling into a similar unhappy marriage in which the one is feminism. Although lesbian feminist theorizing has significantly contributed to feminist thought, it has also generally treated lesbianism as a kind of applied issue. Feminist theories developed outside of context of lesbianism are brought to bear on lesbianism in order to illuminate nature of lesbian oppression and women's relation to women within lesbianism. So, for example, early radical lesbians played off feminist claim that all male-female relationships are dominance relationships. They argued either that lesbian is paradigm case of patriarchal resister because she refuses to be heterosexual or that she fits on a continuum of types of patriarchal resisters.2 In taking this line, lesbian theorists made a space for lesbianism by focusing on what they took to be inherently feminist and antipatriarchal nature of lesbian existence. Contemporary lesbian theorists are less inclined to read lesbianism as feminist resistance to male dominance.3 Instead,

Feminist Standpoint Theory and the Problems of KnowledgeTexts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. Dorothy SmithFeminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology. Liz StanleyGender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism. Susan HekmanWhose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives. Sandra Harding

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview EssaysFeminist Standpoint Theory and the Problems of Knowledge Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. Dorothy Smith Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology. Liz Stanley Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism. Susan Hekman Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives. Sandra Harding Helen E. LonginoHelen E. Longino Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 19, Number 1Autumn, 1993 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494867 Views: 263Total views on this site Citations: 33Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1993 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Axel van den Berg, Tay Jeong Cutting Off the Branch on Which We Are Sitting? On Postpositivism, Value Neutrality, and the “Bias Paradox”, Society 10 (Jul 2022).https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-022-00750-8Shilpa Viswanath, Lauren Bock Mullins Gender responsive budgeting and the COVID-19 pandemic response: a feminist standpoint, Administrative Theory & Praxis 43, no.22 (Sep 2020): 230–244.https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2020.1814080Shelley Budgeon Making feminist claims in the post-truth era: the authority of personal experience, Feminist Theory 22, no.22 (Feb 2021): 248–267.https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700120988638Nicola A Harding Co-constructing feminist research: Ensuring meaningful participation while researching the experiences of criminalised women, Methodological Innovations 13, no.22 (Jun 2020): 205979912092526.https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799120925262Lizhi He, George Zhou, Geri Salinitri, Lianrong Xu Female Underrepresentation in STEM Subjects: An Exploratory Study of Female High School Students in China, EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education 16, no.11 (Jan 2020).https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/109657Angela Leggett Environmentalist protection: feminist methodology and participant risk for research with Chinese NGOs, Contemporary Social Science 13, no.3-43-4 (Jan 2018): 354–371.https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1418522Sharmla Rama Gendered mobilities: The methodology, theory and practice disjuncture, Agenda 32, no.22 (Jun 2018): 113–122.https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2018.1474022Leslie D. Gonzales , The Journal of Higher Education 89, no.55 ( 2018): 677.https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1434278Nancy A. Naples Feminist Standpoint Theory, (Jun 2017): 1–6.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosf044.pub2Kristina B. Wolff Feminism and Postmodernism, (Apr 2016): 1–6.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss774Jon A. Levisohn, D. C. Phillips Charting the Reefs: A Map of Multicultural Epistemology, (Sep 2011): 39–63.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2066-4_3Ben Kotzee Poisoning the Well and Epistemic Privilege, Argumentation 24, no.33 (Mar 2010): 265–281.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-010-9181-8Mary M. Gergen Qualitative Inquiry in Gender Studies, (Dec 2009): 103–131.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1465-1_6Catherine Hundleby Silence and the Limitations of Contextual Objectivity, International Feminist Journal of Politics 11, no.22 (Jun 2009): 254–267.https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740902789625Kristina Wolff Postmodern Feminism, (Feb 2007).https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosp067Nancy A. Naples Strong Objectivity, (Feb 2007).https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeoss286 Table of Contents, ASHE Higher Education Report 31, no.66 (Jan 2006): 1–218.https://doi.org/10.1002/aehe.3106Margaret W. Conkey Dwelling at the margins, action at the intersection? Feminist and indigenous archaeologies, 2005, Archaeologies 1, no.11 (Aug 2005): 9–59.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-005-0003-9Sandra Harding A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory's Controversiality, Hypatia 19, no.11 (Mar 2020): 25–47.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2004.tb01267.xDaniel Harkness To Have and to Hold: Codependency as a Mediator or Moderator of the Relationship Between Substance Abuse in the Family of Origin and Adult-Offspring Medical Problems, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 35, no.22 (Sep 2011): 261–270.https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2003.10400008Piya Chatterjee Transforming Knowledges, (Jan 2003): 257–278.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0007-9_12Lilli S. Hornig, Barbara Lazarus Conclusions, (Jan 2003): 325–336.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0007-9_16A. Kezar Reconstructing Static Images of Leadership: An Application of Positionality Theory, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 8, no.33 (Jan 2002): 94–109.https://doi.org/10.1177/107179190200800308Caroline New Oppressed and Oppressors? The Systematic Mistreatment of Men, Sociology 35, no.33 (Jul 2016): 729–748.https://doi.org/10.1177/S0038038501000372Daniel Harkness, Richard Hale, Melaney Swenson, Kathryn Madsen-Hampton The Development, Reliability, and Validity of a Clinical Rating Scale for Codependency, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 33, no.22 (Jun 2001): 159–171.https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2001.10400481Daniel Harkness Testing Cermak's Hypothesis: Is Dissociation the Mediating Variable that Links Substance Abuse in the Family of Origin with Offspring Codependency?, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 33, no.11 (Sep 2011): 75–82.https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2001.10400471Nadje S. Al-Ali Between Political Epochs and Personal Lives, (Jan 2001): 155–176.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62114-9_11D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein Where Standpoint Stands Now: An Introduction and Commentary, Women's Studies in Communication 23, no.11 (Nov 2015): 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2000.11517687ELIZABETH COMACK Producing Feminist Knowledge:, Theoretical Criminology 3, no.33 (Nov 2016): 287–306.https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480699003003002Brenda J. Allen Black Womanhood and Feminist Standpoints, Management Communication Quarterly 11, no.44 (Aug 2016): 575–586.https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318998114004Daniel Harkness, Gretchen Cotrell The social construction of co-dependency in the treatment of substance abuse, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 14, no.55 (Sep 1997): 473–479.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0740-5472(97)00121-9Brenda J. Allen Feminist standpoint theory: A black woman's (re)view of organizational socialization, Communication Studies 47, no.44 (Dec 1996): 257–271.https://doi.org/10.1080/10510979609368482Natalie Dandekar Matriarchal oppression: Take two, The Journal of Value Inquiry 29, no.44 (Dec 1995): 509–520.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01237535

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature by Donna J. Haraway (review)

The quality of the essays becomes immediately more satisfying with L. Granshaw 's "The Rise of the Modern Hospital in Britain." Had this essay been placed before that of Risse, the latter's essay would have suffered less from gaps in intellectual history between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment. Although the essay is comparatively short, it is able to capsulize the essential points in the development of the hospital and its role in health care from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Irvine Loudon's essay on the period of medical reform (1750—1850) is cast in the same mold. Another carefully crafted, elegantly and clearly written essay, this piece lays out the historiography of the subject in an admirable way and then proceeds to treat its subject skilfully. The author's ability to see the components that have lead to opposing views of the reform movement allows a synthetic rather than a polemic conclusion. Elizabeth Fee and Dorothy Porter combine next in "Public Health, Preventive Medicine and Professionalization: England and America in the Nineteenth Century " and continue the strong series of essays that comprise the central part of this tome. Again, the rise of the concept of public health is placed in the larger sphere of the social history of the two countries (and to a lesser extent several European ones). Roy Porter's essay, "Madness and the Institutions," begins inevitably as a critique of Michael Foucault's concept of the "great confinement," a manifestation of absolutist government. Porter, without totally denying Foucault's ideas any value, discretely adds a number of other causes and responses that contributed to institutionalization of those judged insane. "Providers, Consumers, the State and the Delivery of Health Care Services in Twentieth Century Britain" by Jane Lewis puts into perspective the social forces in play in the development of health care delivery in modern Britain. The author shows how governmental belief that scientific medicine was the key to assuring a healthy population allowed the medical profession to secure its own position. This essay is most adroit in its evocation of the various contenders for power over health care. Anyone wishing an historical perspective on the British National Health Service would do well to start with this essay. The book closes with a translation of an article by Arthur E. Imhof, entitled "The Implications of Increased Life Expectancy for Family and Social Life" I consider this an extremely poor choice of an essay to close a book that, for the most part, is of high quality. Stephen R. Ell Department of Radiology University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention ofNature. By Donna J. Haraway. New York: Routledge, 1991. In her previous book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science, Donna Haraway argued that scientific visions of monkeys and Perspectives in Biology andMedicine, 36, 3 ¦ Spring 1993 | 469 apes—supposedly reflecting the "real nature" of primates and illuminating the evolutionary foundations of human nature, unobscured by culture and history —are themselves profoundly shaped by culturally and historically specific assumptions about gender, race, class, and social order. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention ofNature (consisting of 10 chapters adapted from essays published between 1978 and 1989), Haraway explores the social/historical contexts for a number of different accounts of nature, from primatology to sociobiology , immunology, and problematic feminist claims about "woman's nature" and common "female experience." Haraway, an historian of science and professor in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California (Santa Cruz) begins from the premise that "nature is constructed, constituted historically, not discovered naked in a fossil bed or a tropical forest. Nature is contested" (p. 106). Claims about the nature of primate groups, human sexual dimorphism, or the immune system, prior to their shaping by human society, underlie our understandings of "human possibility within inherited constraint" (p. 101), and these understandings can be shown to change over time. In Chapter 5, "The Contest for Primate Nature: Daughters of Man-theHunter in the Field, 1960-1980" (originally published in 1983), Haraway documents , for example, how female primatologists, working within Washburn's intellectual "patriline...

Civil Rights vs. Civil Liberties

American liberals believe that both civil liberties and civil rights are harmonious aspects of a basic commitment to human rights. But recently these two clusters of values have seemed increasingly to conflict – as, for example, with the feminist claim that the legal toleration of pornography, long a goal sought by civil libertarians, actually violates civil rights as a form of sex discrimination.Here I propose an interpretation of the conflict of civil rights and civil liberties in its latest manifestation: the controversy over how to treat discriminatory verbal harassment on American campuses. I was involved with the controversy in a practical way at Stanford, where I helped draft a harassment regulation that was recently adopted by the university.Like the pornography issue, the harassment problem illustrates the element of paradox in the conflict of civil-liberties and civil-rights perspectives or mentalities. This problem does not simply trigger familiar disagreements between liberals of a classical or libertarian orientation as against those of a welfare state or social democratic one – though it does sometimes do that. In my experience, the issue also has the power to appear to a single person in different shapes and suggest different solutions as it oscillates between being framed in civil-liberties and in civil-rights terms. At the same time, however, it remains recognizably the same problem. It is thus a very practical and political example of the kind of tension noted by Wittgenstein in the aphorism that heads this essay – a puzzle of interpretive framing, of “seeing-as.”

Civil Rights Vs. Civil Liberties: The Case of Discriminatory Verbal Harassment

American liberals believe that both civil liberties and civil rights are harmonious aspects of a basic commitment to human rights. But recently these two clusters of values have seemed increasingly to conflict – as, for example, with the feminist claim that the legal toleration of pornography, long a goal sought by civil libertarians, actually violates civil rights as a form of sex discrimination.Here I propose an interpretation of the conflict of civil rights and civil liberties in its latest manifestation: the controversy over how to treat discriminatory verbal harassment on American campuses. I was involved with the controversy in a practical way at Stanford, where I helped draft a harassment regulation that was recently adopted by the university.Like the pornography issue, the harassment problem illustrates the element of paradox in the conflict of civil-liberties and civil-rights perspectives or mentalities. This problem does not simply trigger familiar disagreements between liberals of a classical or libertarian orientation as against those of a welfare state or social democratic one – though it does sometimes do that. In my experience, the issue also has the power to appear to a single person in different shapes and suggest different solutions as it oscillates between being framed in civil-liberties and in civil-rights terms. At the same time, however, it remains recognizably the same problem. It is thus a very practical and political example of the kind of tension noted by Wittgenstein in the aphorism that heads this essay – a puzzle of interpretive framing, of “seeing-as.”

Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and The Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics

At the heart of recent feminist theorizing about art is the claim that various forms of representation-painting, photography, film-assume a "male gaze." The notion of the gaze has both a literal and a figurative component. Narrowly construed, it refers to actual looking. Broadly, or more metaphorically, it refers to a way of thinking about, and acting in, the world. In literal terms, the gaze is male when men do the looking. Men look both as spectators and as characters within works. In figurative terms, to say that the gaze is male refers to a way of seeing which takes women as its object. In this broad sense, the gaze is male whenever it directs itself at, and takes pleasure in, women, where women function as erotic objects. The feminist claim is that most art, most of the time, places women in this position. In Laura Mulvey's words, man is the bearer of the gaze, woman its object. ' Feminist theory, like many other theories, takes as one of its basic tenets that no vision, not even artistic vision, is neutral vision. All vision is colored by the "spectacles" through which we see the world. The notion that all seeing is "a way of seeing" contrasts sharply with the traditional realist assumption that observation can be cleanly separated from interpretation, at least under certain ideally specified conditions. In part, feminism can be understood as reiterating a familiar, but still important, objection to the naive notion of the innocent eye. As E.H. Gombrich convincingly argues, observation is never innocent. In his words, "whenever we receive a visual impression, we react by docketing it, filing it, grouping it in one way or another, even if the impression is only that of an inkblot or a fingerprint. ... [T]he postulate of an unbiased eye demands the impossible. "2 Observation is always conditioned by perspective and expectation. Yet, the feminist claim that our representations inscribe a male gaze involves more than a denial of the eye's innocence. It involves asserting the central role that gender plays in formulating those expectations. Feminism insists, moreover, that these expectations are disproportionately affected by male needs, beliefs and desires. Both men and women have learned to see the world through male eyes. So, for example, women throughout their lives expend enormous amounts of time and energy and money making themselves "beautiful." In undertaking this costly process, women judge themselves according to internalized standards of what is pleasing to men. As Sandra Bartly observes, adolescent girls "learn to appraise themselves as they are shortly to be appraised." In this sense, the eyes are female, but the gaze is male.3 Feminism objects to seeing the world "through male eyes." It equates the male gaze with patriarchy. Patriarchy defines a social system "marked by the supremacy of the father and the legal dependence of wives and children. "4 Under such a system, women depend not only for status and privilege, but for their very identity, upon men. The assumption is that this arrangement oppresses women. It also, as both feminist and non-feminists have argued, oppresses men, although not necessarily in the same way as it oppresses women. This oppression occurs at the symbolic as well as the material level. Women, as the first editorial of the film journal, Camera Obscura, announced, "are oppressed not only economically and politically, but also in the very forms of reasoning, signifying and symbolical exchange of our culture. "5 Thus, to take a familiar but powerful example, in English "he" functions as the unmarked term, "she" as the marked term.

Gender Communication through Small Groups

Okay, I admit it. I did not burn my bra as a sign of my feminist affiliations in the mid-60s. (Frankly, I wasn't old enough to wear a bra, let alone burn it.) And I haven't marched in any women's rights rallies, not recently, not ever. (I'm just not overt in that manner.) And I confess, I raised two daughters and dressed them in pink so innocent observers would exclaim, What darling little girls! So what gives me the right or privilege to attest suddenly to feminist claims? Not much in past history except that I am an English teacher ... and that says it all. In these past fifteen years, the gender communication issue has grown and flourished as we try to understand more fully, accept, and improve the relationships of males and females in American society. Sandra Bem (1974), Judy Cornelia Pearson (1985), Barbara Eakins and R. Gene Eakins (1978), Nancy M. Henley (1975), Alleen Pace Nilsen (1977), and others have done considerable research into gender and its relation to verbal and nonverbal communication, perception, attitude, and culture.

Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and the Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics

At the heart of recent feminist theorizing about art is the claim that various forms of representation-painting, photography, film-assume gaze. The notion of the gaze has both literal and figurative component. Narrowly construed, it refers to actual looking. Broadly, or more metaphorically, it refers to way of thinking about, and acting in, the world. In literal terms, the gaze is male when men do the looking. Men look both as spectators and as characters within works. In figurative terms, to say that the gaze is male refers to way of which takes women as its object. In this broad sense, the gaze is male it directs itself at, and takes pleasure in, women, where women function as erotic objects. The feminist claim is that most art, most of the time, places women in this position. In Laura Mulvey's words, man is the bearer of the gaze, woman its object. ' Feminist theory, like many other theories, takes as one of its basic tenets that no vision, not even artistic vision, is neutral vision. All vision is colored by the spectacles which we see the world. The notion that all is a way of seeing contrasts sharply with the traditional realist assumption that observation can be cleanly separated from interpretation, at least under certain ideally specified conditions. In part, feminism can be understood as reiterating familiar, but still important, objection to the naive notion of the innocent eye. As E.H. Gombrich convincingly argues, observation is never innocent. In his words, whenever we receive visual impression, we react by docketing it, filing it, grouping it in one way or another, even if the impression is only that of an inkblot or fingerprint. ... [T]he postulate of an unbiased eye demands the impossible. 2 Observation is always conditioned by perspective and expectation. Yet, the feminist claim that our representations inscribe male gaze involves more than denial of the eye's innocence. It involves asserting the central role that gender plays in formulating those expectations. Feminism insists, moreover, that these expectations disproportionately affected by male needs, beliefs and desires. Both men and women have learned to see the world male So, for example, women throughout their lives expend enormous amounts of time and energy and money making themselves beautiful. In undertaking this costly process, women judge themselves according to internalized standards of what is pleasing to men. As Sandra Bartly observes, adolescent girls learn to appraise themselves as they shortly to be appraised. In this sense, the eyes female, but the gaze is male.3 Feminism objects to the world through male eyes. It equates the male gaze with patriarchy. Patriarchy defines social system by the supremacy of the father and the legal dependence of wives and children. 4 Under such system, women depend not only for status and privilege, but for their very identity, upon men. The assumption is that this arrangement oppresses women. It also, as both feminist and non-feminists have argued, oppresses men, although not necessarily in the same way as it oppresses women. This oppression occurs at the symbolic as well as the material level. Women, as the first editorial of the film journal, Camera Obscura, announced, are oppressed not only economically and politically, but also in the very forms of reasoning, signifying and symbolical exchange of our culture. 5 Thus, to take familiar but powerful example, in English he functions as the unmarked term, she as the marked term.

Comment on Hawkesworth's "Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth"

Comment on Hawkesworth's "Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth"

The Other Woman: Feminism and Feminity in the Work of Marguerite Duras by Trista Selous

Book Re v iew s the most probing comments reveal the temptation of responding to and interpreting Duras’s characters as other than mere conduits. Could it be that the readers’ and/or spec­ tators’ desire to find themselves in the “mirror” of the stage is so redoubtable that even Duras can erect only partial barriers between the audience and the characters, enticing her public, instead, into a new form of identification? J udith G. M iller University of Wisconsin-Madison Trista Selous. T he O ther W om an: Feminism and Femininity in the Work of Marguerite D uras. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988. Pp. 260. Price: $30.00. Marguerite Duras’ writing has been called feminine because of the central place of the woman character in each work; and feminist ever since Lacan claimed her writing as the emblematic literary expression of his psychoanalytical theory. This view was upheld by some followers: the orthodox Montrelay, or the dissident Irigaray, writing explicitly as a feminist, claiming that women’s plural sexuality generates a multiple language, which deconstructs the logical grids of the reader-writer. In a study divided into two parts, Trista Selous looks at Duras as a purported feminist writer. She first sums up Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on femaleness and femininity. Given the biological and sociological difference of woman, the Other, the mOther, can one agree with Lacan that the woman, excluded from the nature of things, is excluded from the nature of words, and “does not know what she is saying”? Selous then reads Duras, in a chronological order, pitting the psychoanalysts against her own interpretation. She emphasizes Moderato Cantabile and subsequent works where Duras’ idiosyncrasies can best be traced. Selous takes up the oft discussed function of the “blanks,” the missing links in Duras’ text. Contrary to the feminist contention, Selous does not see the “blanks” as “the place of woman.” Although one can call them points of “nonsense,” as Montrelay claims, they are not specifically “feminine,” anymore than other rhetorical figures. Selous agrees with Duras’ critics that the “blanks” produce “jouissance” for the reader who is spared the “castration” of a finite knowledge. While Selous finds the psychoanalytical grid useful, she distances herself from the feminists. She sees the characterization and position of women as incompatible with the feminist credo. Although Duras’woman is constructed as other, she is portrayed, not as the subject, but as the object of desire of the male subject. Whenever the woman is depicted as subject, her sexual desire can only be inferred by the reader as a desire for her own annihila­ tion. With few exceptions, in Duras’ women, Selous sees masochism coupled with passivity in relation to men. Selous further opposes the feminist claims to Duras, on grounds that there is little diver­ sity in characterization of women, and that she places little emphasis on women’s relation to one another. Duras does not allow for interaction and difference between women, nor for conflicted meanings at the level of language. Consequently there is little political com­ mitment on Duras’part. Although in Duras, women’s silence, ambiguity, and madness can be read as forms of rebellion (as suggested by Marini, Irigaray, Lemoine-Luccioni and Montrelay), Duras is not a hard-line feminist, either as a writer or as a filmmaker. Selous’ discussion of the psychoanalytical grids is readable and aptly applied to specific aspects of the work. Feminists will want to address her claim to and interpretation of the pervasive masochism in Duras’ woman object. What emerges intact is the secret of Duras’ seduction. A more stylistic and linguistic grid, such as the one invited by Irigaray, would shed more light on the question of Duras’ femininity and feminism. A nnie-C laude D obbs Sarah Lawrence Coliege ...

The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought

Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells Barnett, and Fannie Lou Hamer are but a few names from a growing list of distinguished African-American women activists. Although their sustained resistance to Black women's victimization within interlocking systems of race, gender, and class oppression is well known, these women did not act alone.' Their actions were nurtured by the support of countless, ordinary African-American women who, through strategies of everyday resistance, created a powerful foundation for

Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth

paper. 1 For general arguments against an excessive philosophical preoccupation with epistemology, see Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); John Gunnell, Between Philosophy and Politics (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986); Mark Krupnick, ed., Displacement (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1983); Paul Kress, "Against Epistemology," Journal of Politics 41, no. 2 (May 1979): 526-42. For specific arguments against foundationalism, see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979); Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983); Don Herzog, Without Foundations: Justification in Political Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985). It is worth noting the irony that even those most intent on repudiating epistemology on the grounds that traditional epistemological concerns involve claims altogether beyond the possibilities for human knowledge are themselves advancing epistemological claims.

Participation in a Male Sport Model and the Value Alienation of Female Intercollegiate Athletes

Due in part to changes brought about by Title IX and the NCAA, women’s intercollegiate sport programs have increasingly emulated the male model of intercollegiate sport. Given such a shift in orientation, the present study examined the relationship between the degree to which an athlete’s sport program emulated the male model of sport and (a) the nature and type of values emphasized in the athlete’s sport program, and (b) the degree of value alienation experienced by athletes. Such hypothesized relationships are consistent with feminist claims that women are alienated in structures that have been created and shaped by men without regard for the existence or experienees of women. A questionnaire was mailed to 952 former female athletes who had participated in sport programs at 10 Division I universities, with completed questionnaires received from 482 athletes. Results indicated that an increasing emphasis was placed on “male model values” as the sport program of athletes increasingly emulated the male sport model. Furthermore, athletes were slightly more likely to express feelings of value alienation with increasing emulation of the male sport model.

On Digging, Dialogue, and Decision-Making

The papers in this special issue of The Review of Religious Research represent a significant milestone in the current movement for the inclusion of women in all facets of the life of the contemporary Christian churches. There are, as I see it, three primary arenas in which that movement has been framed: the feminist movement, more widely but especially within the churches, the denominational structure concerned with women's inclusion; and those among us who have found in this issue a fertile ground for the pursuit of research concerning the phenomenon. Each of these arenas has its own motivations, its own styles, its own issues. Often these can seem to work at cross purposes. The coming together of these three elements is what I have called the significant event. The churches, as institutions that celebrate some of the most deeply held perceptions and expectations of human culture, have been a particular problem for the feminist movement. Worshipping a God who has been almost universally referred to in masculine terms, exhibiting a long tradition of male leadership and patriarchal style, churches have more often than not defined the social role of women in a far more limited way than that claimed by the feminist movement. Yet at certain points in history, the churches-or at least some of them-have opened up new channels of action for women who have felt the call of God to move out into new roles of service, proclamation, and leadership. These women, acting out their perceptions of a divine mandate, have been among the most invincible in the struggle for freedom of action and legitimation of their role. Modern society has not responded particularly positively to claims about a call from God, so much of what has been spoken and written by religiously motivated women has been brushed aside as rhetoric, special pleading, or even demagoguery. "Horror stories" of how the church has treated some women are brushed aside as isolated cases, and their narrators are discounted. Modern people demand documented "facts," percentages, statistics. And so it is that some researchers are called in to provide reliable documentation. In this context, they may serve either side of the debate, depending on their findings and how they are interpreted. What we find here, for example, are a number of studies that offer at least glimpses into the "objective" reality in which the argument is taking place. Both feminism and its detractors require research to make their points acceptable; and this is true in the Church as it is elsewhere. The churches are, in spite of their ancient roots, institutions of modern society. Especially for those closest to the mainstream of modernization, that means that they partake of the bureaucratic ethos of modern organizations. In addition to the claims of church feminists that the exclusion of women from ecclesiastical positions violates the universalism of the call of God, churches must deal also with the bureaucratic ideal that Berger, et al. [1974] have called "moralized anonymity." Bureaucracies are expected to fill positions on the basis of the ability of persons to fulfill a Job description, and on that basis alone. Any consideration of other

SOCIAL THEORY AND THE FUTURE OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY

Three themes that seem likely to be influential in the near future have recently characterized the work of geographers using social theories as the basis of their explanations of urban phenomena. They are (1) the debates about structure and human agency. (2) the claims of feminists about the analytical significance of the social construction of gender roles, and (3) the demand that we now use our social theories more actively to explain experienced reality. In continuing our use of social theory in urban geography, we must prevent its marginalization as one specific substantive topic; the alternative epistemologies of this type of work can guide new interpretations of every substantive issue in urban geography.