US Feminist Research Articles

The Politics of Abortion

Worldwide, the abortion issue dominates reproductive and sexual politics primarily because opposition to abortion has been at the centre of the right-wing's broad conservative agenda. Under the George W. Bush presidencies, attacks on abortion and other aspects of reproductive freedom have escalated eroding rights and access. The most vulnerable women in society—women who are poor, young, and women of colour—are the most harmed. Their right to have children is undermined as well by policies which curtail health care and welfare benefits. Abortion politics are also part of the battle over the separation of church and state. Religious conservatives try to blur the line by basing policy decisions on everything from emergency contraception to stem cell research on ideology and religion rather than science. The article also looks critically at the ‘choice’ framework for reproductive rights, and the intersection of abortion and population control politics. These two major fault lines have divided US feminists, weakening their ability to resist the right. Finally, the article shows how women of colour activists are promoting an expansive reproductive justice agenda which brings reproductive rights together with social justice and human rights.

Bridging media‐specific approaches

Feminist study of media encompasses a variety of media forms, each of which possesses a distinct set of issues determined by the medium and how it is used, as well as by the variant theoretical and methodological traditions through which scholars have studied the medium. US feminist film and television criticism have maintained distinct methodological and theoretical emphases—yet the two areas of study are closely related. For example, feminist television studies developed from a synthesis of theoretical and methodological work in a range of fields, including feminist film criticism and theory, and remains at once connected to and distinct from feminist approaches to studying film...

Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

The US feminist art movement: a selective annotated bibliography

The US feminist art movement of the 1970s is examined through selected works written by artists, critics, and historians during the 1990s. Books, exhibition catalogues, dissertations, and articles place the movement within the broader contexts of art history and criticism, women’s history, and cultural studies. The art includes painting, drawing, collage, mixed‐media, graphics, installations, video, and performance. An increasing historical perspective allows scholars to examine the movement’s institutions and unresolved issues surrounding class, race, and sexual preference. Background is provided by an introductory essay, which summarizes the movement’s facets of protest, pedagogy, networks and professional associations, and art making while noting examples of publications and institutions that form part of the record of the movement. This article will be useful to librarians and scholars in art, women’s studies, history, sociology, and cultural studies.

Gendering (Trans)National Advocacy

Whether lauded or deplored, transnational organizing among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) generally, and women's NGOs specifically, is recognized as an active player in debates about international economic policy. In this article, I turn attention toward one consequence of women's transnational NGO organizing that has been under-analyzed: the impact that transnational activism has on domestic political organizations and opportunities. The recent increase in activism on gender and policies of free trade in the USA is the product of women's transnational political organizingover the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In the case of NAFTA, theoretical insights about the ways that gendered categories undergird the economy were made visible by and through the transnational advocacy in which feminists engaged.And, this article indicates, these transnational advocacy efforts have helped to shift the domestic political terrain of women's organizing in the United States. I argue that as women's rights advocates in the United States were confronted with the realization that the nexus between gender and trade policy was important to many women's rights and feminist activists around the world, they began to question why the gendered implication of trade policy did not hold a comparable place in the US feminist arena. Thus, changes in the domestic political landscape of non-governmentalactivismmay be one of the longest lasting (and most overlooked) consequences of transnational political engagement.

A World without War: How US Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I

A World without War: How US Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I

A Symposium on the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair

The Clinton Affair raises so many issues around sexuality that a new journal on sexualities could hardly afford to ignore it. In this symposium, six prominent commentators provide brief analyses. Arlene Stein examines the role of the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair within the debate in the US known as ‘culture wars’. Stevi Jackson ponders why US feminists were so quiet on the issue, and provides her own analysis. Stephen O. Murray and Laurie Shrage both look at the issues raised around ‘sexual meaning’ - or ‘what is sex?’ Rob Stones discusses why and how people increasingly seem to be capable of becoming so involved with ‘abstract figures’, and draws some parallels with the concern over Princess Diana. Finally, Jeff Hearn links the affair to the growing interest in sex in organizations.

Dialogues of the self: Toward a theory of (re)reading Ai

Recent US feminist theory highlights the disjunction between traditional “academic” criticism and nondominant perspectives. These perspectives, which often value a kind of “personal” or “autobiographical” criticism, receive little credence in a masculinised academic culture; as Tey Diana Rebolledo observes of Chicano/a writers, “we have internalized the dominant ideology so that only by talking theory (construed as a superior form of logic) can our literature and our cultural practices be intellectually viable”. Exploring what strategies feminist readers and writers can most effectively use for approaching literature of violence written by women, this essay discusses and enacts the conflict between traditional and “autobiographical” criticism, focusing specifically on the powerful and disturbing work of the multiracial poet, Ai, whose work effectively prohibits detachment. It also takes on literary critics’ propensity to normalise, rationalise, and distance emotional responses to texts, as it explores alternative modes of understanding and “theorising”, in the process modeling a “continuum of responding”.

Feminists and Neo-Malthusians: Past and Present Alliances

This study examines the interaction between US feminists and US neo-Malthusians from the early 20th century through the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in order to reveal long-term changes in movement interactions and to identify conditions that are conducive and those that are detrimental to the development and flourishing of alliances. After an introduction the paper presents an analysis of interactions in four time periods. The first period is the early 20th century when feminists were concerned with gaining suffrage and neo-Malthusians were contending with such population movements as eugenics and immigration restriction to control the composition of the population. Next is the 1945-65 period which saw a quiet between neo-Malthusians and the mildly planned parenthood movement. The third period 1965-74 was characterized by a growth in the neo-Malthusian movement and a revival of feminism accompanied by feminist critiques of international population programs. During 1974-85 neo-Malthusianism reached a turning point as birth control was firmly ensconced within the international individual human rights rhetoric and a pro-choice creed became mandatory for feminists. Finally 1985-95 saw a further weakening of the neo-Malthusian ideology accompanied by the elaboration of a feminist population policy and implementation strategy. The durability of the current alliance between neo-Malthusianists and feminists is then considered in light of the extent to which they share an ideology and goals and can call forth mutual benefits. It is concluded that neo-Malthusians and feminists are neither natural allies or natural enemies and that the current alliance is fragile and unlikely to endure changed circumstances. However the growth and consolidation of the global society may strengthen this alliance.

Confronting Neo-conservatism: Anglo-American Women's Movements under Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney

Comparative research on women and public policy has thus far neglected the impact of neo-conservative governments on feminist inter ests. Using data on legislative and judicial decisions in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, this article addresses policy-making in five key issue areas before and after the elections of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney. Comparative results indicate disad vantageous conditions for US feminism in the Reagan years, some progress for British women's interests during the Thatcher era, and relatively advantageous outcomes for Canadian feminists in the Mulroney period. The opportunity structures approach is evaluated as an explanation for these findings.

Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading

I've just emerged from a bout of reading, a wide eclectic sampling of what this wave of US feminism has had to say about motherhood. My conclusions are tentative, and there's another study that I've learned arises directly out of this one a study of how feminists have misread our own texts on this subject. My reading came as the end point of a year and a half of infertility treatments and, although I see now how heavy that experience lies on my own readings, perhaps my misreadings, I've also come to see that anyone doing this work is likely to worry about where to stand. I want to criticize the pervasive pronatalism that has so shaped my recent experience a pronatalism not only in the culture at large but also inside feminism but this desire inevitably raises the question: who is allowed to criticize pronatalism, to question the desire for children? The mothers might feel it disingenuous to take on this task; they have their children after all. And the childless are bound to feel that their critique is a species of sour grapes. Certainly, women like me who have tried so hard to have babies late might well feel sheepish and hypocritical about mounting a heavy critique of pronatalism. Will the lesbian community speak up with unembarrassed enthusiasm for the child-free life? Not now. Far more typical at the moment is the recent book Politics of the Heart: A Lesbian Parenting Anthology. (Although I find there Nancy D. Polikoffs question to the community: 'Who is talking about the women who don't ever want to be mothers?' Her answer: 'No one.') (Pollack and Vaughn, 1987) In one of the best collections of essays about the decision to mother I've found, Why Children?, the editors say they searched for mothers unhappy with motherhood and they found them; but they could not get these mothers to write (Dowrick and Grundberg, 1981). The dissatisfied mothers feared hurting their children if they admitted how little they had liked mothering. And what about the mothers who had children against their