Work Of Feminist Theorists Research Articles

Beyond Consent: Exploring Bi+ People’s Experiences of Negotiating Sex Through a Queer Phenomenological Framework

ABSTRACT This article explores sexual negotiation beyond dominant consent frameworks that have centered on heterosexuality, responding to and preventing sexual violence, and the pursuit of autonomous, free choice. Building on the work of feminist theorists, I challenge the prevailing emphasis on individual responsibility and autonomy in understanding sexual violence and consent and urge a deeper consideration of how bodies and choices are shaped by social, cultural, and historical contexts. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews, I examine how bi+ individuals in Australia negotiate sexual encounters with partners of diverse genders. Using a queer phenomenological framework of comfort and discomfort, I focus on experiences where participants felt they have been able to negotiate sex well. This framework acknowledges the complex interplay between sexual negotiation, gendered norms and sexual scripts, and subjectivity. I argue that hetero and queer norms and scripts both constrain and give possibility to sexual negotiation, and I propose that queer bodies and queer sex can disrupt normative constraints in ways that positively impact sexual negotiation. I conclude by advocating for a deeper understanding of the nuanced ways our choices are shaped during sexual encounters and suggest that we must look beyond heterosexuality and violence prevention going forward.

Identity Politics, Justice, and the Quest for Solidarity

Abstract This article situates arguments against identity politics within a broader context of philosophical and political arguments about identity and the subject. One pervasive argument is that identity politics is a key factor working against social solidarity in a pluralistic democracy. In order to contest this claim, I use the work of feminist theorists who address a persistent bias against collective identity in Western philosophical thought. Finally, I argue that the practice of social solidarity requires not jettisoning identity, but re-conceptualizing identity in terms of narrative, which can serve as a basis for understanding one’s moral responsibility to others.

The productive techniques and constitutive effects of ‘evidence-based policy’ and ‘consumer participation’ discourses in health policy processes

For over twenty years there have been calls for greater ‘consumer’ participation in health decision-making. While it is recognised by governments and other stakeholders that ‘consumer’ participation is desirable, barriers to meaningful involvement nonetheless remain. It has been suggested that the reifying of ‘evidence-based policy’ may be limiting opportunities for participation, through the way this discourse legitimates particular voices to the exclusion of others. Others have suggested that assumptions underpinning the very notion of the ‘affected community’ or ‘consumers’ as fixed and bounded ‘policy publics’ need to be problematised. In this paper, drawing on interviews (n = 41) with individuals closely involved in Australian drug policy discussions, we critically interrogate the productive techniques and constitutive effects of ‘evidence-based policy’ and ‘consumer participation’ discourses in the context of drug policy processes. To inform our analysis, we draw on and combine a number of critical perspectives including Foucault's concept of subjugated knowledges, the work of feminist theorists, as well as recent work regarding conceptualisations of emergent policy publics. First, we explore how the subject position of ‘consumer’ might be seen as enacted in the material-discursive practices of ‘evidence-based policy’ and ‘consumer participation’ in drug policy processes. Secondly, we consider the centralising power-effects of the dominant ‘evidence-based policy’ paradigm, and how resistance may be thought about in this context. We suggest that such interrogation has potential to recast the call for ‘consumer’ participation in health policy decision-making and drug policy processes.

ANALYSING ANIMALITY: A CRITICAL APPROACH

Most people seem to believe that it is wrong to cause needless suffering and death to non-human animals, and yet most people also contribute to the needless suffering and death of a great many animals. If speciesism is understood as a psychological prejudice—the tendency of an individual human agent to disregard the interests of animals—then this fact is extremely difficult to explain. I argue that once speciesism is understood structurally—as a matter of injustice rather than a matter of interpersonal wrongdoing or individual prejudice—the project of explaining how so many humans are implicated in animal suffering becomes much more tractable. Drawing on the work of feminist theorists such as Sally Haslanger and Catharine MacKinnon, I suggest a way of reconceiving the question of the moral status of animals as a political question about the construction of animals and animality through our social, cultural, legal, and linguistic practices.

Reclaiming eroticism in the academy

In this article we address the question ‘what are we to do with ourselves?’ by arguing for the reclamation of the erotic in higher education. By defining the erotic in a way which encompasses the pursuit of pleasure and love, we seek to re-differentiate the collapsed categories of sex and eros. Universities have always been environments where a love of learning and pleasure in pedagogy is possible. Yet a range of cultural and societal factors have rendered academic life on the one hand disembodied, and on the other, commodified and sexualized, especially for women. Our suggestion is that these effects strip out the opportunities to love and enjoy academic life. We therefore pursue the possibility of reclaiming eroticism and the erotic in ways which refuse commodified sexualized norms. Drawing on the work of feminist theorists, we make three proposals for reclaiming eros in the academy: by exploring the relationship between bodies and knowledge; recognizing love in learning and wisdom; and cultivating the pleasure and nurturance that arise in collegial and pedagogic relations. Our view is that exploring broader notions of eros and eroticism in the university will invite a more meaningful understanding of academic work as embodied practice, involving pleasure and love.

Inclusion and Democratization: Class, Gender, Race, and the Extension of Suffrage

ly, analysts may define workers in relation to the means of production, but the path from objective position in the relations of production to political consciousness and identity is twisted and can lead to multiple outcomes. The peril of overlooking the process through which class is socially constructed can perhaps be seen most clearly in South Africa, where white workers used access to the ballot box to guarantee their privileged position toward black workers. White workers rallied under the banner: Workers of the world unite and fight for a White South Africa.32 The point is not simply that race can weaken class cohesion. Indeed, phrasing the relationship between race and class in this manner assumes the causal priority of class over race. Conceptualizing race in this manner-as something that divides classes-prevents scholars from integrating race more meaningfully into their analyses. The basis for excluding racially subordinated groups from the franchise was race, not class, and a conceptualization of race that assigns it importance only insofar as it divides classes is unlikely to provide much illumination about the processes through which these groups are excluded and later included into the democratic polity. Perhaps the worst result of Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens' use of race is that, by acknowledging its importance only when it overlaps with class, they doubly exclude African-American women, once by defeminizing class and twice by defeminizing race. Gender and Race as Categories of Analysis While defining democracy as universal adult male suffrage limits the scope of the variables considered as relevant causal factors, there is a more fundamental point about how analytical categories are constructed. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens could grant that their theory explains only a small part of the story of democratization and that separate studies are needed to explain women's incorporation. Ultimately, Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens lament that analysis of female suffrage would require another comparative since there is little correlation between the extension of suffrage across class and across lines.33 Their analytical error is to assume that, since the group being incorporated in the study is men, they can avoid dealing with gender. As Terrell Carver has observed, gender is not a synonym for women.34 Gender, defined as the social organization of sexual difference, includes both men and women. The absence of women in the definition of the dependent variable, then, does not mean that played no role in episodes of democratization that enfranchised men. As the work of feminist theorists has shown, played an intimate role in defining who counted as a citizen; therefore infused democratic institutions from the beginning, since the abstract individual-the basis for citizenshipwas male.35 The abstract individual of liberal theory was from the start deeply imbued with and race, and certain categories of persons were not defined as

FROM CARE TO CITIZENSHIP:CALLING ECOFEMINISM BACK TO POLITICS

Although there are important aspects of ecofeminist valuations of women's caring, a greater degree of skepticism than is now found in ecofeminist scholarship is in order. In this article I argue that there are political risks in celebrating women's association with caring, as both an ethic and a practice, and in reducing women's ethico-political life to care. I support this position by drawing on the work of feminist theorists who argue that the positive identification of women with caring ought to be treated cautiously for it obscures some of the negative implications of feminized care and narrows our understanding of women as political actors. I explain why I think ecofeminists would be better served by using feminist theories of citizenship to understand and interpret women's engagement in politics.

From Care to Citizenship: Calling Ecofeminism Back to Politics

Although there are important aspects of ecofeminist valuations of women's caring, a greater degree of skepticism than is now found in ecofeminist scholarship is in order. In this article I argue that there are political risks in celebrating women's association with caring, as both an ethic and a practice, and in reducing women's ethico-political life to care. I support this position by drawing on the work of feminist theorists who argue that the positive identification of women with caring ought to be treated cautiously for it obscures some of the negative implications of feminized care and narrows our understanding of women as political actors. I explain why I think ecofeminists would be better served by using feminist theories of citizenship to understand and interpret women's engagement in politics.

The externality of the inside: body images of pregnancy.

This paper draws on literature, empirical data and a range of theoretical perspectives on the maternal body to examine understandings of the relationship between a pregnant woman and her foetus, with a particular focus on the body images used by women to represent this relationship. Psychoanalytic and nursing accounts of the relationship between mother and foetus have often described a symbiotic 'oneness' or unity during pregnancy. Such accounts, however, stress the temporary nature of this unity and identify a series of 'stages' of separation or 'polarisation' between mother and foetus during pregnancy. In contrast, many of the 25 women who participated in our interview study of new motherhood described a confusion of the boundary between self and foetus. For many women the experience of pregnancy and the relationship with the unborn baby was ambiguous and uncertain. Importantly, none of these women described her relationship with the foetus as a series of developmental stages, but rather saw it as fluctuating throughout pregnancy. These findings are more consistent with the work of feminist theorists who describe pregnancy as a dynamic and fluid merging of the inside and the outside of the body/self.

Mass Mediated Representations of the Susan Smith Trial

This essay examines the mass mediated representations of the Susan Smith trial that circulated in both legal and public spheres. Building on the interdisciplinary work of feminist theorists and critics, the authors contend that the media framing of the concept of motherhood occasionally turned Smith into a cipher for discussions of a variety of social issues in America. Although some observers viewed her as an emblematic reminder of the problems that have come from the abandonment of traditional values, other commentators saw her as the victim of patriarchy and abuse. The authors conclude that the mainstream construction of motherhood eventually took precedence over other interpretations of the case. Within this dominant narrative, the tragic drowning of two children in a South Carolina lake in 1994 transformed Smith into a modern Medea, an iconic reminder of what awaited other women who violated the laws of motherhood.

THE BOUNDARIES OF HEGEMONY: CONFIGURING PUBLIC SPACE FROM THE MARGINS

This paper aims to develop a hermeneutic strategy able to direct a useful participation by the Church in the formation of public policy. It does so by drawing on the work of feminist theorists, among them Kathleen Kirby. The political implications of the ‘hermeneutics of the boundary’, Kirby identified, are explored here to establish how they might impact on conceptions of public policy making and applications.

Counselling for women: The contribution of feminist theory and practice

Abstract Much of the literature on the theory and practice of counselling is gender-blind, the assumption being that the emotional worlds of women and men are the same. This view is challenged, the author reviewing the work of feminist theorists and practitioners. Central to this discourse is the argument that to understand the internal psychic structures of women, her concepts of se& we have to acknowledge the effect of external and oppressive structures on her psychological development. This can assist us in our understanding of how the therapeutic relationship might address women's needs and provide the ‘space’ for her to grow and change.