Full Description
Feminisms and Womanisms brings together theory and practical application, so that feminist discourse interacts as a partner with the lived experience of women's social action. The selections combine classics in feminist thought with work from modern theorists and offer a solid foundation in international feminism.
The conceptual understanding embedded in the terms feminism and womanism contributes to feminist discourse, a carefully differentiated focus on the ideological uses of language to define relationships that have been historically mired in domination. The terms also define the way gender often has been used to signify and support domination. Given that feminism and womanism are interpretive concepts, there is always a sense that knowledge-making is in progress; for there is nothing static or stagnant about feminism, feminist theory and feminist action.
The formative nature of the feminist movement has, of necessity, a parallel interpretive theory. This reader embraces both the formative nature of the movement and the accompanying interpretive theories. It also pays attention to the chronological, cultural, geopolitical, racial and ethnic landscapes and sites where women live, carry out social action and theorize issues of equality. For both the general and academic reader, this book will be edifying while providing exposure to the feminist, womanist voices that inform the scholarship.
Contents
SECTION ONE: FOUNDATIONS
Meg Luxton, Feminism As a Class Act: Working-Class Feminism and the Women's Movement in Canada
Sharon Donna McIvor, Self-Government and Aboriginal Women
L. Pauline Rankin and Jill Vickers, Women's Movements and State Feminism: Integrating Diversity into Public Policy
Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
Simone de Beauvoir, Myth and Reality
Betty Friedan, The Crisis in Women's Identity
Germaine Greer, The Middle-Class Myth of Love and Marriage
Gloria Steinem, Life between the Lines
Alice Walker, Womanist: A Letter to the Editor of MS
bell hooks, Feminism: A Transformational Politic
Samantha Sacks, Why Are You a Feminist?
Anne-Marie Kinahan, Women Who Run from the Wolves: Feminist Critique as Post-Feminism
Section Two: Diversity
Anne Fausto-Sterling, The Five Sexes, Revisited
Ruth Frankenberg, Growing Up White: Feminism, Racism, and the Social Geography of Childhood
Yvonne Bobb-Smith, Caribbean Feminism versus Canadian Feminism
Amita Handa, Modest and Modern: Women as Markers of the Indian Nation State
Makeda Silvera, Man Royals and Sodomites: Some Thoughts on the Invisibility of Afro-Caribbean Lesbians
Section Three: Socialization And Gender Roles
Lois Gould, X--A Fabulous Child's Story
Naomi Wolf, Nakedness: Pride and Shame
Andrea O'Reilly, Mothers, Daughters, and Feminism Today: Empowerment, Agency, Narrative, and Motherline
Michelle Hammer, How I Almost Killed My Mother in Childbirth
Margaret Cho, Crush Crash
Patricia Payette, The Feminist Wife? Notes from a Political ""Engagement""
Section Four: Identity, Body, And Health
Kim Anderson, The Construction of a Negative Identity
Julie Glaser, Eat and Disorder
Kathleen LeBesco, Fat and Fabulous: Resisting Constructions of Female Body Ideals
Mariko Tamaki, Angry Naked Women
Inga Muscio, Blood and Cunts
Nancy Graham, Mother Root: Constant Craving
Carolyn Egan and Linda Gardner, Racism, Women's Health, and Reproductive Freedom
Susan Sontag, The Double Standard of Aging
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman
Margaret Cruikshank, Gerastology: A Feminist's View of Gerontology and Women's Aging
Section Five: Work
Jan Borowy, Shelly Gordon, and Gayle Lebans, Are These Clothes Clean? The Campaign for Fair Wages and Working Conditions for Homeworkers
Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong, Class Is a Feminist Issue
Chris Bruckert, The World of the Professional Stripper
Himani Bannerji, In the Matter of ""X"": Building ""Race"" into Sexual Harassment
Section Six: The Classroom
Linda Briskin, Privileging Agency and Organizing: A New Approach for Women's Studies
Viviane Namaste with Georgia Sitara, Inclusive Pedagogy in the Women's Studies Classroom: Teaching the Kimberly Nixon Case
Jean Bobby Noble, Queer Pedagogies of the Closet: Teaching Ignorances in the Heteronormative Classroom
Section Seven: Popular Culture
Janice Acoose, Discovering the Spark
Motion (Wendy Brathwaite), Black Woman Rage
Adrienne Rich, Credo of a Passionate Skeptic
Margaret Atwood, Review of Diving into the Wreck
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Not a Moral Issue
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
Angela Davis, Mama's Got the Blues
Section Eight: Praxis-Social Change
As told to Janet Silman, All for a Decent House
Harriet G. Rosenberg, From Trash to Treasure: Housewife Activists and the Environmental Justice Movement
Diane Driedger, Emerging from the Shadows: Women with Disabilities Organize
Neita Kay Israelite and Karen Swartz, Reformulating the Feminist Perspective: Giving Voice to Women with Disabilities
Joanne Cohen, Identity, Community, and Same-Sex Marriage
Beverly Smith, Equal Marriage for Same-Sex Couples
Federation des femmes du Quebec 1999, 2000 Good Reasons to March
Tammy C. Landau, Women's Experiences with Mandatory Charging for Wife Assault in Ontario, Canada: A Case against the Prosecution
Cornelia Sollfrank, Women Hackers: A Report from the Mission to Locate Subversive Women on the Net
Section Nine: Globalism
Lee-Anne Broadhead, The Gender Dimension to the Search for Global Justice
Naila Kabeer, Gender Equality and Human Development Outcomes: Enhancing Capabilities
Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism
Bibliography, Copyright Acknowledgements
