Preface

The claims that women do not differ essentially from men and that women as rational subjects are entitled to the same rights as men are no longer unproblematic claims for feminism. It is not, of course, that women now believe that they deserve civil and political rights unequal to those of men; rath...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hypatia 1996-01, Vol.11 (3), p.vii-vii
Main Author: Waugh, Joanne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil rights
Jews
Literature
Nonfiction
Women
Womens rights movement
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Summary:The claims that women do not differ essentially from men and that women as rational subjects are entitled to the same rights as men are no longer unproblematic claims for feminism. It is not, of course, that women now believe that they deserve civil and political rights unequal to those of men; rather, it is that the foundation for equal rights claims -- the generic rational subject -- is no longer obvious. The recognition that the norms of Enlightenment rationality from which claims for equal rights proceed seem not only to be historically and culturally specific but also specific with regard to ethnicity and class, undermines the notion that there ever was or even could be a genderless subject, who lacks, as well, a culture, language, ethnicity, and socio-economic class. The nature and activity of the Enlightenment rational subject seems to have been modelled on Northern-European, Protestant, heterosexual white men of property; consequently, people of different ethnicities, religions, genders, and classes must either fail to meet the criteria for a rational subject, or come to resemble the culturally specific -- and specifically gendered -- model for Enlightenment rationality. Nor can feminism confidently speak for all women, since differences other than one's sex or gender are relevant to how one conceives of oneself and one's actions, and how one and one's actions are conceived of by others. Sara Ahmed confronts what these realizations imply for feminist theory and feminist practice in 'Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist Practice and Theory.' Jacob Hale raises questions about how conceptions of women are produced in a society that takes heterosexuality as a norm, and whether such conceptions agree with the descriptions that contemporary American women, especially lesbians, give of themselves.
ISSN:0887-5367