DOCSLIB.ORG

Exploring the Construction of Lgbt Political Identity and Interests in U.S

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Exploring the Construction of Lgbt Political Identity and Interests in U.S BROKERING IDENTITY: EXPLORING THE CONSTRUCTION OF LGBT POLITICAL IDENTITY AND INTERESTS IN U.S. POLITICS, 1968-2001 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Zein Murib IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dara Z. Strolovitch August 2016 © Zein Murib 2016 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am thankful to many people and institutions for support as I worked to complete this degree. First and foremost, I thank my committee – Dara Strolovitch, Joe Soss, Andrew Karch, and Kevin Murphy – for intellectual, professional, and the occasional emotional support that created the best conditions possible for writing this dissertation. Many people describe dissertation writing as a fraught experience, and it is at times, but I have also found it to be a source of great pleasure knowing that this committee would read this work and pose provocative questions that would ultimately improve it and challenge me to develop as a scholar. I would like to give special thanks to Dara Strolovitch for the close readings and the comments she has offered on the drafts of this dissertation, as well as other recent writings as I have positioned myself to make the transition from graduate student. Her feedback and advice have been an education in not only how to be a political scientist who strives to pose timely and pressing questions about politics, but also how to mentor students. Thank you for sharing your expertise with me. I would also like to thank the political science faculty at the University of Minnesota for the education on political science as a discipline, comprehensive subfield knowledge, and fostering an intellectual environment where students are encouraged to take risks. In particular, I want to write huge thanks to Terri Caraway, Katherine Pearson, and Dara Strolovitch for the education on gender, sex, and sexuality in politics, specifically the prodding to critically approach these categories as they animate political science research. Theirs was a unique education in the sub-subfield of gender and politics, and I am very grateful for it. Thanks to Joanne Miller for early and on-going i mentorship. Andy Karch pressed me to refine the analytic framework that I introduce in this dissertation, and I thank him for being the voice in the back of my head as I am writing that reminds me to be as precise as possible with my language. Joan Tronto, August Nimtz, and Daniel Kelliher offered comments on this project at various stages of its development, and this final version is improved because of their interest and interventions. Joe Soss convened a dissertation group for the two years that I wrote this dissertation, and I would like to thank him and that group for helping to puzzle out various methodological questions as well as substantive issues. This dissertation was also greatly improved by line-by-line feedback that Joe provided for one of the earliest drafts of chapter five, which subsequently served as the model for how to convey the analysis in this dissertation; my many thanks to Joe. I have benefitted from help offered by faculty outside of political science as well. I thank Kevin Murphy for sharing his deep knowledge of the history of sexuality with me. I left several meetings with him energized by the conversation we just had and armed with a list of citations that proved invaluable as I attempted to educate myself in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history in the US. With respect to method, thanks to Annie Hall in Communications for detailed feedback and instruction in Critical Discourse Analysis and Ron Aminzade for the introduction to historical social science approaches. Jigna Desai from Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) posed challenging questions about coalitions when I presented a version of this research at a GWSS colloquium two years ago, and I thank her so much for setting me down that path. I owe many thanks to Kathie Hull in Sociology for help crafting the questions and methodological approaches during the early stages of this project. ii This dissertation was completed thanks to generous financial support from University of Minnesota’s Graduate Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and two semesters of dissertation fellowship provided by the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. I was able to conduct two summers of archival research thanks to a generous research grant from Cornell University’s Zwickler Memorial Research Fund, and I thank the archivists at the Cornell Human Sexuality Collection under the supervision of Brenda Marston for their assistance in navigating the collection. Colleagues and friends at the University of Minnesota warrant many thanks. Matt Hindman and Adam Dahl are my Seward buddies, and I thank them for their friendship and countless close and helpful readings of the many different versions of this project that contributed to its development tremendously. Charmaine Chua, Ashley English, Elena Gambino, Rachel Mattson, Emily Baer-Bostis, Chase Hobbs, and David Temin have generously read many drafts of each of these chapters and offered helpful feedback during our dissertation group meetings – my gratitude to them. Phil Chen, Maron Sorensen, Magic Wade, and Brooke Coe are dear grad school friends who I would like to thank for fun times that helped make coursework (especially MLE!), dissertating, and job marketing much brighter. I wrote this dissertation during a two year stint of living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and I would like to thank the people there who offered support and chances for fun: Sara, Jeff, and Gina Frenette; Christina Berchini; José Alvergue and Stephanie Farrar; Pam Foreman and Ellen Mahaffy; and the queer students who came to dinner at our house or attended talks I gave at UWEC and generously engaged me on this project. Thanks are also due to the city of Eau Claire, itself, for being so “calm” that I had nothing better to iii do than write this dissertation. Last but not least, I have benefitted greatly from the advice and mentorship of my neighbor, Katherine Schneider, who is an emeritus professor and committed activist on issues impacting people with disabilities. Thanks, Kathie, for the chats over the fence and the encouraging words and wisdom that always gave me the extra motivation to go back to the computer and continue writing. I have a wonderful chosen family who were integral to the completion of this dissertation. I was lucky to meet Hillary and Caitlin Conboy during the first week of graduate school at a university sponsored BBQ. They are the greatest of friends, and I thank them for so many cocktails, dinners, Wilson/Common Roots writing dates, and dog walks, as well as advice and encouragement as I finished this degree. Rebecca Trinite and Jess Kutch are my DC friends who have always challenged me to balance my development as an academic with a commitment to activism. I thank them for that and I hope I do right by them in the classroom and beyond. I thank Jackie Burns and Shehab Jafari for helping to brighten the occasionally dull and trying moments of graduate school with their friendship and general love of life. Of my bonus family, the Detournays, I thank Emmanuel for sharing his expertise as a professor to offer invaluable career advice as well as the even more important education on single malt whiskeys. Thanks to Christine for really good pep talks! My gratitude to Charlotte, and her partner Nic, for beer and pasta and friendship in Chicago. Thanks to my immediate family are many. My parents left Lebanon because of civil war when they were young, and as a result I grew up in a family that was continually engaged in discussions about politics. I thank my parents for this upbringing that cultivated some of the sensibilities that have made the questions in this dissertation iv possible, in particular the insight that politics is not just what happens when people vote. To my dad: thanks for teaching me that framing an argument matters, no matter the subject. To my mom: thank you for showing me how to always ask tough questions and for being so incredibly tough yourself – seriously, thank you. I also want to thank my mom for extending her habit of asking millions of questions to taking the time to learn about my studies and this project. My brother actually does politics, and I thank him for being my best buddy and for being on-call to clarify some minute detail about the 107th Congress or electoral gerrymandering that I might be wondering about on any given Saturday afternoon. Beyond these lofty gifts, I would like to thank my family for the emotional and material support that made completing this degree possible. I always appreciate when people thank their pets so I would like to thank mine. Oscar receives gratitude primarily in the currency of dog treats, but it would be irresponsible if I didn’t make it publicly known that this dissertation would have never been written were it not for his constant company, snoring on the couch in my little office, and his perpetual excitement to go for a walk that always did the trick for clearing my head of writer’s block. Bidou is a cat and cannot read, either, but I thanked the dog so I would like thank him, too, for always alerting me when it was time to end my day of writing and feed him dinner. Finally, it is my strong opinion that every aspiring social scientist should have a critical feminist theorist to have dinner with at the end of the day. Mine is Diane Detournay and I owe her many thanks.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • (DE)SUBJUGATED KNOWLEDGES.Pdf
    (De)Subjugated Knowledges An Introduction to Transgender Studies Susan Stryker In , I found myself standing in line for my turn at the microphone in the Proshansky Auditorium of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I was attending a conference called “Lesbian and Gay History,” organized by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS). I had just attended a panel discussion on “Gender and the Homosexual Role,” moderated by Randolph Trumbach, whose speakers consisted of Will Roscoe, Martha Vicinus, George Chauncey, Ramon Gutierrez, Elizabeth Kennedy, and Martin Manalansan. I had heard a great many interesting things about fairies and berdaches (as two-spirit Native Americans were still being called), Corn Mothers and molly-houses, passionate female friendships, butch-femme dyads, and the Southeast Asian gay diaspora, but I was nevertheless standing in line to register a protest. Each of the panelists was an intellectual star in his or her own right, but they were not, I thought, taken collectively, a very gender- diverse lot. From my perspective, with a recently claimed transsexual identity, they all looked pretty much the same: like nontransgender people. A new wave of transgender scholarship, part of a broader queer intellectual movement was, by that point in time, already a few years old. Why were there no transgender speakers on the panel? Why was the entire discussion of “gender diversity” subsumed within a discussion of sexual desire—as if the only reason to express gender was to signal the mode of one’s attractions and availabilities to potential sex partners? As I stood in line, trying to marshal my thoughts and feelings into what I hoped would come across as an articulate and eloquent critique of gay historiography rather than a petulant complaint that no- body had asked me to be on that panel, a middle-aged white man on the other side of the auditorium reached the front of the other queue for the other microphone and began to speak.
    [Show full text]
  • Strategies for Sexual Subversion: Informing the Future of Sexualities Research and Activism
    STRATEGIES FOR SEXUAL SUBVERSION: INFORMING THE FUTURE OF SEXUALITIES RESEARCH AND ACTIVISM ANDREA P. HERRERA University of Oregon Abstract In this paper, I review, analyze, and evaluate the myriad ways early canonical and more recent high-profile scholarship in the field of sexualities envision a liberatory sexual politics and the most fruitful modes of achieving it. Due to theorists’ diverging interpretations of the causes and forms of sexual oppression as well as their differing visions of liberated sexuality, I find that prescriptions for dismantling the “ethnosexual regime” (Nagel 2000) vary widely. The strategies suggested by scholars can be categorized into: 1) radical lesbian-feminist separatism, 2) identity politics, 3) the redeployment of gender, which encompasses trans and intersex bodies, gender play (e.g., butch-femme, drag, and shifting constructions of masculinity), and non-binary identities, 4) micro-level individual and interpersonal solutions, 5) changes in educational institutions, and 6) sexualities research itself. I conclude by making suggestions for sociologists who seek to further theorize and effect the subversion of normative systems of sexuality. Introduction Implicit in much sexualities research is the belief that another world is possible, one free from sexual regulation, oppression, persecution, and violence. While nearly all scholars of sexualities identify problems in the contemporary social organization of sexuality, they differ in their estimations of the causes and solutions to these issues. This paper is a qualitative meta-analytic review of the ways early canonical and more recent high-profile scholarship in Andrea P. Herrera ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate and sociologist at the University of Oregon specializing in gender, sexuality, embodiment, and new media.
    [Show full text]
  • Religion, Freedom and Escape of Women in African American and Indian
    Koshy 1 Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom and Escape of Women in African American and Indian Literatures A Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of the School Of Communication In Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in English By Lovely Koshy 3 May 2013 Koshy 2 Liberty University School of Communication Master of Arts in English _______________________________________________________________________ Thesis Chair Date Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, Ph.D. ______________________________________________________________________ First Reader Date Mark Schmidt, Ph.D. _______________________________________________________________________ Second Reader Date Clive McClelland, Ph. D. Koshy 3 Special Thanks to . My husband, Denny Koshy, for putting up with my strange schedules, stressful days, and cheering me on My children, Jonathan, David, Ruth and Jerusalem-Rose, for providing comic relief daily My parents, who coincidentally also celebrated fifty years in the ministry, for their legacy Dr. Yaw, for hours devoted to helping me present a holistic argument Family and friends, for prayers, support, and encouragement Koshy 4 Table of Contents Introduction: Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom and Escape of Women in African American and Indian Literatures …………………………. ………………………………………….……...5 Chapter One: Amen, Sister! Religious Matriarch in Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun ………..............25 Chapter Two: Spicy Women in Tagore’s Short Stories……………………………………….…....…..38 Chapter Three: Hansberry and Tagore: Spice in Social Activism………………………………………..52 Chapter Four: Savoring the Spice through Hansberry and Tagore…………………. ……………….....67 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………….…..81 Koshy 5 Introduction Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom, and Escape of Women in African American and Indian Literatures “When the world gets ugly enough – a woman will do anything for her family.” – Mama in A Raisin in the Sun . Lorraine Hansberry and Rabindranath Tagore are two authors whose contribution to literature goes beyond their giftedness as writers.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter Six: Activist Agendas and Visions After Stonewall (1969-1973)
    Chapter Six: Activist Agendas and Visions after Stonewall (1969-1973) Documents 103-108: Gay Liberation Manifestos, 1969-1970 The documents reprinted in The Stonewall Riots are “Gay Revolution Comes Out,” Rat, 12 Aug. 1969, 7; North American Conference of Homophile Organizations Committee on Youth, “A Radical Manifesto—The Homophile Movement Must Be Radicalized!” 28 Aug. 1969, reprinted in Stephen Donaldson, “Student Homophile League News,” Gay Power (1.2), c. Sep. 1969, 16, 19-20; Preamble, Gay Activists Alliance Constitution, 21 Dec. 1969, Gay Activists Alliance Records, Box 18, Folder 2, New York Public Library; Carl Wittman, “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto,” San Francisco Free Press, 22 Dec. 1969, 3-5; Martha Shelley, “Gay is Good,” Rat, 24 Feb. 1970, 11; Steve Kuromiya, “Come Out, Wherever You Are! Come Out,” Philadelphia Free Press, 27 July 1970, 6-7. For related early sources on gay liberation agendas and philosophies in New York, see “Come Out for Freedom,” Come Out!, 14 Nov. 1969, 1; Bob Fontanella, “Sexuality and the American Male,” Come Out!, 14 Nov. 1969, 15; Lois Hart, “Community Center,” Come Out!, 14 Nov. 1969, 15; Leo Louis Martello, “A Positive Image for the Homosexual,” Come Out!, 14 Nov. 1969, 16; “An Interview with New York City Liberationists,” San Francisco Free Press, 7 Dec. 1969, 5; Bob Martin, “Radicalism and Homosexuality,” Come Out!, 10 Jan. 1970, 4; Allan Warshawsky and Ellen Bedoz, “G.L.F. and the Movement,” Come Out!,” 10 Jan. 1970, 4-5; Red Butterfly, “Red Butterfly,” Come Out!, 10 Jan. 1970, 4-5; Bob Kohler, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Come Out!, 10 Jan.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Gender and Women Studies
    Gender and Women’s Studies 100 Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies Fall 2006 Professor Amy L. Brandzel Phone: 775-6783 Office: Rice 115 Office Hours: T, Th 11-12pm and by appt. E-mail: [email protected] (best way to reach me) Course Description: While Gender and Women‟s Studies is a truly vast field of inquiry, there is great symmetry in the ways in which feminist scholars have been engaged with questions as to how disciplinary apparatuses and discourses shape and construct identities. This course will begin the process of peeking into this exciting scholarship, but here we will chart our exploration through the constructions of identities via the lens of queer and sexuality studies. By exploring how sexuality is constructed through the contested notions of gender, race, class, nation, and global, this class offers an opportunity to interrogate a range of discourses and disciplinary apparatuses (such as law, medicine, and popular culture) that shape and construct our understandings of identity, subjectivity, experience, power, agency, normalcy, deviance, disciplinarity, labor, activism and justice at the individual, community, national and transnational levels. We will also be working diligently to connect these issues directly to current affairs, especially during our last week of the course when the class will conduct a conference on “Feminism, War and the State of Emergency.” Course Objectives: In its most simplistic sense, this course is designed to familiarize you with key debates (such as identity, subjectivity, power, agency, normalcy, etc) within the field of Gender and Women‟s Studies, and help you obtain a nuanced, critical analysis of these debates.
    [Show full text]
  • Eugenics and Domestic Science in the 1924 Sociological Survey of White Women in North Queensland
    This file is part of the following reference: Colclough, Gillian (2008) The measure of the woman : eugenics and domestic science in the 1924 sociological survey of white women in North Queensland. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Access to this file is available from: http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/5266 THE MEASURE OF THE WOMAN: EUGENICS AND DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN THE 1924 SOCIOLOGICAL SURVEY OF WHITE WOMEN IN NORTH QUEENSLAND Thesis submitted by Gillian Beth COLCLOUGH, BA (Hons) WA on February 11 2008 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Arts and Social Sciences James Cook University Abstract This thesis considers experiences of white women in Queensland‟s north in the early years of „white‟ Australia, in this case from Federation until the late 1920s. Because of government and health authority interest in determining issues that might influence the health and well-being of white northern women, and hence their families and a future white labour force, in 1924 the Institute of Tropical Medicine conducted a comprehensive Sociological Survey of White Women in selected northern towns. Designed to address and resolve concerns of government and medical authorities with anxieties about sanitation, hygiene and eugenic wellbeing, the Survey used domestic science criteria to measure the health knowledge of its subjects: in so doing, it gathered detailed information about their lives. Guided by the Survey assessment categories, together with local and overseas literature on racial ideas, the thesis examines salient social and scientific concerns about white women in Queensland‟s tropical north and in white-dominated societies elsewhere and considers them against the oral reminiscences of women who recalled their lives in the North for the North Queensland Oral History Project.
    [Show full text]
  • Transgender, and Queer History Is a Publication of the National Park Foundation and the National Park Service
    Published online 2016 www.nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories/lgbtqthemestudy.htm LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History is a publication of the National Park Foundation and the National Park Service. We are very grateful for the generous support of the Gill Foundation, which has made this publication possible. The views and conclusions contained in the essays are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government. © 2016 National Park Foundation Washington, DC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced without permission from the publishers. Links (URLs) to websites referenced in this document were accurate at the time of publication. INCLUSIVE STORIES Although scholars of LGBTQ history have generally been inclusive of women, the working classes, and gender-nonconforming people, the narrative that is found in mainstream media and that many people think of when they think of LGBTQ history is overwhelmingly white, middle-class, male, and has been focused on urban communities. While these are important histories, they do not present a full picture of LGBTQ history. To include other communities, we asked the authors to look beyond the more well-known stories. Inclusion within each chapter, however, isn’t enough to describe the geographic, economic, legal, and other cultural factors that shaped these diverse histories. Therefore, we commissioned chapters providing broad historical contexts for two spirit, transgender, Latino/a, African American Pacific Islander, and bisexual communities.
    [Show full text]
  • Trans-Phobia and the Relational Production of Gender Elaine Craig
    Hastings Women’s Law Journal Volume 18 Article 2 Number 2 Summer 2007 1-1-2007 Trans-Phobia and the Relational Production of Gender Elaine Craig Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Elaine Craig, Trans-Phobia and the Relational Production of Gender, 18 Hastings Women's L.J. 137 (2007). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj/vol18/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Women’s Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Trans-Phobia and the Relational Production of Gender Elaine Craig* In 1431, Joan of Arc, a nineteen-year-old cross-dresser, was burned alive at the stake because she refused to stop dressing in men's clothing.' Nearly six centuries later, in 2002, Gwen Araujo, a seventeen-year-old male-to-female transsexual, was strangled to death by two men who later claimed what can be described as a "trans panic defense" because they hadn't realized that Gwen was biologically male before they had sex with her.2 Individuals who transgress gender norms are among the most despised, marginalized, and discriminated against members of many societies. 3 A deep seated fear of transgender individuals reveals itself in a plethora of contexts and across a wide spectrum of demographics. Perhaps most disturbingly, intolerance towards and discrimination against transgender individuals is found not only among the ranks of those whose gender offers them opportunity and privilege, but also among those whose own gender identity and expression has been a source of oppression and persecution.
    [Show full text]
  • Eng234h3x-201609
    ENG 234: LGBT Writing and the American Century Section: ENG 234 Meeting times: Mondays 4-6:45PM Location: Sullivan House Instructor: Ryan Winet Instructor office: Orlando 112 Instructor email: [email protected] Office Hours: MWF 9-11AM or by appointment Class description: In 1941, publisher Henry Luce imagined a period when the United States would lead the “triumphal purpose of freedom” across the globe, declaring every citizen was called to “create” the American Century. This course will consider Luce’s emphasis upon creating the American Century from the perspectives of LGBT authors who sought to develop spheres of sexual and artistic freedom following the Second World War. We will read selections from earlier authors like Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, and Hart Crane before turning our primary attention to the many LGBT authors who contributed to a flourishing of American literature in the middle twentieth century, including Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, James Baldwin, and others. Required texts for purchase: · Oxford Book of American Poetry (978-0195162516) · Riki Wilchins: Queer Theory, Gender Theory (978-1626010895) · Gore Vidal: The City and the Pillar (978-1400030378) · James Baldwin: Giovanni’s Room (978-0345806567) · Leslie Feinberg: Stone Butch Blues (978-1555838539) Course Goals/Learning Objectives (taken from the University of Arizona’s online resources page for Honors English) By the end of this course, students will be able to: Analyze a variety of texts through close reading and critical thinking. Develop strategies for analyzing texts for particular purposes, audiences, and contexts. Compose essays that develop analyses with evidence drawn from the texts.
    [Show full text]
  • STONEWALL INN, 51-53 Christopher Street, Manhattan Built: 1843 (51), 1846 (53); Combined with New Façade, 1930; Architect, William Bayard Willis
    Landmarks Preservation Commission June 23, 2015, Designation List 483 LP-2574 STONEWALL INN, 51-53 Christopher Street, Manhattan Built: 1843 (51), 1846 (53); Combined with New Façade, 1930; architect, William Bayard Willis Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan, Tax Map Block 610, Lot 1 in part consisting of the land on which the buildings at 51-53 Christopher Street are situated On June 23, 2015 the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation of the Stonewall Inn as a New York City Landmark and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No.1). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of the law. Twenty-seven people testified in favor of the designation including Public Advocate Letitia James, Council Member Corey Johnson, Council Member Rosie Mendez, representatives of Comptroller Scott Stringer, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Assembly Member Deborah Glick, State Senator Brad Hoylman, Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer, Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Real Estate Board of New York, the Historic Districts Council, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Family Equality Council, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Parks Conservation Association, SaveStonewall.org, the Society for the Architecture of the City, and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, New York City, as well as three participants in the Stonewall Rebellion—Martin Boyce, Jim Fouratt, and Dr. Gil Horowitz (Dr. Horowitz represented the Stonewall Veterans Association)—and historians David Carter, Andrew Dolkart, and Ken Lustbader. In an email to the Commission on May 21, 2015 Benjamin Duell, of Duell LLC the owner of 51-53 Christopher Street, expressed his support for the designation.
    [Show full text]
  • Feminism and Pragmatism
    Feminism and Pragmatism Richard Rorty When two women ascended to the Supreme Court of Minnesota, of the reasonable rapist on women's employment opportunities' .3 Catherine MacKinnon asked: 'Will they use the tools of law as 'The conditions that create women's rapeability as the definition women, for all women?' She continued as follows: of womanhood were not even seen as susceptible to change. '4 MacKinnon thinks that such assumptions of unchangeability will only be overcome once we can hear 'what women as women I think that the real feminist issue is not whether biological would have to say'. I take her point to be that assumptions males or biological females hold positions of power, become visible as assumptions only if we can make the although it is utterly essential that women be there. And I contradictories of those assumptions sound plausible. So injus­ am not saying that viewpoints have genitals. My issue is tices may not be perceived as injustices, even by those who suffer what our identifications are, what our loyalties are, who them, until somebody invents a previously unplayed role. Only if our community is, to whom we are accountable. If it somebody has a dream, and a voice to describe that dream, does seems as if this is not very concrete, I think it is because we what looked like nature begin to look like culture, what looked have no idea what women as women would have to say. like fate begin to look like a moral abomination. For until then I'm evoking for women a role that we have yet to make, in only the language of the oppressor is available, and most oppres­ the name of a voice that, un silenced, might say something sors have had the wit to teach the oppressed a language in which that has never been heard .
    [Show full text]
  • THE MARGINALITY of the AMERICAN LEFT: the LEGACY of the 1960S
    THE MARGINALITY OF THE AMERICAN LEFT: THE LEGACY OF THE 1960s Barbara Epstein By virtually any definition of the term, the US left is not doing well. In the sixties the left was intertwined with a series of progressive social movements; these movements and the left within them attracted enormous numbers of young people, many of whom changed not only their ideas but the way they led their lives through this experience. A vibrant left politics and culture flourished in every major city in the North and in many in the South; few college or university campuses were untouched by it. The left was a major presence in national politics and in intellectual life, outside as well as within academia. The left brought a freshness, honesty and moral integrity to national discussion that compelled attention and respect. Today this is virtually all gone. Though there are many organizing projects concerned with specific social problems, there are only the remnants of a left able to link these issues and call for systematic social change. In national politics the left has little if any influence. There is a subculture that identifies itself as left, but it is insular and dispirited, and too often preoc- cupied with policing the attitudes and language of those in or close to the left. The staleness of the left's perspective and its political marginality in the nineties stand in sharp contrast to its attractiveness and influence in the sixties. The mistakes of the left are only one reason for its decline: the left has also been undermined by the rising power of global corporate capital and discouraged by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent victory of capitalism over socialism.
    [Show full text]