Showing papers in "Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society in 1980"
TL;DR: The authors argue that the erasure of lesbians from scholarly feminist literature is anti-lesbian and anti-feminist in its consequences, and to distort the experience of heterosexual women as well.
Abstract: I want to say a little about the way ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’ was originally conceived
and the context in which we are now living. It was written in part to challenge the erasure of
lesbian existence from so much of scholarly feminist literature, an erasure which I felt (and
feel) to be not just anti-lesbian, but anti-feminist in its consequences, and to distort the experience of heterosexual women as well. It was not written to widen divisions but to encourage
heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution which disempowers
women – and to change it. I also hoped that other lesbians would feel the depth and breadth of
woman identification and woman bonding that has run like a continuous though stifled theme
through the heterosexual experience, and that this would become increasingly a politically
activating impulse, not simply a validation of personal lives. I wanted the essay to suggest
new kinds of criticism, to incite new questions in classrooms and academic journals, and to
sketch, at least, some bridge over the gap between lesbian and feminist. I wanted, at the very
least, for feminists to find it less possible to read, write, or teach from a perspective of unexamined heterocentricity.
2,940 citations
TL;DR: In a recent review of anthropological writings on sex roles, this paper pointed out that "What is clearest in the literature reviewed is the need for further investigation, and what is most impressive about this literature is the overwhelming number of specific researchable questions it has produced."
Abstract: This is an article about questions. Feminists have managed, in recent years, to impress a matter of undeniable importance on both academic and popular audiences alike. Previously blinded by bias, we have begun a "discovery" of women and have reported a good deal of data on women's lives, needs, and interests that earlier scholars ignored. Sexist traditions have, of course, made our records uneven. Now more than ever we see just how little is known about women. And the urgency experienced by current researchers is fueled by a recognition that invaluable records of women's arts, work, and politics are irretrievably lost. Our theories are-the saying goes-only as good as our data. As was suggested in a recent review of anthropological writings on sex roles, "What is clearest in the literature reviewed is the need for further investigation.... What is most impressive about this literature is the overwhelming number of specific researchable questions it has produced. Hopefully the social force which inspired anthropological interest in women's status will sustain this interest through the long second stage of research fashioned to explore these hypotheses."1 But whatever we do or do not know, my sense is that feminist thinking-in anthropology at least-faces yet a more serious problem. Many a fieldworker has spent her months in the hills with predominantly
455 citations
TL;DR: A woman's place is in the home has been one of the most important principles of architectural design and urban planning in the United States for the last century as discussed by the authors, but it will not be found in large type in textbooks on land use.
Abstract: "A woman's place is in the home" has been one of the most important principles of architectural design and urban planning in the United States for the last century. An implicit rather than explicit principle for the conservative and male-dominated design professions, it will not be found stated in large type in textbooks on land use. It has generated much less debate than the other organizing principles of the contemporary American city in an era of monopoly capitalism, which include the ravaging pressure of private land development, the fetishistic dependence on millions of private automobiles, and the wasteful use of energy.' However, women have rejected this dogma and entered the paid
249 citations
TL;DR: The field of human development underwent an interesting pendulum swing over the years, from an earlier concentration on childhood to a focus on the elderly, and new attention is being paid to middle age.
Abstract: As the aging of the American population became apparent, the field of human development underwent an interesting pendulum swing over the years, from an earlier concentration on childhood to a focus on the elderly. Gerontology emerged as a specialty long before middle age received research attention. Now new attention is being paid to middle age. Prominent in the immediate background of this scrutiny was the Kansas City Study of Adult Life in the 1950s and 1960s, led by psychologists from the University of Chicago. The first of their many publications was the 1964 book, Personality in Middle and Late Life, followed four years later by an anthology that remains even today the best collection of essays on the middle years.2
188 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that if we continue to speak this sameness, if we speak to each other as men have spoken for centuries, as they taught us to speak, we will fail each other.
Abstract: If we continue to speak this sameness,1 if we speak to each other as men have spoken for centuries, as they taught us to speak, we will fail each other. Again. ... Words will pass through our bodies, above our heads, disappear, make us disappear. Far. Above. Absent from ourselves, we become machines that are spoken, machines that speak. Clean skins2 envelop us, but they are not our own. We have fled into proper names, we have been violated by them.3 Not yours, not mine. We don't have names. We change them as men exchange us, as they use us. It's frivolous to be so changeable so long as we are a medium of exchange.
178 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors deal with three related uses of the words "women," "men", "men," "suburbs," and "cities" in American culture: the city against the suburb, men against women, and women against men.
Abstract: "Cities" and "suburbs," "men" and "women," are names of categories that encompass individual entities which are, in many ways, as different from each other as they are similar. Yet, because the commonalities that do exist are, for various reasons, important to us, we find the labels meaningful. In this paper, I will try to deal with three related uses of the words "women," "men," "suburbs," and "cities." First, they are symbols that our culture has construed as polar opposites: the city against the suburb, men against women. We have gone on to link the city with men, the suburbs with women. Next, they are both symbols and actual events in the lives of contemporary Americans who talk about themselves. Finally, they are the subjects of statistical descriptions of the distribution of people of various racial and socioeconomic groups in different residential locations, household types, and jobs. The pictures that emerge from each type of data-the cultural, the introspective self-report, and the demographic-have a certain apparent consistency. Yet, taken together, contradictions between symbols, lived experience, and demographic description become obvious.
139 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors outline some historical precedents for the current feminist attack on commercial sex, as represented by the Women against Pornography campaign, as well as the women's suffrage movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Abstract: In this essay, I shall outline some historical precedents for the current feminist attack on commercial sex, as represented by the Women against Pornography campaign.' The radical feminist attack on commercial sex has its roots in earlier feminist campaigns against male vice and the double standard. Past generations of feminists attacked prostitution, pornography, white slavery, and homosexuality as manifestations of undifferentiated male lust. Their campaigns were brilliant organizing drives that successfully aroused female anger, stimulated grass-roots organizations, and mobilized women not previously brought into the political arena. The vitality of the women's suffrage movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries cannot be understood without reference to the revivalistic quality of these antivice crusades, which often ran in tandem with the struggle for the vote. Nonetheless, these earlier moral campaigns were in many ways self-defeating. Frequently, they failed to achieve their goals; feminists started a discourse on sex and mobilized an offensive against male vice,
138 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a discussion separates the strands of argument often tangled in current approaches to the issue, whether these approaches appear in the popular media, academic journals, or feminist publications.
Abstract: Time calls it "Ms-guided,"' a syndicated columnist "linguistic lunacy."2 TV Guide wonders what the "women's lib redhots" with "the nutty pronouns" are doing.3 A clear understanding of the sexist language issue continues to elude the popular press. The medium is not alone in its misunderstanding. This discussion separates the strands of argument often tangled in current approaches to the issue, whether these approaches appear in the popular media, academic journals, or feminist publications. The arguments against sexist language have been mistranslated more often than not. Those mistranslations have then been
122 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors turn a familiar fact into a historical puzzle: how and why schoolteaching tip from a predominantly male to a female occupation, and why top managerial positions remain male even when 85 percent of public schoolteachers were women.
Abstract: We are turning a familiar fact into a historical puzzle. How and why did schoolteaching tip from a predominantly male to a female occupation, and why did top managerial positions remain male even when 85 percent of public schoolteachers were women? This brief report discusses the developing conceptualization of our work and comments on the process of interdisciplinary research. Although the inclusive dates for the study are, roughly, 1840-1970, we shall focus here on the period 1840-1900.
112 citations
TL;DR: In a recent study, the authors found that women expressed significantly higher levels of fear than men when living in cities and reported increased use of certain safety precautions, such as staying home at night or avoiding certain parts of the city.
Abstract: Although crime and the fear of crime affect both the men and women who live in cities, women are especially affected. In numerous studies they express significantly higher levels of fear than men. For example, according to a 1972 national poll,1 over half the women surveyed, compared with 20 percent of the men, said they were afraid to walk in their neighborhoods at night. The proportion of women reporting such feelings has grown in recent years.2 Accompanying this fear may be an increased use of certain safety precautions, such as staying home at night or avoiding certain parts of the city. This results in what Biderman3 has called "foregone opportunities." Beyond serving as means of protection for women, such restrictions may serve as instruments of social control. Feminist analyses of one crime, rape, have made this point eloquently:
112 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigates the interrelationship between city spatial structure, women's household work, and urban policy and argues that the dominance of the single-family detached dwelling, its separation from the workplace, and its decentralized urban location are as much the products of the patriarchal organization of household production as of the capitalist organization of wage work.
Abstract: This paper investigates the interrelationship between city spatial structure, women's household work, and urban policy. It first differentiates between two types of work in urban space: wage-labor production and household reproduction of labor power, generally and incorrectly ignored in analyses of urban spatial structure and dynamics by neoclassical location theorists and Marxist urbanologists alike. I contend that social reproduction, organized within the patriarchal household where an unequal internal division of labor favors men, profoundly affects and explains the use of urban space. The paper then presents a theoretical argument regarding the evolution of contemporary urban spatial structure. It argues that the dominance of the single-family detached dwelling, its separation from the workplace, and its decentralized urban location are as much the products of the patriarchal organization of household production as of the capitalist organization of wage work. While this arrangement is apparently inefficient and onerous from the point of view of women, it offers advantages to men and poses contradictions for capitalism. Challenging such patriarchal structuring of urban space are residential choices that certain demographic groups are currently making. New spatial developments-such as retirement communities, gentrification (urban renewal for upperand middle-income households), and the growth of small towns-suggest that the dominant urban decentralized form of housing and land use may pose major obstacles to efficient household production. A second, and less anarchic, challenge is from the women's movement. Since the 1960s women have organized to
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluate psychoanalytic paradigms, themselves in transition, in order to see what they imply for a contextual theory of female sexuality, and challenge two popular assumptions: (1) that sexuality is an innate force that achieves its ideal expression when free from cultural inhibitions; and (2) that female sexuality is inhibited (hyposexual), while male sexuality represents the norm.
Abstract: It has long been recognized that certain conventions-the double standard, the cult of virginity, and the requirement that female sexuality find expression solely within monogamous heterosexual marriages-control and inhibit female sexuality. Whatever their origins might be, these conventions are major supports for male dominance and patriarchy. Consequently, various feminist critiques have proposed one or another new prescriptions for sexuality as a part of a general restructuring of society. However, it is difficult to formulate such prescriptions without a large theory of sexuality. The aim of this paper is to evaluate psychoanalytic paradigms, themselves in transition, in order to see what they imply for a contextual theory of female sexuality. Two popular assumptions will be challenged: (1) that sexuality is an innate force that achieves its ideal expression when free from cultural inhibitions; and (2) that female sexuality is inhibited (hyposexual), while male sexuality represents the norm. On the contrary, individuals do internalize their culture, which shapes both their experience of desire and expression of sexuality. If female sexuality is now inhibited, male sexuality is driven and cannot serve as a model. Sexuality must be understood, not only in terms of its source, but also in its relationship to the maintenance of identity.
TL;DR: This article reviewed what we have learned about the baccalaureate origins of women achievers and highlighted ambiguities inherent in this kind of research and the difficulties of interpreting the data.
Abstract: Identifying the baccalaureate origins of achieving women might seem a relatively straightforward task. It is not. Difficulties arise because many standard information sources are inadequate or incomplete, because the definition of achievement not only is open to interpretation but also is limited by the resources available, and because the number of achieving women by any measure is small and rendered smaller when only those achievers who have graduated from college are selected. If achieving graduates are then to be compared on the basis of the type of institution from which they received the baccalaureate degree, this again reduces the number of women in each group. Further subdivisions of sets of achievers or institutions may yield such small groups of subjects that reliability of findings and their interpretations may suffer. Yet researchers still try to delineate the parameters that influence subsequent achievement of women college graduates, or that distinguish among the kinds of accomplishment attained by women graduates relative to their baccalaureate origins. The following report reviews what we have learned about the baccalaureate origins of women achievers and highlights ambiguities inherent in this kind of research and the difficulties of interpreting the data.
TL;DR: A review of the relationship between behavior and the menstrual cycle can be found in this article, where the authors focus on influences on the individual arising from biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors.
Abstract: Because of the existence of multiple individual and environmental factors influencing a person's behavior, no one study can provide a complete analysis of the complex relationships that exist between behavior and the menstrual cycle. In studying that we must focus on influences on the individual arising from biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. All three have the capacity to modify an individual woman's responses, and some factors may be more important than others in accounting for any one woman's behavioral changes. Thus dramatic biological changes, perhaps in nerve-cell receptor response to changing hormone levels, may be of such importance in the case of one individual that personality and sociocultural features may be relatively inconsequential. Alternatively, constellations of psychopathological syndromes may be primarily responsible for magnifying the effects of normal variations in hormone levels or receptor sensitivities. In this review, we will focus on selected research studies that have attempted to explore the relationship between behavior and the menstrual cycle. Our purpose is to give an overview of the spectrum of information available. Further resource material will be noted throughout the text for those readers with a particular interest in any of the topics discussed. In considering each study, we shall devote some attention to the kind of individuals studied, the techniques employed in
TL;DR: Within the last five years, the issues of women in urban settings have come to the fore, receiving long overdue attention as discussed by the authors, and the solutions will benefit both women as a special group and the society as a whole.
Abstract: Within the last five years, the issues of women in urban settings have come to the fore, receiving long overdue attention. Academics and policymakers, both of whom have been loathe to admit that there even was a perspective on urban problems unique to women, are not only concerning themselves with these problems but also are realizing that the solutions will benefit both women as a special group and the society as a whole.
TL;DR: The notion of self-control and self-determination of sexual and reproductive uses of the body was introduced by women in the early 1970s as mentioned in this paper and has been used to defend women's right to abortion.
Abstract: Throughout history in virtually all cultures women have practiced abortion in one form or another. Recurrent moral or legal prohibitions against abortion have merely forced women underground in their efforts at reproductive control. Abortion remains a political not technological issue. 2 essential ideas underlie a feminist view of reproductive freedom: equality and autonomy. The first is derived from the biological connection between womens bodies sexuality and reproduction. It is the concept of "bodily integrity" or self-determination of sexual and reproductive uses of the body that leads to the notion of self-control and the right to self-control. The second argument for the right to abortion is based on the social position of women and the socially determined needs that position generates. Since women are the ones most affected by pregnancy the care and rearing of children it is women who must decide about contraception abortion and childbearing. The first idea emphasizes the individual dimensions of reproduction the second the social consequences. The dichotomy in feminist logic means that responsibility for reproduction should be shared by both sexes ideally; and at the same time women have to defend the principle of control over their bodies since they have never experienced the concrete historical conditions under which they could give up the right.
TL;DR: Most women are encouraged to feel guilty for their own victimization, authorities are reluctant to believe women who report being raped, and, even if a woman is believed, she is compelled to endure humiliating experiences that at worst constitute additional violations of her self as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Most who study the status of American women are aware of the prominent role sexual violence plays in the oppression of women-of the devastating effects it has on individual women who are victimized by it as well as the broader ways in which it intimidates all women. Women are encouraged to feel guilty for their own victimization, authorities are reluctant to believe women who report being raped, and, even if a woman is believed, she is compelled to endure humiliating experiences that at worst constitute additional violations of her self. Not only do the culture and social structures of patriarchy generate violence against women; they also interfere with efforts to see that violence clearly for what it is.'
TL;DR: A literature is now developing that describes the part women have played in social movements and the sexism they encountered there as discussed by the authors, focusing on the ideological interchange between party leadership and feminists, which is largely descriptive.
Abstract: Many recent studies have documented the presence of sexism in American society, charted the oppressive impact of discrimination against women, and traced its sources.1 So ubiquitous is sexism, and so pervasive the engines supporting it, that, ironically, its trace may be found even within movements for social justice. A literature is now developing that describes the part women have played in social movements and the sexism they encountered there. This is largely descriptive, focusing on the ideological interchange between party leadership and feminists.2
TL;DR: In the early modern period, Geneva was a highly visible symbol of both austere morality and republican liberty, and women's experience in early modern Europe was examined from the vantage point of women's history as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Calvinist Geneva offers a significant vantage point from which to examine the quality of women's experience in early modern Europe. Between the Reformation and the French Revolution, this small but important place remained a highly visible symbol of both austere morality and republican liberty. Geneva's Protestantism and her republicanism influenced the female half of her population in sometimes surprising ways. The supposedly repressive dimension of Calvinist morality affected women's lives in ways which were often beneficial, but the republican dimension apparently helped reduce women's capacities for autonomous expression. Of course, Geneva changed a great deal between 1550 and 1800, as Calvin's city became the home of Rousseau and Voltaire. Its population, which had risen to 25,000 by 1560, fell to less than 15,000 by 1590 and remained at that level for a century; after 1690 it gradually grew until by 1780 it again reached 25,000. From the vantage point of women's history there are three especially important contrasts between sixteenth-century and eighteenth-century Geneva. First, the former was poor-crowded with religious refugees and later beset with economic problems accompanying religious conflicts-while eighteenth-century Geneva was generally prosperous. Second, the ratio between the sexes changed. From 1550 to 1580, men outnumbered women in Geneva; in the eighteenth century, women outnumbered men (the first usable census, in 1720, showed a population 55 percent female). Women married early and often in sixteenth-century Geneva, but later and less frequently in eighteenth-century Geneva. Finally, the city's moral climate changed. If sixteenth-century Geneva was almost as austere as contemporary propaganda claimed, eighteenth-century Geneva was discreetly dissipated, as statistics of illegitimate births or the memoirs of Casanova testify.
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TL;DR: The failure to acknowledge and infuse what women know and who women are into sociological inquiry has rendered static the substantive areas of formal sociology as mentioned in this paper, and the failure to incorporate women into sociologists' research has rendered them static.
Abstract: To the casual observer, sociology has continued to thrive for women since Lopata's review essay was published by Signs in 1976.1 More women participate actively in academic sociology,2 and feminist scholarship has increasingly been identified as such.3 Even so, a decidedly androcentric tradition dominates sociological analysis, and it remains unclear how, and with what analytic and methodological tools, sociologists actually can and should study women as a social group. The failure to acknowledge and infuse what women know and who women are into sociological inquiry has rendered static the substantive areas of formal sociology. These, for the most part, retain traditional
TL;DR: In 1914 and 1915, thousands of American women testified to the marvels of having babies without the trauma of childbirth, and this 1914 ideal contrasts with today's feminist stress on being awake, aware, and in control during the birthing experience.
Abstract: "At midnight I was awakened by a very sharp pain," wrote Mrs. Cecil Stewart, describing the birth of her child in 1914. "The head nurse ... gave me an injection of scopolamin-morphin. ... I woke up the next morning about half-past seven ... the door opened, and the head nurse brought in my baby. ... I was so happy."1 Mrs. Stewart had delivered her baby under the influence of scopolamine, a narcotic and amnesiac that, together with morphine, produced a state popularly known as "twilight sleep." She did not remember anything of the experience when she woke up after giving birth. This 1914 ideal contrasts with today's feminist stress on being awake, aware, and in control during the birthing experience. In 1914 and 1915, thousands of American women testified to the marvels of having babies without the trauma of childbirth. As one of them gratefully put it, "The night of my confinement will always be a night dropped out of my life."2
TL;DR: For decades, women's sexuality had not for decades been viewed squarely in its political dimension as an aspect of the power relations between the sexes as mentioned in this paper, and, far from being viewed as a political relation, sex was considered a strictly biological, psychological, personal, or religious matter.
Abstract: Thirteen years have passed since a handful of radical feminists began organizing for women's liberation and analyzing every aspect of the relations between the sexes, including the sexual. Not that the subject of women's sexuality was ignored before then. Sex had long been a "hot," salable subject. Men were studying it in laboratories, in books, in bedrooms, in offices; after several repressive decades, changes called the "sexual revolution" and "sexual liberation" were being widely discussed and promoted all through the sixties; skirts were up, prudery was down. Nor was the sudden feminist attention to the political aspects of sexuality in the late sixties without precedent, as it appeared at the time; for feminists have always understood that institutions regulating relations between the sexes were their concern.' But by the 1960s feminism itself had long been in eclipse, and, far from being viewed as a political relation, sex was considered a strictly biological, psychological, personal, or religious matter. Until the radical feminists boldly declared that "the personal is political," opening for political analysis the most intimate aspects of male-female relations, women's sexuality had not for decades been viewed squarely in its political dimension as an aspect of the power relations between the sexes. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such sex-related institutions as family, motherhood, chastity, prostitution, birth control, and the double standard of morality had been subjected to feminist
TL;DR: The history of childbirth could more accurately be termed the history of obstetrics as mentioned in this paper, and the social context of childbirth has only recently turned their attention to the changing customs and attitudes Americans have carried into the lying-in chamber and the delivery room.
Abstract: Despite the centrality of pregnancy and birth in women's lives, historians have only recently turned their attention to the changing customs and attitudes Americans have carried into the lying-in chamber and the delivery room. Until a few years ago, the history of childbirth could more accurately be termed the history of obstetrics. Medical histories, such as Harvey Graham's Eternal Eve, Palmer Findley's Priests of Lucina, and Herbert Thoms's Chapters in American Obstetrics,l provide useful information on leading obstetrical practitioners and an outline of medical developments, such as forceps, but they ignore the social context of childbirth. Virtually all histories of obstetrics conceptualize the development of modern obstetrical practices in a linear, progressive fashion: a handful of dedicated men in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought birth out of the realm of ignorance and superstition and laid the foundation for a scientific understanding of the birth process. Recent studies have been less concerned with the history of obstetrics than with the social aspects of childbirth and its management. Works such as Richard and Dorothy Wertz's Lying-In2 which, as the only full-
TL;DR: Pornography is here to stay because of the "naturalness" of sexuality and the resiliency of the political and economic institutions which structure and shape sexual expression.
Abstract: "Porn Is Here to Stay," sociologist Amitai Etzioni could assert with complete confidence in 1977,1 by assuming that any attempt to abolish pornography would be tantamount to trying to eliminate sexual impulses. Pornography may in fact have the staying power suggested by Etzioni, not because of the "naturalness" of sexuality but rather because of the resiliency of the political and economic institutions which structure and shape sexual expression. If we regard pornography primarily as a medium for expressing norms about male power and domination which functions as a social control mechanism for keeping women in a subordinate status, then we have to question the prevailing liberal attitudes toward the issue of pornography and repression, which Etzioni and other social scientists hold. My purpose here is to examine the assumptions and data upon which the liberal model rests. Historically, efforts to control the distribution of pornography have emanated from societal forces bent on suppressing all sexual mattersfrom birth control to sex education to scientific studies-while opposing efforts have come from those promoting openness in sexual matters. Moreover, since John Wilkes's An Essay on Woman in the eighteenth century, pornography has been used as a vehicle for criticizing the prevailing social order. As a consequence of this history, contemporary wisdom in the social science and "progressive" intellectual communities chastizes all plans to control pornography as attempts to repress sexuality and maintain the established order by those who have unenlightened and unhealthy sexual attitudes. Predictably, Etzioni dismisses a 1976 poll indicating that a substantial majority of Americans approves of crackdowns on pornography by declaring that most of these persons
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TL;DR: For instance, musicology in America is a young discipline as mentioned in this paper that has seen a new approach in three areas: ethnomusicology, American studies, and nineteenth-century research, which discarded an elitist approach, studied each musical document on its own terms, and recognized the need for inclusivity.
Abstract: Musicology in America is a young discipline. Biography, bibliography, scholarly editions, and single-composer monographs have been essential priorities for the retrieval, analysis, and eventual performance of known and neglected musical works. Interpretations of music as a sociocultural phenomenon, a vigorous dialectic through interaction with other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, or critical, theoretical challenges to traditional-if sophisticated-ways of doing musicology are few and secondary to mainstream activity. Yet the past decade has seen a new approach in three areas: ethnomusicology, American studies, and nineteenth-century research. Scholars in these areas have discarded an elitist approach, studied each musical document on its own terms, and recognized the need for inclusivity.1 Scholars have begun to raise questions about the musical preferences of the majority of consumers who sustain musical institutions and the means by which value attributions are articulated; to examine not merely what constitutes musical culture but how it functions and what mechanisms decide its processes; to view connections between mass and elite forms, between acquired and indigenous musical systems, between music and the other arts, as fit topics for intellectual exchange with other academic disciplines.
TL;DR: The authors define maternal sexuality as a woman's sexual feelings or behaviors while she is involved in tasks normally associated with motherhood, and discuss asexual motherhood as both asexual and asexual.
Abstract: This paper exists because of two recent, extraordinarily important books. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (New York: Bantam Books, 1977), clearly demonstrates the impact of patriarchy on the institution of mothering. After Rich it is impossible to talk of women's "natural" role. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), shows how patriarchy effects individual personality development. What these writers laboriously set out to prove, I am privileged to be able to take as given. Nancy Chodorow read an earlier draft of this paper and made insightful comments and suggestions. I am indebted to her for these, as well as for support and discussions throughout the process of writing. In addition, I have profited from careful comments by Karen E. Paige and Guy E. Swanson. Conceptual and factual errors, however, remain my responsibility. I am grateful for the support of NIMH training grant MH 15122-03, which I received during part of this project. The title of the paper requires additional definitions and discussion. Throughout, I will talk about mothering as a woman's experience with her infant. Cross-cultural evidence indicates that early caretaking responsibilities fall almost universally to mothers (Michelle Z. Rosaldo, "A Theoretical Overview," in Women, Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974]). In spite of media talk of househusbands, a variety of recent articles on dual-career professional couples indicates that, even among these couples, caretaking of small children is the woman's domain (Jeff B. Bryson and Rebecca Bryson, Dual-Career Couples, a special issue of the Psychology of Women Quarterly [vol. 3, no. 1] [New York: Human Sciences Press, 1978], passim). I define maternal sexuality in the most general way, as a woman's sexual feelings or behaviors while she is involved in tasks normally associated with motherhood. This does not specify who arouses the feelings and to whom they are directed, nor does it narrow down the tasks to only those which involve direct interaction with children. I will discuss asexual motherhood as both
TL;DR: In the absence of movements or organizations, such as we find in Western societies, that explicitly aim to defend the female's legal, economic, and political interests, women passively participate in the structures of their own domination as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: How do women in male-dominant cultures define and interpret reality-their own reality, particularly, attributive and rational,1 erotic and nonerotic aspects of their sexuality? Are their conceptions merely extensions or derivations of reality as defined by the male-centered culture? In the absence of movements or organizations, such as we find in Western societies, that explicitly aim to defend the female's legal, economic, and political interests,2 do women passively participate in the structures of their own domination? Do they accept the notions of how they are supposed to feel, think, and act, because they are influenced by the weight of moral or mechanical3 sanctions or because they internalize these structures through socialization and enculturation processes? In this paper, I hope to underscore the inadequacy of this perspective for understanding the dialectical nature of sexual as well as other forms of sociocultural domination.4 I will examine the case of Iran, a society that
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between female puberty ceremonies and so-called menstrual taboos is discussed, and it is shown that myths and rituals related to female puberty in general and to menstruation in particular are aspects of the same phenomenon.
Abstract: This chapter shows the relationship between female puberty ceremonies and so-called menstrual taboos. Anthropologists have usually treated these rites independently and have regarded taboos associated with menstruation as symbols of a woman's defilement. The onset of menstruation is regarded by the Navajo as a time for rejoicing, and the young woman becomes a tribal symbol of fecundity. Treating one Native American society, the Oglala, the chapter demonstrates that myths and rituals related to female puberty in general and to menstruation in particular are aspects of the same phenomenon, which emphasizes the importance of the female reproductive role. It focuses on the female puberty ceremony and myths and rituals associated with menstruation at the micro level of analysis. The function of the menstrual taboo then is not to enunciate the pollutive nature of the female but to give structure to what otherwise is a period of antistructure.
TL;DR: The apocryphal Acts of the Apostles as discussed by the authors provide a rich source of information about the post-apostolic churches in which they circulated and illuminate a significant aspect of women's religion in the Greco-Roman world, namely, the appeal of Christian asceticism.
Abstract: Accounts of the conversion of women to ascetic forms of Christianity abound in a collection of texts known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Extant in numerous languages, including Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Arabic, these Acts often seem to be composite works containing diverse legends associated with the apostles of Jesus. Most scholars doubt that the apocryphal Acts reflect the actual histories of the apostles, or that they relate to the actual conversion experiences of historical women or men: Paul of Tarsus may never have converted Thecla of Iconium; nor Andrew, Maximilla of Patrae; nor Thomas, Mygdonia of India. Nonetheless, these Acts are important sources of information about the postapostolic churches in which they circulated. Analogously, the conversion accounts, in my view, illuminate a significant aspect of women's religion in the Greco-Roman world, namely, the appeal of Christian asceticism, which was particularly strong in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.l
TL;DR: For example, this paper found that women in Australia are discriminated against at the University of Sydney, which is "a male enclave that allows women to function only in closely restricted areas." Australia is one of the most highly urbanized countries in the world.
Abstract: In modern industrial societies, universities both help to maintain occupational stratification, through their accrediting of professionals, and promote or inhibit research on social and technological topics. They influence, then, whether or not women have better-paid jobs and whether or not women are studied seriously. Americans have shown that this "crucially central institution" is "a male enclave that allows women to function only in closely restricted areas."1 We wish to document that statement for another modern country, Australia, and to establish international patterns of discrimination against women.2 Australia is one of the most highly urbanized societies in the world. Approximately 86 percent of its population lives in centers of 1,000 or more people. Although its export wealth traditionally has been based on the products of farm and mine, it nevertheless has a high proportion (approximately 90 percent) of its population employed in secondary and tertiary industry. All its universities are autonomous institutions