Feminist Theory Reader is an ideal reader for courses in gender and women’s studies, and social theory more generally. The third edition updates the collection of important classical and contemporary works of feminist theory within a multiracial transnational framework. This edition includes 16 new essays; the editors have organized the read-ings into four sections.
Section I—Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces—REVISED SECTION
Classical conversations and debates about gender, difference, and women’s experiences are juxtaposed with essays that challenge the prevailing representation of feminism as waves. It includes both documents-of-the-moment and alternative genealogies of feminist theory.
Section II—Theorizing Intersecting Identities
Readings theorize the intersections of gender with class, race, nation, religion, ethnic-ity, globalization, and sexuality. It includes readings that investigate social processes of gender identity formation and first person essays by feminist scholars reflecting on the complex identities they negotiate in professional and personal lives.
Section III—Theorizing Feminist Knowledge and Agency
Epistemological conversations between standpoint and poststructural theories that debate the grounds of feminist knowledge-building and gender identity formation in social experience and discourse.
Section IV—Imagine Otherwise—NEW SECTION
Readings present new tools for building effective knowledge for social justice in a world of asymmetrical relational differences. Topics include bodies, emotions, identity, dif-ference, connection, and transnational social justice.
Introductory essays by the editors placed at the beginning of each of the four major sections lay out the framework that brings the readings together, and provide historical and intellectual context of the readings.
Carole R. McCann is Director and Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and an affiliate faculty member of the Language, Literacy, and Culture Graduate Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Her research expertise includes, feminist science studies, twentieth century history of birth control, eugenics, and
population, and feminist theory. Her publications include Birth control Politics in the United States, 1916–1945 (Cornell University Press, 1994, 1999). She is currently work-ing on a book manuscript about masculinities in mid-century population sciences. Seung-kyung Kim is Director and Associate Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. Her research expertise includes gender and labor politics, Ethnography, Feminist Theory, and Women in East Asia and Asian America. The author of numerous articles and book chapters, her publications include Class Struggle or Family Struggle? Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea (Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2009); South Korean Feminists Bargain: Progressive Presidencies and the Women’s Movement, 1998–2007 (forthcoming, Routledge). She is currently working on a book manuscript, Global Citizens in the Making? Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Families.
F E M I N I S T
L O C A L A N D G L O B A L
T H E O R Y
P
E
R
S
P
E
C
T
I
V
E
S
R E A D E R
THIRD EDITION
Edited by
C A R O L E R . M c C A N N A N D S E U N G - K Y U N G K I M
First published 2013 by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Feminist theory reader : local and global perspectives /
Edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim.—Third Edition. pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index
1. Feminist Theory. I. McCann Carole R. (Carole Ruth), 1955– II. Kim, Seung-Kyung, 1954–
HQ1190.F46346 2013 305.4201—dc23 2012032636 ISBN: 978–0–415–52101–7 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–415–52102–4 (pbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–59831–3 (ebk) Typeset in Minion
Preface to the Third Edition ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Feminist Theory: Local and Global Perspectives 1
SECTION I
INTRODUCTION: THEORIZING FEMINIST TIMES AND SPACES 11
Feminist Movements 29
1. Yosano Akiko, “The Day the Mountains Move” 30 2. Nancy A. Hewitt, “Re-Rooting American Women’s Activism: Global
Perspectives on 1848” 31
3. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, “Introduction,” 40 4. Linda Nicholson, “Feminism in ‘Waves’: Useful Metaphor or Not?” 49 5. Becky Thompson, “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology
of Second Wave Feminism,” 56
6. Amrita Basu, “Globalization of the Local/Localization of the
Global: Mapping Transnational Women’s Movements” 68 7. Michelle V. Rowley, “The Idea of Ancestry: Of Feminist Genealogies
and Many Other Things” 77
Local Identities and Politics 83
8. Muriel Rukeyser, “The Poem as Mask” 84
9. T. V. Reed, “The Poetical is the Political: Feminist Poetry and the
Poetics of Women’s Rights” 85
10. Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy” 98 11. Carole Pateman, “Introduction: The Theoretical Subversiveness of
Feminism” 107
12. Elizabeth Martinez, “La Chicana” 113
13. The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” 116 14. Shulamith Firestone, “The Culture of Romance” 123
15. Charlotte Bunch, “Lesbians in Revolt” 129
16. Sônia Correa and Rosalind Petchesky, “Reproductive and Sexual
17. Leslie Feinberg, “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose
Time Has Come” 148
SECTION II
INTRODUCTION: THEORIZING INTERSECTING IDENTITIES 161 Social Processes/Configuring Differences 175 18. Bonnie Thornton Dill and Ruth Enid Zambrana, “Critical Thinking
about Inequality: An Emerging Lens” 176
19. Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and
Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union” 187
20. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women,
Migration, and Domestic Work 202
21. Lila Abu-Lughod, “Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies” 218
22. Mrinalini Sinha, “Gender and Nation” 227
23. Monique Wittig, “One Is Not Born a Woman” 246 24. Raewyn Connell, “The Social Organization of Masculinity” 252
Boundaries and Belongings 265
25. Donna Kate Rushin, “The Bridge Poem” 266
26. June Jordan, “Report from the Bahamas” 268
27. Gloria Anzaldúa, “The New Mestiza Nation: A Multicultural Movement” 277 28. Minnie Bruce Pratt, “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart” 285 29. Audre Lorde, “I am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing
across Sexualities” 292
30. Lionel Cantú with Eithne Luibhéid and Alexandra Minna Stern, “Well Founded Fear: Political Asylum and the Boundaries of Sexual
Identity in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands” 296
31. Leila Ahmed, “The Veil Debate Again” 306
32. Obioma Nnaemeka, “Forward: Locating Feminisms/Feminists” 317 33. Andrea Smith, “Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and
Social Change” 321
34. Mari Matsuda, “Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal
Theory Out of Coalition” 332
SECTION III
INTRODUCTION: THEORIZING FEMINIST KNOWLEDGE AND AGENCY 343 Standpoint Epistemologies/Situated Knowledges 353 35. Nancy C. M. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Toward a
Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism” 354
36. Uma Narayan, “The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives
from a Nonwestern Feminist” 370
37. Patricia Hill Collins, “Defining Black Feminist Thought” 379 38. Cheshire Calhoun, “Separating Lesbian Theory From Feminist Theory” 395 39. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in
Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” 412
Poststructuralist Epistemologies 425 40. Luce Irigaray, “This Sex Which Is Not One” 426 41. Lata Mani, “Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age
of Multinational Reception” 433
42. Sandra Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of
Patriarchal Power” 447
43. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay
in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” 462
SECTION IV
INTRODUCTION: IMAGINE OTHERWISE 477 Bodies and Emotions 485 44. Alison Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology” 486 45. Kathy Davis, “Reclaiming Women’s Bodies: Colonialist Trope or Critical
Epistemology?” 502 46. Sara Ahmed, “Multiculturalism and the Promise of Happiness” 517
47. Lucille Clifton, “Lumpectomy Eve” 533
Solidarity Reconsidered 535 48. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited:
Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles” 536 49. Suzanna Danuta Walters, “From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism,
Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can’t a Woman
be More Like a Fag?)” 553
50. Paula M. L. Moya, “Chicana Feminism and Postmodernist Theory” 571
51. Malika Ndlovu, “Out of Now-here” 589
Works Cited 591
Credits 615
THIRD EDITION
In the introduction to the first edition of Feminist Theory Reader, we expressed our hope that it would challenge readers, as we challenged ourselves, to rethink the com-plex meanings of difference outside of contemporary Western feminist contexts. The second edition extended that challenge, encouraging readers to rethink the numer-ous ways in which gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and nationality are reconfigured by emerging global–local configurations of power. The third edition assembles readings that rethink feminist times and spaces by challenging the prevailing representation of feminist movements as waves.
In this third edition, Section I has been reorganized to include both histori-cal accounts and documents-of-the-moment that archive the ideas and emotions of the mid- and late-twentieth-century feminisms. Together these reading enrich our understanding of the many histories of feminist theory. In addition, a new Section IV, Imagine Otherwise, draws on recent efforts to move beyond the debates between post-modern and standpoint theories towards frameworks that build on the strengths of each perspective. These frameworks renew discussion of the grounds for feminist soli-darity, and they reassert the social group women, however unstable, as the agent of feminist politics. In particular, the section includes feminist analyses of emotions, bod-ies, and affect. The new edition endeavors to continue to expand the diverse voices of transnational feminist scholars throughout.
Introductory essays by the editors placed at the beginning of each of the four major sections lay out the framework that brings the readings together, provide historical and intellectual context for the readings, and, where appropriate, point to critical additional readings not included here. Five core theoretical concepts—gender, difference, wom-en’s experiences, the personal is political, and intersectionality—anchor the antholo-gy’s organizational framework. The introductory essay for Section I provides a detailed discussion of these concepts.
Other than those changes, the Reader retains the same structure as the second edition. Section II, Theorizing Intersecting Identities, examines macro-level proc-esses that configure intersections of gender, race, class, geographic/national, and/or sexual differences. Readings alternatively focus attention on the material and discursive processes connecting capitalism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, Orientalism, and glo-balization. In addition, it presents personal narratives that reflect on the subjective experiences of intersecting social processes. The readings delineate the complex politics
of shifting locations and blurred boundaries, and they illuminate the tensions pervad-ing experiences of intersectpervad-ing identities, and border-crosspervad-ings.
Section III presents two key feminist theoretical currents: standpoint theories and poststructuralist theories. Readings make the demanding concepts used in these theo-ries more accessible for students by introducing concepts and frameworks, particularly the concepts of the disciplined body, Orientalism, the nation, and heteronormativity.
The new edition includes 16 new readings. The editors have provided test ques-tions, which instructors can request from [email protected].
FOR THE THIRD EDITION
We were first inspired to compile a feminist theory reader in 1995 through a Ford Foundation’s Summer Institute on Women and Gender in an Era of Global Change, a faculty development seminar offered by the Curriculum Transformation Project at the University of Maryland, College Park, where we first met. Both of us have taught theo-ries of feminism courses for many years. In many ways, our development as feminist scholars, teachers, and as editors of this volume has moved as U.S. women’s studies has moved. We belong to the generation who lived through the 1970s women’s movements in Korea and the United States, and who received graduate training in Women’s Stud-ies in the U.S. in the 1980s. Through our training and subsequent teaching experiences in the 1990s, we became convinced that “women’s studies core curricula that remain exclusively oriented to U.S. content and Western feminist perspectives no longer meet the standards of scholarly rigor and political relevance that define our field” (McDer-mott 1998: 88). We each decided to participate in the faculty development seminar as a way to begin to incorporate into our courses “the experiences, voices, and strategies for change of women around the world” (Rosenfelt 1998: 4).
While revising our courses, we often complained about the difficulty we had in locating a suitable upper-level feminist theory anthology. This difficulty prompted us to develop our own selection of readings, and our feminist theory courses became the experimental sites where we tried, revised, and retired various collections of articles. In addition, the process of our collaborative work shaped the final form of this reader in a very fundamental way. Over the several years of reading and teaching, we engaged in an extended dialogue that we found to be incredibly valuable. Through our own efforts to construct and update a coherent textbook of feminist theory without losing the particularity of different locations and opportunities for creating feminist theory, we constructed a strong personal friendship and a professional association that has greatly enriched our other scholarship and our teaching. Our ongoing collaboration embodies the kind of dialogue often recommended as a productive way to build effec-tive feminist knowledge and alliances between women of the global north and south in an era of ever expanding globalization (Taylor 1993). This collaboration has continued to be very rewarding for both of us as we worked on each subsequent edition.
Many individuals have aided our collaboration through the years. First and fore-most, we thank the students in our feminist theory classes. As with the first and second editions, we tried out several combinations of articles in our classrooms before deciding on the revisions to the third edition. Through the years, sometimes complaining and
sometimes enjoying the endless readings we required them to do, students have been very generous in sharing their thoughts. Their insights, critiques, and suggestions have been invaluable in making this reader more accessible.
We thank Debby Rosenfelt, Director of Curriculum Transformation Project and Summer Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park, who provided an oppor-tunity for us to meet and work together. Debby has been supportive of our project throughout the past seventeen years and her continuous words of encouragement have meant a lot to us. We also thank our colleagues in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland College Park and Gender and Women’s Studies Pro-gram at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) for the vibrant intel-lectual communities that sustain our work: Amy Bhatt, Jessica Berman, Elsa Barkley Brown, Lynn Bolles, Bonnie Dill, Kate Drabinski, Katie King, Jason Loviglio, Viviana MacManus, Christine Mallinson, Jeffrey McCune, Pat McDermott, Claire Moses, Tara Rodgers, Michelle Rowley, Catherine Schuler, Orianne Smith, Ashwini Tambe, Elle Trusz, and Ruth Zambrana.
We are grateful to our editor, Steven Rutter for recognizing the value of this anthol-ogy and for his continuing support throughout the long process of preparing the cur-rent edition. Steve arranged for several reviewers to provide their assessments of the Reader. We would like to thank Alejandra Elenes, Arizona State University; Audrey Bilger, Claremont Mckenna College; Mimi Marinucci, Eastern Washington Univer-sity; Angela Hubler, Kansas State UniverUniver-sity; Kimberly Williams, Mount Royal Uni-versity; Althea L. Tait, Old Dominion UniUni-versity; Janet Lee, Oregon State UniUni-versity; Angelique Nixon, University of Connecticut; and Emily Noelle Ignacio, University of Washington for the time and attention they gave to their thoughtful reviews. We have benefited tremendously from their insightful suggestions and incorporated many into the current edition. In addition, we thank all the women’s studies professors and stu-dents at conferences who have offered us their appraisal of the anthology’s strengths and weaknesses. We greatly appreciate this feedback. It is always useful to hear com-ments and suggestions from those who use the anthology in classrooms because our goal is to compile a useful pedagogical resource.
We have been very lucky to have the assistance of graduate students to help us the with manuscript preparation. In particular, we are indebted to Emek Ergun for her tireless efforts in support of this project. Jeannette Soon and Carissa Liro-Hudson also provided timely assistance with in the final weeks of revision. Their work has made this process much easier.
Lastly, we would like to thank our families for their support and assistance: Carole thanks Mel and Rustin. Seung-kyung thanks John, Anna, and Ellen.
FEMINIST THEORY:
LOCAL AND GLOBAL
PERSPECTIVES
In its most general sense, the word “feminism” refers to political activism by women on behalf of women. The term originated in France in the 1880s. It combines the French word for woman, “femme,” with the suffix meaning political position, “ism,” and was used in that time and place to refer to those who defended the cause of women (Cott 1986b; Moses 1998a). Widely used in the U.S. women’s movements beginning in the 1970s, it indicated opposition to women’s subordinate social positions, spiritual authority, political rights, and/or economic opportunities. However, beyond that gen-eral description, the meaning of feminism has never been historically stable or fixed (Delmar 1986; Moses 1998a). For all its ambiguity and limitations, the term nonethe-less signals an emancipatory politics on behalf of women. It contends that the prevail-ing unjust conditions under which women live must be changed. Moreover, it assumes that a group of historical agents—women—will take action to change them.
Feminist theories, like other political philosophies, provide intellectual tools by which historical agents can examine the injustices they confront and build arguments to support their particular demands for change. Feminist theories apply their tools to building knowledge of women’s oppression.1 That knowledge is intended to inform
strategies for resisting subordination and improving women’s lives. Feminist theories ask questions, including: How do structures of gender difference subordinate women as women? How can we understand the ways in which specific events result from gen-der oppression, rather than unique individual misfortune? How can we be sure that we have clear understandings of oppressive situations? How is women’s subordina-tion as women connected to related oppressions based on race, ethnicity, nasubordina-tionality, class, and sexuality? How can women resist subordination? What kinds of changes are needed?
Answers to these kinds of questions make assumptions about who “we” are, how and why things got to be the way they are, and what changes may be needed. In other words, answers to these questions rest on some notion of ontology (theories of being and reality), epistemology (theories of how knowledge is produced), and politics (rela-tions and practices of power). The last term is, perhaps, the most important purpose of feminist theory: to inform effective politics. A central principle of feminist theory is that theory should be accountable to politics. It should make sense of women’s situa-tions and point to effective strategies for change.2
This anthology assembles readings that present key aspects of the conversations and debates3 within multiracial and transnational U.S. feminisms, and places those
local conversations and debates within a global perspective. As Amrita Basu observes in the article included here, the term “global … may connote the breadth and universality that is often associated with Western feminism.” On the other hand, as she notes, the term “local … can connote the supposed particularism, provincialism and primor-dialism of the Third World.” Instead, she offers a more specific definition, which we follow. We use the term “local” to refer to “indigenous and regional” feminist theories and movements, in whatever region they arise. We use the term “global” to refer to theories and movements that emerge within “transnational” locations and discourses (Basu Reading 6). In juxtaposing feminist voices from the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, we highlight the complex relationships of local and global feminist theories to transnational women’s and gender movements. Tran-snational refers to the literal movement of people, ideas, and resources across national boundaries. At the same time, when used to refer to persons, it evokes the processes and experiences of crossing geopolitical borders and identity boundaries. Such cross-ings have both physical and psychological implications, as migrants live their lives both here and there, physically separated from but often in frequent contact with kin, com-munity, and culture (Parreñas Reading 20). Many of the authors included here are transnational in both their personal and professional identities.
The global feminisms Basu identifies emerge from the linkages, networks, and alli-ances between a diverse array of organizations, movements, and issue-based campaigns that have developed within global civil society. In the context of the four conferences on women convened by the United Nations since 1975, international political leaders and non-governmental women’s groups from around the world have articulated inter-national law concerning women’s rights, have struggled over the terms of interinter-national women’s activism, and have developed enduring linkages and alliances. Transnational feminist organizations, movements, and campaigns are firmly grounded in the rights articulated in the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.4 But the new space of feminist agency and transnational women’s
movements created within global civil society is not one in which all women are sud-denly equal nor one in which all women have the same concerns. Global civil soci-ety reverberates with historical power relations of race, colonialism, class, and gender. These shifting sites of power continue to shape the possibilities and limitations for feminist politics even as new forms of domination emerge with new forms of globali-zation. Thus, the relationships of local and global, even the meaning and use of these words, arise in historically specific contexts (Grewal and Kaplan 1994).
In the ten years since the first edition of Feminist Theory Reader, unrelenting glo-balization has come to frame the local and the global in new and expanding ways.5
Glo-balization (discussed in greater depth in Section II: Introduction) refers to the “social, economic, cultural, and demographic processes that take place within nations but also transcend them” (Parreñas Reading 20). Although globalization began to intensify dur-ing the last two decades of the twentieth century, since 2001 we have witnessed ever-greater speed and reach of communications, surveillance, and financial technologies.
Economic, political, cultural, technological, and demographic exchanges around the world deny the possibility of isolated local spaces. Thus, neither the local nor the global are pure, homogeneous, or mutually exclusive sites for either feminist interventions or the workings of global capitalism. The realities and practices of global–local inter-sections are instead fraught with contradictions and dislocations configured in and through messy and multidirectional global cultural flows (Appadurai 1996).
The feminist conversations and debates we present here are anchored by five theo-retical concepts—gender, difference, women’s experiences, the personal is political, and intersectionality—which have been integral to late twentieth and early twenty-first-century feminisms and to the field of women’s and gender studies (Grant 1993). These five concepts and tracing the tensions between them in feminist dialogues and debates provide a useful heuristic device for learning feminist theory. However, there is and can be no one theory of gender subordination or one strategy for change because women live in so many different social, economic, cultural, and political circum-stances. Nor has the development of feminist theory been linear or unidirectional. No final answers have emerged. Thus, the readings brought together here do not present a single homogenous story. We do not claim that this collection of essays speaks “for everybody, to everybody, or about everything” (Young 1990: 13). There are interrup-tions, overlaps, disagreements, disjunctures, and contradictions among the essays. The feminist identities articulated within this anthology also shift and change with these interruptions, overlaps, disjunctures, and contradictions. As Judith Butler has noted elsewhere, “Gender identities emerge, … shift, and vary so that different identifica-tions come into play depending upon the availability of legitimating cultural norms and opportunities” (Butler 1990b: 331).
Yet much useful knowledge is generated through recurring themes and difficult dialogues6 about what feminism is and can be; about how to do feminist theory; about
which theories adequately explain women’s status in different social groups and his-torical locations; and about which theories offer the best strategies for changing gender relations. We believe, taken together, the essays effectively represent the multivocal feminist theory of this historical moment, as well as the multiple and shifting sites of feminist identities. We hope the resonance and discord among the multiple voices and perspectives in this collection of essays will push readers to examine their own assump-tions, the explanatory power and limits of the theories, and the relationships between feminist theories and practices. We end the anthology with readings that point to the new directions of feminist theory that have emerged from previous strands of conver-sation and debate between postmodern and standpoint theorists, and between queer7
and feminist theorists even as they take up longstanding and recurring themes—bodies and emotions—central to feminist discourses.
In assembling the readings, our guiding principle has been to make the theoretical foundations of U.S. women’s studies intelligible to contemporary students by includ-ing a mixture of old and new material, which represent pivotal moments of intellectual insight. In particular, we reframe the discussion of feminist theory by balancing the writings of women of color—representing numerous ethnic identities and postcolonial locations—with those of Western women and white women. The Reader also does not
focus narrowly on gender. Instead, it examines both systems of gender, and systems of difference and domination that intersect with gender to shape women’s situations and women’s identities (Collins Reading 37). Yet, because even the word “feminism” is not used throughout the world, our framing of the feminist conversations risks (re)imposing Western categories and chronology on transnational women’s move-ments and gender politics.
Realizing how easy it is to slip into a U.S.-centric view of the world, we begin with readings that both present the conventional periodization of “the first and second waves” of feminism and destabilize that rendering of feminist pasts. In addition, we do not simply add a section about global feminism. Nor do we provide readings that either exoticize Third World women or portray them as homogeneous victims of global capitalism and local patriarchal culture. Instead, we incorporate global perspectives throughout the anthology in order continually to challenge Western hegemonic con-cepts and categories. In addition, we do not merely incorporate the challenges made by women of color and women of the global south to themes and agendas defined by white and Western feminists. We include conversations among women of color about issues of gender, race, colonialism, and sexuality and conversations within local U.S. feminism informed by insights generated by women of color and women of the global south. Appropriate labels for regions of the post-colonial world are always imprecise. Although the geographic terminology of global north and global south does not ade-quately convey the political configuration of the world, we use it as the best approxima-tion available. We also include poetic voices to highlight the importance of poetry as a form of feminist theorizing worldwide. Thus we have tried to “incorporate ideas that have been developed by emergent and post-colonial feminists in a way that centralize their theoretical perspectives in U.S. classrooms, rather than just using their experience to illustrate predefined Western feminist theories” (McDermott 1998: 90).
In the years since the first edition of the Feminist Theory Reader was published, transnational and global perspectives on feminist theory has been widely recognized as a significant and important strand of feminist theory and politics. This recognition coincided with the dramatic increase in scholarship building on what Chandra Talpade Mohanty terms comparative feminist analysis (Mohanty Reading 48). Comparative feminist analysis seeks to break the binary positioning of local/global through compari-son of contextualized and historicized investigations of women and gender processes in different social and geopolitical locations. In so doing, it builds a fuller understanding of the myriad ways in which gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and nationality are pro-duced under global–local configurations of power. Throughout the Reader, we hope to challenge readers, as we challenged ourselves “to rethink the complex meanings of ‘dif-ference’ in contexts outside of … Western feminism” (Rosenfelt 1998: 6). In so doing, we hope to move closer to “a curriculum that illuminates the multiple levels … at work in globalization and tracks the power of its political logic as it crosses international boundaries” (Mohanty 1996, as cited in McDermott 1998: 95). In addition, even as the concept of gender grounds feminist theorizing in a number of feminist spaces, the meanings of sex, gender, and sexuality have been contested and reconfigured through ongoing dialogues with lesbians, transgender scholars, and queer theorists. Discussions
about how gender difference is related to and different from that based on sexual orien-tation, sexuality, and gender identity have stimulated much theorizing about how sex, gender, and sexuality might be connected and/or disconnected in theory and practice. Strands of these conversations appear throughout all the sections of the Reader.
We also gave a lot of thought to how to locate the voices of feminists that rely on white, northern, middle-class, and/or heterosexual experiences as the experience of gender subordination. Some readings, especially early ones, construct and recapitulate this experience as the experience of ‘women in general,’ which we seek to destabi-lize. We disrupt the logic of the hegemonic feminist subject by situating her within conversations that include many voices inside and outside the U.S., and that analyze gender in the context of race, nationality, class, and sexuality (Sandoval 1990). We locate theories based upon white, middle-class, heterosexual northern women’s lives as another variety of local feminist theory and practice, which has dominated feminist discourse because of unearned privileges of race, nation, class, and sexuality. We think it is better to retain these historical artifacts and encourage students to re-examine that privileged, particular, local experience of gender. In so doing, we take “the task of unmasking privilege seriously by trying to locate the places it finds a home, rather than simply noting that it must be at work.” In her cogent analysis of who the “we” is in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Elizabeth Spelman argues that “we honor her work by asking how such privilege functions in her own thinking” (1988: 77; see also Taylor 1993).
The Feminist Theory Reader has four sections, each of which begins with an intro-ductory essay by the editors that lays out the framework that brings the readings together, locates the historical context of the readings, and, where appropriate, points to critical additional readings not included here. The introductory essay for Section I includes an in depth discussion of the five core concepts used to organize the reader. Those concepts do not represent the only threads of conversation between the readings. Themes of iden-tity, autonomy, and belonging also resonate across them. In addition, readings provide students with a solid introduction to concepts and frameworks from other fields that have been so central to feminist theorizing, particularly the work of Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Antonio Gramsci. We hope that the plethora of themes and issues within the readings will generate wide-ranging discussion in the classroom.
Section I: Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces takes up and destabilizes the con-ventional narrative of feminist pasts captured by the wave metaphor. Readings include both third person scholarly accounts and documents-of-the-moment that archive the ideas and emotions of the mid- and late-twentieth-century feminisms. The third person analyses question the value of existing narratives and offer stories that complicate our understanding of feminist times and spaces. Documents-of-the-moment illuminate dif-ficult conversations about the social causes and consequences of gender subordination and women’s personal experiences as a basis for building feminist knowledge. In par-ticular, they include voices of feminists of color who challenge the narrow focus on sex difference and argue that any adequate theory of gender oppression must take account of the intersecting systems of difference and domination in which people live their lives. These readings illuminate the exclusions constructed by the initial definitions of U.S.
feminist theory’s core concepts. They point to the false universalism and essentialism of those concepts and examine systematic differences among women. The section includes voices representing feminist poetry, black, Chicana, lesbian, transgender, transnational, radical, and liberal feminism, and global reproductive rights activism.
Section II: Theorizing Intersecting Identities includes readings that theorize the ways in which gender is continually reconfigured by complex and multiple global proc-esses. The readings in the first subsection present feminist theoretical efforts to elab-orate the structural intersections of gender with multiple dimensions of oppression, including class, race, ethnicity nationality, religion, and sexuality. Like a kaleidoscope in which a jumble of objects are refracted through a prism in constantly shifting pat-terns, the readings offer a shifting prism of difference, through which to examine the mobile and multiple configurations of domination in women’s and men’s lives. They also unsettle the notion that race, nation, class, sexuality, or gender can be treated as fixed, essential, or separable categories. The second subsection includes first person accounts of the tensions pervading experiences of intersecting identities. The readings present self-reflexive narratives about identity, the terms of belonging to community, and the challenges of boundary-crossing. They delineate the complex politics of loca-tion in feminist theory (Mani Reading 41; Kaplan and Grewal 1994; Rich 2001). The readings offer students of diverse backgrounds models for how to negotiate the con-flicts and contests that comprise feminist activism in an era of perpetual war, economic collapse, and globalization.
Section III: Theorizing Feminist Knowledge and Agency, presents two central solutions offered by feminist theorists for constructing grounds for feminist politics: feminist standpoints theory and poststructural analyses of gendered discourse, power, and performativity. The readings build on insights generated by conversations repre-sented in Section II. Standpoint theories argue that women’s social location is a resource for the construction of a uniquely feminist perspective on social reality, which, in turn, can ground feminist political struggles for change. Taken together, the included selec-tions lead students to consider that there might be a multiplicity of feminist stand-points. Poststructural feminisms focus on operations of power in any/every articula-tion of a feminist subjectivity, suggesting that any asserarticula-tion of a stable gender identity or stable unity among women involves an exclusion of some kind. The basic concepts of poststructuralist theory, including the relationship of language and subjectivity, and of discourse and power, are presented along with selections that raise questions about the essentializing, disciplining, and normalizing functions of the concepts, “woman,” “sex,” “gender,” and “experience.” Through the essays, students will begin to see the normative functions of discourse and a feminist critique of identity politics.
Section IV Imagine Otherwise draws readings from recent efforts to move beyond the debates between postmodern and standpoint theories towards frameworks that build on the strengths of each perspective. These readings point in new directions to tentative resolutions of how to think/act to change gender relations. In discussions ranging from intensive economic globalization and the politics of emotion to queer theory and Chicana feminism, the readings reposition women’s lives and everyday experiences as a central focus of feminist theorizing and they reassert the social group
women, however unstable, as the agent of feminist politics. On one hand, the readings illustrate how poststructural theories of discourse and power have reshaped feminist social theory. On the other hand, readings also illustrate the new materialism evident in poststructural feminist theories, which responds to critiques that it gives too much attention to texts at the expense of embodiment. In particular, the section includes feminist analyses of emotions, bodies, and affect.
* * *
As a group, the voices, concepts, and analyses brought together within the Reader pro-vide frameworks for understanding feminist politics across national boundaries and the social processes that shape relational differences of gender and its intersections with race, ethnicity, nation, class, and sexuality. They advocate an open and flexible intel-lectual posture, urging students to question what they ‘know’ about the past, and to develop a habit of asking what else is going on here. While conveying a sense of hope-fulness, the readings do not offer easy answers. They do offer useful guidance on how to think about and enact feminist strategies for change in our local situation and within a transnational world, encouraging all of us to reflect on the shifting identities and asym-metries of power we must negotiate in this time of perpetual war, economic collapse, and increasing nationalist fervor.
Notes
1. For definitions of oppression see Marilyn Frye (1983) who defines oppression as constraints on and limitations of life options because of one’s identity as a member of a subordinated group. See also Iris Marion Young (1990) who identifies five forms of oppression: exploitation, marginaliza-tion, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.
2. How well this relationship between theory and political practice has developed is itself an issue of debate by scholars and activists alike.
3. The sense of conversations we intend here is informed by Katie King’s definitions. She distin-guishes between conversations and debates; the former involves “political contours,” the latter “theoretical contents.” She also describes conversations not as a single thing in which we all share but as ongoing, overlapping, and shifting. See King 1994: xi, 56, and 87.
4. More than100 nations have signed the Convention, but the United States is not one of them. 5. As publishing has become more global, we met with problems securing permission to publish
some classic articles worldwide and in electronic form.
6. This phrase is taken from Johnnella Butler’s work. See for example, Johnnella Butler and John Walter 1991.
THEORIZING FEMINIST
TIMES AND SPACES
Throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s, women’s challenges to their subordinate status seemed to explode in struggles involving issues of equal rights, social conventions of femininity and heterosexuality, reproductive self-determination, violence, poverty, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism, among others. While very visible, this period was not unique. At earlier points in modern history, women’s movements in many loca-tions across the world allied with nationalist, anti-colonial liberation movements, and labor activism to promote changes in women’s social status and political rights. In this section, we assemble a group of readings that encourage readers to question what they know about past feminist movements. Picking up “different strands running in tan-dem,” the readings tell different stories that elaborate the myriad connections and con-versations that comprise contemporary feminist theory (Barkley Brown 1992). While destabilizing the conventional representation of feminist genealogies (first, second, third waves), we also contextualize the feminist theoretical conversations and debates through a genealogy of core feminist concepts.
The readings in the Feminist Movements subsection urge readers to rethink femi-nist times and spaces by challenging the prevailing representation of femifemi-nist move-ments as waves. Certainly, women’s movemove-ments have varied in intensity throughout the modern era, as exemplified by the eagerness with which women in different times and places adopt or reject the label, feminist (Moses 1998a). In the mid-twentieth cen-tury, North American feminists used the metaphor of ‘waves’ to describe patterns of ‘ebb’ and ‘flow’ in feminist activism. They labeled the myriad women’s movements of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the ‘first wave of feminism.’ They labeled themselves the ‘second wave.’1 As histories often do, this description of the past
validated the present. Arguing that the first wave subsided before the work of women’s liberation was complete, these self-named second wave feminists took up the fight “to end male supremacy” (Bunch Reading 15)
While the wave metaphor may have had strategic value in the 1970s, the follow-ing readfollow-ings suggest that it is of limited usefulness as a tool for explainfollow-ing various coalescences and fractures in feminist movements. As a framework for telling feminist histories, the wave metaphor obscures more than it illuminates. As historian Elsa Barkley Brown has argued, “history is everyone talking at once, multiple rhythms being played simultaneously.” Therefore stories of women’s lives and social movements are simul-taneous, multiple, and connected. However, both formal scholarship and movement histories, tend “to isolate one conversation,” often as if it took place against a backdrop of silence. “The trick,” she argues, is to contextualize that conversation, “making evi-dent its dialogue with so many others” (1992: 297). The multiple stories, conversations,
12 Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces debates, and dialogues of feminist times and spaces are complexly related, and, because they are enmeshed in the hierarchies of differences that organize the world, they are asymmetrical. The conventional accounts of highs and lows of feminist waves configure a story that honors the lives and activities of white, middle-class, heterosexual women in the global north, and overlooks the activities of women situated otherwise. Thus, for instance, the period described as the low point of feminist activism between 1920 and 1960 saw continuous efforts by working-class union women to secure workplace justice (Cobble 2005). Moreover, the conventional narratives represent the activities of women situated otherwise as “different from” and “later than.” Such accounts ignore that, from the outset, relational differences and dialogues configure all knowledge, including feminist theories. The readings in this section recommend that we develop the habit of asking what else was/is going on whenever we engage accounts of women’s and social justice movements.
Feminist Movements
To invoke alternative images and metaphors of women’s activism, we start this section with a poem by Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) who is internationally recognized as one of the leading poets and writers of early modern Japan. The poem (Reading 1) appeared in the 1911 inaugural volume of Seito¯ (Bluestockings), the first Japanese feminist literary journal. In this poem, Yosano compares the creativity and vitality of women to dor-mant volcanoes. Drawing from the natural landscape of Japan, composed of mountains that were once blazing volcanoes, Yosano uses this imagery as a metaphor to character-ize the situation of women. She suggests that the creative energy of women, like fire of dormant volcanoes, has not been extinguished. It is gathering momentum to explode and women’s inner genius will shake the entire land.
Following the suggestion by Elsa Barkley Brown to make connections between the numerous stories and conversations of the past, Nancy Hewitt rethinks the history of “first wave” feminism by “re-embedding the Seneca Falls Convention in the world of 1848” (Reading 2). In so doing, she situates the emblematic founding moment of “first wave feminism” within the wider context of social justice movements around the globe that year. Her essay demonstrates that the angle from which we access the past shapes the stories we come to know. By shifting away from the conversations and connections available from the point of view of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the most prominent white middle-class woman in official histories of the nineteenth-century women’s move-ment, Hewitt illuminates the myriad of other connections between Seneca Falls and the people and movements surrounding it. She reminds readers that 1848 was an eventful year. Slavery was abolished in the West Indies, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American war, the Communist Manifesto was published, and revolutions occurred in France and Germany. She also reminds us that Seneca Falls was located in what had been the Iroquois nation, and that women’s claims for justice were closely connected to the American abolitionist movement. Finally, she reminds us that the women and men in attendance at the convention came from and brought with them a myriad of connections and perspectives on women’s condition.
In the mid-twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir (Reading 3) published her highly influential treatise, The Second Sex. In it, de Beauvoir articulates key argu-ments about the condition of women that would be taken up by feminists in the 1970s. Rejecting biological determinism and the “eternal feminine,” De Beauvoir starts from the premise that “one is not born a woman,” but becomes one, and asks then “what is a woman?”2 She argues that while men define themselves as the
exem-plary case of humanity, they define women in terms of their difference from men. “He is the subject … she is the other.” That definition marks women by what they lack. Moreover, she argues, “she appears to him as a sexual being. For him she is sex—absolute sex, no less.” It is not surprising therefore, that “knowledge” about “women’s nature,” often sexualized, justifies their subordination. Thus, de Beauvoir concludes, women must address for ourselves “… how the fact of being women will affect our lives. What opportunities precisely have been given us and what withheld? What fate awaits our younger sisters, and what directions should they take?” (Reading 3) An exhaustive philosophical treatise on the condition of women, feminist scholars have returned repeatedly to de Beauvoir’s work.3
Linda Nicholson (Reading 4) asks if any aspect of the wave metaphor is still useful. In answering that question, she summarizes the activity around gender that occurred in the U.S. between the passage of women’s suffrage and the emergence of the “second wave” as well as elaborating on the commonly used terms, liberal, radical,4 and socialist
feminist. She concludes that while the metaphor had strategic historical value, it should be discarded because it does not adequately capture the “different kinds of activism around gender” in U.S. history. It gives the false impression that a single feminism lies beneath the peaks and valleys of feminist waves. Furthermore, it cannot usefully account for the uneven outcomes of feminist activisms, some of which succeeded and some of which did not. She would reserve use of the metaphor to describe periods, when feminist claims resonate with “the felt needs of ordinary women and men,” mobiliz-ing “large numbers of people in very public, noisy, and challengmobiliz-ing ways” (Readmobiliz-ing 4). However, she urges readers not to overlook the quieter work required to institutional-ize social change.
Becky Thompson (Reading 5) contests what she calls the “hegemonic feminism” that organizes most conventional accounts of “second wave” feminism. She tells an alternative history focused on the rise of multiracial feminism. In particular, she con-tests those scholars who conclude that radical feminism subsided by the early 1970s. This assessment, she argues, limits our understanding of feminist activism to the nar-row conjuncture of the new left and women’s liberation movements. It also limits our understanding of radical to anti-patriarchal activism. One can only read the 1970s and 1980s as a period of dissipated feminist activism if one discounts the spaces in which women of color and anti-racist white women struggled to build a movement to end multiple forms of domination. To the contrary, she argues, the 1970s and 1980s saw the rise of multiracial feminism. It was a period in which “issues that had divided many of the movement’s constituencies … were put on the table” (Barbara Smith cited in Thompson Reading 5). Once on the table, multiracial women’s groups engaged in difficult dialogues required to be accountable across difference. Thompson
14 Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces chronicles the key scholars, organizations, and events in multiracial feminisms, contex-tualizing the key concepts that multiracial feminist theory generated, such as interlocking oppressions, the politics of location, and coalition politics.
Amrita Basu (Reading 6) discusses a vitally important strand running in tandem with, but independent from, U.S. women’s movements. Her account focuses on the women activists who came together around the U.N. “Decade for Women” to articu-late an international women’s rights agenda at the four international conferences on women between 1975 and 1995. Basu’s analysis illuminates the sites of coalescence and conflict between women of the global north and global south. Her account of this history indexes the asymmetries of power and perspective that shaped global feminist networks from early “bitter contestation” in the period from 1975 to 1985 to the con-temporary coalitions formed in the period from 1985 to 1995. She highlights struggles over the priorities and terms of international women’s activism, noting the women of the global north tend to favor issues involving personal freedoms while women of the global south prioritize economic issues of poverty and development. She makes clear that women of the global south set their own agenda, and were not “waiting for” U.S. women to lead them. Basu argues that with all the differences, what women have in common are political goals, defined in specific historical times and places. She suggests that greater attention to the geopolitics that shape both contentious issues and com-mon goals will enable feminist networks to flourish in the current climate of intensified globalization. Although the geographic terminology of global north and global south does not adequately convey the political configuration of the world, following Basu’s example we use it as the best approximation available.
Asking if feminist waves are transatlantic, Michelle Rowley (Reading 7) critiques the pedagogical reliance on feminist waves from the perspective of transnational femi-nists teaching in U.S. women’s studies classrooms. While the wave metaphor should be discarded, she argues, genealogies are nonetheless important. Drawing on the poetic voice of Etheridge Knight, an Afro-Caribbean poet, Rowley reminds us that our rela-tional connections, past, present, and future, make us who we are and who we may become. She offers Knight’s evocative phrase, “whereabouts unknown,” to posit a new method for composing feminist genealogies, one that recognizes, “the importance of unexpected, diverse, and surprising beginnings.” The wave metaphor, she notes, “frames” the “whereabouts” that “are already known.” In its place, she offers the term, “politics and conditions of emergence,” which allows us to “place emphasis on the power dynamics and context that lead to specific feminist issues and responses coming into full force.” In other words, Rowley advocates that we investigate the “wherea-bouts” of what is “unknown” in order to elaborate the there and then of the conditions spurring feminist action (Reading 7).
Local Identities and Politics
The readings in second subsection provide a number of additional entry points into feminist debates of the 1970s and 1980s. Some are third person accounts; some are doc-uments-of- the-moment that archive strands of conversation within feminist theory.
The language and the emotions indexed in the readings speak to both universal claims made in the voice of normative feminist subject as well as the counter claims of those excluded from it. Together these readings endorse Rowley’s recommendation that we examine the conditions of emergence within the local feminist times and spaces to which they refer. Likewise, we encourage readers to ask what else was going on, what else informed these local identities and politics.
The readings represent only a very small number of those that might have been chosen. We selected them because they offer insight into the five concepts with which, we believe, students can gain an understanding of contemporary feminist theory. Those concepts are gender, difference, women’s experiences, the personal is political, and intersectionality. In the remainder of this chapter, we introduce the readings in the Local Identities and Politics subsection by way of an intellectual genealogy of those core concepts. Not intended to be definitive or exhaustive, it locates the following readings in their time and place, situating them in the relational differences, the asymmetrical connections, and ongoing contentions archived within them.
GENDER—Even as women moved into new areas of public life across the globe in the twentieth century, Western social scientists amassed evidence that they said dem-onstrated the natural basis of sex differences (Delphy 1993; Stern 2005; Meyerowitz 2002). Anglophone feminists developed the concept of gender to counter the claim that biology is destiny.5 As case in point, Ann Oakley’s, 1972 book, Sex, Gender, and Society,
offers a meticulous critique of data about sex differences, arguing that whatever small differences exist are exaggerated by the methods used to measure them. Height is a clas-sic example. On average, men are taller than women are. However, the range of differ-ence within each group is greater than the differdiffer-ences between them. The comparison by average height obscures similarities and exaggerates differences to the benefit of men. Concurring with de Beauvoir, Oakley notes, women’s differences from men are construed as inferiority. In contrast to “natural” sex differences, Oakley defines mas-culinity and femininity as the products of the gendered social process of learning and internalizing behaviors, roles, and personality traits deemed appropriate to each sex. She concludes that the resulting gender types overstate the otherwise minimal biologi-cal sex differences. Minimal biologibiologi-cal sex differences are completely obscured by social practices (and prejudice). Besides, modern technology and contraception made those differences irrelevant. She concludes that “man-made” interpretations of sex differ-ences secure male dominance and women’s devaluation, which amounts to injustice.
Oakley bolsters her argument that gender is socially determined with anthropolog-ical evidence of cultural variations in the activities and personality characteristics asso-ciated with men and women in “other cultures.”6 Another example of this common
strategy in early feminist theories of gender appears in Gayle Rubin’s influential 1975 essay, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex.” Like Oakley, Rubin describes the cultural processes of gender, the sex/gender system, as that which takes the raw material of human babies/bodies and produces gender-differentiated beings with complementary skills and personalities. When properly coupled, gendered beings produce the basic social unit—the family. The sex/gender system subordinates women by positioning them as the objects exchanged by men to create family and
16 Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces community. Rubin’s careful explication of the sex/gender system is peppered with references to “exotic”7 gender and sexual practices in the global south taken from
anthropology.8 These examples augment her argument that gender is differentiated
everywhere, but not always in the same way.
Multiracial and transnational feminists have critiqued this argumentation strategy, pointing out that it distorts their heritage as it constructs “other” women as “decora-tions” for the political struggles and theorizing of Western white women (Lorde 1981: 96).9 Such references to other cultures index the diversity of gender and demonstrate
that male domination is universal. The implication is that, even though the details may differ, all women are subjected to the same underlying patriarchal gender system. “To imply,” however, as Audre Lorde notes, “that all women suffer the same oppression simply because they are women, is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy” (95). Moreover, these appropriative uses of the global south are emblematic of Orien-talist discourses, as Edward Said has demonstrated (Said 1978). Following Said, Ori-entalist discourses constructed by colonial regimes and ordinary travelogues created an imaginative geography—“the East,” “the Orient” and “the West,” “the Occident.” Often in racialized terms, Orientalist discourse sets up the binary opposition of primi-tive and civilized, through which “the West” understands itself as superior in all things. The contrast represents the (white) West as more progressive, more advanced, and thus world leaders. Transnational feminists have shown that although Said may have over-looked it, inasmuch Orientalist discourse casts “other” women either as exotic and/or as sexually victimized in contrast to Western women, gender is central to Orientalism (Mohanty 1991b; Abu-Lughod Reading 21). Western feminist theories participate in Orientalist discourses when they pluck examples of women’s oppression elsewhere to support their own arguments, and when they presume to say what the most important issues for all women. Such Orientalist arguments and postures raise particular dilem-mas in organizing around gender and sexuality within transnational communities of color around the world. Amrita Basu notes that the 1980 U.N. Conference erupted in controversy over just such issues (Reading 6; see also Rao 1991).
Another important strand of feminist theorizing about gender surfaces in Rubin’s essay: She credits the sex/gender system with cultural construction of sexuality as well gender. This observation points to critiques lesbian feminist would make about the het-eronormative assumptions underlying initial feminist theories of gender. For instance, Shulamith Firestone’s (Reading 14) discussion of “the culture of romance” assumes that desire is heterosexual. What counts as erotic is the coupling of masculine male bodies with feminine female bodies. Thus, while her argument elaborates de Beauvoir’s observation that men sexualize women, it ignores the specifically heterosexual compo-nents of the culture of romance, thus reiterating heterosexist reasoning. So, do lesbians fit into the category of women, into the category of feminist? Charlotte Bunch’s essay (Reading 15) addresses such questions as she challenges reflexive heterosexism and homophobia in mid-twentieth-century women’s movements. Her argument situates lesbianism as a political and sexual identity. A “woman-identified” political separatism, she asserts, offers the best means of overthrowing patriarchy because “lesbianism threatens male-supremacy at its core.” Clearly angered by the exclusion of lesbians from
feminist organizations, Bunch’s argument is audacious in a historical period of enormous stigma attached to lesbianism, and one frequently hurled at feminists as anti-male.
In the 1990s, queer theory contested feminist accounts of gender, suggesting that if the cultural processes configure gender and compulsory heterosexual couplings, more is going on here than feminists have accounted for. Dialogue between queer theorists and feminist theorists has generated feminist theories of heteronormativity and the cultural configuration of heterosexuality, and it continues to inform accounts of the relationship between gender, male dominance, and heteronormativity. That is, does the gender system primarily serve systems of male dominance, resulting in the subordi-nation and devaluation of women? Alternatively, does it primarily serve heteronorma-tivity, resulting in exclusion of queer sexualities, genders, bodies, and identities? Does gender then serve the ends of heteronormativity?
In addition, critiques by queer and transgender theorists unsettled the feminist assumption that biological sex is pre-social. They theorize a far more complex and contingent relationship between bodies, sexes, sexualities, and genders, arguing that culture configures sexed bodies as well as genders (Butler 1990 and Delphy 1992). Les-lie Feinberg’s essay (Reading 17) is an early example of a feminist/transgender political treatise that challenges the binary opposition of men and women. Feinberg defines gender as “self-expression, not anatomy.” Ze10 challenges the automatic linkage of
body type and gender identity. Instead, ze argues, within the history of gender oppres-sions, non-normative (queer) configurations of bodies and gender identities have been subject to severe repression. However, ze notes that transphobia has its own specific dynamics, which are detailed in the essay.
Recent feminist scholarship has, in response, returned to the relationship between biology and culture to consider how much of what we call anatomical sex difference is shaped by culture and to critique the gender binary (the binary opposition of sexes, sexualities, and genders) that prevails in most social, including feminist, theory.11
As this brief summary suggests, the fundamental feminist concept, gender, ignited an explosion of scholarship but it does not have a single or uncontested definition. Sometimes gender refers to characteristics of individuals; the meanings of sex differ-ences ingrained on bodies, minds, and identities. Sometimes it refers to the processes by which sex difference was struggled over, enacted in cultural practices, and inscribed in and deployed by social institutions (schools, courts, hospitals, and the media). Sometimes, gender refers to culturally prescribed performances in everyday activities and expressive cultural forms. At the same time, feminist theorists of color in the glo-bal north and gloglo-bal south challenged universalized views of gender that treated all women as subject to the same gender oppression and that appropriated their cultural practices to support universalist claims. Different theories about connections between anatomical sex, gender, and sexuality shaped dialogues and debates between feminist theories, lesbian feminist and queer theory. They all concur, however, that power rela-tions shape how gender is defined, constituted, sanctioned, identified with, resisted, lived, and reproduced. Together, debates about the importance and composition of differences between women became the generative engine for feminist theory in the 1980s (Sandoval 1991 and McDermott 1994).
18 Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces DIFFERENCE12—As the preceding discussion indicates, “difference” was
articu-lated not only as “gender difference that united women as distinct from men” but also “as an index of incommensurability among women of different races, classes, ethnici-ties, and sexualities” (Schmitz et al. 1995: 710). As the above quotation from Audre Lorde shows, women of color objected to a gender-only focus in feminist theory. In addition, Frances Beal warned in 1972, that women’s liberation would quickly become a white women’s movement if it insisted on organizing along the gender lines alone (Sandoval 1991). Such a focus on “women in general” presumed that other dimen-sions of social life were unimportant in understanding women’s experience as women. Moreover, women of color argued, the exclusive focus on gender universalized the par-ticular experience of white, middle-class, heterosexual women residing in the global north as the normal/normative situation of “women in general,” and dismissed their experiences and perspectives (Lorde 1981; Spelman 1988; and Thompson Reading 5).
To illustrate how false universals silence difference, recall the earlier example of average height. The contrast of men and women treats each group as homogenous. Differences among women (and among men) vanish, especially differences in privilege and disadvantage within each group. Hierarchies of difference within each group ensure that the general case represents the situation, perspective, interests of the dominant group. bell hooks illuminated the flawed logic of false universals when she famously asked, “Which men do women want to be equal to” (hooks 1984: 18)? Because they are not also subordinated by race, class, (neo)colonialism, or homophobia, white mid-dle-class, heterosexual women of the global north mistook their situation to be a case of pure sexism. As if privileges of race, class, nation, sexuality did not shape their lives (Spelman 1988). This reasoning also overlooks the relational processes by which sys-tems of domination confer privileges on some and deprivations on others. As Barkley Brown reminds us, “We need to recognize” that “middle-class women live the lives they do precisely because working class women lead the lives they do. White women and women of color not only live different lives, but white women live the lives they do in large part because women of color live the ones they do” (Barkley Brown 1992: 298). Intertwining race, class, heterosexual, and imperialist privilege gave (and continue to give) white, middle-class, heterosexual women of the global north greater means for articulating their perspectives. This culturally and economically dominant group’s perspectives thus came to define the terms of feminist debate, against which women located otherwise have had to situate themselves.
The effects of hierarchical differences are evident in the essays by Elizabeth Mar-tinez (Reading 12) Combahee River Collective (Reading 13), and Charlotte Bunch (Reading 15) who directed their arguments against the “hegemonic feminist” subject (Thompson Reading 5). Their arguments reflect the terms of inclusion/exclusion that women of color and women of the global south confront in feminist theory and politics narrowly focused on gender. Either they must ignore dimensions of their situations to locate themselves within “women in general” or they must mark themselves by their differences from that group. In contrast, the essays by Carole Pateman (Reading 11) and Shulamith Firestone (Reading 14) speak about “women in general,” without speci-fying which women and where. Nor do they consider how their accounts might change
