Who's afraid of feminism?: Seeing through the backlash - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140253610 ISBN 13: 9780140253610

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 1998

Synopsis

This is a collection of essays examining the position of women in society today. It seeks to challenge the myth that women are out in the world working on the same terms as men, as well as the myth of the domesticated man. It also dissects the process of the dismantling of gender and the return to a naive masculinist understanding of women's place. Finally, it challenges the idea of women as a universal category, arguing instead for a recognition of multiple social groups in which women exist in different political regimes and cultural identities. The contributors are: Parminder Bhachu; Carol Gilligan; Jack Goody; Susan Heath; Carolyn Heilbrun; Juliet Mitchell; Ann Oakley; Patrizia Romito; Joanna Ryan; Ahneta Stark; Margaret Walters; Peggy Watson; and Nira Yuval-Davis.

About this title

Review:

Feminism was never intended to be monolithic or totalitarian, but all too often it gets cast that way. Who's Afraid of Feminism? takes a weighty, tough-minded look at backlash within--and outside of--the feminist movement, and its international contributors don't pull punches. Margaret Walters delivers scathing commentary on the mirror-image melodrama of Camille Paglia and Catharine MacKinnon squaring off over pornography. She notes dryly that the demonizing rhethoric spouted in this fight "offers far more excitement than the slow slog to get a better deal for women in the workplace, at home, in politics, or the equally slow struggle to explore the ambiguities of our own sexual feelings..." Susan Heath puts the lie to advances made by lesbians that are too often shredded by day-to-day homophobic realities. The book is no dirge, however, but a healthy shake-up that carefully examines and in some instances affirms what feminist values are and how they've sped and slowed our journey. --Francesca Coltrera

About the Author:

Ann Oakley is a professor of sociology at the University of London. Her previous books include Gender on Planet Earth and Experiments in Knowing (both published by The New Press), The Men’s Room, The Captured Womb, Subject Women, Becoming a Mother, Woman’s Work, The Sociology of Housework, and Sex, Gender and Society.

Juliet Mitchell is a psychoanalyst and currently A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She is also a university lecturer at Cambridge University and Fellow of Jesus College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0140253610
• ISBN 13: 9780140253610
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 291