Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T00:38:43.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking About Gender

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Julie A. Nelson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I present a way of thinking about gender that I have found helpful in evaluating various proposed feminist projects. By considering gender and value as independent dimensions, relationships of “difference” can be more clearly perceived as involving relationships of lack, of complementarity, or of perversion. I illustrate the use of my gender/value “compass” with applications to questions of self-identity, rationality, and knowledge. This way of thinking about gender allows a conceptualization of feminism that neither erases nor emphasizes gender distinctions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Summer 1992 , pp. 138 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcoff, Linda. 1988. Cultural feminism versus post‐structuralism: The identity crisis in feminist theory. Signs 13: 405–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bern, Sandra L. 1974. The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42(2): 155–62.Google Scholar
Bern, Sandra L. 1981. Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review 88(4): 354–364.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. 1990. Epistemologies of postmodernism: A rejoinder to Jean‐Francois Lyotard. In Feminism/postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, Linda J.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bernard, Jessie. 1987. Reviewing the impact of women's studies on sociology. In The impact of feminist research in the academy, ed. Farnham, Christie. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1990. Feminism, postmodernism, and gender‐scepticism. In Feminism/postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, Linda J.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crawford, Mary. 1989. Agreeing to differ: Feminist epistemologies and women's ways of knowing. In Gender and thought: Psychological perspectives, ed. Crawford, Mary and Gentry, Margaret. New York: Springer‐Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenstein, Hester and Jardine, Alice eds., 1985. The future of difference. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1987. Feminist political rhetoric and women's studies. In The rhetoric of the human sciences, ed. Nelson, John S., McGill, Allan, and McCloskey, Donald N.Madison: University of Wiscons.Google Scholar
Flax, Jane. 1990. Postmodernism and gender relations in feminist theory. In Feminism/postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, Linda J. New York.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy and Nicholson, Linda J. 1990. Social criticism without philosophy: An encounter between feminism and postmodernism. In Feminism/postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, Linda J.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Carol. 1987. Remapping development: The power of divergent data. In The impact of feminist research in the academy, ed. Farnham, Christie. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hare‐Mustin, Rachel T. and Marecek, Jeanne. 1988. The meaning of difference: Gender theory, postmodernism, and psychology. American Psychologist 43(6): 455–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy. 1990. Foucault on power: A theory for women? In Feminism/postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, Linda J.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hooks, Bell. 1990. Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Huston, Aletha C. 1983. Sex‐typing. In Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 4): Socialization, personality and social development, ed. Mussen, P. H. and Hetherington, E. M.Fourth edition. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keller, Catherine. 1986. From a broken web: Separation, sexism and self. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1986a. How gender matters or, why it's so hard for us to count past two. In Perspectives on gender & science, ed. Harding, Jan. London: The Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1986b. Making gender visible in the pursuit of nature's secrets. In Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, ed. De Lauretis, Teresa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1987. The gender/science system: or, is sex to gender as nature is to science? Hypatia 2(3): 37–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Lynda. 1983. Woman is not a rational animal: On Aristotle's biology of reproduction. In Discovering reality, ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merril B.Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The man of reason: ‘Male’ and ‘female’ in Western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Maccoby, Eleanor E. and Masters, John C. 1970. Attachment and dependency. In Carmichael's manual of child psychology (Vol. 2), Mussen, Paul H., ed. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Margolis, Howard. 1987. Patterns, thinking, and cognition: A theory of judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morawski, J. G. 1987. The troubled quest for masculinity, femininity and androgyny. Review of Personality and Social Psychology 7: 7–69.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Linda J. ed., 1990. Feminism/postmodernism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Offen, Karen. 1988. Defining feminism: A comparative historical approach. Signs 14(1): 119–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poovey, Mary. 1988. Feminism and deconstruction. Feminist Studies 14: 51–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Joan W. 1988. Deconstructing equality‐versus‐difference: Or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism. Feminist Studies 14: 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich‐Haste, Helen. 1986. Brother sun, sister moon: Does rationality overcome a dualistic world view? In Perspectives on gender and science, ed. Harding, Jan. London: The Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Wilshire, Donna. 1989. The uses of myth, image, and the female body in re‐visioning knowledge. In Gender/bodylknowledge, ed. Jaggar, Alison M. and Bordo, Susan R.New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar