Best of
Gender

1987

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (Updated With a New Epilogue)


Riane Eisler - 1987
    The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women


Caroline Walker Bynum - 1987
    The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.

Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men


Anne Fausto-Sterling - 1987
    Features a new chapter and afterward on recent biological breakthroughs.

The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction


Emily Martin - 1987
    Contrasting the views of medical science with those of ordinary women from diverse social and economic backgrounds, anthropologist Emily Martin presents unique fieldwork on American culture and uncovers the metaphors of economy and alienation that pervade women's imaging of themselves and their bodies. A new preface examines some of the latest medical ideas about women's reproductive cycles.

AIDS: Cultural Analysis / Cultural Activism


Douglas Crimp - 1987
    But AIDS has precipitated a crisis that is not primarily medical, or even social and political; AIDS has precipitated a crisis of signification the "meaning" of AIDS is hotly contested in all of the discourses that conceptualize it and seek to respond to it . AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism is the first book on the subject that takes this battle over meaning as its premise.ContributorsLeo Bersani, author of The Freudian Body; Simon Watney, who serves on the board of the Health Education Committee of London's Terrence Higgens Trust; Jan Zita Grover, medical editor at San Francisco General Hospital; Suki Ports, former executive director of the New York City Minority Task Force on AIDS; and Sander Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology.Also included are essays by Paula A. Treichler, who teaches in the Medical School and in communications at the University of Illinois; Carol Leigh, a member of COYOTE and contributor to Sex Work; and Max Navarre, editor of the People With AIDS Coalition monthly Newsline. In addition to these essays, the book contains a portfolio of manifestos, articles, letters, and photographs from the publications of the PWA Coalition, an interview with three members of the AIDS discrimination unit of the New York City Commission on Human Rights; and presentations for the independent video documentaries on AIDS, Testing the Limits and Bright Eyes.An October Book.

Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics


Raewyn W. Connell - 1987
    This exceptional book seeks to integrate gender and sexuality into the mainstream of social and political theory with the aim of challenging and transforming these traditional areas.The book is an original contribution to the theory, setting out for the first time a systematic framework for the social analysis of gender and sexuality. It is written with a clarity and scope that also make it useful as an introductory textbook sexual politics.The book reviews theories of gender from feminism to psychoanalysis, sex role theory, and sociobiology. It maps the structure of gender relations in contemporary life and in history; proposes a new approach to femininity and masculinity; and offers a wide-ranging analysis of sexual politics and the dynamics of change, from working-class feminism to the dilemmas of the "men's movement."Connell has produced a major work of synthesis and scholarship which will be of unique value to students and professionals in sociology, politics, psychology, women's studies, gay studies, and to anyone interested in sexual politics.

Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (Revised Edition): The Global Politics of Population Control


Betsy Hartmann - 1987
    With a new introduction, this fully revised edition of a feminist classic reveals the dangers of contemporary population control tactivs, especially as they affect women in developing countries.

Toward a New Psychology of Women


Jean Baker Miller - 1987
    Toward a New Psychology of Women revolutionized concepts of strength and weakness, dependency and autonomy, emotion, success, and power.

The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone


Barbara G. Walker - 1987
    A spiritual autobiography of one woman's inner journey away from her Christian upbringing to an appreciation of the idea of a goddess and a skeptical, feminist view of society.

A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney


Susan Quinn - 1987
    A vivid and convincing portrait of a woman whose struggles and passions speak to us today with astonishing immediacy. Black-and-white photographs.

Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement 1970-1985


Rozsika Parker - 1987
    An extensive collection of articles, as well as broadsheets printed in facsimile, illustrate the history and diversity of arguably the most important intervention in modern art. Essays by, amongst others, Laura Mulvey, Sarah Kent, Rosalind Coward, mary Kelly, and Sally Potter combine with press releases from the Women's Workshop, articles from The times and Spare Rib, and a host of other documents.

The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives


Jane Schaberg - 1987
    Jane Schaberg argued that Matthew and Luke were aware that Jesus had been conceived illegitimately, probably as a result of a rape of Mary, and had left in their Gospels some hints of that knowledge, even though their main purpose was to explore the theological significance of Jesus' birth. By having the Messiah born out of the exploitation of a woman of the poor, God demonstrates the vindication of the oppressed in a truly miraculous manner. Exegetical precision, theological passion, and an exquisite prose style are combined in this landmark book, whose importance is yet to be fully recognized. Perhaps not surprisingly, the book and its author were vilified, even though scholarly reviewers found much to praise in it, and it still features on many classroom reading lists. For this Anniversary Edition, we have added Schaberg's own disturbing account of the reception of the book, and two extensive responses--one respectfully dissenting, one fully supportive--from other New Testament scholars.

Womanchrist: A New Vision of Feminist Spirituality


Christin Lore Weber - 1987
    

Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-Eroticism and Modern Poetry


Gregory Woods - 1987
    Lawrence, Hart Crane, W.H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, and Thom Gunn. Woods’s controlled and elegant study demonstrates that a critic who ignores the sexual orientation of a poet, particularly a love poet, risks overlooking the significance of the poetry itself.

Frye Street & Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner


Marita Bonner - 1987
    

The Nonsexist Word Finder


Rosalie Maggio - 1987
    

The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology


Dorothy E. Smith - 1987
    Smith develops a method for analyzing how women (and men) view contemporary society from specific gendered points of view. She shows how social relations - and the theories that describe them - must express the concrete historical and geographical details of everyday lives. A vital sociology from the standpoint of women, the volume is applicable to a variety of subjects, and will be especially useful in courses in sociological theory and methods.

Age of Sex Crime


Jane Caputi - 1987
    Jane Caputi argues that the sensationalized murders by men such as Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, and the Yorkshire Ripper represent a contemporary genre of sexually political crimes. The awful deeds function as a form of patriarchal terrorism, "disappearing" women at a rate of some four thousand annually in the United States alone. Caputi asks us not only to name the phenomenon of sexually political murder, but to recognize sex crime in all of its various interconnecting manifestations.

I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers


Brian Swann - 1987
    This second edition features a new introduction by the editors and updated biographical sketches for each writer.

Her Wits about Her: Self-Defense Success Stories by Women


Denise Caignon - 1987
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Letters to MS., 1972-1987


Mary Thom - 1987
    

The Threshing Floor: Short Stories


Barbara Burford - 1987
    Powerful, well-crafted tales, The cruel realities, dream fantasies, and bitter escapes of Black women.

Female Authority: Empowering Women through Psychotherapy


Polly Young-Eisendrath - 1987
    The double-bind of female authority--that a women cannot be both a healthy adult and an ideal woman--is the context in which a woman must construct her self in this culture. Whether she sees herself as "too needy" or "too controlling," "too insecure" or "too self-reliant," she is gathering evidence to support a theory of personal inadequacy. The traditional perspectives of psychodynamics and psychopathology reinforce women's sense of inferiority. How then does a woman claim her own authority--the validity of her own truth, beauty, goodness, originating in her own experience?Young-Eisendrath and Wiedemann break with the tradition of "deficit thinking," the examination of what is absent, wrong, or deficient. Recognizing this as a fundamental barrier to the empowerment of women, they work instead from an understanding of what is already strong and satisfying in the lives of women and girls in a patriarchal society. This volume unravels the paradox of female authority through the examination of its sociocultural, symbolic, and personal dimensions. Chapters 1 through 4 present a re-visioning of the female self, using the psychologies of C. G. Jung and Jane Loevinger as major theoretical frameworks. The authors argue for a modification of Jung's concept of "animus"--the repressed masculine in the girl or woman--and in chapters 5 through 8 present a detailed model of psychotherapy based on five stages of animus development. Using a wealth of clinical material from their own practices--including two extended case presentations in chapters 9 through 11--the authors skillfully illustrate their own efforts to help women assume greater personal authority. The book's concluding chapter presents New Texts and Contexts for Female Development. Unique in its combination of feminist theory, social psychology, and Jungian psychology, Female Authority offers a fresh approach to the analysis of gender concerns in identity. The book will be of great value to practitioners and theoreticians in the human services. The discussion of women's self-esteem and personal authority, and the probing of conflicts inherent in female identity in our society, place this book among the major recent contributions to the development of a psychology of women.

Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation


Steven Foster - 1987
    The absence of these traditional supports creates problems in the lives of those who are caught in the void and lack definite expectations at various times of their lives. The chapters on masculine and feminine initiation provide new and creative concepts and practical possibilities for each of us. Initiation has been a missing component in the modern world and needs to be re-introduced with new understanding and consciousness.

Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice


Libreria delle donne Di Milano - 1987
    

Women Doctors in Gilded-Age Washington: Race, Gender, and Professionalization


Gloria Moldow - 1987