Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public PolicySharon M. Meagher, Patrice DiQuinzio This diverse collection explores the rhetoric of a wide range of public policies that propose "to put women and children first," including homeland security, school violence, gun control, medical intervention of intersex infants, and policies that aim to distinguish "good" from "bad" mothers. Using various feminist philosophical analyses, the contributors uncover a logic of paternalistic treatment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary popular policy discourse and affects the way that people understand and respond to social and political issues. Contributors rethink basic philosophical assumptions concerning subjectivity, difference, and dualistic logic in order to read the rhetoric of contemporary public policy discourse and develop new ways of talking and acting in the policy domain. |
Contents
| 8 | |
| 17 | |
Medical Discourse and | 81 |
Social Melancholy Shame and Sublimation | 99 |
Locating | 137 |
PART IV | 157 |
Maternalist Civic | 227 |
List of Contributors | 247 |
Other editions - View all
Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy Sharon M. Meagher,Patrice DiQuinzio No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
abuse action agency American analysis argues associated authority Battered become birth blame boys called cause Census child claim concept concerns consider culture daughter depression describes difference discourse domestic violence drugs effects essential example experience explain fact fear feel feminist gender girls groups guilt harm human rights ideal identity images important individual intersex issues lack lives logic male March marriage maternal meaning motherhood mothers movement oppression parents person political poor position practices pregnant Press prevent problems programs prostitution protection question rational reason relations relationships Report representation represented requires response result rhetoric risks role school violence sense sexual shame shows social society studies subjectivity sublimation substance suggests theory threat tion traditional treatment understanding University University Press victims woman women York
Popular passages
Page 139 - Disorder (PTSD) is essentially, the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one's physical integrity...
Page 145 - To understand political power aright and derive it from its original, we must consider what s^tate all men are naturally in,' and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their .possessions and persons as they see fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man...
Page 57 - The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Page 66 - Declaration, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating him or other persons.
Page 23 - From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.
Page 81 - ... systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively 'regulated
Page 100 - In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.
Page 145 - To UNDERSTAND political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
Page 68 - Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. ARTICLE 13 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Page 94 - Except as provided in subsection (b), whoever knowingly circumcises, excises, or infibulates the whole or any part of the labia majora or labia minora or clitoris of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."44 Subsection "b...