Feminist Crosscurrents – serie

"A courageous analysis of Arab writers, addressing the connections between masculinity, violence, and nationalism." —Robin Morgan, Ms.."Rarely have sexuality and war been treated with such poignancy and historical concreteness .... The force of these often intertwined phenomena endemic to the human condition are considered with incisive and wrenching specificity from within one of the most baneful convergences of sexuality and war in recent history." —Djelal Kadir, editor, World Literature Today."Personal, powerful, passionate, uncensored."—Fedwa Malti-Douglas, The Journal of Women's History.A welcome departure from stereotypical nationalist conceptions from which no solutions to the current impasse can possibly emerge."—Joel Benin, The Middle East Report.Accad's extraordinary pacifism is deeply compelling to women as it is deeply challenging to men." —Andrea Dworkin.A splendid book. Drawing on interviews with Lebanon's village women and her close readings of Lebanon's contemporary novelists, Accad manages to pull back the veil that has shrouded so many conventional nationalisms, revealing their roots in men's effort to control women's sexuality."—Cynthia Enloe, author of Does Khaki Become You?"Extraordinary in weaving together literature, feminist theory, and theories of war and violence. Her analysis of the relationships between sexuality, war, and nationalism is stunning in its frankness and importance." —Berenice A. Carroll, Purdue University."It is in the women's writings on the Lebanese civil war that Accad discerns alternative visions that could shape a non- violent reality." —Miriam Cooke, The Middle East Studies.This book should remind us how patriarchies can operate similarly in societies we most often define through difference .... [Accad's] forthright, critically respectful, caring treatment of Lebanese lives and worlds resonates as we engage with the longterm repercussions of the Gulf War.—Marilyn Booth, Women's Review of Books.This compelling book offers an exploration of the indissoluble link between war and sexuality based on over twelve years of interviews by the well-known Lebanese expatriate teacher, critic, and writer.Evelyne Accad explores what she calls the indissoluble link between war and sexualtiy. She refers to sexuality as the physical and psychological relations of men and women, and examines Middle Eastern customs involved in defining such relationships. She argues that many of the problems faced by societies at war stem from the way male sexuality is viewed and imposed and from the oppression of women within cultural parameters. For twelve years Professor Accad interviewed women throughout the Middle East about their sexuality and relationships with men. On the basis of these interviews and a close study of six novels written by both men and women on the subject of the Lebanese war, she explores the connection between sexualtity and war and contrasts the reactions of male authors with those of their female counterparts. Each author views war as having roots in sexuality.Evelyne Accad concludes that "there is a need for a new rapport between men and women, women and women, and men and men: there is a ned for relationshops based on trust, recognition of the other, tenderness, equal sharing, and love devoid of jealousy and possession. Since the personal is the political, changes in relationshops traditionally based on domination, oppression, and power games will inevitably rebound in other spheres of life.

A selection of insights into the relationship between men and womenHave you wondered: Why women are more sympathetic than men toward O. J. Simpson? Why women were no more supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment than men? Why women are no more likely than men to support a female political candidate? Why women are no more likely than men to embrace feminism—a movement by, about, and for women? Why some women stay with men who abuse them? Loving to Survive addresses just these issues and poses a surprising answer. Likening women's situation to that of hostages, Dee L. R. Graham and her co- authors argue that women bond with men and adopt men's perspective in an effort to escape the threat of men's violence against them.Dee Graham's announcement, in 1991, of her research on male-female bonding was immediately followed by a national firestorm of media interest. Her startling and provocative conclusion was covered in dozens of national newspapers and heatedly debated. In Loving to Survive, Graham provides us with a complete account of her remarkable insights into relationships between men and women.In 1973, three women and one man were held hostage in one of the largest banks in Stockholm by two ex-convicts. These two men threatened their lives, but also showed them kindness. Over the course of the long ordeal, the hostages came to identify with their captors, developing an emotional bond with them. They began to perceive the police, their prospective liberators, as their enemies, and their captors as their friends, as a source of security. This seemingly bizarre reaction to captivity, in which the hostages and captors mutually bond to one another, has been documented in other cases as well, and has become widely known as Stockholm Syndrome.The authors of this book take this syndrome as their starting point to develop a new way of looking at male-female relationships. Loving to Survive considers men's violence against women as crucial to understanding women's current psychology. Men's violence creates ever-present, and therefore often unrecognized, terror in women. This terror is often experienced as a fear for any woman of rape by any man or as a fear of making any man angry. They propose that women's current psychology is actually a psychology of women under conditions of captivitythat is, under conditions of terror caused by male violence against women. Therefore, women's responses to men, and to male violence, resemble hostages' responses to captors.Loving to Survive explores women's bonding to men as it relates to men's violence against women. It proposes that, like hostages who work to placate their captors lest they kill them, women work to please men, and from this springs women's femininity. Femininity describes a set of behaviors that please men because they communicate a woman's acceptance of her subordinate status. Thus, feminine behaviors are, in essence, survival strategies. Like hostages who bond to their captors, women bond to men in an effort to survive.This is a book that will forever change the way we look at male-female relationships and women's lives.

A selection of insights into the relationship between men and womenHave you wondered: Why women are more sympathetic than men toward O. J. Simpson? Why women were no more supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment than men? Why women are no more likely than men to support a female political candidate? Why women are no more likely than men to embrace feminism—a movement by, about, and for women? Why some women stay with men who abuse them? Loving to Survive addresses just these issues and poses a surprising answer. Likening women's situation to that of hostages, Dee L. R. Graham and her co- authors argue that women bond with men and adopt men's perspective in an effort to escape the threat of men's violence against them.Dee Graham's announcement, in 1991, of her research on male-female bonding was immediately followed by a national firestorm of media interest. Her startling and provocative conclusion was covered in dozens of national newspapers and heatedly debated. In Loving to Survive, Graham provides us with a complete account of her remarkable insights into relationships between men and women.In 1973, three women and one man were held hostage in one of the largest banks in Stockholm by two ex-convicts. These two men threatened their lives, but also showed them kindness. Over the course of the long ordeal, the hostages came to identify with their captors, developing an emotional bond with them. They began to perceive the police, their prospective liberators, as their enemies, and their captors as their friends, as a source of security. This seemingly bizarre reaction to captivity, in which the hostages and captors mutually bond to one another, has been documented in other cases as well, and has become widely known as Stockholm Syndrome.The authors of this book take this syndrome as their starting point to develop a new way of looking at male-female relationships. Loving to Survive considers men's violence against women as crucial to understanding women's current psychology. Men's violence creates ever-present, and therefore often unrecognized, terror in women. This terror is often experienced as a fear for any woman of rape by any man or as a fear of making any man angry. They propose that women's current psychology is actually a psychology of women under conditions of captivitythat is, under conditions of terror caused by male violence against women. Therefore, women's responses to men, and to male violence, resemble hostages' responses to captors.Loving to Survive explores women's bonding to men as it relates to men's violence against women. It proposes that, like hostages who work to placate their captors lest they kill them, women work to please men, and from this springs women's femininity. Femininity describes a set of behaviors that please men because they communicate a woman's acceptance of her subordinate status. Thus, feminine behaviors are, in essence, survival strategies. Like hostages who bond to their captors, women bond to men in an effort to survive.This is a book that will forever change the way we look at male-female relationships and women's lives.

A groundbreaking analysis of how gendered oppression is written into the American legal systemLaw, Gender, and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Woman is a landmark study of how women remain second-class citizens under the current legal system. In this widely acclaimed book, Joan Hoff questions whether the continued pursuit of equality based on a one-size-fits-all vision of traditional individual rights is really what will most improve conditions for women in America. Concluding that equality based on liberal male ideology is no longer an adequate framework for improving women's legal status, Hoff's highly original and incisive volume calls for a demystification of legal doctrine and a reinterpretation of legal texts (including the Constitution) to create a feminist jurisprudence.

A groundbreaking analysis of how gendered oppression is written into the American legal systemLaw, Gender, and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Woman is a landmark study of how women remain second-class citizens under the current legal system. In this widely acclaimed book, Joan Hoff questions whether the continued pursuit of equality based on a one-size-fits-all vision of traditional individual rights is really what will most improve conditions for women in America. Concluding that equality based on liberal male ideology is no longer an adequate framework for improving women's legal status, Hoff's highly original and incisive volume calls for a demystification of legal doctrine and a reinterpretation of legal texts (including the Constitution) to create a feminist jurisprudence.

For centuries, the "great man" format and masculine discourse of biography and autobiography have eclipsed women. If we accept this history, we remain ignorant of "Lady Sarashina," a Japanese woman of the Han period, whose book survives from the 11th century. We overlook Margaret Cavendish and Dame Julian, two early English autobiographers. And we fail to consider sufficiently slave narratives, oral histories, or lesbian "coming out" stories.Telling Women's Lives assesses existing traditions of autobiography and biography in search of a method capable of conveying the distinctive content of women's lives while retaining the tenor of feminine subjectivity. Drawing on feminist research methodologies of the past two decades as well as anthropology and sociology, Long paves the way for the formulation of an emergent feminist methodology for telling women's lives.This highly original study seeks to revise and recreate the genre so as to accommodate a feminine discourse, narrator, reader, and subject. The "messiness" of women's lives-the daily work and detail that men have programmatically excluded-acquires new meaning as Long develops here an innovative theory of sociobiography.