New Feminist Perspectives – serie

Feminist scholars have long been concerned with how women and sexuality are perceived and treated by the American legal system. Feminists have put forth a variety of arguments seeking the causes and solutions to the class-based and sex-biased characteristics of the legal system that contribute to the victimization of women in contemporary society. No consensus within the women's movement has been achieved on a number of legal issues, such as pornography or prostitution, since approaches are often divided by political, economic, moral, or sexual ideology.Women, Sex, and the Law is a comprehensive survey and analysis of the legal and sexual issues important to women. Rosemarie Tong introduces the reader to the different feminist and legal perspectives on the causes and solutions for the problems of pornography, sexual harassment, prostitution, rape, and woman-battering. Tong clearly and concisely details and assesses the legal theory and practice for each issue, describs and critiques the various feminist debates surrounding these concerns, and offers her own thoughtful proposals for ameliorating the discriminatory tendencies and improving the effectiveness of our present legal system.

This valuable collection examines closely the construction of male and female identity around the theme of collective violence. Why did such violence get 'moralized' for men in the case of warfare-but not for women? Women, Militarism and War presents alternatives to both 'business as usual' thinking and excessively utopian or naive feminist accounts. Contributors:

'Is politics gendered? Wendy Brown things so, and argues for this point with elegance, imagination and pungent phrases. Brown's book is challenging, provocative and...original; it does force us to question the degree to which gender controls our politics.'-THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

'Is politics gendered? Wendy Brown things so, and argues for this point with elegance, imagination and pungent phrases. Brown's book is challenging, provocative and...original; it does force us to question the degree to which gender controls our politics.'-THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

The new edition of this popular book is reorganized to present pairs of contrasting views on what it means to be a man in contemporary Western culture. Addressing such issues as sex differences, fatherhood, intimacy, homosexuality, and oppression; the collection also includes new discussions of paternity, pornography, mixed-race marriage, impotence, and violence. Rethinking Masculinity is an excellent text for gender studies, ethics, and social philosophy courses.

Written by an acclaimed scholar to enrich and complete the vision offered by traditional Western spirituality, Women and Spirituality demonstrates that women, as women, have a valuable contribution to make to religion. This new edition is revised and updated in light of thirteen years of feminism, including new biblical role models and a new chapter on women's special relationship to time. Prodding readers to pay attention to their own experiences, Ochs challenges traditional religious concepts such as solitary struggle, otherworldliness, and the spiritual journey to a distant goal, and shows how women's spirituality focuses on relationships with others, commitment to this world, and engagement with the present.

In this important book, a distinguished group of feminist scholars and activists discuss crucial bioethics topics in a feminist light. Among the subjects explored are the care/justice debates, transforming bioethics, practice, and reproduction. The book also covers less commonly discussed issues, such as culturally appropriate responses to reproductive health problems in developing countries.

Feminists have long argued that at the hands of patriarchal religious institutions, women have been brutalized, exploited, and manipulated. In this book, part philosophical analysis/part meditation, philosopher Sheila Ruth explores an ancient and profoundly different orientation to life, Paganism, to show the possibilities, the pleasures, and the power of connecting the self with the cosmic. Take Back the Light contains certain elements that make it unique: the blend of strategies-including philosophical analysis, poetry, autobiography, and mystical stories; an avowedly feminist stance that is grounded in traditional philosophical training as well as women's experience and feminist scholarship; and most particularly, the intention to make clear to those feminists who are opposed to religion in principle that spirituality need not be inconsistent with positive, progressive social action.

'Anita L. Allen breaks new ground...A stunning indictment of women's status in contemporary society, her book provides vital original scholarly research and insight.' |s-NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WOMEN

In this thought-provoking feminist study of the moral issues raised by new and emerging technologies of sex selection, Mary Anne Warren shows that these technologies could substantially undermine and ultimately reverse the progress women have made in today's society.

This valuable collection examines closely the construction of male and female identity around the theme of collective violence. Why did such violence get 'moralized' for men in the case of warfare-but not for women? Women, Militarism and War presents alternatives to both 'business as usual' thinking and excessively utopian or naive feminist accounts. Contributors:

An important, yet little explored, area of feminist research is women's subjective experience of everyday life. Claiming Reality is the first study to apply the insights of the growing discipline of phenomenological sociology to women's experience, particularly the experience of childbirth, in an attempt to develop a feminist phenomenological perspective.

This book presents a significant challenge to the belief that philosophy, especially Anglo-American philosophy, is gender neutral. The author argues that this philosophical tradition is structured in such a way as to make philosophy from a woman's point of view problematic, if not impossible. Her unusual background in Anglo-American philosophy, contemporary Continental philosophy, and feminism supports a creative synthesis involving the work of philosophers in all three areas. With its focus on Locke and Hume, the book also serves as an important critique in the history of modern philosophy.

In Speaking from the Heart, Rita Manning has added an important contribution to the growing literature on feminist moral theory and ethics. Manning presents an original and ambitious study of the moral practice and moral intuitions which are infused by a commitment to an ethic of care. In doing so, she challenges the received wisdom about moral philosophy-that to reason morally one must appeal to underlying principles rather than one's own experience.

Leading feminist scholars offer the reader both sides of 'the feminism of difference' debate and the most recent arguments concerning the divisive issues of feminist theory and public policy.

Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1995. Moving beyond the traditional feminist ethics of care, Linda A. Bell places an existentialist conception of liberation at the heart of ethics and argues that only an ethics of freedom sufficiently allows for feminist critique and opposition to a status quo imbued with violence. She offers a critique of Aristotelian, utilitarian, and Kantian ethics, analyzing each approach from feminist perspectives and showing how each fails women and others who resist oppression.

Drawing on recent advances in analytic epistemology, feminist scholarship, and philosophy of science, Jane Duran's Toward a Feminist Epistemology is the first book that spells out in the detail required by a supportable epistemology what a feminist theory of knowledge would entail.