Gender ThinkingTemple University Press, 2010 M04 30 - 384 pages How can we accept the gender system in view of its ills? Yet, are we really at liberty to abolish gender differences, "when the gender system gives us benchmarks of personal identity and worth along with primary channels in which to pursue the rewards of love?" With this double question, Steven G. Smith introduces his inquiry into the idea of gender and how it is implicated in love, respect, equality, and personal character. Gender Thinking is the first comprehensive philosophical exploration of the concept of gender Asking the question, what is gender?—that is, what sort of thing do we take femininity and masculinity to be?—Smith considers how gender thinking is interwoven with ideas about human nature. He suggests ways in which ideas about race, class, culture age, temperament, and sexual orientation can be understood from clues found in gender thinking. And he calls for a renegotiated procreative partnership between women and men as the key to the redemption of gender. |
From inside the book
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... male humanity ? No greater prejudgment could possess one . If a girl I liked deviated from feminine stereotypes , that did not upset the prejudgment about girls ; that is how I knew she was special . In those days , the problems of ...
... male worth does not include manliness , does have Achilles speak a memorable version of the womanliness reproach . The Trojans have carried the fight to the Greeks ' ships , and Patroclus comes to plead with Achilles for help ...
... male nor female " ( Gal . 3:28 ) -he is not , and does not pretend or want to be , free of the natural ... male spon- sorship , that only male - mediated value has accrued to women and that women have been self - defeatingly proud of ...
... male simply by virtue of pos- sessing a female or male body , but substantially , " spiritually . " If Homer stands at one end of the range of positive gender thinking , where men are men and women are women , with varying degrees of ...
... male bodies . The entanglement of gender with what we nowadays call sexual orientation is easy to see , though hard to understand . Trying to get to the bottom of it , Proust's contemporary , Freud , starts an inevitably tortuous and ...
Contents
1 | |
5 | |
23 | |
41 | |
4 The Sex Basis of Gender | 85 |
5 Gender Valuation and Selfhood | 139 |
6 Gender and Duality | 205 |
7 Gender and Procreation | 254 |
Realizing Sex | 303 |
Notes | 321 |
Index | 375 |