Gender and Sexuality Commons^™

Science, Identity, And The Construction Of The Gay Political Narrative, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Article contends that the current debate over gay civil rights is, at base, a dispute over the nature of same-sex desire. Pro-gay forces advocate an ethnic or identity model of homosexuality based on the conviction that sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. The assertion that, in essence, gays are "born that way," has produced a gay political narrative that rests on claims of shared identity (i.e., homosexuals are a blameless minority) and arguments of equivalence (i.e., as a blameless minority, homosexuals deserve equal treatment and protection against discrimination). The pro-family counter-narrative is based on a behavioral …

Of Information Highways And Toxic Byways: Women And Environmental Protest In A Northern Mexican City, Anna O. Oleary

Anna Ochoa OLeary

This case study of community protest in Hermosillo, a Mexican city in the state of Sonora, outlines s a postmodern model of environmental protest as one that primarily carried out by women and social networking. The model of community highlights the use of social networks as a means of politicizing a toxic waste dump eight kilometers outside the city. A feminist perspective reveals a struggle primarily carried out by women and bears out the intersection of gender, environmentalism, and globalization. As familiar spaces of social interaction, social networks provided the cultural platform from which women agitated for the dump’s closure. …

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …

You're So Pretty You Don't Look Moroccan, Henriette Dahan Kalev

henriette dahan kalev

"You are so pretty--you don't look Moroccan." I grew up hearing this sentence from the time my parents brought me from Morocco in 1949 to the immigrant camp Sha'ar Aliyah and to the Ma'abara [transit camp] Pardes Chana. I heard it from the white uniformed nurse, who came to our tent in the immigrant camp to tell my mother how she should raise me, my sister, and my baby brother, who was born in that tent. This nurse spoke of "raising children" as if it was something Zionists invented. The tall silver-haired Yekke [German Jew] kindergarten teacher also used this …

Homosexuality As Contagion: From The Well Of Loneliness To The Boy Scouts, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

In the political arena, there are currently two central and competing views of homosexuality. Pro-family organizations, working from a contagion model of homosexuality, contend that homosexuality is an immoral, unhealthy, and freely chosen vice. Many pro-gay organizations espouse an identity model of homosexuality under which sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. Both pro-family and pro-gay organizations believe that to define homosexuality is to control its legal and political status. This sometimes bitter debate regarding the nature of same-sex desire might seem like an exceedingly contemporary development. However, the ex-gay media blitz of 2000 represents only the latest …

Class, Gender, And Parental Values In The 1990s, Hong Xiao

Hong Xiao

Previous research documents a persistent relationship between social class and parental values. Middle-class parents are more likely to emphasize autonomy, and working-class parents are more likely to stress conformity in children. More recent literature, however, suggests a gender difference in the effects of class on values. Feminist scholarship also claims a gender gap in fundamental value orientations. Drawing data from the U.S. sample in the World Values Survey, this research examines the intersections of class and gender as they influence parental values in the 1990s. The findings suggest that while social class continues to be a source of the valuation …

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Latina Women And Political Leadership: Implications For Latino Community Development, Carol Hardy-Fanta Phd

Carol Hardy-Fanta

No abstract provided.

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

Theism For The Masses, Non-Dualism For The Monastic Elite: A Fresh Look At Sankara's Trans-Theistic Spirituality, Lance E. Nelson

Lance E. Nelson

No abstract provided.