Women and Children First : Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy

by MEAGHER, SHARON M.; Diquinzio, Patrice

• ISBN13: 9780791465394
• ISBN10: 079146539X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-08
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: Women and Children First	1	(16)
Patrice DiQuinzio
Sharon M. Meagher
PART I (Mis)representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions
Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse	17	(20)
Elizabeth F. Randol
Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse around Cohabitation and Single-Motherhood	37	(20)
Kirsten Isgro
Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights	57	(24)
Jennifer A. Reich
PART II Medical Discourses and Social Ills
Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex	81	(18)
Ellen K. Feder
Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation	99	(22)
Kelly Oliver
PART III Subjects of Violence
Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence	121	(16)
Sharon M. Meagher
Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Advocacy	137	(22)
Sally J. Scholz
PART IV Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children
Bad Mothers as ``Brown'' Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance-Abusing Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls	159	(24)
Norma L. Buydens
Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm	183	(22)
Tricha Shivas
Sonya Charles
PART V Protesting Mothers: Politics under the Sign of Motherhood
(M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War	205	(22)
Tina Managhan
Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference	227	(20)
Patrice DiQuinzio
List of Contributors	247	(4)
Index	251

Excerpts

"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."--BOOK JACKET.