critical thinking and feminism

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Unit 2 – Part 2 – A Feminist Perspective on Critical Thinking

To confirm, before you begin reading…this article is written from an academic and feminist perspective and touches on political issues of oppression and dominant power structures. It is also a long article . I recommend that you take a “key points overview” approach at first (read the opening, the conclusions and highlights that you are drawn to, then read more deeply). Take breaks and come back to your reading. If it’s easier, or helpful for you, print the article and use a highlighter or the margins for some ideas. The purpose of assigning this article to you is to encourage you to be patient when reading, and to read through a well-crafted, discipline-informed perspective.

Warning: The author touches on the issue of abortion as one of her examples. This is an important issue in our time, and you may have strong feelings one way or the other about the issues and perspectives described. As part of this course, it is important practice to separate feelings, opinions, and personal beliefs from evidence-informed information and rational communication. I encourage you to comment and add dialogue through the use of the Hypothes.is tool respectfully. Consider that when you are feeling emotional, the possibility of communicating effectively and rationally can sometimes be reduced.

The purpose of assigning this article, and asking you to annotate it, is to demonstrate to you that you have the skills required to read academic articles and further your understanding and confirm for you that there are multiple perspectives on practices such as critical thinking. The feminist perspective is often not the dominant perspective when “facts” are the topic (as evidenced in the very male-dominant History of Thinking reading).

The proper reference for this article in APA format is as follows:

Warren, K. J. (1988). Critical thinking and feminism. Informal Logic , 1 , 31-44.

Critical Thinking and Feminism by Karen Warren

Introduction: critical thinking and feminism.

What does feminism have to do with critical thinking? What can a political movement, feminism, contribute to an understanding of a reflective activity, critical thinking? If critical thinking is a feminist issue, what makes it so?

In this paper I suggest answers to these questions by raising two sorts of worries about current conceptions of critical thinking from a feminist perspective. The first and primary worry concerns the nature of critical thinking and the critical thinker. The second concerns the learning/teaching of critical thinking. Underlying this twofold worry is the view that an adequate understanding of critical thinking–both what it is and how it is taught–must involve a recognition of the importance of conceptual frameworks . I argue that since critical thinking always occurs within a conceptual framework, what is needed is a contextual understanding of critical thinking, i.e. one which acknowledges the ways in which conceptual frameworks affect the sort of thinking we do. Furthermore, I argue that insofar as a given conceptual framework is biased, the critical thinking which grows out of and reflects it will inherit this bias. Just as patriarchy is the special interest of feminists, it is patriarchal conceptual frameworks and the bias they generate which is of special interest to a feminist critique of critical thinking.

The Nature of Critical Thinking

While there is no single definition of critical thinking which is accepted by all specialists 1 , it is sufficient for our purposes to use the term as it is frequently used in the literature and as it has been used by Robert Ennis: Critical thinking is reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do 2 .

Critical thinking so defined involves both abilities (or skills) and dispositions (or, tendencies). Setting aside taxonomical questions about classification, a typical list of critical thinking abilities and dispositions includes several of special interest in this paper: the abilities of deducing and assessing deductions, inducing and assessing inductions, identifying and assessing assumptions, observing and assessing observation reports, identifying and assessing the credibility of a source, detecting and avoiding unnecessary and avoidable bias, identifying and assessing generalizations, identifying and assessing causal claims; and, the dispositions of openmindedness and interpersonal sensitivity 3 .

Notice that this broad definition of critical thinking in terms of both abilities and dispositional aspects allows that creative thinking, passion, and empathy may play important roles in “reasonable reflection” about what to do or believe 4 . Critical thinkers are those who exercise such skills and display such dispositions. This broad definition also allows for the important role knowledge, especially background or prior knowledge, plays in one’s ability to think critically.

Feminism and Patriarchal Conceptual Frameworks

Although there are important differences among the variety of feminisms (e.g. liberal feminism, traditional Marxist feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, Black and Third World feminism, ecological feminism), all feminists agree that feminism is (at least) the movement to end sexist oppression 5 . All feminists agree that sexism exists, that it is wrong, and that it must be eliminated. As such, all feminists are opposed to patriarchy, i.e. the systematic domination of women by men.

Contemporary feminists claim that, whether we know it or not, each of us operates out of a historically and socially constructed “frame of reference,” “world view,” or what I am calling “ conceptual framework , ” i.e. a set of basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions which explain, shape, and reflect our view of ourselves and our world. Conceptual frameworks are influenced by such factors as sex-gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, affectional preference, and nationality. Although one’s conceptual framework can change, all individuals perceive and construct what they perceive, know, and value through some conceptual framework. At any given time, a conceptual framework functions for an individual as a finite lens, a “field of vision, ” in and through which information and experiences are filtered. As such, conceptual frameworks set boundaries on what one “sees.”

Some conceptual frameworks are oppressive . For our purposes, there are three typical features of oppressive conceptual frameworks, at least in Western societies, for an understanding of women’s oppression 6 . First, an oppressive conceptual framework typically is characterized by value-hierarchical thinking . As I am using the expression, value-hierarchical thinking (as distinguished from “hierarchial thinking”) is “a perception of diversity which is so organized by a spatial metaphor (Up-andDown) that greater value is always attributed to that which is higher.” 7 Value-hierarchical thinking has put men “up” and women “down,” culture “up” and nature “down,” minds “up” and bodies “down,” reason or intellect “up” and emotion “down.” 8 .

Second, an oppressive conceptual framework typically supports the sort of “either-or” thinking which posits inappropriate or misleading or harmful value dualisms , i.e. either-or pairs in which the disjunctive terms iue seen as exclusive (rather than inclusive) and oppositional (rather than complementary), and where higher value is attributed to one disjunct than the other. Value dualisms not only condition how one perceives and describes reality (viz. evaluatively dualistically); they also conceptually separate as opposite aspects of reality that may in fact be inseparable or complementary, e.g. reason and emotion 9 . As will be illustrated, such uses of value dualisms may be inappropriate, misleading, or harmful.

The third and most important feature of an oppressive conceptual framework is that it gives rise to a logic of domination , i.e. a structure of argumentation which explains, justifies, and maintains the subordination of an “inferior” group by a “superior” group  on the grounds of the (alleged) superiority and inferiority of the respective groups. Since it is the logic of domination which supplies the missing assumption that superiority justifies subordination , it is the logic of domination which gives the final moral stamp of approval to the “justified” subordination of that which is deemed lower or less valuable 10 .

Many contemporary feminists are interested in oppressive conceptual frameworks that are patriarchal , i.e. ones in which historically or traditionally male gender identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions are taken as the only, or the standard, or the more highly valued ones than female gender-identified ones. II Historically , a patriarchal conceptual framework has assigned greater value, status, or prestige to that which traditionally has been identified as “male” than to that which traditionally has been identified as “female,” or carves out different spheres (e.g. the “public” sphere of the polls and the· “private” sphere of the home) and gives value to what is female-identified only within that female-identified and relatively lower status sphere 12 . Conceptually,  a patriarchal conceptual framework functions to maintain the subordination of women 13 .

It is by understanding the nature and power of conceptual frameworks, particularly oppressive and patriarchal ones, that one can see the respects in which critical thinking is a feminist issue. It is to this topic that I now turn.

Critical Thinking as a Feminist Issue

Any issue is or could be a feminist issue. What makes any issue a feminist issue is that an understanding of it contributes in some way to an understanding of the oppression of women. Lack of comparable pay for comparable work is a feminist issue wherever and whenever an understanding of it bears on an understanding of the oppression of women. Carrying water is a feminist issue if, in a given culture, it is the women who spend several hours a day carrying water and that activity contributes to their unequal, inferior, or subordinate status.

Critical thinking is a feminist issue  because there are important ways in which an understanding of critical thinking bears on an understanding of the subordination of women. The basic link or connection provided in this paper between the two-critical thinking and feminism-is located in the nature of conceptual frameworks, especially oppressive patriarchal ones 14 .

Critical thinking does not occur in a vacuum; it always occurs within some conceptual framework . Stated differently, when one does the sorts of things critical thinkers do, e.g. observe, infer, generalize, predict, define, make assumptions, give causal explanations, there is always some point of view which is the point of view of the critical thinker. The so-called ideal of a “neutral observer, ” i.e. one who has no point of view is, at best, an ideal, and at worst, an ideological prejudice” 15 .

Recent feminist scholarship in two different areas-science and ethics-reveal the importance of conceptual frameworks. Consider ways in which feminist challenges in these two areas bears on an understanding of what makes critical thinking a feminist issue 16 .

Feminist Science . In her book Science and Gender , neurophysiologist Ruth Bleier argues that “science is not the neutral, dispassionate, value-free pursuit of Truth.” 17 According to Bleier, traditional or dominant science occurs within androcentric conceptual framework and inherits the androcentric bias of that framework 18 . Bleier and other feminist scientists have defended their charge that male gender-bias arises in two areas of scientific research in which important critical thinking skills are used: so-called “sex differences” research between men and women, and primatology.

“Sex Differences” Research . Suppose an assumption of a given conceptual framework is that there is a meaningful distinction between “pure biology” and “environment” (or “culture”). Within such a framework, the question “Are there genetic sex -based differences in men’s and women’s behaviors?” makes sense . Research projects and methodologies aimed at isolating sex-linked differences in brain structure, hemispheric lateralization, hormones, or genes to explain behavior differences between “the sexes” (e .g. in verbal fluency, mathematical skill, visual spatial information processing skills, or cognitive abilities) are countenanced, and conclusions about purely biological bases for male superiority in certain activities are offered as empirically verified or verifiable.

However, what if the initial assumption about the dichotomy between pure biology and environment is false or conceptually flawed? Then the controversy about purely genetic, inherited, sex-based behavior traits itself, including the questions asked, the research projects undertaken, the methodologies employed, and the answers given, is also conceptually flawed.

This is what feminist scientists like Ruth Bleier argue. They claim that the question – Are there biological sex differences between men and women?” is conceptually flawed, since it is not possible to separate off any “pure” biology from culture in the requisite way 19 . Stated differently, in order for the question to be meaningfully raised at all, one must presuppose the legitimacy of the very biology/culture dualism that feminist scientists like Bleier deny. Furthermore, if the question “Are there biological sex differences between men and women?” is conceptually flawed, then so is any conceptual framework which countenances a debate over sex differences, since it will also mistakenly assume that it does make sense to talk of a “pure” biology separate from culture, that one can measure how much of human behavior can be attributed to pure biology and how much to environment and learning, and that any differences in behaviors between men and women-socially constructed gender categories-is based in pure biology. This is especially important to notice since, historically, assumptions about “sex differences” have functioned to explain and justify the alleged “natural” or “innate” inferiority of “the female sex” and the biological basis of women’s oppression in her childbearing and childrearing roles.

If the views of feminist scientists such as Ruth Bleier are correct (no attempt is made to defend them here) and “sex difference” research is conceptually flawed, then so is any conceptual framework which sanctions, maintains, or gives rise to the meaningfulness of such research. The point here is not whether the distinction between “pure biology” and “environment” is patriarchally motivated or causally linked to a patriarchal conceptual framework; establishing that would be a different task. The point here is that the sort of conceptual framework which sanctions, maintains, or gives rise to such value-laden “either-or” thinking is flawed. Since feminist scientists claim that “sex-differences research” is comfortably housed in dominant science, and that dominant science reflects a patriarchal conceptual framework, then, if they are correct, “sex-differences research” is comfortably housed within a patriarchal conceptual framework-one which has historicalIy functioned to value as inferior or lower-status whatever is genetically or biologically linked with’ ‘the female sex,” or has historically sanctioned “sex difference” conclusions about superior male abilities and behavior over female abilities and behavior.

Understood in this way, the feminist objection to “sex differences research” done from within an oppressive conceptual framework is that it takes as meaningful and tenable the either-or (and not both) distinction between “pure genetics” and “environment” and mistakenly assumes that information about genetics alone will explain human behavior. The feminist position that biology is both genetic and cultured, both determined and conditioned, is never entertained. For feminist scientists, it isn’t so-called “biological differences” (whatever they are) between males and females that is really at issue, but the values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions  about biological differences and about the relevance of such differences for how men and women are viewed and treated that is at issue. And to get at that issue is to get at the nature and significance of conceptual frameworks .

Primatology . Feminist primatologists such as Donna Haraway and Sarah Hrdy 20 have challenged traditional androcentric observational and explanatory models for primate social organization. The assumption of such models was that primate social organization was structured around “male dominance hierarchies. ” If any attention was focused on observing female primate behavior, females were cast in passive and primarily nurturing roles, while males were cast in culturally stereotyped and sanctioned active, courting, and promiscious roles. Assumptions of “male dominance hierarchies” prevented primatologists from seeing’ ‘the full extent of female choice, initiative and aggressivity or its polyandrous expression,” and from seeing that dominance hierarchies are neither universal nor always male 21 . It prevented researchers from seeing, for example, that it is usually estrous females that select mating partners, that in some species (e.g. Japanese macaques, rhesus macaques, and vervets) species dominance is matrilineal, and that no evidence supports the view that dominant males have more frequent access to females than less dominant males in baboon troops 22 .

As Bleier writes,

In the absence of knowledge about female primates based on observations of their behaviors, primatologists then felt free to speculate (that is , to construct) female primates in ways that allowed their imagined behaviors and characteristics to fit existing male-centered theories of human cultural evolution and thus to embellish, naturalize, and reinforce the social construction of human female and male genders and of relations of domination and subordination 23 .

Again, if this view is correct (and I do not attempt here to defend the view that it is), then the basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions which describe a patriarchal conceptual framework blinded these researchers from raising and addressing crucially relevant issues about “male dominance hierarchies” and female primate behavior. The “point of view” of these researchers does not permit such issues to get raised at all. (More is said about this in connection with the discussion of assumptions, below.)

Feminist Ethics . One target of feminist criticisms of gender-bias in contemporary Western philosophy is the dominant “ rights/rules ethic ,” i.e. an ethical framework for assessing moral conduct in terms of alleged rights of relevant parties and/or in terms of governing rules or principles, appeal to which provides a decision procedure for resolving conflicts among rights. The ethical framework is essentially hierarchical or “pyramidal,” where the “authority” of a right or rule is given from the top of the hierarchy.

Judith Thomson’s discussion of abortion in her well-known article, “A Defense of Abortion” 24 is characteristic of a discucssion within a rights/rules framework . Thomson critiques the. argument that since a fetus’ right to life overrides a pregnant woman’s right to decide what shall happen in and to her body abortion is wrong. She does so not by challenging the rights/rules framework in which that argument occurs, but by challenging the truth of the claim that a fetus’ right to life overrides a pregnant woman’s right to decide.

Feminist philosophers like Kathryn Addelson raise several objections to “the Thomson tradition” approach to discussions of abortion 25 . First, it represents moral situations in a value-hierarchial way which conceals that “the point of view” from the top of the hierarchy is an invisible, unmarked, and hence privileged point of view of the dominant group (historically white males), while the point of view of the “other (women, blacks) functions as a value-laden biased, or marked point of view. A judge is a Judge unless she is female or black. A philosopher is a philosopher unless she is feminist; then she is a feminist philosopher. And the Western philosophical tradition is just that until it is critiqued by feminists who insist on marking it as “the white male dominant Western philosophical tradition.” It is not, as traditional philosophers have assumed, an ungendered, unraced, or unclassed point of view.

Addelson argues that the sort of bias that infects the Thomson approach to abortion “allows moral problems to be defined from the top of various hierarchies of authority in such a way that the existence of the authority is concealed. “ 26 By concealing the authority (e.g. of traditional academic philosophers), the point of view from the top of the hierarchy  appears to be impartial when it is not. Furthermore, according to Addelson, since the Thomson tradition systematically ignores discussions of hierarchy, dominance, and subordination, it does not provide an adequate conception of ethics from the point of the experiences of women (including poor, pregnant women) in subordinate positions.

Second, a rights/rules approach to abortion incorrectly assumes that talk of rights adequately captures all the morally relevant features of abortion. Other morally relevant data, e.g. what Jane Martin calls the “3 C’s of caring, concern, and connection,”  27  either do not get included at all, or, if they do, get included only insofar as they can be unpacked in terms of the relevant moral categories of property, rules, and rights of moral agents.

For these two sorts of reasons, feminists like Addelson object that a rights/rules approach to abortion incorrectly assumes that a rights/rules framework provides an objective, impartial, and universalizable decision procedure for resolving moral conflicts such abortion; what (they claim) it really provides is a decision-procedure which grows out of a value-hierarchical, historically well entrenched system of social relationships whlch assumes that “authority” (objectivity, impartiality, universalizability) is given from the top of the hierarchy–the dominant group 28 .

As with the preceding discussion of feminist science, the point here is neither to defend the feminist positions given by Addelson and others, nor to establish some sort of logical entailment relation between a “rights/rules ethic” and male-dominance value-hierarchies (even if such an entailment relationship could be shown to exist). Rather the point is to suggest that if the view of feminists like Addelson is correct, viz. that a rights/rules ethic within a hierarchical social system of male dominance, whatever else its virtues or strengths , has historically functioned as if it were an observer-neutral position when it is not and has not been, then use of a rights/rules ethic within a patriarchal conceptual framework serves to explain, maintain, and justify the point of view of those” on top” as an unmarked and unprivileged point of view (e.g. of the “rational,” or “objective,” or “detached and impartial,” or “neutral observer”) when it is not. Calling attention to the nature and power of historically constructed patriarchal conceptual frameworks is part of what makes this historical and contemporary feature of a rights/rules ethic visible.

Feminist Science, Feminist Ethics, and Critical Thinking

If what I have said so far is plausible, then critical thinking in and about science and critical thinking in and about ethics requires recognition of the ways in which the exercise of important critical thinking skills and dispositions is not always easy to do, and is sometimes impossible to do, within a patriarchal conceptual framework. A consideration of a few such selected skills and dispositions will show why this is so.

1. Recognizing and assessing an assumption . When an assumption is basic to a conceptual framework, it may not always be possible to challenge or revise the assumption and yet remain within that framework. It is impossible when the framework itself presupposes the truth of the claim one is denying. In such a case, the framework itself must be changed; no reformist moves from within the framework (e.g. changing the meanings of some terms or altering other-than- basic assumptions) will remedy the defect.

This issue, the “reform or revolution” issue-change from within or change from without-arises in all areas of contemporary feminist scholarship. For example, it arises in “feminist curricular transformation projects,” i.e. feminist discussions of ways to change the traditional or “mainstream” curriculum to make it more inclusive of women. There, the “reform or revolution” issue often arises in connection with the “add women and stir approach” to curriculum development. As one “adds” women-particularly feminist women-to traditional science or ethics courses, for instance, one soon realizes that the inclusion of women begins to challenge the way in which science and ethics are conceived, the way each is taught and practiced, and which issues get labeled as bona fide “scientific” or “ethical” issues. This is because, in the words of Elizabeth Minnick, one cannot simply add the idea that the world is round to the idea that the world is flat. Some ideas or assumptions simply don’t mix. When they do not, the result one gets is more like an explosion than a mixture.

The idea that there is no clear conceptual distinction between biology and culture cannot simply be added to the idea that there is a clear conceptual distinction between biology and culture. The idea that animal dominance hierarchies are neither universal nor male cannot be added to the idea that they are. The ideas that there is androcentric bias in science and ethics (even if “only” a historical bias rather than one “in the nature of things”), and that there currently is no value-neutral, objective, and impartial view in science or in ethics, cannot  simply be added to the ideas that there is no such bias or that there is a value-neutral, objective, and impartial point of view in science and ethics. In each of these cases, to adopt a feminist-identified stance is to deny some of the main assumptions of traditional science and ethics, and thereby to abandon, at least on these issues, the conceptual framework which gives rise to them.

2. Observing and judging observation report s. As has been suggested already, what an author notices or fails to notice, what she takes as “given” in what she observes, or what she considers relevant or credible or a reason, is ultimately affected by the conceptual framework through which she does the observing and assessing. Feminist neurophysiologists looking at a cluster of cells under a microscope may take very different observations than traditional scientists engaged in observing cells. Feminist scientists like Ruth Bleier who assume that there is no “pure” biology separate from environment or “culture,” that cells are “cultured,” look for interconnections among cells when observing cells 29 . Any generalizations, predictions, correlations, or causal claims offered based on those observations will stress the complex interconnections among multiple (not single or “linear”) biological mechanisms and environmental factors 30 . Single-cause theories will be highly unlikely, if not impossible, to give. Similarly, feminist primatologists will reject as unwarranted extrapolations from observations about rodents and primates to generalizations, predictions, or causal explanations about purely biological explanations of human behaviors, because “rodent or monkey behavior is not basic behavior minus culture “ 31 . The basic assumption on which such extrapolations are based is flawed. And feminist ethicists will insist on including observations based on women’s felt experiences of abortion among the morally relevant data of ethical theory-building and conflict resolution regarding abortion.

3. Identifying and assessing causal claims . One helpful test for assessing causal claims is given by Mary Anne Wolff’s acronym “CPROOF:” To assess the adequacy of a causal claim, establish a correlation between events to be explained, precedence of some events relative to others, and then rule out other factors. How would one apply “CPROOF” to the “sex-difference research” on human and primate behaviors which is conducted from within a patriarchal conceptual framework? It is difficult, if not impossible, to apply the test since included among the crucial factors that need to be ruled out is the very assumption that is necessary to generate the research in the first place, viz. that it is possible to conduct biological sex based research “uncontaminated” by the culture. Unless that assumption gets challenged, any explanations or causal claims based on it will be highly suspect, if not simply wrongheaded and ill-conceived 32 . This is worth noticing because the CPROOF test is a perfectly good test. It is just that it is not a test one cannot effectively or adequately use  within a patriarchal conceptual framework by one who subscribes to that framework when that very conceptual framework is characterized by basic assumptions, the falsity of which would have to be challenged in order to adequately apply the CPROOF test. To do so one needs to challenge the patriarchal conceptual framework itsel f an activity which those who subscribe to it for as long as they subscribe to it cannot consistently undertake.

The influence of patriarchal conceptual frameworks is not limited to critical thinking skills. There are also conceptually-bound limits on one’s ability to exercise important critical thinking dispositions as well. Consider a mainstay disposition, “openmindedness.”

4. Openmindedness . It is difficult, if not impossible, to consider seriously other points of view than one’s own if one is not aware that there are other points of views. Suppose, for instance, that a fundamental and invisible assumption of one’s conceptual framework is that science is objective or value-neutral, or that there is a basic distinction between “innate” biology and learned culture. It then will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to take seriously the view that science is androcentric, that there are no innate biological differences between men and women (even if there are some between males and females), or that women’s childbearing and childrearing roles are not an inevitable consequence of her anatomy 33 .

One thing this shows is that the extent of one’s willingness and ability to be openminded about issues is significantly affected by the conceptual framework out of which one operates. Openmindedness is a disposition that persons do or do not exercise within a given conceptual framework . This is the  essentially contextual nature of openmindedness: it is always exercised from within a (some) conceptual framework . Notice that this view of openmindedness does not conflict with the view that openmindedness includes being receptive (“open”) to points of view different than one’s own on a given topic or issue. In some conceptual frameworks, the basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions of the framework might make being “open” to quite different points of view quite easy, e.g. a conceptual framework in which a basic belief is that one must always be open to differing points of view. Whether such a conceptual framework is a desirable one or not, of course, is a separate and, as I suggest shortly, a debatable issue.

Suppose this view of the contextual nature of openmindedness is correct. What, then, is required of persons in order for them properly to be said to be openminded? From within a given conceptual framework, certain positions, claims, or points of view may be viewed as undeserving of serious and equal consideration. Consider, for example a feminist conceptual framework , e.g. one that views women as equal to men, views the subordination of women as wrong, and rejects any claim to a biological “innateness” of gender differences. From within that framework, the claim that women are innately inferior to men not only will not get “equal treatment;” it  cannot really be raised at all. It cannot be raised for two related reasons: first, none of the assumptions necessary to give rise to the claim are included within the conceptual framework; second and more importantly, the assumptions necessary to give rise to the claim are logically incompatible with the basic and defining assumptions of the feminist conceptual framework, and so cannot consistently be added to it. It is a variation of the “add women and stir” problem again. Feminists who take the time to address such arguments may do so because such arguments are taken seriously in a patriarchal conceptual framework, or because they want to defeat such arguments. Since the successes of feminism involved the defeat or undermining of patriarchal conceptual frameworks, it is important that someone defeat or undermine such arguments. Still, given the sorts of beliefs, attitudes and value commitments that characterize his world view as “feminist,” and given the fact of finite time, resources, and energy, he may choose to pay them no heed.

Is a feminist who chooses not to take seriously arguments for the conclusion that women are innately inferior to men failing to be open minded? Or, is a feminist who chooses not to take seriously arguments for the genetic inferiority of Black people to Anglos failing to be openminded? The answer is “Yes” only if one assumes (as I do not) that openmindedness requires’ ‘considering seriously other points of view than one’s own” without regard for the truth, bias, or prejudice of those points of view. But the answer is “No” if one assumes otherwise and recognizes that openmindedness  always takes place within some conceptual framework. From a feminist point of view, some conceptual frameworks are better than others, and not all positions are worthy of equal consideration. From a feminist  point of view, being openminded does not necessarily require that all points of view be given equal consideration; some points of view simply may not warrant such consideration. From a feminist point of view, contemporary Western society is thoroughly structured by race, class, and sex/gender factors; as such, in contemporary Western society at least, there is no currently available value neutral conceptual framework within which the trait of openmindedness can be exercised. From a feminist point of view, then, a feminist who chooses not to take seriously arguments for the innate inferiority of women or people of color is not being “closeminded” 34 .

At this point a critic might object as follows : Feminists who choose not to take seriously non-feminist or anti-feminist viewpoints are “partial” or “biased. ” Since such bias or partiality is incompatible with openmindedness, feminists who take such a stand fail to be openminded. By extension, since openrnindedness is an important critical thinking disposition, feminists who take such a stand also fail to be critical thinkers (or good critical thinkers).

A feminist could respond to this objection in either of two ways. She could argue either that a feminist view is not biased, or that it  is biased, but a better bias than the alternatives. Which response is most appropriate depends on what counts as bias. In one sense of ‘bias,’ the charge of bias attaches to such items as assumptions, reasons, conclusions, or conceptual frameworks which are based on  false or faulty generalizations (a common conception of bias) 35 . In this sense of ‘bias,’ feminist bias arises in the same sort of way that bias arises in generalizations generally, viz. through stereotyping, too small a sample size, a skewed sample that is not representative of the total population, or a generalization from one case only. One determines bias by assessing the reasons or evidence offered.

A patriarchal conceptual framework is biased (in this sense) insofar as the sorts of reasons or evidence it offers or countenances, the assumptions on which it is based and the conclusions it warrants produce false or faulty generalizations, e.g. about biologically based sex-differences between men and women, or male dominance in primate societies. Is a feminist conceptual framework biased? Insofar as it rejects as false claims that are indeed false, or rejects as conceptually flawed distinctions that are indeed conceptually flawed, or does not seriously consider reasons, arguments, or data based on such false or flawed claims, it is not biased , or not biased in the way in which patriarchal conceptual frameworks are biased.

However, a feminist point of view may be “biased” or “partial” in a different sense, a sense in which all conceptual frameworks,  all points of view, are “biased” or “partial.” In this second sense of ‘bias’, a claim, position, or conceptual framework is biased if it is not value-neutral or objective. Since a conceptual framework is, by definition, based on certain basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions which permit certain sorts of reasons and omit others, it is biased (in this second sense). This sort of bias makes certain claims from within a given conceptual framework resistant to certain new evidence (especially logically incompatible evidence). Feminists who, from within a feminist conceptual framework, dismiss as unworthy of equal and serious consideration arguments for the biological inevitability of patriarchy would then be correctly described as “biased” in this second sense, i.e. as not offering a value neutral, ahistorical, or noncontextual objectivity. In this sense, bias is a matter of degree as well as kind.

Given this second sense of ‘bias’, the proper question is not whether a feminist view is biased, but whether a feminist bias is a better  bias than a patriarchal or androcentric bias. Feminists who argue that it is a better bias do so precisely because it is more inclusive and less partial . To be impartial on an issue is not to have no opinion or feelings about it. Nor is it to take some “value-neutral” stance outside  any given conceptual framework, since (I have claimed) no such stance is possible. Impartiality, like the critical thinking dispositions of openmindedness and interpersonal sensitivity, is always exercised from with  some conceptual framework.

From a feminist point of view, impartiality consists partly in listening to points of view of those in subordinate positions, of those without established authority within the dominant culture, of those at the bottom of the hierarchy. It involves being sure that the felt experiences of women, however diverse those experiences may be, are part of theory building. From a feminist point of view, impartiality requires inclusiveness . A patriarchal conceptual framework that supports or fails to challenge assumptions, beliefs, values and attitudes that serve to reinforce male domination and that omits the felt experiences, contributions, and perspectives of women, is  more partial because less inclusive than one (e.g. a feminist conceptual framework) that does not. A feminist conceptual framework thereby provides a better bias (‘bias’ in the second sense).

Furthermore, since a feminist conceptual framework which is more inclusive of the realities of more people provides a better data base from which to make generalizations, it helps to ensure that the generalizations one makes are not biased in the first sense. That is, the bias (‘bias’ in the second sense) of a feminist conceptual framework contributes to its being less biased (in the first sense).

From a feminist point of view, then, a commitment to feminism is a commitment to impartiality and openmindedness (properly understood), and a commitment to impartiality and openmindedness (properly understood)  is a commitment to feminism. Alison Jaggar expresses this viewpoint succinctly in her article “Teaching Sedition: Some Dilemmas of Feminist Pedagogy:”

Indeed. feminists believe that a genuinely impartial consideration of contemporary social life must generate inevitably a commitment to feminism… From the feminist point of view. it is not feminism that is irrational or biased. but rather positions that ignore or discount the specific interests of women. Far from constituting a disqualifying bias. feminist commitment is a defense against one very common and damaging form of bias. Impartiality is not undermined by feminism; instead, feminist commitment helps to safeguard impartiality 36 .

If what I have said is correct, a “proper understanding” of “openmindedness” requires an understanding of the nature and power of conceptual frameworks, particularly patriarchal ones.

Teaching/Learning Critical Thinking: Some Feminist Considerations

I have argued that critical thinking is always contextual in that it always occurs within a given conceptual framework. Current research on critical thinking suggests that critical thinking is extremely sensitive to context in other ways as well. According to Stephen Norris,

This is true for two reasons. First , the inferences and appraisals of inferences that a person can justify making depend on the background assumptions, level of sophistication, and concept of the task. Inferences that do not agree with those sanctioned by a test or with those a teacher might make do not necessarily indicate a critical thinking deficiency… Second, critical thinking is sensitive to context because context can dramatically affect the quality of one’s performance. This is a highly confirmed result in the area of deductive logical reasoning (Evans, 1982). Deductive logical reasoning is based on the form rather than on its content … Despite this, people reason better deductively when dealing with thematic contexts, with contexts that relate to their personal experience, and when they do not have presumptions about the truth of the conclusion. In addition, deductive reasoning performance is lowered in contexts involving threats or promises 37 .

According to Norris, both the inferences one can justify making and the quality of one’s ability to make inferences is sensitive to context, e.g. to the “background assumptions, level of sophistication, and concept of the task” as well as to whether the environment feels safe. Some inferences may be justified against one background set of assumptions but not others, or within one conceptual framework but not another. If, as Norris claims, “people reason better deductively when dealing with thematic contexts, with contexts that relate to their personal experience, and when they do not have presumptions about the truth of the conclusion,” then a person’s ability to reason well deductively is affected by conceptual frameworks.

The element of contextual sensitivity is also important to the effective teaching/learning of critical thinking 38 . It raises the problem of the “ transfer ” of critical thinking to domains other than those in which the skill was originally taught. A discussion of the problem of transfer must attend to various levels of transfer: transfer within a restricted field of study to new examples within that field, transfer across disciplinary boundaries, and transfer into the thinking practices in which we engage in our everyday lives 39 . An attention to the problems of transfer is an attention to context: the learner’s background knowledge , assumptions, and experiences, and the nature of her “everyday life.” One who manifests such contextual sensitivity  manifests an important critical thinking disposition.

According to Norris, this general need for contextual (including interpersonal ) sensitivity and for “teaching critical thinking for transfer” is confirmed, even if there is as yet little detailed knowledge about what specifically makes students who have had direct instruction in critical thinking better thinkers or how to accomplish the desired transfer 40 . To achieve this contextual sensitivity, teachers/learners must eventually come to recognize their own conceptual frameworks, see alternative conceptual frameworks, and, where possible, conduct discussions across conceptual frameworks.

It is because critical thinking is extremely sensitive to context that both the teaching and assessments of critical thinking abilities and performance must seek explicit indications of people’s reasons for their conclusions. Otherwise, one will be unable to “differentiate between deficiencies in thinking abilities and differences in background assumptions and beliefs between the examiner and examinee” 41 .

Robert Swartz may be correct that, as a rule of inference, “Modus ponens is the same in science as in history. “ 42 But, if Norris’ research conclusions are correct, then a person’s ability to learn and use modus ponens may be very different in different contexts, including the contexts provided by science and history. One implication of Norris’ view is that the ability to recognize, use, and assess inferences based on modus ponens will be affected by both the “safety” of the environment and the inferer’s own prior knowledge. A learner’s critical thinking performance and abilities may be significantly affected if the examples used and conclusions drawn are given from a very different conceptual framework. Failure to take seriously one’s own conceptual framework (‘ ‘point of view’ ‘) as well as the learner’s could also incline an evaluator to conclude, prematurely if not incorrectly, that the learner is not very good at deductive reasoning.

In this paper I have argued that an adequate conception of critical thinking must involve the recognition that critical thinking always takes place within some conceptual framework. In this respect, critical thinking must be understood as essentially contextual , i.e. sensitive to the conceptual framework in which it is conceived, practiced and learned or taught. What makes this contribution distinctively feminist is that it makes visible the ways in which patriarchal conceptual frameworks are relevant to the theory and practice of critical thinking.

Feminism changes the agenda of critical thinking by problematizing old issues in new ways. If what I have said in this paper is correct or even plausible, then the link between critical thinking and feminism is much deeper and potentially more liberating than the current scholarship on critical thinking would suggest. The aims of each are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. It may be, then, that critical thinking is not simply a feminist issue. It may be that critical thinking must be feminist if it is truly to be what it purports to be, viz. reasonable and reflective activity aimed at deciding what to do or believe.

I I do not take up directly the debate over the proper definition of critical thinking in this paper. Nor do I debate the related issues of the proper taxonomy of’ ‘critical thinking skills, ” whether critical thinking is ” subject-area specific, ” or the most effective ways of teaching critical thinking. For a discussion of various views on critical thinking, see Barry K. Beyer’s “Critical Thinking: What Is It?” Social Education (April, 1985): 270-276.

2 Robert H. Ennis, “Rational Thinking and Educational Practice,” in Philosophy of Education (80th yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Vol. 1), ed. by J. F. Soltis (Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education, 1981), and more recently, “A Logical Basis for Measuring Critical Thinking Skills,” Educational Leadership, 43 (October, 1985): 44-48, and “A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities,” in Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice, ed. by Joan B. Baron and Robert J. Sternberg (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1987), pp. 9-26. This definition is “sufficient for our purposes” because the position advanced in this paper would not change substantially even if some other definition of critical thinking currently in use is preferable.

3 For a more complete listing of critical thinking abilities and dispositions, see Ennis, “A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Abilities and Dispositions,” ibid. It is worth noting that according to current research, having a “critical spirit” (or “critical disposition “) is as important in critical thinking as having certain skills (Stephen P. Norris, “Synthesis of Research on Critical Thinking,” Educational Leadership, 42 (May, 1985): 44.

4 Richard Paul, for instance, argues that since “emotions and beliefs are always inseparably wedded together,” empathy and passions are important in critical thinking. See Paul, “Dialogical Thinking: Critical Thinking Essential to the Acquisition of Rational Knowledge and Passions,” in Teaching Thinking Skills, ibid., 127-148. This broad definiton seems to have two distinct advantages: it accommodates narrower definitions in terms of skills, while also being attractive from a feminist point of view. The latter is so because, as I argue in the paper, exclusive and oppositional dualisms (e.g. critical vs. creative thinking, reason vs. emotion) are viewed with extreme suspicion by many feminists.

5 Alison Jaggar provides a thorough analysis of the first four leading conceptions of feminism in her book, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), and a discussion of Black and Third World Feminism in Feminist Frameworks: 2nd Edition, eds. Alison M. Jaggar and Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: McGraw Hills, 1984). A discussion of ecological feminism vis-a-vis the other feminisms can be found in Karen J. Warren, “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections,” Environmental Ethics (Spring, 1987): 3-20.

6 This discussion of oppressive conceptual frameworks is a revised version of what I offered in my “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections,” ibid.

7 Elizabeth Dodson Gray, Green Paradise Lost (Wellesley Mass.: Roundtable Press, 1981), p. 20.

8 Although I do not argue for these claims here, arguments for ways in which Western culture, particularly Western philosophy, has sanctioned such value hierarchical thinking can be found, e.g., in: Susan Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany: Suny Press, 1987); Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in VVestern Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: VVomen, Ecology, and The Scientific RevoItuion (San Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1980).

9 See Jaggar, ibid., p. 96.

10 I discuss this point with regard to ecological feminism in my piece “The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism,” read at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meetings, Dec. 27-30, 1987.

II Although many feminists argue that all the dominant cultures of Western history have been patriarchal, whether enlightened, reformed, feudal, capitalist, or socialist, I leave open here the question whether that is true.

12 In Western culture at least, women are presumed to be the ones to do so-called “women’s work” (e.g. raising children, attending to domestic responsibilities, caregiving), i.e. work relegated primarily to the “private” sphere. So, while that work may have some status or value typically it is status or value within ~ sphere generally taken to be of less seriousness, significance, or political importance than the “public sphere” of men’s work.

13 Notice that calling a conceptual framework “patriarchal” does not mean that it is one held by all, or by only, males. To the extent that both males and females in contemporary culture are raised within a patriarchal conceptual framework, they will both be affected by that framework even if, as men and women, they are affected by it in different ways and to different extents.

14 Other approaches to showing the link between critical thinking and feminism also could be used. For instance, one could show the ways in which understanding how the college and pre-college climate is “chilly for women” bears on understanding women student’s abilities or dispositions . to think critically, or how testing situations and measurements fail to use examples or situations which draw on the particular or cultural experiences of women. See Roberta M. Hall and Bernice R. Sadler, “The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One For Women?” Project for the Status and Education of VVOMEN Association of American Colleges, 1818 R. Street NW, Washington, DC 20009.

15 For a helpful discussion of bias, and the unavoidable but potentially dangerous bias of a “point of view,” see J. Anthony Blair’s “What is Bias?” in Selected Issues in Logic and Communication, ed. Trudy Govier (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing: 1988): 93-103.

16 The examples are chosen from science and ethics because these two fields represent a wide range of issues concerning the making and assessing of so-called factual and value claims which are central to discussions of critical thinking. They thereby illustrate both the breadth and depth of feminist concerns about the nature and teaching of critical thinking.

17 Ruth Bleier, Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and its Theories on Women (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984).

18 Bleier, “Introduction,” in Feminist Approaches to Science, ed. by Ruth Bleier (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986), p. 2. I do not intend to defend Bleier’s views here, or any of the other views given by the feminist scientists and feminist ethicists cited. My objective is simply to use their views to show why and how the way critical thinking is conceived and practiced within patriarchal conceptual frameworks is a feminist issue.

19 Sherry B. Ortner was one of the first to address a similar question of interests to ecological feminists: “Are women closer to nature than men?” (Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is To Culture?” in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture, and Society (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1974), pp. 67-68. Ecological feminists raise the same sort of objection to this question “Are women closer to nature than men?” that I have raised here to the question” Are there biological differences between men and women?” For example, Joan Griscom argues that “the question is itself flawed” since’ ‘we are all part of nature, and since all of us, biology and culture alike, is part of nature” (Joan Griscom, “On Healing the Nature/Culture Split in Feminist Thought,” Heresies 13: Feminism and Ecology, 4 (1981): 9.

20 See Donna Haraway, “Primatology is Politics by Other Means” and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, “Empathy, Polyandry, and the Myth of the Coy Female, ” in Feminist Approaches to Science, ibid., pp. 77-118 and 119-146, respectively.

21 Bleier, “Introduction,” Feminist Approaches to Science, p. 8.

22 Bleier, Science and Gender, p.29.

23 Ibid., p. 9.

24 Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion, ” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (September, 1971): 47-66.

25 See Kathryn Adelson, “Moral Revolution, ” in Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy, ed. Marilyn Persall (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986): 291-309.

26 Ibid., p. 306.

27 Jane Roland Martin, Reclaiming A Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 197.

28 As in the preceding section on feminist science, my purpose here is not to resolve this important issue about bias in ethics. Nor is it to suggest that whatever bias exists in ethics requires revolutionary, rather than reformist, changes to remedy (as Addelson claims). Rather, it is to use recent feminist discussions in ethics to illustrate ways in which the charge of bias arises in ethics and what the bias has to do with conceptual frameworks.

29 Compare Evelyn Fox Keller’s discussion of cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock’s approach to her research of the maize plant. According to Keller, McClintock urges scientists to “let the material speak to you [the material in McClintock’s case is the corn plant]” by developing a “feeling for the organism.” (Evelyn Fox Keller, “Women, Science, and Popular Mythology,” in Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives 01/ Technology, ed. Joan Rothschild (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983), p. 141). For a complete discussion of Keller’s treatment of McClintock’s work, see Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (San Fransisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983).

30 Bleier, Science and Gender, p. 107.

32 Such considerations have led many feminist scientists to conclude that there is no single correct scientific methodology, and that scientific methodology cannot protect research and its conclusions from the investigator’s biases, values and beliefs. See Bleier, Science and Gender, pp. 4-5. 33 Similarly, if one operates from within a racist conceptual framework which assumes that nonwhites are genetically inferior to whites, it will be very difficult to take seriously the points of view that there are no relevant genetic difference between whites and nonwhites, that whites and blacks are equal, that “white supremacy” is a piece of ideology. It will be impossible to take those opposing views seriously if one continues to adhere to the basic assumptions of the racist conceptual framework.

34 Notice that I have not argued here for the view that only a feminist point of view is an “openminded” view. What I have claimed is that from a feminist point of view, openmindedness does not require taking seriously all points of view, since some points of view (e.g. that women ought to be treated as inferior to men) do not warrant serious consideration.

35 This is the notion of bias that Michael Scriven offers in his book Reasoning (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976): 208.

36 Alison M. Jaggar, “Teaching Sedition: Some Dilemmas of Feminist Pedagogy,” Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, pp. 8-9.

37 Norris, ibid., p. 42. The reference to Evans is to J. S1. B.T. Evans, The Psychology of Deductive Reasoning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).

38 Space does not permit me to discuss the relevance of research on “feminist pedagogy” in this paper. For a discussion of such issues, see the journal Feminist Teacher; Mary Anne Wolff’s “According to Whom? Helping Students Analyze Contrasting Views of Reality,” Educational Leadership (October, 1986): 36-41 ; Charlotte Bunch and Sandra Pollack, eds. Learning Our Way: Essays in Feminist Education (Trumansburg, N. Y.: Crossing Press, 1983); Margo Culley and Catherine Portugues, eds. Gendered Subjects: The Dynamics of Feminist Teaching (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985); Bernice Fisher, “What is Feminist Pedagogy?” in Radical Teacher, 18 (1981): 20-24; Henry A. Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition (South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey, 1983); Nancy Hoffman, “White Woman, Black Woman: Inventing an Adequate Pedagogy,” in Women’s Studies Newsletter, 1-2 (1977): 21-24; Nancy Porter, “Liberating Teaching,” in Women’s Studies Quarterly, X (1982): 19-24.

39 Robert J. Swartz, “Critical Thinking, the Curriculum, and the Problem of Transfer,” in Thinking: Progress in Research and Teaching. ed. David N. Perkins et al. (Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Assoc., 1987), p. 283.

40 Norris, ibid., p. 44.

41 Ibid., p. 42.

42 Swartz, ibid., p. 270. Professor Karen 1. Warren, Philosophy Department, Macalester College, 1600 Grand A venue, Saint Paul MN 55105 0

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Feminist Perspectives on Argumentation

The noun “argument” and verb “to argue” can describe various things in ordinary language and in different academic disciplines (O’Keefe 1982; Wenzel 1980 [1992]). “Argument” may identify a logical premise-conclusion complex, a speech act, or a dialogical exchange. Arguments may play off other arguments or support each other; smaller arguments can serve as sub-arguments inside larger arguments to which they contribute. Following the practice of Anglophone philosophers, this entry uses the term “argument” only to indicate a premise-conclusion complex that may involve sub-arguments. “Argumentation” also includes the larger context belonging to the activity of “arguing”, understood as the offering of reasons.

Feminist philosophical work on argumentation takes a number of different directions. Some feminists note a general association of arguing with aggression, competition, and masculinity, and they question the necessity of these connections. Also, because many view arguing as a central method of philosophical reasoning, if arguing involves gendered assumptions and standards then that would pose special problems for the discipline. In particular, the goal of winning might get in the way of the other purposes for arguing. So, some feminists ask: Can allegedly “feminine” modes of arguing provide an alternative or supplement to allegedly “masculine” modes? Can overarching epistemological standards account for the benefits of different approaches to arguing? These are some of the prospects for argumentation inside and outside of philosophy that feminists consider.

Some feminists charge, moreover, that the academic study of argumentation—by philosophers and other scholars—has failed to account for the type of reasoning required to provide social justice. Ordinary politeness or even a more robust conception of civility can be inadequate to counteract the influence on argumentation of inequalities based on social identity. What resources can informal logic and interdisciplinary argumentation studies provide to help arguing practices avoid the reinforcement of social injustices? Are informal logic and the study of rhetoric any more helpful than deductive logic? Feminist scholars suggest certain strategies for reasoning and for argument pedagogy, especially looking at ways to address the personal nature that arguing often has.

Other feminists find problems with argumentation standards fairly specific to the discipline of philosophy. It emerges that philosophers often invoke claims about arguments and arguing contrary to accepted argumentation scholarship. Feminists especially note this problem in the way that philosophers employ fallacy labels and how they teach argument in critical thinking courses. Even though argumentation scholarship stands in need of further feminist development, it provides some resources to help philosophy better address social justice concerns.

1.1 Metaphors and norms of masculine aggression

1.2 the adversary paradigm and the discipline of philosophy, 2.1 gendered reasoning, 2.2 caring and coalescent argumentation, 2.3 knowledge and criticism, 2.4 politeness and civility, 3.1 formal logic, 3.2 rhetorical approaches and power differences, 4. credibility and argumentative injustice, 5. the fallacies approach to argument evaluation, 6. critical thinking and argument pedagogy, 7. feminism, the discipline of philosophy, and argumentation scholarship, other internet resources, related entries, 1. arguing to win.

Theories about arguing generally assume that arguers disagree, and sometimes arguing operates as a type of battle among ideas that may be preferred over physical combat among people. Adversarial orientation among people arguing may, however, marginalize women’s patterns of communication and discount social norms of “femininity” (that regularly attach to women and girls but vary across time and culture). The connection between “masculinity” (understood also as a social norm, ideal, or role) and adversarial processes for reasoning may be heightened and even become stylized as a disciplinary method in contemporary Euro-American philosophy (Moulton 1983; Burrow 2010; Rooney 2010; Alcoff 2013). [ 1 ] When reasoners treat arguing as a contest, each aiming to win by defeating the other’s claim, it can become “eristic”, which is to say that the goal of winning takes over from other purposes that arguing serves. In the same way as adversarial reasoning and eristics, other discursive norms can complicate the ways that women may be marginalized and marginalize other groups of people, including men. Little attention has been given in Euro-American philosophy to the gendered dimensions of arguing in other cultures. However, feminists regularly suggest that where adversarial arguing dominates, non-dominant styles of reasoning can provide productive alternatives or complements to it, and this often involves styles gendered as “feminine”.

Some feminist philosophers suggest that an aggressive culture associated with masculinity poorly serves processes of reasoning and hinders the discipline of philosophy insofar as it sidelines, downgrades, and even excludes people’s non-adversarial engagement with each other and with each other’s reasoning. Evidence for this problem emerges in various places, beginning with the prevalence of military and aggressive language to describe philosophical discourse and rational arguing more generally (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Ayim 1988; Cohen 1995).

Janice Moulton (1983) argues that a particular style she calls “the Adversary Method” dominates the discipline of philosophy, and this goes beyond a set of attitudes or styles of interaction to include prioritizing a particular discursive logic. Further evidence for Moulton’s characterization of disciplinary practices in philosophy comes from Phyllis Rooney (2012) and Catherine Hundleby (2010).

The metaphor of argument-as-war provides a central example for George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s landmark book, Metaphors We Live By (1980). War can operate as “structural metaphor” for arguing:

Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument—attack, defense, counterattack, etc.—reflects this. (1980: 4)

Without that structure, Lakoff and Johnson suggest that we could not even recognize a piece of discourse as an argument.

Moulton (1983) observes that prioritizing aggression in the practice of arguing and the association of aggression with certain forms of masculinity is problematic. If people assume that success requires aggression, then discussants must appear aggressive in order to appear competent at arguing. Not only may the assumption be false, but it may entail a distinct disadvantage for women. Cultures that treat aggression as a natural quality in men encourage and advantage men in eristic modes of engagement. When success demands aggression, contributions to an exchange of reasons made in other styles—including those that read as feminine—will not measure up; and they may not even be noticed. At the same time, a woman can seem to be aggressive merely by asserting her own viewpoint or by showing competence in some other fashion. She may tend to stand out in many contexts as behaving inappropriately, even as her actions become acknowledged, because of her feminine social identity (Moulton 1983: 150; Rancer & Stewart 1985; Hample et al. 2005; Kukla 2014; Olberding 2014).

Moulton calls attention to ways in which philosophical approaches to arguing and reasoning in Euro-American culture take on a pronounced adversarial dynamic that reflects aggressive expectations. Her concern about the discipline and about models for argumentation is shared by many feminist philosophers (Ayim 1988; Burrow 2010; Gilbert 1994, 1997; Hundleby 2010, 2013b, Rooney 2003, 2010) and some who are not specifically feminist (Cohen 1995). Maryann Ayim observes that a culture of hostility can be viewed in the militaristic, violent, subjugating, and controlling language used to describe philosophical arguing, especially the metaphor of argument-as-war:

Philosophers tend to value their “sharper” students, whom they may openly praise for their “penetrating” insights. Occasionally they find students of “piercing” intelligence, one or two perhaps with minds like “steel traps”. Philosophers regard such students as important: They require “tough-minded” opponents with whom they can “parry” in the classroom, so they can exhibit to the others what the “thrust” of philosophical argumentation is all about. This “battle of wits” is somewhat risky, however, and a “combatant” must take care always to “have the upper hand”, to “win thumbs down”, to “avoid being hoist by your own petard”. If you find yourself pressed for time at the end of a lecture, with your “back to the wall”, or as it is occasionally even more colorfully expressed, “between a rock and a hard place”, you may have to resort to “strong arm tactics”, to “barbed” comments, to “go for the jugular”, to “cut an opponent’s argument to pieces”, or to “bring out the big guns or heavy artillery”. If caught in the throes of a real dilemma, you many even have to “take the bull by the horns” or rebut the dilemma by advancing a “counter” dilemma. (Ayim 1988: 188)

Martial metaphors and competitive evaluation foster the eristic goal of defeating others and their views (Cohen 1995), even perhaps, Ayim suggests, for instructors in regard to their students. While this attitude may seem obviously inappropriate for instructors to take with students over whom they have authority, the available range of such language suggests a general disciplinary culture that enforces aggression through conflating it with success (Moulton 1983).

Admittedly, aggressive interaction may be comfortable for many women and uncomfortable for some men, and it may be inflected with class and race biases with similarly variable effect. Yet these may be merely exceptions to the “masculine” homosocial culture of hostility that many feminists maintain prevails in philosophical arguing. Rooney argues that culture reinforces male status in the discipline and resonates with narratives of opposition against not just ideas but also against people who present them, especially women (Rooney 2010: 229). Common ideals of masculinity and rationality coincide with the association of aggression with success, power, effectiveness, and vitality; they contrast with emotion, unreason, body, sexuality, instinct, nature, and rhetoric, [ 2 ] all notions that Euro-American cultures regularly associate with femininity.

In the history of Euro-American philosophy, Rooney (2010) observes, masculine reason regularly appears in battle against feminine elements of unreason, a battle that occurs both within the knower and among aspects of thought. “Embattled reason” constantly struggles to subordinate feminine elements of unreason, and the suppression of perceived negative qualities that are gendered as “feminine” provides a central means for achieving the ideals of reason and rationality central to the discipline. That the discipline functions this way can discourage women’s participation. So, Rooney argues

that a full feminist accounting of the general cultural problem with gender, adversariality, and authority must include consideration of philosophy’s history and its lingering effects. (2010: 209, 217–219)

Otherwise the discipline may continue to perpetuate sexist standards of reason from the larger culture and its history.

Daniel Cohen (1995) suggests that antagonistic attitudes may not actually enhance competition and the knowledge it is supposed to serve, and that imposing the goal of agreement can silence rational discourse and undermine the goal of philosophy to further inquiry. The value of information that challenges our own beliefs can always be hard to recognize, a difficulty described as “confirmation bias”, and this problem can be exacerbated when the focus of arguing is winning rather than learning or ascertaining truth (Makau & Marty 2013: 39–40, 167; Linker 2015).

Norms of masculine aggression may help a particular reasoning method to dominate the discipline of philosophy, Janice Moulton argues in an early article (1983). She describes the process of competitive reasoning through deductive refutation—typically by counter-example—as the “Adversary Method”. [ 3 ] According to Moulton, the Method employs opposing views on a topic as tests for each other—the more severe the opposition, the better, and surviving the confrontation grants “objectivity” to a view. Winning at arguing in this fashion depends on defeating competing positions based on faults identified in them. Defeat of the opposite position becomes more decisive when the claims are very specific, as specificity aids deductive refutation.

Philosophy, at least in Moulton’s (1983) context of late twentieth century Anglo-American or “analytic” philosophy, may be so permeated by the combination of adversarial arguing and deductive logic that the Adversary Method operates as a disciplinary “paradigm”. Moulton argues that this “paradigm” for philosophy demands aggressive opposition to other people’s opinions, in the same way that Thomas Kuhn observed that mature scientific disciplines demand adherence to an overarching theory, an ideal, and a practice that together constitute a cultural paradigm. Philosophers’ technique of aiming to falsify each other’s claims reflects Karl Popper’s epistemology but adversarial reasoning in philosophy has taken many different forms and traces back at least to Aristotle. Descartes and Kant shifted the normative focus of the study of logic from dialogue to individual cognition, and the logic of opposition became internalized (Dutilh Novaes 2011, 2015). Yet, arguing as a dialogical form of reasoning retains the oppositional dynamic.

Moulton criticizes how the operation of the Adversary Method as a paradigm can hobble the progress of philosophical reasoning by narrowing the possibilities for discussion. Isolating claims maximizes their vulnerability and prepares them for Adversarial testing, forcing proponents to rely on ad hoc revisions, and prohibiting the systematic reconsiderations that encourage theories to evolve. For instance, ad hoc concessions “for the sake of argument” create common ground for discussion only by restricting the basis for disagreement; and so, Moulton maintains, they slow the development of philosophical thought (1983: 154–155).

Moulton (1983) argues that the narrow discourse of the Adversary Method seriously limits the relevance of philosophy to feminist concerns. She takes the example of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s classic philosophical defense of the moral permissibility of abortion that concedes a great deal (that the fetus is a full-fledged person with a right to life) to show that the right to life does not supersede the right to bodily autonomy. Moulton’s concern is that even though Thomson’s position supports feminist theoretical views, it employs reasoning so remote from the circumstances of pregnancy that it provides no guidance for people seeking to make decisions about actual abortions. Taking the purpose of arguing to be the defeat of a view limits the practical relevance of the argumentative exchange.

Moulton makes a further related point that forcing narrow theories to compete can make philosophy look quite absurd. Moral arguments are directed at egoists and epistemology is offered to skeptics. Debates over the existence of the external world and the existence of God occupy philosophers at the expense of attention to the character of the world we live in or the role of God in our religions. Philosophers rarely question the assumption that there must be a supreme moral principle, Moulton explains, because otherwise there would be little sense to making different theories compete for recognized supremacy (1983: 157–158). Losing sight of other reasons for arguing may have even resulted in the misinterpretation of key figures in the history of philosophy. Moulton suggests that interpreters often miss various purposes for which Socrates argued because they assume that his only goal was refutation (1983: 155–157). The assumption that the Adversary Method drives philosophical progress may distort philosophers’ understanding of the value of their own discipline.

The Adversary Method’s prevalence and constitution of a Kuhnian paradigm may be recognized in Rooney’s observation that philosophers tend to engage each other from a “default skeptical stance”. The skeptical stance challenges the quality of the components of another’s arguments, including the basis for premises, the support premises provide for the conclusion, and the possibility of counterexamples. The skeptical stance operates as a default without consideration of the appropriateness of the challenges for the topic under discussion. Rooney notes in particular,

skeptical argumentative responses that take necessary truths and valid arguments as the ideal poorly serve the variety of arguments and forms of argumentation that important philosophical works have presented and will continue to present. (2012: 321)

Inappropriate standards undermine the general epistemic aims of truth and understanding. They create specific problems for discussion of social justice issues which depends extensively on testimony and therefore on deft employment of the epistemology of testimony and sensitivity to the danger of testimonial injustice (see Section 4 on Credibility and argument interpretation ). The unsuitability of the Adversary Method for discussions of social justice will stall social justice projects, Rooney concludes, including those within the discipline of philosophy.

Hundleby presents as evidence for the paradigmatic operation of the Adversary Method an analysis of critical thinking textbooks in philosophy. Twenty-four textbooks of the thirty examined—four-fifths—revealed in their presentation of fallacies the norms of the Adversary Method: narrow discourse and decisive refutation. Most of these textbooks exhibiting the Adversary Paradigm have authors with no research expertise in argumentation more specific than doctoral training in philosophy, whereas the much smaller number of textbooks (six out of thirty) authored by scholars of argumentation do not show the same signs of the Adversary Method. Given this evidence that argumentation scholarship differently orients argument pedagogy, the prevalence of the Adversary Method in so many other textbooks seems to derive simply from the disciplinary culture of philosophy (Hundleby 2010).

Some empirical educational studies suggest, too, that while students learn a great deal from learning eristic practices of argument, it undermines their progress as learners by emphasizing winning over gaining understanding (Makau & Marty 2013: 13). People—including feminists—Moulton (1983) suggests, might expect more relevant advice from the discipline of philosophy. More practical philosophies addressing mundane problems also may be found outside Euro-American cultures (Olberding 2015).

2. Other Goals for and Styles of Arguing

Feminist philosophical models of arguing aim either to replace or to complement arguing practices and norms defined in terms of a contest between people or reasons. In addition to the goal of defeating an interlocutor or their reasons, arguments can serve many purposes. Explanation and explanatory argument (sometimes considered to be the same thing) already receive attention from argumentation theorists and philosophers of science. Other functions of arguing, such as educating the uninitiated or the undecided and discussing matters with like-minded people, remain neglected by theorists (Goodwin & Innocenti 2019). None of the alternatives need to take over as a new “paradigm”, but exploring various purposes, methods, and styles of arguing may help to scrutinize accepted procedures and purposes (Moulton 1983). Such questioning of methods deters their dogmatic acceptance.

According to Cohen, more important for the role of arguing in philosophy and education than to praise or condemn any particular norms of arguing may be the exploration of multiple approaches. Philosophers and arguers more generally might find means for innovation and constructive questioning in many new models and metaphors. Cohen finds that traffic metaphors seem to work especially well:

We can say that arguments are (i) conversational traffic jams—(ii) gridlock with a lot of honking and little movement; (iii) conversational traffic accidents; (iv) wrong turns, or (v) detours, or (vi) dead ends or (vii) roundabouts on the streets of discourse; or should we have said that they are (viii) short cuts to the truth at the end of the road; maybe (ix) they are long and winding roads to nowhere; or, instead, we can conceive of arguments as (x) intellectual one way roads to their conclusions although maybe they are really (xi) one-lane roads but with two-way traffic. More positively, they can be thought of as a case of (xii) a merging traffic of ideas or even better as (xiii) conceptual roads under construction. (Cohen 1995: 184)

The availability of so many traffic metaphors suggests something appropriate about this analogy. Another option identified by Keith Lloyd (2014) lies in perceptual metaphors, especially regarding what arguers can see. However, visual metaphors have a fraught history in feminist philosophy because ideal vision tends to be associated with abstraction, and to lean on a hierarchy of the senses (Keller & Grontkowski 1983). In any case it is likely that no metaphor or analogy can capture all the shapes that arguments take and the purposes they serve (Cohen 1995: 187).

Metaphors, models, and methods that tend to be “gendered” as feminine may carry connotations of subordination—and so they may seem inferior, yet they may be also especially useful for women and hence powerful for feminists. These approaches can provide a potent basis for generating alternatives to eristic standards and an understanding of the processes that may go alongside or support arguing as a contest. Metaphors and models based on collaboration fit with the work of physical and emotional care that regularly constitutes women’s roles and responsibilities. Yet collaboration also proves quite apt for many other contexts and functions of arguing such as explanation and deliberation. Rooney suggests that because people converse with rather than against each other, and because arguing is a species of conversation, we should speak of arguing with rather than against people and their views (2010: 221). This possibility suggests that the argument-as-war metaphor may not be so overwhelming as to make alternatives unimaginable in the way Lakoff and Johnson suggest (1980: 4). Alternative structures for argument can be found in our ordinary language.

Patterns that might seem to distinguish how women argue may not express deep cognitive differences between the genders. A range of communicative styles including gendered norms of polite discourse that have people constrain their public reasoning may equally serve cognitive functions common to men and women. Gendered roles may even complement each other’s epistemological operation. The most aggressive and disruptive behavior will not endure norms of politeness. However, some feminists consider that politeness can require conformity to structures of social authority that marginalize women, people of color, and others belonging to subordinated social categories.

The gendered associations of different styles of reasoning suggest that a source for alternative models of arguing might be found in what have been seen as “feminine” styles of reasoning. Whether or not women reason differently from men depends on what we count as reasoning (Verbiest 1995), and the evidence from psychology and sociology reveals no significantly gendered differences in the mental processes of inference and cognition (Fine 2010). Yet women’s communication practices often reflect distinct “values of intimacy, connection, inclusion, and problem sharing” (Burrow 2010: 247).

Ayim argues that in order to avoid reinforcing patterns of subordination, we must detect and examine how values and presuppositions play into the ways that we interpret argumentation (1988: 185). Rooney adds that cooperative and collaborative inclinations may involve a tendency to defer, a reluctance to take responsibility for a position, or a lack of confidence in one’s ideas (2010: 213–214). The need to appease those with greater power may explain why an open-ended and tentative quality sometimes distinguishes women’s style of arguing and practices of communication associated with femininity. Sylvia Burrow suggests that women may give others’ interests priority over their own in order to secure cooperation and connection (2010). This may characterize subordinate roles more generally, sometimes extending to marginalized races and ethnicities.

While styles of “femininity” and “masculinity” are neither wholly good nor bad, they both have inherent dangers. A danger for masculinity arises from its association with activity and aggression as apparently natural features of maleness. As a result, these masculine ideals constrain women’s communication, as has often been noted by feminist theorists, while feminine modes tend to be dismissed. Because masculine characteristics also operate as ideals of humanity or personhood (Hundleby 2016), men can over-identify with them and have no motivation to reflect on or problematize their gender identity (Bruner 1996).

The strategy of transgressing gender by adopting an aggressive masculine mode for arguing can seem useful to women and the temptation may be strongest in “masculine” discourses such as philosophical discussion, or wherever listeners treat an authoritative manner as valuable. Yet, when women adopt masculine discursive styles and adversarial techniques, they can garner criticism for being selfish, cold, and mean, which is criticism that men would not receive (Burrow 2010). Furthermore, such character challenges weaken women’s authority and their ability to participate in argumentation (Burrow 2010; Hundleby 2013a). Even when those challenges are not interpreted as a character fault, the effect may be to present women as merely requesting permission to participate, whereas men are not taken to need permission (Kukla 2014; Olberding 2014). When women decline to offer explanations, they are considered incompetent, whereas the same behavior reads as strength in men. Women’s attempts to defend their authority can easily backfire because the very nature of authority depends on not always having to defend what one says (Hanrahan & Antony 2005).

The consideration that women may have a “different voice” in moral reasoning (Gilligan 1982) gave rise to care ethics as a feminist alternative to traditional accounts of morality. Ayim (1988) suggests that metaphors of nurturing could also replace violent ones describing arguing, especially because arguing can help to foster community (Makau & Marty 2013). Approaches to reasoning that presume interest in the flourishing of other people and that consider the needs of others may be common among girls and women in cultures that press them into practices of motherhood and related caring labor, such as teaching, nursing, and food service.

Attention to the unique audience and the speakers involved in a particular discussion forces consideration of its detailed situation. In one sense, this attention exhibits a bias toward certain sorts of evidence. That bias does not pretend to value-neutrality. Yet, Karen Warren argues that attention to detail provides a feminist sense of “open-mindedness” that enriches feminist reasoning with data in a way that entails a type of impartiality (1988: 38). Reasoners operate from specific locations that cannot be adequately addressed by an epistemology of generic or uniform knowers, as feminist epistemologist Lorraine Code argues (1991). And feminist communications scholars Josina M. Makau and Debian L. Marty note that “taking other people’s perspectives seriously is a basic requirement in peaceful coexistence” (2001: 11; 2013: 51).

Accounting for reasoners’ social situations in the way that Warren and Code advise provides part of the goal for Maureen Linker’s model of “intellectual empathy” (2015). This involves working to understand the history of social inequality and how it affects the reasoning and arguing of ourselves and others. Linker argues that

reason and understanding must be supplemented with emotion and experience so that we can know in the fullest possible sense. (2015: 13)

Attention to specific personal experiences that historically have been ignored provides a feminist standpoint with particular empirical and scientific value, and marks a place where the two general feminist epistemologies of science, feminist standpoint theory and feminist empiricism, coincide (Intemann 2010).

The same feminist epistemological concerns motivate Michael Gilbert’s model of “coalescent argumentation”, which treats arguing as communication that involves much more than a generic expression of a premise-conclusion complex. In coalescent argumentation, the views of speakers stand in opposition to each other without the people speaking being opposed to each other. Arguers’ orientation to other people requires that they account for their interconnection with those in conversation and how their decisions affect others. In this collaborative model, the defeat neither of ideas nor of an opponent provides the goal; instead the goal is to find mutual ground among people, which requires a broad view of relevant considerations (1994; 1997). The processes of coalescent argumentation demand more information than required simply to find fault with others’ arguments. The premise-conclusion complexes that logicians recognize as arguments become understood in coalescent arguing as standing in for “a position-cluster of attitudes, beliefs, feelings and intuitions” belonging to the arguer (Gilbert 1994: 96, original emphasis). Arguers’ motivations offer a basis for interpretation that provides greater room for recognizing middle ground among people who seem to disagree. Exploring this common territory also suggests ways in which alternative solutions may be developed. By emphasizing how divergent positions involve agreement among the proponents’ views and desires, points of disagreement can be distinguished from points of agreement and minimized. On Gilbert’s model, “one asks not, ‘What can I disagree with?’ but, ‘What must I disagree with?’” (1994: 109).

In light of the general feminist interest in collaborative and coalescent models of argumentation, Tempest M. Henning (2018) warns they may reflect certain cultural assumptions, and presumptions of universal culture. The norms recommended by what she identifies as “non-adversarial feminist argumentation models”, and attributes especially to Ayim, may run contrary to the cultures and needs of U.S. Black women. More generally, argumentation theory tends to prescribe a pleasantness of tone and directness of speech that connotes respect in some cultures but not others (Henning 2021; see Section 2.4 on Politeness and civility ). Some feminist philosophers also value adversarial arguing or even identify personally as adversarial arguers. So, the resistance to forms of adversarial arguing that appears to provide a valuable commonality between some feminist concerns and accepted views in argumentation theory may reflect only the interests of certain white women. It may actually work against the interests of other groups of women and risk reinforcing racial marginalization.

Even feminists with concerns about adversarial reasoning recognize that it promotes criticism that may advance the goal of attaining knowledge and understanding. Knowledge is an important purpose among those that arguing serves and different styles of arguing can serve different purposes. Some efforts to build knowledge may benefit from the adversarial styles and models, especially if arguers can avoid automatically slipping into hostile, “ancillary” modes of aggression (Govier 1999). Arguers may also need to avoid reinforcing other epistemic cultures and subcultures that prioritize men’s interaction with each other (Rooney 2012). So feminists need norms for arguing that support criticism of such androcentric cultures and practices and the development of knowledge about how such systems function.

Non-adversarial models of reasoning such as coalescent argumentation may aid people’s understanding too, especially about others and their positions. Mutual understanding develops from coalescent arguing because it demands finding common ground. The remaining opposition among people and their beliefs constitutes a minimally adversarial orientation that Trudy Govier (1999) and Rooney (2010) argue may be valuable for both the development of arguments and the role of arguing in the processes that generate knowledge. Arguers can aid each other in achieving knowledge, which is the main goal in academic arguing, despite the fact that academics sometimes can be side-tracked by mundane power play.

Because of overarching epistemic purposes, Cohen suggests that the people whose ideas lose in eristic debate thus may benefit the most because they learn the most (1995: 182). People may also share an inquiry (Dutilh Novaes 2015: 598–599), and epistemic benefit may accrue to communities. The discursive practices in which individual scientists work together by testing each other’s claims may exhibit certain characteristics that Helen Longino’s (1990) model of scientific reasoning sees as supporting a form of objectivity. Longino’s account of objectivity addresses feminist concerns with about gender bias in scientific theories and involves both collaborative and adversarial elements.

Such shared epistemic projects among people might be understood as “arguing with” rather than “against” other reasoners (Rooney 2003). Rooney argues that readily available logical terms such as “contradictory” and “contrary” can adequately describe differing opinions without implicating opposition among the people holding divergent views (2003; 2010: 222). Such language may help reasoners move away from both the Adversary Method’s dominance as a Paradigm and eristic arguing that may be otherwise dysfunctional. The negative connotations of “argument” and “arguing” in the English language may be part of the problem. [ 4 ] Related words in other Indo-European languages carry no such implication of verbal fighting (Hitchcock 2017: 449). Avoiding the English-language connotations is part of the reason theorists often speak instead of “argumentation” even though that terminology can be unclear or unnecessarily abstract.

Yet, criticism must be part of feminism, especially to direct it at sexism, and feminists may be no more skilled than anyone else at avoiding the pitfalls of arguing such as its tendency to aggravate conflict. Feminist models of arguing avoid levelling criticism against people and direct it toward the views they hold so as to better serve everyone’s understanding. Feminist models of arguing and some ways of arguing used by feminists and non-feminists alike exhibit a benevolent attentiveness to other arguers in the processes of arguing and yet they may also subject what other people say to extensive criticism and opposition.

According to Govier, the characteristic explicitness of reasoning when people argue enables them to learn from disagreement and doubt (1999). Explicitness also promotes honesty with ourselves and each other and respect for interpersonal differences:

an arguer, in actually or potentially addressing those who differ, is committed to the recognition that people may think differently and that what they think and why they think it matters. (1999: 8, 50)

Feminist criticism often involves anger, an emotion also regularly associated with arguing. Anger can be a distracting or even destructive influence on reasoning and it can signify harmful arrogance (Tanesini 2018). Moira Howes and Catherine Hundleby make a case that arguing can help derive cognitive benefit from anger because arguing encourages reasoners to express and to articulate their reasons (2018). It can reveal aspects of reasoning that otherwise would remain unconscious, a feature of arguing processes that Douglas Walton identifies as the “maieutic effect” (1992).

Styles for communicating and sharing reasons often distinguished as “feminine” also play roles in feminist epistemologies of argumentation: Gilbert assigns a fundamental role in coalescent argumentation to the values of attention to the speaker and seeking agreement, while Linker characterizes empathetic intellectuals as having the skills of cooperation and accepting vulnerability. Feminist ethical goals of accountability to women thus can benefit from the pursuit of knowledge. Not only for feminists but for all reasoners, the ethical value of understanding other people can enhance the standard philosophical treatment of arguments as logical premise-conclusion complexes. Coalescent and intellectually empathic reasoning complement critical analysis once we distinguish criticism from the eristic culture of aggressive fault-finding (Miller 1995).

As a remedy for some of the problems that women and other arguers face, some feminists champion politeness, while others stress that expecting etiquette to address abuses of power belies the realities of women and others who are socially marginalized. Norms of politeness function to minimize conflict and so can hold people in subordinate positions (Mayo 2001). Like “ideal theory” in philosophy (Mills 2005), politeness can exacerbate the oppression it ignores—in this case, discursive marginalization.

Govier argues that the discursive norm of politeness limits the problem of overt interpersonal aggression in arguing (1999). Respect for other people and careful consideration of their views ought to be part of persuasion , including rational persuasion, which scholars often take to be the central or even the sole purpose for arguing (1999: 58–59). On this view, aggressive styles of communication or “ancillary adversariality” can be dismissed as simple rudeness or hostility. These ought not to be tolerated in any context and may not impact much on the beliefs and attitudes of the audience (Govier 1999; Miller 1995).

The main difficulty with this ideal arises because norms of politeness tend to be gendered in ways that undermine women’s authority when people argue, affirming power and status for men but not for women. This dynamic can receive reinforcement when women adopt cooperative strategies that play into norms of “femininity”, according to Burrow (2010) and Hundleby (2013a). Securing cooperation and connection with other people provides the very purpose for politeness. Both “masculine” and “feminine” forms of politeness can reflect this purpose. However, the gendered dynamics of politeness in many cultures may entail that cooperative or collaborative argumentation serves women poorly. It contributes to their subordination and perhaps also the subordination of other people with marginalized social identities. For women, cooperating and connecting with others may entail deferring one’s interests and promoting dialogue through hedging, questioning intonation, and use of tag questions, for example, “You know?” “Right?” “Don’t you think?” These strategies generally imply powerlessness or conflict avoidance. In contrast, masculine norms of polite connection facilitate shared competition and encourage joint autonomy along with regard for each other’s needs (Burrow 2010).

Burrow argues that women often have no easy options for conforming with the etiquette demands that reinforce power differences among speakers. Deferential styles of dialogue are part of most subordinate positions and, for women, other aspects of social rank do not mitigate this much. Therefore, to negotiate politeness and to argue effectively, women need complex strategies tailored to their circumstances (2010).

Henning (2021) observes that what many feminist and not-specifically-feminist argumentation theorists count as rudeness may actually belong to politeness strategies in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). In particular, “signifying” or “signification” within AAVE “utilizes exaggeration, irony, and indirection to partake in coded messages, riddled with insults”. To refuse to participate in signification is rude and politeness demands participation in speech that on the surface suggests disrespect. In some cultures, arguing not only performs pro-social functions, it provides such an important form of sociability that superficial or even insincere arguing may be an essential part of interaction and social bonding (Schiffrin 1984).

Because of the range of conflicting politeness strategies across different communities, it may serve better to seek an alternative to politeness as a norm and that may lie in an inclusive practice and ethic of civility in dialogue. Civility tends to be understood as deeper than politeness, sometimes considered itself to be a virtue or as involving such virtues as respect for other people (Calhoun 2000: 253; Bone et al. 2008; Laverty 2009; Reiheld 2013). Respecting others requires trying to understand them “as they wish to be known and understood” in the cooperative argumentation model developed by Makau and Marty (2013: 69). Others suggest that civil respect be parsed in ethical frameworks, such as deontology or consequentialism, because simple deference to existing social standards may be oppressive in assigning more restrictive practices to certain groups of people. Practices of respect may involve people’s adherence to oppressive social roles, just as they do for politeness, if common practice determines them. Ethically rich interpretations of civility must be shared among interlocutors in order that civility can fulfill its function to regulate disagreement. Such shared norms of civility not only aid the articulation of understandings that prejudiced and oppressive behavior are intolerable, they also aid people’s ability to challenge broader social problems (Calhoun 2000).

Civility may be distinguished from other virtues as “an essentially communicative form of moral conduct”, a display and expression of how one regards others (Calhoun 2000: 260). However, this virtue has limits and incivility can also perform important argumentative functions. Uncivil communication can create space for new forms of meaning and value:

The disruption entailed by incivility provides room for concerted reconstruction of social practices, identities, and spaces. (Mayo 2001: 79)

Uncivil communication and arguing may even be necessary for some social change (Lozano-Reich & Cloud 2009: 223–224). Because certain practices viewed as “civil” may depoliticize disagreement, incivility that highlights these political problems can prove to be as necessary as civility is to democratic decision-making (Mayo 2001). Which moral and political demands justify incivility remains, however, a complicated question that demands analysis of the discursive norms in operation in a particular context for their ability to sustain interpersonal respect.

3. Informal Logic and Argument Interpretation

Feminist philosophical work on argumentation as it emerged in the early 1980s coincides with the rise of informal logic, an approach that encompasses much of contemporary philosophical work done in argumentation theory (Johnson 1996 [2014: 12]). Many feminists and informal logicians share both a resistance to the idealization by some philosophers of formal deductive methods for reasoning and a desire to provide better tools for addressing real world contexts of reasoning and arguing (Govier 1999: 52).

Any interpretation or analysis of an argument omits some aspects of the reasoning involved in the surrounding discourse while it attends to others, and different forms of abstraction suit different purposes (Rooney 2001). Interpretations become problematic for feminists when they leave out salient details that would make possible other interpretations that account for social bias. For instance, interpreting an argument as a deductive inference may not allow for the sorts of analysis of social situation that a standard informal logic interpretation of ad hominem makes possible.

Even informal logicians may assume an equality among arguers that is more ideal than real and that may obstruct political progress. The problems that feminists find with assumed equality may be most visible in accounts of ad hominem arguing. Both feminist (Janack & Adams 1999; Yap 2013, 2015) and not-specifically feminist (Walton 1995) argumentation theorists recognize that appeals to the person may or may not be fallacious. The difference is that while the informal logic analysis informs an audience about the irrelevance of a personal attack, a feminist analysis also maintains that the line of reasoning may still succeed because of unconscious biases such as implicit sexism and racism that feminists find unacceptable. For this reason, feminist critiques of ad hominem arguments require more than logical analysis and also consider the epistemology of testimony (Yap 2013).

Addressing women’s more general concerns about arguing and assessing feminist arguments about women’s marginalization requires a richer and more diverse analysis than a logical analysis of inferences provides. Andrea Nye (1990) suggests ways that the language of logic, including both the artificial language of abstract ideals and the surrounding discourse of logicians, might convey the interests and purposes of people who hold social power. Logical models for argument, especially formal ones, are developed, according to Nye, to prioritize some people’s interests over others and to hide that prioritization by claiming generality and the dominance of such models can lead to systematic misinterpretations of women’s arguments.

Other feminists maintain that abstract interpretation causes trouble only when reasoners mistake it for a uniform authority. The trouble with abstract analysis, Ayim suggests, lies not in the models themselves, but in how people use them (1995: 806). Logical or argumentative ideals that involve abstract models may be partial in representing some people’s preferred inference forms without these models having an intrinsically universalizing character that makes them false. Ayim believes that any such problems in the disciplines of logic result from the practitioners’ failure to be realistic and humble. She says that

It is only when logic is seen as the exclusive avenue to truth and reason that problems arise—not when it is seen as an avenue to truth and reason. (Ayim 1995: 810, emphasis added)

Gilbert suggests that the practical concerns and interdisciplinary considerations of informal logic must be expanded and become more attuned to the specific social situations from which arguments arise (2007). Neglected aspects of argumentation may include the identities of speakers (Code 1991), the power relationships between speakers (Bondy 2010; Linker 2011, 2015; Rooney 2012), the emotions involved (Nye 1990; Gilbert 1994; Linker 2015), the social consequences of argumentation (Code 1991; Rooney 2012), and intersectional identities (Henning 2018, 2021). When feminine speech and writing styles are poorly received and misinterpreted, women will encounter difficulties getting their arguments heard or to taken seriously, let alone recognized as good reasoning. The demand from feminist philosophers to situate argumentative reasoning and to evaluate it in the larger discursive contexts (Burrow 2010; Lang 2010) can be met at least in part by the recent revival of rhetorical accounts of argumentation that address the role of audience (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958 [1969]; Perelman 1977 [1982]; Tindale 1999, 2007).

Formal logic employs artificial abstract languages generally understood to address particular types of inference. Formal symbolism is also used to interpret arguments from natural language so as to assess the strength of an argument’s inference, in particular, whether the argument has deductive validity. So, the argument, “It is icy outside and therefore I will not travel today” might fail to be translatable into a deductively valid form, although people easily recognize its good reasoning. (“Missing premises” might be added to make the argument deductive but that requires more than formal interpretation.)

Nye’s work on formal logic, especially Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic (1990), provides the point of departure for many of the initial feminist philosophical discussions of argument and arguing. Nye considers certain historical points when deductive logic’s operation as the default interpretive mechanism for arguments may have had an oppressive influence. Rather than arguing for this interpretation, she adopts a practice of “reading” that includes attention, listening, understanding, and responding (1990, 183), approaches that are traditionally associated with rhetoric (Keith 1993). Her feminist “reading” of episodes in the history of Euro-American logic suggests ways in which abstract logical systems may have helped to justify social dominance at different moments in time. Her “reading” purposefully aims to consider the personal and political desires behind logic that might motivate its prescription of rules for thought (Nye 1990: 9).

Nye begins her study with Parmenides’ logic of “what is”, what exists beyond sensuous existence and human communities. The ensuing silence among the ancient Greeks was broken by Plato who addressed “what is not” through using rational discussion to reveal the existence of differences. For Aristotle, this dialectic involved only men from the upper classes, making the exclusive nature of the logic most explicit. As a result, in Nye’s view, a silence regarding a lot of reasoning surrounds logic. Nye notes that

once rationality is defined as what is not emotional, and emotionality established as the characteristic of women understood as what is only a body, there could be no discussion of institutions of slavery and sexism. (1990: 50)

She traces through medieval formulations of logic ways in which the claims of logic’s universal application may have discouraged criticism of social institutions that authorized those accounts of logic. These institutions include patriarchy in general, sometimes underwritten by God, the Roman Empire, and the Catholic Church.

Logical restriction on what counts as reasoning culminates, on Nye’s reading, when Gottlob Frege moves logic out of human discourse to formulate it in a symbolic language. Frege’s functionalist notation promises to express all forms of truth with the aim, Nye suggests, “that thought will be unified and logical errors in science, mathematics, and philosophy exposed” (1990: 131). Using Frege’s approach, how a concept refers to the world becomes “an objective fact:…one cannot invent its value” (1990: 135). As a result, the institutions that render concepts meaningful, including the social institution of language, stand beyond question, creating a new form of muteness that harkens back to Parmenides. The surrounding silence breaks again when the Vienna Circle adds empirical input in place of the concepts on which the Fregean functions work. Nye indicates that this theoretical development places science above meaningful criticism, and so allows scientific reasoning to be co-opted by authoritarian regimes (1990: 163–171).

As an alternative to logic, Nye suggests building confidence for women and developing new concepts aided by a concrete (natural, not artificial) “women’s language”. Discourse that is for or about women might provide inclusion, bonding, and ways to share power. Women have relied historically on the skills needed for reading:

We have listened and read to survive, we have read to predict the maneuvers of those in power over us, to seduce those who might help us, to pacify bullies, to care for children, to nurse the sick and the wounded. (1990: 184)

The next step lies in developing the language to respond.

Nye’s experiment in avoiding argument falters in two ways observed by feminists and other scholars who have not been convinced by her socio-historical reading. Some cite errors in her historical interpretation (Keith 1993; Weiner 1994). Others find that in Words of Power, Nye does argue, but fails to persuade and so fails to provide the alternative to logic she seeks (Gilbert 1994; Ayim 1995).

Gilbert offers a related but distinct criticism of formal logic for its role in the “Critical-Logical” approach that he characterizes as extracting text from utterances for the purposes of applying a competitive or eristic process to the stylized text (1994). He suggests, like Moulton (1983), that such abstraction serves the competitive functions and standard practice of Euro-American academic philosophy. Because arguing need not adhere to the Critical-Logical model, it remains possible that feminine styles of reasoning may ground effective interpretive practices for arguers. Arguing also may find natural corollaries in other styles of communication and other values that operate within communication.

Reasoners appeal to logic and to other abstract accounts of what other arguers say partly so they might avoid bias as they interpret natural language. Yet such abstract interpretation may favor forms of argument evaluation unsuited to the context of utterance. For instance, if the Critical-Logical model of argument evaluation provides the basis for legal procedures, then it may compromise access to justice for people who are socially marginalized based on gender, race, class, and education. Gilbert echoes Nye’s concern that logical systems can reflect the lingua franca of the ruling class that captures their own interests (1994: 105). Applying it to other contexts risks distorting and disenfranchising other people and their modes of communication.

Nye concedes that a women’s language cannot stand up to the power and authority of logic but believes that perhaps reasoners may gain something different from a replacement for logic. It may be that

her notion of reading teaches that the circumstances in which something is said and the person who says it are relevant considerations. (Tindale 1999: 196)

The appeal of Nye’s “reading” may be that

currently popular theories of reading, unlike traditional logic, highlight rather than diminish the interests, personality, and motives that the reader brings to the task of reading. (Ayim 1995: 807)

Arguers can emphasize the moral goals behind an argument through their emotional language. Likewise, an explanatory purpose for an argument would mean that the speaker offers it up as a truthful description rather than as a subject for debate (Gilbert 1994). Such purposes and values can fall away with the abstraction of a premise-conclusion complex from its context of utterance. When the Critical-Logical model grounds decision-making processes, the authority it carries creates problems for anyone using other styles of reasoning and communication.

Note that Nye is the only feminist philosopher to date suggesting a substitute for arguing and logic. Ayim (1995) and Gilbert (1994) stress that different styles of communication and value-systems can be natural corollaries for each other. Govier (1993) further suggests that the power of universal logic may be indispensable, and that feminist concerns can be addressed through a better understanding of the interpretation and application of logical norms.

Rhetorical studies attend to argument audiences in a way that can help to address feminist concerns about the emotional and gendered aspects of argument (Tindale 1999: 201). They may also help to resolve a dilemma of feminist arguing practice by demonstrating how the advancement of feminist affirmative projects, such as acknowledging the significance of women’s experience, may require adversarial forms of argumentation often associated with masculinity. Communication styles identified as rhetoric create both problematic and constructive aspects of social identity, including feminine identity. Rhetorical analysis of the situational specifics can reveal how communication helps to produce social identities and can suggest ways to address particular power differences among reasoners (Bruner 1996; Palczewski 2016).

M. Lane Bruner argues that some aspects of gender stereotypes make it harder to argue, while other aspects make it easier (1996). Distinguishing the empowering from the disempowering aspects of social identity depends on examining the ways in which “masculine” identity is tied up with ideals of arguing and the ways in which identity politics can counteract the power of dominant identities. Although speakers must suppress each of their unique differences from others in order to communicate explicitly in regard to their own social positions, the resulting feminine and masculine identifications do not become fixed. Because identities are created, they must be maintained and they remain subject to transformation. That flux in identity gives feminists strategic opportunities for developing women’s argumentation and giving credit to it.

Rooney notes that an artificial severing of arguing from narrative and rhetorical practices helps to dissociate arguments from femininity and frustrates feminist practices of philosophical arguing (2010; Le Doeuff 1980 [1989]). Research that attends to rhetoric and its influences may go under the name of “rhetorical studies” (often in English or literature departments) but may also be found in communications studies, psychology, and interdisciplinary fields such as women’s and gender studies or argumentation studies. Rhetorical studies give attention to the perspective of a particular audience and that concern with the audience and the various interests audiences may have challenges the view—especially in the discipline of philosophy—that reasoning and argumentation must be a constant battle. Rooney argues that philosophical practice itself involves rhetoric and narrative through myths, thought experiments, and metaphors. These rhetorical practices make theories more attractive to specific audiences. Philosophers commonly portray reason as in battle against feminine forces which “primarily makes sense to men among men in cultural contexts where sexism or misogyny is a cultural given” (2010: 227).

Rhetorical studies of speakers, audiences, their purposes, and their social contexts were revived in twentieth century argumentation theory by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958 [1969]). Perelman, writing on his own, advocates that instead of appealing to “the rational” as a standard for argumentation, scholars should consider a “reasonable” person in terms of the standards of a particular community (1977 [1982]).

The discipline of rhetorical studies typically takes persuasion to be the goal of arguing. Some feminists resist this assumption. Concern that persuasion may be intrinsically an act of domination of one person over another and even an act of violence (Gearhart 1979) led feminist rhetoricians to develop an alternative in “invitational rhetoric” that makes understanding the goal of arguing (Foss & Griffin 1995; Bone et al. 2008). This approach resonates with rhetoric’s Aristotelian history, Christopher Tindale observes, which does not involve intentions to change another person that some feminists consider violent, because Aristotle conceives change as an internal process. On Tindale’s model of “rhetorical argumentation”,

the audience, when persuaded, is persuaded by its own deliberations, after reflection on reasoning that it has understood in its own terms and may even have had a hand in completing. (1999: 191)

However, at the same time, invitational rhetoric demands a civility that may presume social equality (Lozano-Reich & Cloud 2009) and thus it faces the same problems as politeness (addressed in Section 2 ).

Linker suggests that reasoning across power differences can be aided by speakers employing a process of “intellectual empathy”; other people’s claims, especially if these people are relatively disadvantaged, can help reflect on one’s own interpretive assumptions in order to move past unreflective bias (2011; 2015). Relatedly, an attitude of playfulness may facilitate consideration of another’s perspective, that is, “travelling” to the person’s “world” as described by Maria Lugones (1987). Perhaps this attitude will help philosophers appreciate the viewpoints presented in feminist epistemology (Lang 2010). However, Mariana Ortega (2006) warns that the radical potential of playfulness demands a deep engagement with work by women of color. Superficial citation of women of color by white feminists only replicates oppressive gatekeeping in philosophical argumentation.

Assuming the goal of arguing to be persuasion invokes a limited context and one that poses problems for some feminists, especially regarding power differences among speakers. Nevertheless, rhetorical analysis offers many resources for feminist analysis because its attention to the audience provides valuable details about the situations in which people argue. As we will see next, recent work in philosophy concerning credibility and developing the concept of “argumentative injustice” articulates persistent concerns for feminists about arguing, as does both regular and feminist philosophical scholarship about fallacies and critical thinking education.

Credibility granted to speakers and their testimony affects processes of arguing and may adhere to social categories following lines of gender and other axes of oppression (Govier 1993). Miranda Fricker (2007) describes the case of testimonial injustice, which is a species of epistemic injustice, and identifies when a listener gives diminished credibility or epistemic authority to a speaker based on that speaker’s social identity. Patrick Bondy (2010) defines analogous “argumentative injustice” as consisting in a related harm done to the processes of arguing when people wrongly assess an arguer’s credibility. We can underestimate or overestimate an arguer’s credibility by using social stereotypes to assess it (2010). Bondy explains that both overestimation and underestimation can result from viewing testifiers through social stereotypes—typically men’s credibility becomes overestimated whereas women’s becomes underestimated. Additionally, testimony from people with social identities different from our own may be difficult to accept simply because their experiences contrast with our own and those experiences with which we identify. This second problem when considered as a fallacy goes by the name of “provincialism” (Kahane & Cavender 2001) and is sometimes attributed to the psychology of in-group bias (Brewer 1979; Rudman & Goodman 2004). Whether due to stereotypes or to in-group bias, being discounted as a participant in discussion amounts to an epistemic injustice that Christopher Hookway (2010) describes as “participant injustice”.

Bondy argues that an underestimated testifier loses at least some capacity for critical engagement with other people. This capacity might progressively deteriorate, or the person might internalize its diminished form. Underestimating a testifier undermines the rationality of arguing processes with the result that the audience tends to lose potentially valuable information and insight. On the other hand, an overestimated testifier also can fail to gain valuable information from others, derailing the argumentative exchange by preventing the success of the better line of reasoning. After the particular discussion, the overestimated person can come to be viewed as beyond scrutiny, thus losing (at least on occasion) the benefits of engaging in discursive argumentation. By contrast, Fricker’s original conception of testimonial injustice accounts for the harmful effects on knowers only when their testimony is underestimated, and she argues that epistemic injustice does not accrue from overestimating credibility.

The solution to argumentative injustice might be simply for the listener to take care to treat arguers on their own terms. This would avoid viewing people in terms of group membership, a practice that leaves reasoners vulnerable to stereotype-thinking (Govier 1993, 1999). However, sometimes people’s social identities are relevant to the credibility of what they say, when, for instance, it concerns their personal experience of discrimination. Also, social stereotypes influence our thinking unconsciously, in a way that earns the label “implicit bias”. This bias differs from in-group bias but works alongside it, sometimes reinforcing it and sometimes conflicting with it. As a result, women often hold prejudices against other women (and even themselves) just as men do, and people of color may hold unconscious biases against their own ethnicity. When such bias persists despite conscious beliefs to the contrary, psychologists describe it as “aversive bias” (Greenwald & Banaji 1995; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek 2004; Kay & Zanna 2009).

Implicit social biases work like other cognitive biases, such as those that encourage us to generalize from small samples and personal experience and can affect many of our best intentions in reasoning and argumentation. Insofar as these biases undermine our ability to manage our own confidence, they frustrate the virtue of intellectual humility that otherwise might offset adversarial inclinations and momentum when people argue (Kidd 2016; Aberdein 2016). Ian James Kidd considers ways in which arguing can foster humility, and suggests that ideally, arguing

is also a route to other intellectual and ethical goods such as truth, knowledge, and enlightenment, as the ancient philosophers maintained. (2016: 399)

The challenge remains to bridge the real and the ideal.

Bondy argues that because social bias may be inevitable in people’s perception of speakers’ credibility, we need to counteract it actively. He recommends that we adopt a general attitude of “metadistrust” in which we exercise skepticism about our credibility judgments regarding testimony from people belonging to marginalized social groups.

Alternatively, we might try “intellectual empathy” based on mutual compassion, which is the approach that Linker develops. She argues that compassion must involve consciousness of how oppression operates through specific intersecting social matrices, including social privileges that can be very difficult to recognize. Such intersectional intellectual empathy may especially help us realize that it is our own biases or limited experiences that lead us to dismiss others’ testimony by interpreting them as whining, complaining, or “playing the gender (or race, etc.) card” (Linker 2011, 2015).

Achieving epistemic justice when we argue requires some sort of accounting for the identities of arguers, and might include appeal to the “epistemic privilege” described in feminist standpoint epistemology. Some standpoint theorists maintain that epistemic privilege can accrue to people who oppose oppression. Their engagement with the lives of oppressed people and their resistance to the oppression structuring those lives provides a unique and valuable awareness of the social structures of power. Thus a “feminist standpoint” and those who achieve it may gain epistemic advantage from fighting the oppressed condition of women’s lives. Although it is not necessary to be a woman to achieve this standpoint and its advantage, women themselves may most easily achieve it (Harding 1991; Intemann 2010).

One way that arguers might try to address the effects of social position on arguing is through meta-debate—a background argument may address arguers’ biases operating in the central discussion (Kotzee 2010). However, Linker (2014) argues that regardless of what the meta-debate yields, the person with social privilege will continue to benefit from debates that are adversarial. Arguers have difficulty recognizing when their biases reflect their own social privilege at any level of debate because social identity frequently affects testimonial authority unconsciously.

Linker suggests that we treat epistemic privilege as a form of expertise about arguing. This allows feminists and other anti-oppression advocates to set the bounds for ending inquiry (2014). Such advocates operate as the authority and determine the place where explanation stops (Hanrahan & Antony 2005). Rooney argues that this kind of expertise should be accorded to women philosophers whose lived experience tends to ground their feminist philosophy. Arguers should recognize expertise in situations

where A ’s minority status relative to B (with respect to some locally salient status or power differential) makes it likely that A has insights and understandings relating to P that are less available to B . (2012: 322)

Rooney says that speaking from personal experience becomes important for arguing because of the “hermeneutical injustices” (Fricker 2007) facing women. Hermeneutical injustice, according to Fricker, means that women’s experiences may not receive adequate consideration because the language to describe them is underdeveloped. Men may therefore have trouble recognizing evidence that women provide, and they

are not in the same position as women to confidently assert whether they find it plausible or not because they do not have access to the evidence in the way women are likely to have. (Rooney 2012: 328)

Argumentation theory has a tradition of taking fallacies as an operational concept for identifying problems with arguments. The types of deficiency identified as fallacies emerge from disparate points in the history of philosophy, and, as Charles Hamblin (1970) first recognized, the fallacies approach to argument evaluation tends to lack consensus regarding what constitutes a fallacy. Further, many theorists find that “fallacy” fails as both an analytic category (Massey 1995) and a pedagogical tool (Hitchcock 1995), and yet the scholarly controversy has not put a stop to the regular use of fallacies for evaluating arguments and for teaching reasoning. Feminists share the ambivalence of other philosophers regarding fallacies, adding their own criticisms and developments, but a specific controversy emerges in regard to the adversarial nature of fallacies.

Some feminists decry the inadequacy of traditional fallacies for addressing problems women face in argument exchanges (Al Tamimi 2011) and others point out how some philosophers use fallacy labels to dismiss and silence feminist philosophers. [ 5 ] In particular, when feminist philosophers employ arguments concerning the history of philosophy, they have been charged with committing the genetic fallacy (e.g., Levin 1988). That fallacy results from taking the significance of a claim or theory to depend on its origin and history—its genesis—and thereby dismissing that view without attention to its current meaning and context. Feminist philosophers consider how the fact that mostly men developed certain theories, including many philosophical theories, may undermine the justification for applying these theories to women. In doing so, feminists also attend to how those theories currently operate.

The difficulty some philosophers have in recognizing the sophistication of feminist historical criticism regarding philosophical theories may be due, first, to feminist use of certain theories that were the target for philosophers who developed the category “genetic fallacy”. Margaret Crouch explains that the concept of the genetic fallacy was developed only in the early twentieth century by some philosophers in the analytic tradition with the explicit intention of discounting the scientific status of Marxist and Freudian accounts. Given that Marxist and Freudian accounts from the continental European tradition have influenced a good deal of feminist theory, Crouch argues that it is unsurprising that feminist analysis might seem at first glance to commit the genetic fallacy (1991; 1993).

Moreover, Crouch argues, employing the label of “genetic fallacy” against feminist criticisms of the historically masculine sources for popular views in the discipline of philosophy relies on a misunderstanding of what constitutes a fallacy at a point where reasonable consensus has emerged: not every instance of a pattern of reasoning associated with a fallacy label—here genetic appeals—constitutes that fallacy; there may be exceptions and even highly reasonable practices that employ the same pattern. So, some appeals to personal characteristics are relevant and do not commit the ad hominem fallacy and some appeals to authority are perfectly reasonable and not cases of the ad verecundiam fallacy (Walton 1995). Scholarship on the genetic fallacy likewise recognizes that the way a theory developed historically only  sometimes affects the value of the reasoning now supporting it. In particular, Crouch explains that the genesis of a claim affects its justification when testimony provides its only support, or when a claim involves the speaker as a subject, and whenever the source of information has an objective connection supporting the statement’s truth or falsity (1991; 1993).

The charge that feminist epistemology commits the genetic fallacy in asking such questions about the origins of the canon not only depends on a misunderstanding of that fallacy, the criticism itself also commits the fallacy of begging the question. Critics of some feminist philosophy make the epistemological assumption that the origins of a belief are irrelevant to its justification, which is the very claim that these feminists reject (see Crouch 1991). For instance, standpoint theorists argue that women’s material situation affects and can advantage the types of understanding that women and feminists have (Harding 1991). Critics of feminist epistemology cannot simply assume that the use of a certain type of premise makes a line of reasoning unjustified.

This kind of exchange between feminists and their critics—one that involves each party accusing the other of committing fallacies—illustrates how arguers may use fallacy labels to characterize their disagreements. Some feminists advocate fallacy analysis as a contextualized form of epistemology (Janack & Adams 1999) and some suggest the development of new fallacy labels to help address feminist epistemological concerns. Code suggests a counterpart for ad hominem be known as ad feminam to address how listeners and audiences discount women’s testimony (1995: 58–82). Also, androcentrism, the assumption of a masculine standard, can be named as a typical problem arising in argumentation by using the fallacies approach. More generally, Hundleby (2016) argues that assuming the desirability of stereotypic qualities of people who tend to be systematically granted social authority, such as men and white people, may be identified as the “status quo fallacy”. Better education about fallacies in argumentation may help to address the implicit bias that can underlie the “status quo fallacy”. The proposal of new fallacy labels, for example, ad stuprum or the appeal to sex (Anger & Hundleby 2016), is by no means unique to feminism, but it offers special power for social justice projects in providing language to account for socially marginalized experience, thus addressing hermeneutical injustices.

Proficiency with the fallacies approach can be empowering even though any claim that a fallacy has been committed makes disagreement explicit and that involves an adversarial quality which can make it difficult for socially marginalized people to use. It entails at least a minimal level of adversariality of the sort described by Govier (1999): “minimal adversariality” is opposition to another person’s view but not to the person. The involvement of even this minimal level of adversariality may make the fallacies approach a form of argument analysis difficult for members of subordinated classes to employ in contexts where socialization and norms of politeness discourage subordinates from expressing dissent (Rooney 2003). Yet, some individual women find success in adversarial engagement, some take pleasure in the heightened opposition of debate, and adversarial conversation is key to some women’s culture and identity (Schiffrin 1984; Henning 2018, 2021). Moreover, opposition is necessary for feminist resistance, struggle, and change. In these ways, women, feminists, and others with related liberatory projects can find unique resources in the adversariality of the fallacies approach.

Fallacies remain a popular way to teach reasoning, as does argument analysis more generally. Both play central roles in the content of Canadian, US, and UK post-secondary education as part of the set of skills regularly taught under the name “critical thinking” in philosophy departments. Education allows cultures of reasoning to reinforce and reproduce themselves and these cultures affect the prospects for feminist transformation of the larger society. Educational institutions have authority and grant authority to systems of thought and to individuals and in this way critical thinking education provides opportunities for conformity or for social transformation, starting at the level of individual reasoning and interpersonal discourse. In many ways, the ideal and practice of critical thinking serves social progress but in other ways it needs reform.

The way that argument education works its way from the academy into ordinary reasoning practices may be rather indirect and slow but academic philosophy is not merely one discourse among others and it has a central role in validating or authorizing other discourses (Alcoff 1993), especially in the epistemological assumptions conveyed through critical thinking pedagogy. Courses in critical thinking became stock components of the undergraduate curriculum during the late twentieth century and so the standards for reasoning implicit in “critical thinking” as an educational goal for students directly impact on countless students every year. Critical thinking operates as a specifically Western practice and ideal that provides alternatives to patterns of reasoning that enforce male dominance in various cultures, Western culture included (Norris 1995). The appeals to individual rationality and independent reasoning in the critical thinking curriculum contrast with appeals to tradition and with prioritizing community and personal relationships.

Systems of thinking, such as theories or logics, and speech acts, such as arguments, can hold authority that is not attached to a specific speaker or type of speaker, even though people may be paradigmatic holders of authority. The authority of social institutions, especially in their claims to be objective, Code argues (1995: 21, 181), may be likewise justified or not justified. Granting the justification of depersonalized authorities that include institutions of postsecondary education becomes second nature in a technological society, while those who lack social status and expertise have heightened dependence on the authority of expertise. This authority actually lies in the hands of people who have social privilege and yet people who are socially marginalized have a serious stake in the institutions that develop knowledge, from the legal system and the media to the pedagogy of argumentation in the form of “critical thinking” education (Hundleby 2013b).

Hundleby makes a case that critical thinking courses provided by philosophy departments currently tend to reinforce disciplinary biases because they invoke an authority that lacks the monitoring and evaluation that justifies authority (Hanrahan & Antony 2005). The typical way that textbooks present fallacies exhibits ignorance of the current informal logic scholarship, which would provide the appropriate source of expertise. There are few textbooks written by scholars who have published even one article in argumentation or logic and these same textbooks written by non-specialists are most likely to evince the Adversary Method described by Moulton (1983). The unreflective nature of dependence on that Method suggests that it remains authoritative—as well as “paradigmatic”—in philosophy (Hundleby 2010).

Gilbert argues that critical thinking education ought to affirm a range of considerations that do not enter into traditional logic (Gilbert 1994: 111). Contemporary philosophical theorizing tends to treat arguments as premise-conclusion complexes, merely as “products” of the discourse that generates them (Wenzel 1980 [1992]), without considering the processes that give rise to them. The focus on premise-conclusion complexes obscures factors relevant to the feminist goal of preventing harm (Lang 2010) and such a lack of appropriate “rhetorical spaces” or conceptual frameworks in philosophy impedes the education of people about the problems that women face (Code 1995). The standard Euro-American philosophical practices of the Adversary Paradigm or the Critical-Logical model sideline important aspects of arguing that indicate the significance and cogency of feminist claims about things like the social identities of arguers. Argument has a testimonial dimension, as Audrey Yap explains (2013; 2015). Consciousness of such situational aspects of reasoning and philosophical argumentation facilitates the appreciation of feminist perspectives. It also provides for more rigorous analysis and more thoroughly critical thinking.

Bucking the large trend of textbooks that fail to reflect the argumentation scholarship, Linker (2015) follows in a minor tradition of textbooks by expert authors that also advance scholarly theorizing about argumentation (e.g., Govier 1985; Johnson & Blair 1977; Makau & Marty 2001, 2013). Her Intellectual Empathy aims to provide reasoners with skills for understanding how social inequalities affect people’s lives and how those structures are maintained. The first three skills involved in “intellectual empathy” are: (i) understanding the invisibility of privilege; (ii) knowing that social identity is intersectional; [ 6 ] and (iii) using models of cooperative reasoning. Linker argues that social identity lies at the center of what Quine calls the “web of belief”, [ 7 ] which is to say it is deeply connected with many of a person’s beliefs; and for Linker that involves it in their self-esteem. The personal stake people have in their social identities means that discussion that engages our identities can be emotionally fraught. We “take it personally”. When people are arguing about aspects of social identity, they often fall into feelings of blame or guilt. Linker suggests that reasoners can find alternatives to such destructive responses by consideration of the complexities of everyone’s individual situation regarding social privilege. Attending to the specificities of each other’s perspectives allows us to better understand each other and set up reasoners for more cooperative and less adversarial arguing (Linker 2015: 98).

According to Linker, intellectual empathy also requires that when encountering a view that seems biased or stereotypical reasoners (iv) apply a principle of conditional trust, treating the person holding the view as reasonable and well-intentioned. This assumption allows us better to learn about the real reasons the person holds the view, and generally improves the audience’s ability to gather and share evidence (2015: 156–158).

Finally, Linker advises (v) recognizing our mutual vulnerability to bias and stereotype, while at the same time allowing ourselves to be responsive and accommodating to new information. This demands courage and strength. Linker’s five skills thus provide a way to address the testimonial dimensions of arguing with special attention to their operation when people argue from very different social locations. This vision of critical thinking steps forward in addressing feminist concerns with the cultures and practices of argumentation.

In conclusion, as we see especially in the discussions of fallacies and argument pedagogy as well as in the dominance of the Adversary Method, feminist philosophical work on argumentation reveals a need for philosophers to attend to argumentation scholarship. Outdated or unscholarly conceptions of how different modes and styles of arguing serve the advancement of knowledge can undermine the value of philosophical reasoning and specifically how philosophers respond to feminist philosophy. Yet, the work by interdisciplinary argumentation scholars and feminist philosophers to explore these tensions receives little uptake in the discipline of philosophy.

Among the feminist topics in argumentation scholarship that remain in need of philosophical attention are: the range and complexity of values that arguing can serve, including social justice, social bonding, dispute resolution, and knowledge; and more thorough representations of arguing practices that account for how discursive norms code power and privilege, such as through politeness and testimonial authority. Feminist research on these topics will be important for scholarship on argumentation and also for the discipline of philosophy, given the centrality of arguing to its practice. Interdisciplinary vantage points on argumentation provide resources useful for feminist purposes and promise a broader perspective that might unify different feminist concerns; at the same time, other disciplines can face their own challenges from a feminist perspective, as rhetorical studies does for taking persuasion to provide the only purpose for arguing.

Feminist concerns about argumentation pull in different directions and create a great deal of room for further research. Feminists regularly oppose practices and theories central to the discipline of philosophy and some such form of opposition is intrinsic to feminist work. Yet feminists criticize overemphasis on the opposition that occurs in the default adoption of adversarial styles of reasoning in philosophy and in the assumption that arguers must oppose each other or that they must have contrary beliefs. Appeals to politeness do not provide the easy resolution to these concerns that some argumentation theorists often presume. In addition, although some of the worst tendencies in argumentation scholarship may be passed on generation to generation in critical thinking classes taught by philosophers, these classes have potential to create progress toward social justice. Let us note that, overall, feminist perspectives on argumentation challenge broad social and epistemological norms as well as attend to the ways the norms play out in the culture of critical thinking, academic philosophy, and other accepted standards for shared reasoning.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Aberdein, Andrew, 2019–, Virtues and Arguments; A Bibliography , Regularly updated.
• Alcoff, Linda Martín, 2013, “ What’s Wrong with Philosophy? ”, The New York Times Opinionator , 3 September 2013.
• Blair, J. Anthony, Christopher W. Tindale, and Katharina Stevens (eds.), Informal Logic: Reasoning and Argumentation in Theory and Practice , online open journal, ISSN 0824-2577.
• Cohen, Daniel H., 2013, “ For Argument’s Sake ”, TED Talk (August 2013).
• Janack, Marianne, (n.d.), “ Feminist Epistemology ”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Linker, Maureen, (n.d.), Intellectual Empathy: Critical Thinking for Social Justice (Facebook page)
• Palczewski, Catherine H., (n.d.), Suffrage Postcard Archive , Cedar Falls, IA: University of Northern Iowa.
• The Implicit Association Test provides recent research evidence of implicit bias. The portal allows you to take classic versions of the test, e.g., regarding race and gender, or participate in new studies. The significance of the test has been subject to some controversy explored at The Brains Blog .
• “Open for Debate”, Blog at Cardiff University about public debate including the problem of arrogant and aggressive behaviors.
• Proceedings of conferences organized by the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA) .
• The American Philosophical Association Studies on Feminism and Philosophy .

[Please contact the author with additional suggestions.]

Aristotle, General Topics: rhetoric | bias, implicit | consequentialism | critical thinking | epistemology: virtue | ethics: deontological | fallacies | feminist philosophy | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: history of philosophy | feminist philosophy, interventions: philosophy of language | feminist philosophy, interventions: social epistemology | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on power | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on science | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on sex and gender | Frege, Gottlob | Kuhn, Thomas | logic: informal | Parmenides | Plato | Popper, Karl | Quine, Willard Van Orman | reasoning: defeasible | scientific explanation | testimony: epistemological problems of | Vienna Circle

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

• DOI: 10.22329/IL.V10I1.2636
• Corpus ID: 142708891

Critical Thinking and Feminism

• Published 1988
• Informal Logic

34 Citations

Giving up our cultural addiction.

• Highly Influenced

Adversariality in Argumentation: Shortcomings of Minimal Adversariality and A Possible Reconstruction

• 17 Excerpts

Toward a Critical Rethinking of Feminist Pedagogical Praxis and Resistant Male Students

(what) is feminist logic (what) do we want it to be, what about being a feminist is protective an examination of constructs related to feminist beliefs as moderators of the relationship between media awareness and thin-ideal internalization., “don’t let your mouth”: on argumentative smothering within academia, breath by breath: reconsidering the project of critical pedagogy through the lens of zen buddhist thought and practice, critical thinking in moral argumentation contexts: a virtue ethical approach, the kisceral: reason and intuition in argumentation, philosophy, adversarial argumentation, and embattled reason, related papers.

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January 1, 1988

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Critical Theory Pedagogies Guide

• Welcome to the Guide
• Critical Pedagogy
• Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Feminist Pedagogy

• Inclusive Pedagogy

Feminist pedagogy is grounded in feminist theory, and it stems from critical pedagogy .

Power & Empowerment

Feminist pedagogy is concerned with existing and historical power systems and relations while also incorporating the concept of intersectionality (Vanderbilt). Feminist pedagogy adopts a classroom model in which teachers become students and students become teachers. Power is shared within the classroom (Vanderbilt). Feminist pedagogy seeks to connect social justice with learning, and acknowledges a connection between power and knowledge in the learning environment (Vanderbilt).  

Knowledge is socially produced rather than individually produced. According to Freire, when knowledge is treated as individually produced, this leads to a view of knowledge as "a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing" (Freire, p.72). Freire terms this the "banking" model of education. In this view, students become repositories of information and are inactive, passive learners. 

• Feminist pedagogues approach knowledge as being socially produced through "interaction, collaboration, and negotiation" (Vanderbilt).
• Instructors on this view consider themselves as part of the learning community rather than being positioned above students. According to Vanderbilt, the ideal is that "students and teachers ideally learn with and from one another, co-constructing knowledge" (Vanderbilt).
• The classroom is "a space historically rooted within systems of power" (Vanderbilt).
• One aspect of feminist pedagogy involves ensuring that students can become aware of power through "empowering students to reflect upon their positions in the classroom, to consider themselves as holders of knowledge, and to consider their implicit authority" (Vanderbilt)

Identity & Intersectionality

Feminist pedagogy affirms that identity is intersectional.  Intersectionality is the concept that "different aspects of identity and systems of oppression" are interconnected and inextricable (Vanderbilt). Intersectionality is accounted for in feminist pedagogy. Because of this, the following are components of feminist pedagogy:

• Instructors develop an understanding of identity that acknowledges difference.
• The acknowledgement of difference allows for "equity-mindedness, a desire for justice and fairness that's attentive to the specific identities, histories, and needs of students within a specific context, rather than assuming that everyone in the classroom is the same" (Vanderbilt). 
• Instructors also address "those identities and voices that are erased, silenced, absent, or otherwise excluded" (Vanderbilt).
• By being aware of the multiple identities of both instructor, students, and texts, this can create "a deeper sense of community and solidarity" as well as allowing students to "achieve a better sense of the world around them and the contingent nature of its truths" (Vanderbilt). 

Knowledge & Personal Experience

Feminist pedagogy affirms that personal experience (including emotion) is a valid form of knowledge. 

• Feminist pedagogy incorporates "the whole of one's identity - student and instructor - in learning" (Vanderbilt).
• Feminist pedagogy moves away from the emphasis on rationalism that Freire acknowledged. Rather, feminist pedagogy acknowledges emotion as valid, particularly in response to the historical positioning of rationalism opposed to the "irrational Other," which included women and "other exotic Others" (Vanderbilt). 
• Feminist pedagogy helps identify the "relationship between experience, emotion, and action" to "help students bridge the classroom and the 'real world,' the personal and the political, theory and practice" (Vanderbilt).
• The incorporation of emotion into the classroom is about "analyzing how they inform perspectives and actions" (Vanderbilt). Therefore, emotion in the classroom is about allowing greater knowledge.

Community is "the understanding that members of a group have of themselves as a collective and how they relate to each other based on that understanding" (Vanderbilt).

• Feminist pedagogy addresses "notions of listening, speaking, risk-taking, respect, reconciliation, and mutuality" to address the historical oppressions brought about to influence community (Vanderbilt).
• The classroom allows "interactions that can embody the values of solidarity and shared power, and facilitate the goals of unveiling and dismantling oppressive structures and organizing for action" (Vanderbilt).
• Emphasis on community, therefore, is a way of rejecting the patriarchal oppressions that have led "women and other historically marginalized groups to fear one another, and to believe they are 'valueless and obtain value only by relating to or bonding with men' (hooks 34)" (Vanderbilt).

Feminist Pedagogy Influences

Because feminist pedagogy stems from critical pedagogy, a key figure in feminist pedagogy is Paulo Freire, whose work Pedagogies of the Oppressed heavily influenced critical pedagogy. Another major figure in feminist pedagogy is bell hooks, whose work Feminist Theory: from Margin to Center was highly influential. 

A major figure in feminist pedagogy is bell hooks, whose work  Feminist Theory: from Margin to Center  was highly influential. 

Putting it into Practice

Empowering Students:

Empower students through activities that allow each student and instructor to share power or control over the course.

Assign students activities that allow for students to take turns leading the class and invite collaboration. An example of this would be to have a student present on a topic, then lead a discussion in which a variety of perspectives are desired. These perspectives may be heard in silence while the student takes notes on their answers and considers their own initial reactions to their peers’ answers. (Chick)

Facilitate a discussion in which students get into small groups to develop 1-2 of their own goals for the course. As groups report back, students see how the goals relate to one another and collectively incorporate them into the syllabus. (Chick)

Consciousness raising - group activities which emphasize dialogue and allow for students to share their experiences around a topic and locate shared experiences.

Connect students' classroom experiences with the "real world," allowing them to find practical applications of instruction they can apply elsewhere.

Community-Building:

• Discussion-based learning
• Collaborative assignments
• Consciousness-raising activities
• Activities and resources that connect the classroom to activism in the community

Instruction Design:

• Backward design model  - Design an assignment or lesson starting with the lesson goal (i.e. what the students will be learning), rather than the activities or assessment methods (i.e. how they will learn it). Once the learning goals have been established, then move on to designing the activities and ways of assessing student understanding and learning.

Classroom Environment:

• This may include setting expectations for discussions and preparing to handle conflicts and disagreements.
• Create a classroom where students and instructors and utilize silence and self-reflection as ways of active learning.
• Classroom environments also emphasize community and allow for personal experience and emotion to be expressed, with each student's experiences viewed as valid forms of knowing and learning about the world. 

Key Theorists

bell hooks - A scholar, feminist, and activist whose work focuses on intersectionality, feminism, and critical pedagogy.

Paulo Freire - Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was a philosopher of education whose work became the foundation of critical pedagogy. Read more about Freire .

• Peter McLaren  - A leading scholar in critical pedagogy whose work relates to Marxist theory, critical literacy, and cultural studies. Read more about McLaren at his Chapman University faculty profile.
• Patricia Lather   - A scholar and educator whose work focuses on feminist methodology and gender and education. Read more about Lather at her faculty page at Ohio State University. 
• Kimberlé Crenshaw - Philosopher, scholar, and lawyer, Crenshaw's work focuses on critical race theory, intersectionality, and feminism. Read more about Crenshaw.
• Ileana Jiminez  - A feminist and social justice scholar and educator. Learn more about Jiminez. 
• Audre Lorde - Audre Lorde (1934 - 1992) was a civil rights activist, writer, and feminist. 

Key Readings

• Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. "Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women - battering and rape - I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourses of either feminism or antiracism" (Crenshaw 1244).
• Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why Doesn't this Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 59(3), 297–324. Critical pedagogy has developed along a highly abstract and utopian line which does not necessarily sustain the daily workings of education. Such concepts as empowerment, student voice, dialogue, and critical reflection are critiqued.
• Jaggar, A. M. (1989). Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. Inquiry (Oslo), 32(2), 151–176. This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge.
• Lal, S. (2000). Dangerous Silences: Lessons in Daring. Radical Teacher (Cambridge), 58(58), 12–15. Examines the power dynamics of university instruction from the perspective of a graduate teaching assistant, questioning her own response when white students resisted a text that included works by women of color which were critical of white, middle class feminism. Describes how to promote ongoing discussion, noting the importance of analyzing one's own identity in order to move forward.
• Lee, M., & Johnson-Bailey, J. (2004). Challenges to the classroom authority of women of color. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2004(102), 55–64. Two women of color professors use the themes of authority, mastery, voice, and positionality to examine the theoretical and practical underpinnings of feminist pedagogy.
• Shulman, L. (2005). Signature Pedagogies in the Professions. Daedalus (Cambridge, Mass.), 134(3), 52–59. Shulman talks about signature pedagogies, the types of teaching that organize the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their new professions. In these signature pedagogies, the novices are instructed in critical aspects of the three fundamental dimensions of professional work--to think, to perform, and to act with integrity. But these three dimensions do not receive equal attention across the professions

Additional Readings & Resources

• A Guide to Feminist Pedagogy (Vanderbilt) An in-depth guide to feminist pedagogy from Vanderbilt University providing the theoretical framework and core principles of feminist pedagogy.
• Diversity & Inclusion Syllabus Statements (Brown University) A guide to creating a diversity & inclusion statement for your syllabus with sample statements from Brown University instructors. Also included are samples of curriculum, wellness, and land acknowledgement statements.

Referenced Guides & Sources

• A Guide to Feminist Pedagogy (Vanderbilt)
• Freire, P., Ramos, M. B., & Macedo, D. (2014). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Thirtieth anniversary edition.). Bloomsbury.
• << Previous: Anti-Racist Pedagogy
• Next: Inclusive Pedagogy >>
• Last Updated: Sep 22, 2023 9:57 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.charlotte.edu/criticaltheory

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42 What Are Feminist Criticism, Postfeminist Criticism, and Queer Theory?

Feminist Criticism

Feminist criticism is a critical approach to literature that seeks to understand how gender and sexuality shape the meaning and representation of literary texts. While feminist criticism has its roots in the 1800s (First Wave), it became a critical force in the early 1970s (Second Wave) as part of the broader feminist movement and continues to be an important and influential approach to literary analysis.

Feminist critics explore the ways in which literature reflects and reinforces gender roles and expectations, as well as the ways in which it can challenge and subvert them. They examine the representation of female characters and the ways in which they are portrayed in relation to male characters, as well as the representation of gender and sexuality more broadly. With feminist criticism, we may consider both the woman as writer and the written woman.

As with New Historicism and Cultural Studies criticism, one of the key principles of feminist criticism is the idea that literature is not a neutral or objective reflection of reality, but rather, literary texts are shaped by the social and cultural context in which they are produced. Feminist critics are interested in gender stereotypes, exploring how literature reflects and reinforces patriarchal power structures and how it can be used to challenge and transform these structures.

Postfeminist Criticism

Postfeminist criticism is a critical approach to literature that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s as a response to earlier feminist literary criticism. It acknowledges the gains of feminism in terms of women’s rights and gender equality, but also recognizes that these gains have been uneven and that new forms of gender inequality have emerged.

The “post” in postfeminist can be understood like the “post” in post-structuralism or postcolonialism. Postfeminist critics are interested in exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed and represented in literature, but they also pay attention to the ways in which other factors such as race, class, and age intersect with gender to shape experiences and identities. They seek to move beyond the binary categories of male/female and masculine/feminine, and to explore the ways in which gender identity and expression are fluid and varied.

Postfeminist criticism also pays attention to the ways in which contemporary culture, including literature and popular media, reflects and shapes attitudes towards gender and sexuality. It explores the ways in which these representations can be empowering or constraining and seeks to identify and challenge problematic representations of gender and sexuality.

One of the key principles of postfeminist criticism is the importance of diversity and inclusivity. Postfeminist critics are interested in exploring the experiences of individuals who have been marginalized or excluded by traditional feminist discourse, including women of color, queer and trans individuals, and working-class women. If you are familiar with t he American Dirt controversy, where Oprah’s book pick was widely criticized because the author was a white woman, is an example of this type of approach.

Queer Theory

Queer theory is a critical approach to literature and culture that seeks to challenge and destabilize dominant assumptions about gender and sexuality. It emerged in the 1990s as a response to the limitations of traditional gay and lesbian studies, which tended to focus on issues of identity and representation within a binary understanding of gender and sexuality. According to Jennifer Miller,

“The film theorist Teresa de Lauretis (figure 1.1) coined the term at a University of California, Santa Cruz, conference about lesbian and gay sexualities in February 1990…. In her introduction to the special issue, de Lauretis outlines the central features of queer theory, sketching the field in broad strokes that have held up remarkably well.”

While queer theory was formalized as a critical approach in 1990, scholars built on earlier ideas from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, as well as the works of Judith Butler, Eve Sedgewick, and others.

Queer theory is interested in exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed and performative, rather than innate or essential. As with feminist and postfeminist criticism, queer theory seeks to expose the ways in which these constructions are shaped by social, cultural, and historical factors, but additionally, queer theory seeks to challenge the rigid binaries of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Queer theory also emphasizes the importance of intersectionality, or the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with other forms of identity such as race, class, and ability. It seeks to uncover the complex and nuanced ways in which multiple forms of oppression and privilege intersect.

Queer theory focuses on the importance of resistance and subversion. Scholars are interested in exploring the ways in which marginalized individuals and communities have resisted and subverted the dominant culture’s norms and values, observing how these acts of resistance and subversion can be empowering and transformative.

Learning Objectives

• Use a variety of approaches to texts to support interpretations (CLO 1.2)
• Using a literary theory, choose appropriate elements of literature (formal, content, or context) to focus on in support of an interpretation (CLO 2.3)
• Be exposed to a variety of critical strategies through literary theory lenses, such as formalism/New Criticism, reader-response, structuralism, deconstruction, historical and cultural approaches (New Historicism, postcolonial, Marxism), psychological approaches, feminism, and queer theory (CLO 4.1)
• Understand how context impacts the reading of a text, and how different contexts can bring about different readings (CLO 4.3)
• Demonstrate awareness of critical approaches by pairing them with texts in productive and illuminating ways (CLO 5.5)
• Demonstrate through discussion and/or writing how textual interpretation can change given the context from which one reads (CLO 6.2)
• Understand that interpretation is inherently political, and that it reveals assumptions and expectations about value, truth, and the human experience (CLO 7.1)

Scholarship: Examples from Feminist, Postfeminist, and Queer Theory Critics

Feminist criticism could technically be considered to be as old as writing. Since Sappho of Lesbos wrote her famous lyrics, women authors have been an active and important part of their cultures’ literary traditions. Why, then, are we sometimes not as familiar with the works of women authors? One of the earliest feminist critics is the French existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). In her important book, The Second Sex, she lays the groundwork for feminist literary criticism by considering how in most societies, “man” is normal, and “woman” is “the Other.” You may have heard this famous quote: “One is not born a woman but becomes one.” (French: “On ne naît pas femme, on le devient”). This phrase encapsulates the essential feminist idea that “woman” is a social construct.

Feminist: Excerpt from Introduction to The Second Sex (1949), translated by H.M. Parshley

If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through ‘the eternal feminine’, and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question “what is a woman”? To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defence is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’, for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete 3 hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. ‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle; ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam. Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: ‘Woman, the relative being …’ And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’Uriel: ‘The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself … Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.’ The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality – that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts. It is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those of Dumézil on the East Indies and Rome. The feminine element was at first no more involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra, Uranus-Zeus, Sun-Moon, and Day-Night than it was in the contrasts between Good and Evil, lucky and unlucky auspices, right and left, God and Lucifer. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile ‘others’ out of all the rest of the passengers on the train. In small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are ‘strangers’ and suspect; to the native of a country all who inhabit other countries are ‘foreigners’; Jews are ‘different’ for the anti-Semite, Negroes are ‘inferior’ for American racists, aborigines are ‘natives’ for colonists, proletarians are the ‘lower class’ for the privileged. Excerpt from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (translated by H.M. Parshley) is licensed All Rights Reserved and is used here under Fair Use exception.

How do you feel about de Beauvoir’s conception of woman as “Other”? How are her approaches to gender similar to what we have learned about deconstruction and New Historicism? Could feminist criticism, like Marxist, postcolonial, and ethnic studies criticism, also be thought of as having “power” as its central concern?

Let’s move on to postfeminist criticism. When you think of Emily Dickinson, sadomasochism is probably the last thing that comes to mind, unless you’re postfeminist scholar and critic Camille Paglia . No stranger to culture wars, Paglia has often courted controversy; a 2012 New York Times article noted that “ [a]nyone who has been following the body count of the culture wars over the past decades knows Paglia.” Paglia continues to write and publish both scholarship and popular works. Her fourth essay collection, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education , was published by  Pantheon in 2018.

This excerpt from her 1990 book Sexual Personae , which drew on her doctoral dissertation research, demonstrates Paglia’s creative and confrontational approach to scholarship.

Postfeminist: Excerpt from “Amherst’s Madame de Sade” in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia (1990)

Consciousness in Dickinson takes the form of a body tormented in every limb. Her sadomasochistic metaphors are Blake’s Universal Man hammering on himself, like the auctioneering Jesus. Her suffering personae make up the gorged superself of Romanticism. I argued that modern sadomasochism is a limitation of the will and that for a Romantic like the mastectomy-obsessed Kleist it represents a reduction of self. A conventional feminist critique of Emily Dickinson’s life would see her hemmed in on all sides by respectability and paternalism, impediments to her genius. But a study of Romanticism shows that post-Enlightenment poets are struggling with the absence of limits, with the gross inflation of solipsistic imagination. Hence Dickinson’s most uncontrolled encounter is with the serpent of her antisocial self, who breaks out like the Aeolian winds let out of their bag. Dickinson does wage guerrilla warfare with society. Her fractures, cripplings, impalements, and amputations are Dionysian disorderings of the stable structures of the Apollonian lawgivers. God, or the idea of God, is the “One,” without whom the “Many” of nature fly apart. Hence God’s death condemns the world to Decadent disintegration. Dickinson’s Late Romantic love of the apocalyptic parallels Decadent European taste for salon paintings of the fall of Babylon or Rome. Her Dionysian cataclysms demolish Victorian proprieties. Like Blake, she couples the miniature and grandiose, great disjunctions of scale whose yawing swings release tremendous poetic energy. The least palatable principle of the Dionysian, I have stressed, is not sex but violence, which Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Emerson exclude from their view of nature. Dickinson, like Sade, draws the reader into ascending degrees of complicity, from eroticism to rape, mutilation, and murder. With Emily Brontë, she uncovers the aggression repressed by humanism. Hence Dickinson is the creator of Sadean poems but also the creator of sadists, the readers whom she smears with her lamb’s blood. Like the Passover angel, she stains the lintels of the bourgeois home with her bloody vision. “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” she announces with a satisfaction completely overlooked by the Wordsworthian reader (389). But merely because poet and modern society are in conflict does not mean art necessarily gains by “freedom.” It is a sentimental error to think Emily Dickinson the victim of male obstructionism. Without her struggle with God and father, there would have been no poetry. There are two reasons for this. First, Romanticism’s overexpanded self requires artificial restraints. Dickinson finds these limitations in sadomasochistic nature and reproduces them in her dual style. Without such a discipline, the Romantic poet cannot take a single step, for the sterile vastness of modern freedom is like gravity-free outer space, in which one cannot walk or run. Second, women do not rise to supreme achievement unless they are under powerful internal compulsion. Dickinson was a woman of abnormal will. Her poetry profits from the enormous disparity between that will and the feminine social persona to which she fell heir at birth. But her sadism is not anger, the a posteriori response to social injustice. It is hostility, an a priori Achillean intolerance for the existence of others, the female version of Romantic solipsism. Excerpt from Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia is licensed All Rights Reserved and is used here under Fair Use exception.

It’s important to note that these critical approaches can be applied to works from any time period, as the title of Paglia’s book makes clear. In this sense, post-feminist scholarship is similar to deconstruction and borrows many of its methods. After reading this passage, do you feel the same way about Emily Dickinson’s poetry? How does Paglia’s postfeminist approach differ from Simone de Beauvoir’s approach to feminism?

Our final reading is from Judith Butler , who is considered both a feminist scholar and a foundational queer theorist. Their 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is considered an essential queer theory text. Expanding on the ideas about gender and performativity, Bodies that Matter (2011) deconstructs the binary sex/gender distinctions that we see in the works of earlier feminist scholars such as Simone de Beauvoir.

Queer Theory: Excerpt from “Introduction,”  Bodies that Matter  by Judith Butler (2011)

Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? -Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs If one really thinks about the body as such, there is no possible outline of the body as such. There are thinkings of the systematicity of the body, there are value codings of the body. The body, as such, cannot be thought, and I certainly cannot approach it. -Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “In a Word,” interview with Ellen Rooney There is no nature, only the effects of nature: denaturalization or naturalization. -Jacques Derrida, Donner le Temps Is there a way to link the question of the materiality of the body to the performativity of gender? And how does the category of “sex” figure within such a relationship? Consider first that sexual difference is often invoked as an issue of material differences. Sexual difference, however, is never simply a function of material differences that are not in some way both marked and formed by discursive practices. Further, to claim that sexual differences are indissociable from discursive demarcations is not the same as claiming that discourse causes sexual difference. The category “sex” is, from the start, normative; it is what Foucault has called a “regulatory ideal.” In this sense, then, “sex” not only functions as a norm but also is part of a regulatory practice that produces the bodies it governs, that is, whose regulatory force is made clear as a kind of productive power, the power to produce-demarcate, circulate, differentiate-the bodies it controls. Thus, “sex” is a regulatory ideal whose materialization is compelled, and this materialization takes place (or fails to take place) through certain highly regulated practices. In other words, “sex” is an ideal construct that is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize “sex” and achieve this materialization through a forcible reiteration of those norms. That this reiteration is necessary is a sign that materialization is never quite complete, that bodies never quite comply with the norms by which their materialization is impelled. Indeed, it is the instabilities, the possibilities for rematerialization, opened up by this process that mark one domain in which the force of the regulatory law can be turned against itself to spawn rearticulations that call into question the hegemonic force of that very regulatory law. But how, then, does the notion of gender performativity relate to this conception of materialization? In the first instance, performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act” but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names. What will, I hope, become clear in what follows is that the regulatory norms of “sex” work in a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body’s sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative. In this sense, what constitutes the fixity of the body, its contours, its movements, will be fully material, but materiality will be rethought as the effect of power, as power’s most productive effect. And there will be no way to understand “gender” as a cultural construct which is imposed upon the surface of matter, understood either as “the body” or its given sex. Rather, once “sex” itself is understood in its normativity, the materiality of the body will not be thinkable apart from the materializatiqn of that regulatory norm. “Sex” is, thus, not simply what one has, or a static description of what one is: it will be one of the norms by which the “one” becomes viable at all, that which qualifies a body for life within the domain of cultural intelligibility. At stake in such a reformulation of the materiality of bodies will be the following: (1) the recasting of the matter of bodies as the effect of a dynamic of power, such that the matter of bodies will be indissociable from the regulatory norms that govern their materialization and the signification of those material effects; (2) the understanding of performativity not as the act by which a subject brings into being what she/he names, but, rather, as that reiterative power of dis.course to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains; (3) the construal of “sex” no longer as a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but as a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies; (4) a rethinking of the process by which a bodily norm is assumed, appropriated, taken on as not, strictly speaking, undergone by a subject, but rather that the subject, the speaking “I,” is formed by virtue of having gone through such a process of assuming a sex; and (5) a linking of this process of “assuming” a sex with the question of identification, and with the discursive means by which the heterosexual imperative enables certain sexed identifications and forecloses and/ or disavows other identifications. This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet “subjects” but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of the subject. The abject designates here precisely those “unlivable” and “uninhabitable” zones of so cial life, which are nevertheless densely populated by those who do not enjoy the status of the subject, but whose living under the sign of the “unlivable” is required to circumscribe the domain of the subject. This zone of uninhabitability will constitute the defining limit of the subject’s domain; it will constitute that site of dreadful identification against which-and by virtue of which-the domain of the subject will circumscribe its own claim to autonomy and to life. In this sense, then, the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, “inside” the subject as its own founding repudiation. The forming of a subject requires an identification with the normative phantasm of”sex,” and this identification takes place through a repudiation that produces a domain of abjection, a repudiation without which the subject cannot emerge. This is a repudiation that creates the valence of “abjection” and its status for the subject as a threatening spectre. Further, the materialization of a given sex will centrally concern the regulation of identificatory practices such that the identification with the abjection of sex will be persistently disavowed. And yet, this disavowed abjection will threaten to expose the self-grounding presumptions of the sexed subject, grounded as that subject is in repudiation whose consequences it cannot fully control. The task will be to consider this threat and disruption not as a permanent contestation of social norms condemned to the pathos of perpetual failure, but rather as a critical resource in the struggle to rearticulate the very terms of symbolic legitimacy and intelligibility. Lastly, the mobilization of the categories of sex within political discourse will be haunted in some ways by the very instabilities that the categories effectively produce and foreclose. Although the political discourses that mobilize identity categories tend to cultivate identifications in the service of a political goal, it may be that the persistence of disidentification is equally crucial to the rearticulation of democratic contestation. Indeed, it may be precisely through practices which underscore disidentification with those regulatory norms by which sexual difference is materialized that both feminists and queer politics are mobilized. Such collective disidentifications can facilitate a reconceptualization of which bodies matter, and which bodies are yet to emerge as critical matters of concern. Excerpt from Bodies that Matter by Judith Butler is licensed All Rights Reserved and is used here under Fair Use exception.

You can see in Butler’s work how deconstruction plays a role in queer theory approaches to texts. What do you think of her approach to sexuality and gender? Which bodies matter? Why is this question important for literary scholars, and how can we use literary texts to answer the question?

In our next section, we’ll look at some ways that these theories can be used to analyze literary texts.

Using Feminist, Postfeminist, and Queer Theory as a Critical Approach

As you can see from the introduction and the examples of scholarship that we read, there’s some overlap in the concepts of these three critical approaches. One of the first choices you have to make when working with a text is deciding which theory to use. Below I’ve outlined some ideas that you might explore.

• Character Analysis: Examine the portrayal of characters, paying attention to how gender roles and stereotypes shape their identities. Consider the agency, autonomy, and representation of both male and female characters, and analyze how their interactions contribute to or challenge traditional gender norms.
• Theme Exploration: Investigate themes related to gender, power dynamics, and patriarchy within the text. Explore how the narrative addresses issues such as sexism, women’s rights, and the construction of femininity and masculinity. Consider how the themes may reflect or critique societal attitudes towards gender.
• Language and Symbolism: Analyze the language used in the text, including the representation of gender through linguistic choices. Examine symbols and metaphors related to gender and sexuality. Identify instances of language that may reinforce or subvert traditional gender roles, and explore how these linguistic elements contribute to the overall meaning of the work.
• Authorial Intent and Context: Investigate the author’s background, motivations, and societal context. Consider how the author’s personal experiences and the cultural milieu may have influenced their portrayal of gender. Analyze the author’s stance on feminist issues and whether the text aligns with or challenges feminist principles.
• Intersectionality: Take an intersectional approach by considering how factors such as race, class, sexuality, and other identity markers intersect with gender in the text. Explore how different forms of oppression and privilege intersect, shaping the experiences of characters and influencing the overall thematic landscape of the literary work.

Postfeminist

• Interrogating Postfeminist Tropes: Examine the text for elements that align with or challenge postfeminist tropes, such as the notion of individual empowerment, choice feminism, or the idea that traditional gender roles are no longer relevant. Analyze how the narrative engages with or subverts these postfeminist ideals.
• Exploring Ambiguities and Contradictions: Investigate contradictions and ambiguities within the text regarding gender and sexuality. Postfeminist criticism often acknowledges the complexities of contemporary gender dynamics, so analyze instances where the text may present conflicting perspectives on issues like agency, equality, and empowerment.
• Media and Pop Culture Influences: Consider the influence of media and popular culture on the text. Postfeminist criticism often examines how cultural narratives and media representations of gender impact literature. Analyze how the text responds to or reflects contemporary media portrayals of gender roles and expectations.
• Global and Cultural Perspectives: Take a global and cultural perspective by exploring how the text addresses postfeminist ideas in different cultural contexts. Analyze how the narrative engages with issues of globalization, intersectionality, and diverse cultural perspectives on gender and feminism.
• Temporal Considerations: Examine how the temporal setting of the text influences its engagement with postfeminist ideas. Consider whether the narrative reflects a specific historical moment or if it transcends temporal boundaries. Analyze how societal shifts over time may be reflected in the text’s treatment of gender issues.
• Deconstructing Norms and Binaries: Utilize Queer Theory to deconstruct traditional norms and binaries related to gender and sexuality within the text. Explore how the narrative challenges or reinforces heteronormative assumptions, and analyze characters or relationships that subvert or resist conventional categories.
• Examining Queer Identities: Focus on the exploration and representation of queer identities within the text. Consider how characters navigate and express their sexualities and gender identities. Analyze the nuances of queer experiences and the ways in which the text contributes to a more expansive understanding of LGBTQ+ identities.
• Language and Subversion: Analyze the language used in the text with a Queer Theory lens. Examine linguistic choices that challenge or reinforce societal norms related to gender and sexuality. Explore how the text employs language to subvert or resist heteronormative structures.
• Queer Time and Space: Consider how the concept of queer time and space is represented in the text. Queer Theory often explores non-linear or non-normative temporalities and spatialities. Analyze how the narrative disrupts conventional timelines or spatial arrangements to create alternative queer realities.
• Intersectionality within Queer Narratives: Take an intersectional approach within the framework of Queer Theory. Analyze how factors such as race, class, and ethnicity intersect with queer identities in the text. Explore the intersections of different marginalized identities to understand the complexities of lived experiences.

Applying Gender Criticisms to Literary Texts

As with our other critical approaches, we will start with  a close reading of the poem below (we’ll do this together in class or as part of the recorded lecture for this chapter). In your close reading, you’ll focus on gender, stereotypes, the patriarchy, heteronormative writing, etc.  With feminist, postfeminist, and queer theory criticism, you might look to outside sources, especially if you are considering the author’s gender identity or sexuality, or you might bring your own knowledge and lived experience to the text.

The poem below was written by Mary Robinson, an early Romantic English poet. Though her works were quite popular when she was alive, you may not have heard of her. However, you’re probably familiar with her male contemporaries William Blake, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Keep in mind that reading this poem is thus itself a feminist act. When we choose to include historical voices of woman that were previously excluded, we are doing feminist criticism.

“January, 1795”

BY  MARY ROBINSON

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving.

Lofty mansions, warm and spacious; Courtiers cringing and voracious; Misers scarce the wretched heeding; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who laugh at passive spouses; Theatres, and meeting-houses; Balls, where simp’ring misses languish; Hospitals, and groans of anguish.

Arts and sciences bewailing; Commerce drooping, credit failing; Placemen mocking subjects loyal; Separations, weddings royal.

Authors who can’t earn a dinner; Many a subtle rogue a winner; Fugitives for shelter seeking; Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.

Taste and talents quite deserted; All the laws of truth perverted; Arrogance o’er merit soaring; Merit silently deploring.

Ladies gambling night and morning; Fools the works of genius scorning; Ancient dames for girls mistaken, Youthful damsels quite forsaken.

Some in luxury delighting; More in talking than in fighting; Lovers old, and beaux decrepid; Lordlings empty and insipid.

Poets, painters, and musicians; Lawyers, doctors, politicians: Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes, Seeking fame by diff’rent roads.

Gallant souls with empty purses; Gen’rals only fit for nurses; School-boys, smit with martial spirit, Taking place of vet’ran merit.

Honest men who can’t get places, Knaves who shew unblushing faces; Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded; Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.

“January, 1795” by Mary Robinson is in the Public Domain.

Questions (Feminist and Postfeminist Criticism)

• What evidence of gender stereotypes can you find in the text?
• What evidence of patriarchy and power structure do you see? How is this evidence supported by historical context? Consider, for example, the 1794 contemporary poem “London” by William Blake. These two poems have similar themes. How does the male poet Blake’s treatment of this theme compare with the female poet Mary Robinson’s work? How have these two works and authors differed in their critical reception?
• Who is the likely contemporary audience for Mary Robinson’s poetry? Who is the audience today? What about the audience during the 1940s and 50s, when New Criticism was popular? How would these three audiences view feminism, patriarchy, and gender roles differently?
• Do a search for Mary Robinson’s work in JSTOR. Then do a search for William Blake. How do the two authors compare in terms of scholarship produced on their work? Do you see anything significant about the dates of the scholarship? The authors? The critical lenses that are applied?
• Do you see any contradictions and ambiguities within the text regarding gender and sexuality? What about evidence for subversion of traditional gender roles?

Example of a feminist thesis statement: While William Blake’s “London” and Mary Robinson’s “January, 1795” share similar themes with similar levels of artistry, Robinson’s work and critical reception demonstrates the effects of 18th-century patriarchal power structures that kept even the most brilliant women in their place.

Example of a postfeminist thesis statement: Mary Robinson’s “January, 1975” slyly subverts gender norms and expectations with a brilliance that transcends the confines of traditional eighteenth century gender roles.

To practice queer theory, let’s turn to a more contemporary text. “The Eyepatch” by transgender author and scholar Cassandra Arc follows a gender-neutral protagonist as they navigate an ambiguous space. This short story questions who sees and who is seen in heteronormative spaces, as well as exploring what it means to see yourself as queer.

“The Eyepatch”

The lightning didn’t kill me, though it should’ve. The bolt pierced my eyes, gifted curse from Zeus or Typhon or God. I remember waking up in that hospital, everything was black. I felt bandages, pain, fire. I tried to sit up, but a hand gently pushed me back into the bed. I heard the shuffling of feet and the sound of scrubs rubbing against each other. I smelled the pungent disinfectant in the air.  I heard the slow methodical beep of a heart rate monitor. That incessant blip-blip-blip was my heart rate. I heard the thunder of my heart beating to the same methodical rhythm. A metronome to a wordless melody of ignorance, an elegy to blindness.

I wasn’t awake long. They put me back to sleep. To salvage my face. My burned face, my charred face. I should’ve died. The next time I woke the bandages were gone. I could see the doctors, but I couldn’t see me. They wouldn’t let me see me, told me they would fix my face, make it look good again. I didn’t trust them. The doctors thought their faces were pretty. They weren’t. I asked to see my face. They wouldn’t let me. I’m lucky to be alive, that’s what they said. I’m lucky I can see.

But some things I can’t see. They left the eyepatch on my left eye. Told me the left eye would never work again. My right eye can’t see everything. It sees the doctors, their heads swathed in sterile caps, their wrinkled noses, their empty eyes. It sees the nurses, their exhaustion, their bitterness. It sees the bleak beige walls and the tiny tinny television hanging in the corner by the laminated wood door. It sees the plastic bag of fluid hanging from the metal rack on wheels, the plastic instruments and the fluorescent light panel above my head. But it can’t see my mom, it can’t see my sister. It can’t see myself. They never believe me.

My mom comes to visit me on the third day I’m awake. I hear her enter, smell her usual perfume, lilac with a hint of dirt and rain. I feel her hand hold mine, warmth and comfort and kindness. My right eye can’t see her. She came from the garden to see me, to make sure I’m okay. My right eye can’t see my mom. The doctors don’t believe me. My mom believes me.

The doctors pull her away from me. They say they need to fix my face. She can see me tomorrow. I smell the anesthesia and hear the spurt of the needle as they test to make sure no air bubbles formed in the syringe. I hear my mom crying. She assures me she’ll come back tomorrow. I can’t see her tears. They put me back to sleep.

In my dreams I can see them, my mother and sister. There is no eyepatch on my left eye; it can see them, and it can see me, reflected in the water. We swim across the pond to the island with the tree in the center. The reeds grow tall along the banks. The water smells of fish shit and moss. the reflection is murky except for the shallow blue eyes.

The reflection is broken by a ripple. My sister swims to me, wraps her arms around me, then splashes water directly into my face. Some droplets stick to my forehead and nose, like beads of cold sweat. She giggles, a grin emerges on her freckled face. Her wet blonde hair has strands of moss hanging from it. I smile back and with a quick flick of my wrist she too is drenched.  I feel peace from the water. My mother calls us to shore. Storm clouds, she says. The lightning might kill you. That’s what she said then. I didn’t believe her. Thunder echoes like the heartbeat of the sky.

The doctors wake me up. They have thunder too. I cannot see them, can’t see anything. Bandages surround my face. My face is fixed. That’s what they claim. I didn’t see anything wrong before. They wouldn’t let me see me. It’s a miracle. I’m lucky to be alive. I don’t believe them. They apologize for not being able to fix my eye.

My sister comes with my mom today. I can’t see her. She believes me, reminds me about the lightning. It could’ve killed me. When she learns I can’t see her, she cackles. She says she’ll have fun when I come home. She asks when I’ll come home.

I don’t know when I’ll come home. The doctors don’t know. I should’ve died. They want to keep me. My mother wants to take me. They shout at each other. My sister holds my left hand. I can’t see her hand, or mine.

The doctors remove the bandages. They show me a mirror. I see behind me, but I don’t see me . I see the eyepatch float. When I try to remove it the doctors stop me. My eye is too damaged. They tell me to never remove the eyepatch. They hold up a vase. My mom brought me flowers.  I can’t see the flowers. They don’t believe me. Their voices are angry. Stop being childish, they say. I lie and say I see the flowers.

Once one of the nurses I can’t see, he brought me food from outside. I saw the bag float in the room. I heard his footsteps. He handed me the brown paper bag and told me to enjoy. He sounded old. I felt a band of metal on his left-hand ring finger when I took the bag. The smell of chicken nuggets and French fries pierced the stale aroma of bleach and disinfectant. I heard the edge of the bed creak, the cushion indented slightly. The invisible nurse told wild tales of dragons and monsters while I ate. He didn’t know when I’ll be home. He watered invisible flowers before leaving. I fell back asleep.

In my dreams I’m still swimming. The sun is blocked by clouds. Drops of rain hit my hair. Mother calls from the cabin on the shore. My sister runs out of the water, her leg kicks water into my eyes. I’m blinded for a moment. I don’t leave. I stay in the water, dropping my eyes level with the water. They both hear the thunder. I don’t hear the thunder. They both see the lightning.

All I feel is heat. I’m blind. The lightning should’ve killed me. The lightning in my eyes, lucky to be alive.  My sister screams for help. Smell the ozone. Pungent and sweet. I don’t scream, I can’t scream. I’m dead. I’m alive. The lightning killed me. I can’t see my mom. I can’t see my sister. I can’t see the flowers. The lightning saved me. I can see the doctors, I can see the nurses, I can see the hospital.

The lightning killed me, that’s what they said. They brought me back with lightning, pads of metal, artificial energy. My eye is broken, the one the lightning struck. Three minutes. That’s what they told me. Three minutes of death. My face was burned. I can’t see it. They fixed it.

The doctors worried my body was broken too. The lightning still might kill me. They say I need to move, I need to walk. Lightning causes paralysis, or weakness. They bring in a special doctor. I can’t see this doctor. The other doctors leave. The invisible doctor takes me to a room for walking practice. I think I walk just fine. They hold me anyway. Crutches line the walls, pairs of metal handrails take up the center, and exercise equipment sits off to the right side. The invisible doctor lets go and I fall. My hands are too slow to catch me. My face hits one of the many black foam squares that make up the floor. I turn my head left and see the eyepatch almost fall off in the mirror on the wall. For a second, I think I see me, but I can’t see me. The invisible doctor fixes it and helps me to my feet. They tell me to be like a tree, that I’ll be okay. That I’ll be able to walk again soon. They tell me when I can walk I will go home. I place my hands on the rails. The metal is cold. The doctor yelps in shock and withdraws their hand; it was just static. My arms are weak but they hold me. My legs move slowly, but I can’t walk without the rails.

The invisible doctor takes me back after a while. They tell me I did good work. It’s a miracle I can still move. They tell me lightning takes people’s movement. The lightning should’ve killed me. That’s what they say. They tell me strength should come back to me. Lightning steals that too. Lightning can’t keep strength like it keeps movement.

My mom comes back again. She brings me the manatee, Juno. I can see Juno. Soft gray fabric, small black plastic eyes. I hold her tightly in my arms. Mom wants me home. The doctors still won’t let her take me. Juno will keep me safe, that’s what she said. She brings me homework too, and videos of teachers explaining how the world works. I can see them. I can’t see my mom.

I miss the smell of earth when my mom leaves. I want to smell her garden again. To swim in the pond and feel the moss brush against my skin. I want to feel the peace of the water and hear the crickets sing their lullaby. The invisible doctor tells me I will. They tell me I need to steal my strength from the lightning. They take me back to that room for walking. I only need one hand to guide me now. They tell me I’ll go home soon. They tell me I’m stronger than lightning. I still can’t see them.

Back in my room I learn about lightning. It’s hotter than the sun. I remember the heat I felt and wonder if that’s how it feels to touch the surface of a star. The video says that direct strikes are usually fatal. I’m lucky to be alive. I hold Juno tightly.

It takes a month to steal my strength back from the lightning. I walk without holding the rails. The invisible doctor applauds me and tells me I’m ready to go home. They call my mom. I still can’t see my mom.

I can’t see the trees with my right eye, my good eye. I know where they should be by the shaded patches of dirt in the ground. I can see the grass, the road, the dirt covered green Volvo Station wagon, Mom’s car. My sister shouts for joy and runs toward me. I fall to the ground. Her arms squeeze Juno into my chest. I can’t see my sister.

Mom drives me to the cabin. I can see the towering buildings of the city. In the reflection of the tinted glass, I see the station wagon. The eyepatch floats in the window right above Juno’s head. Mom tells me about what she’ll make for dinner. She killed one of the chickens and plucked carrots and celery from the ground. Soup gives strength. That’s what she said. She reminds me that I’m lucky to be alive.

I can’t see the reeds. Mom stops the car in front of the cabin. I can’t see the cabin, nor the rustic wood threshold. Mom helps me across it. The hand-carved wooden table is invisible, but I can see the small electric stove. I smell the soup, hear the water boil, guide my hand along the wood of the narrow hallway to help me walk. I can’t see my bedroom, nor the bed alcove carved into the wall. My mattress floats in the air as if by magic. I can see the plastic desk my mom bought me for school, and the lightbulb in the ceiling. I see wires in invisible walls.

My sister wants to play. She tugs on my arm. I set Juno into the bed alcove and feel my way back to the main room. Mom reminds me to be careful. She tells my sister to be gentle. She reminds us both that I can’t take off my eyepatch. We both take off our shoes.

My sister guides me to the shore. I enjoy the sensation of dirt beneath my feet and the occasional pain of a rock. We move slowly, some of my strength still belongs to the lightning. She runs in. I can’t see the pond. I can’t see the moss in the pond. I can’t see my sister. My sister asks about the eyepatch. She wants to know why I can’t take it off. I don’t know. She asks about my eye. The dark one. The one filled with abyss. The right eye. She asks why it’s dark. I don’t know. I put my foot in the invisible water. My sister jumps out. Something shocked her. She thinks I shocked her. She gets back in.

I stay close to the shore I can’t see. I don’t want to drown. I don’t want my eyes near the water. There are no storm clouds today. I fiddle with moss between my toes. Mom calls us in for dinner. My sister runs ahead. I try walking on my own. I trip over a tree root that I couldn’t see. I fall and hit my chin on the ground. The eyepatch slides up a bit. I quickly push it back down before it can come off. I can’t take off my eyepatch.

My mom hears the thud and comes running. She helps me to my feet, guides me back to the cabin, and sits me at the table. She brings me a bowl of soup, tells me I need to be careful. She wants me to stay alive. I sip the soup and listen to her sing while she cleans the soup pot. I can’t see my mom.

When I sleep, I dream of before. Before the lightning stole my left eye. Before it stole my strength. I dream of the pond. I dream of the old willow tree on the island. Its dark drooping branches blossoming every spring. The leaves fall on the pond. Nature’s Navy of little boats. The tree is stronger than lightning. I am the tree. I want to see the tree again.

My sister tells me she’ll guide me to the island. I refuse. I can’t see the tree, or the water. My eyes would have to be close to it. The eyepatch might come off. I spend the day holding Juno. My mom brings me a sandwich and sits with me a while. I only know she’s there from the sound of her bouncing leg. She’s nervous. She doesn’t smell of the garden yet. She won’t smell of the garden today. I want to smell of the garden, but I can’t see the garden.

In the evening I sit outside the cabin and listen to the crickets. I’m lucky to be alive. The lightning didn’t kill me. I scratch at an itch under the eyepatch. I feel a shock in my hand and pull it back. I smell the ozone on my fingertip.  In my mind I’m in the water again. I remember the heat, the pain. My mom comes running when I scream. She puts Juno in my arms. I feel safe again. I am stronger than the lightning. The lightning didn’t kill me.

While I sleep I am the tree, standing tall, guarding my island. The lightning wants to take it. It strikes at the water around me, burning my Navy of leaves. Once it struck me, but the rain extinguished its flames. I grew back stronger. My Navy rebuilt. The lightning always comes back. I am always stronger.

My sister and I play in the lake. I go out deeper today. My legs can tell how deep I am. We go to the tree. The lightning couldn’t steal the ability to swim. I follow the sound of my sister’s splashing. We push through invisible reeds, I feel the plants surround me. My sister holds my hand and guides me through the canopy of branches. I feel the incomplete ships of Nature’s Navy brush against my face. She puts my hand against the tree. I guide my hand along it until I find the once charred wood where lightning burned it. The lightning should’ve killed us.

My sister and I sit under the tree for a while. I feel the bugs occasionally crawl across my hands. She rests her shoulder on mine. I’m lucky to be alive. The lightning didn’t kill us.

We walk back to the shore. I feel the water, and one of Nature’s boats brush against my foot and look down. I still can’t see the water. I can’t see myself. I can see the Navy. The floating leaves atop the tranquil pond. The tears begin to fall. My sister asks why the tears from beneath the eyepatch are white as ash. I wish I knew.

The crickets sing again that evening. Tonight, they sing the ballad of the tree. Loud and harmonic. I whisper my thanks into the wind. The crickets whistle back. They believe me.

In the morning I wake up before anyone else. I shuffle through the halls and out to the porch to listen to the morning bird song. I let my head weave side to side in tune with their melody. I dance across invisible dirt. A laugh escapes my lips. I jump into invisible water. I sail with Nature’s Navy to the tree.

My soul sits atop resilient roots. Hands find the burned wood, where the lightning almost killed it. I bring the left hand to the eyepatch, where the lightning almost killed me. The wind blows through the leaves. Splashes echo from the opposite shore, sounds of someone swimming. Thunder echoes from my stomach, I rise to return home. Gallivanting down the invisible slope back towards my invisible home.

I trip across a root near the water. The eyepatch sinks beneath the surface of the lake. I yank my head back. The eyepatch slips off. My left hand covers my eye. A shock forces me to pull it away. The eyelid flutters opened. I see the lightning. Nature’s Navy set ablaze by my gaze. My eye touches the sun again as the lightning leaves. The tree set ablaze by my gaze. The crickets echo a lament. The birds resound a harmonizing elegy. The drooping branches fall lower, as if bowing. I bow in return.  The splashing water calms.

My left eye sees the water, sees the earth, sees myself. Authentic and whole. It observes my leaves of joy, fingers stretched in shallows. My left eye witnesses my roots of kindness, feet planted on solid shores. It beholds the resilience of my trunk, a beautiful body. The eyepatch floats in the water. I perceive my eyes again, the dark one and the white. my black and white tears drift across the surface of water. Someone shuffles the dirt behind me. I turn with a smile on my face.

Cassandra Arc is an autistic trans woman living in Portland, Oregon. In her writing she likes to focus on themes of healing, gender identity issues, and nature as a means of understanding authenticity. This story was originally published in the Talking River Review and is reprinted here by permission of the author (All Rights Reserved). 

• Who is the narrator of this story? What do we know about their gender? How do we know this? What does the lightning signify?
• What does the eyepatch represent? When the narrator says, “I see behind me, but I don’t see me,”  what does this mean? What ideas about social constructs are present in this narrative, and how does the story subvert those social constructs?
• How do characters navigate and express their gender identities in the text? Does the story expand your understanding of the queer experience? In what ways? What do you think about the way some things can’t be seen and some things can in the story? How might this experience relate to being queer?
• How are time and space treated in this story?
• How does the story subvert or resist conventional categories?

Example of a queer theory thesis statement: In “The Eyepatch” by Cassandra Arc, the binary oppositions of light, darkness, sight, and blindness are used to subvert heteronormative structures, deconstructing artificially constructed binaries to capture the experience of being in the closet and the explosive nature of coming out.

Limitations of Gender Criticisms

While these approaches offer interesting and important insights into the ways that gender and sexuality exist in texts, they also have some limitations. Here are some potential drawbacks:

• Essentialism: Feminist theory may sometimes be criticized for essentializing gender experiences, assuming a universal women’s experience that overlooks the diversity of women’s lives.
• Neglect of Other Identities: The focus on gender in feminist theory may overshadow other intersecting identities such as race, class, and sexuality, limiting the analysis of how these factors contribute to oppression or privilege.
• Overlooking Male Perspectives: In some instances, feminist theory may be perceived as neglecting the examination of male characters or perspectives, potentially reinforcing gender binaries rather than deconstructing them.
• Historical and Cultural Context: Feminist theory, while valuable, may not always adequately address the historical and cultural contexts of literary works, potentially overlooking shifts in societal attitudes towards gender over time.
• Oversimplification of Feminist Goals: Post-feminist criticism may be criticized for oversimplifying or prematurely declaring the achievement of feminist goals, potentially obscuring persistent gender inequalities.
• Individualism and Choice Feminism: The emphasis on individual empowerment in post-feminist criticism, often associated with choice feminism, may overlook systemic issues and structural inequalities that continue to affect women’s lives.
• Lack of Intersectionality: Post-feminist approaches may sometimes neglect intersectionality, overlooking the interconnectedness of gender with race, class, and other identity factors, which can limit a comprehensive understanding of oppression.
• Commodification of Feminism: Critics argue that post-feminism can lead to the commodification of feminist ideals, with feminist imagery and language used for commercial purposes, potentially diluting the transformative goals of feminism.
• Complexity and Jargon: Queer Theory can be complex and may use specialized language, making it challenging for some readers to engage with and understand, potentially creating barriers to entry for students and scholars.
• Overemphasis on Textual Deconstruction: Critics argue that Queer Theory may sometimes prioritize textual deconstruction over concrete political action, leading to concerns about the practical impact of this theoretical approach on real-world LGBTQ+ issues.
• Challenges in Application: Queer Theory’s emphasis on fluidity and resistance to fixed categories can make it challenging to apply consistently, as it may resist clear definitions and frameworks, making it more subjective in its interpretation.
• Limited Representation: While Queer Theory aims to deconstruct norms, some critics argue that it may still primarily focus on certain aspects of queer experiences, potentially neglecting the diversity within the LGBTQ+ spectrum and reinforcing certain stereotypes.

Some Important Gender Scholars

• Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986): A French existentialist philosopher and writer, de Beauvoir is best known for her groundbreaking work “The Second Sex,” which explored the oppression of women and laid the groundwork for feminist literary theory.
• Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): A celebrated English writer, Woolf is known for her novels such as “Mrs. Dalloway” and “Orlando.” Her works often engaged with feminist themes and issues of gender identity.
• bell hooks (1952-2021): An American author, feminist, and social activist, hooks wrote extensively on issues of race, class, and gender. Her works, such as “Ain’t I a Woman” and “The Feminist Theory from Margin to Center,” are essential in feminist scholarship.
• Adrienne Rich (1929-2012): An American poet and essayist, Rich’s poetry and prose explored themes of feminism, identity, and social justice. Her collection of essays, “Of Woman Born,” is a notable work in feminist literary criticism.
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: An Indian-American literary theorist and philosopher, Spivak is known for her work in postcolonialism and deconstruction. Her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a key text in postcolonial and feminist studies.
• Susan Faludi: An American journalist and author, Faludi’s work often explores issues related to gender and feminism. Her book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” critically examines the societal responses to feminism.
• Camille Paglia: An American cultural critic and author, Paglia is known for her provocative views on gender and sexuality. Her work, including “Sexual Personae,” challenges conventional feminist perspectives.
• Rosalind Gill: A British cultural and media studies scholar, Gill has written extensively on gender, media, and postfeminism. Her work explores the intersection of popular culture and contemporary feminist thought.
• Laura Kipnis: An American cultural critic and essayist, Kipnis has written on topics related to gender, sexuality, and contemporary culture. Her book “Against Love: A Polemic” challenges conventional ideas about love and relationships.
• Judith Butler: A foundational figure in both feminist and queer theory, Judith Butler has made profound contributions to the understanding of gender and sexuality. Their work Gender Trouble  has been influential in shaping queer theoretical discourse.
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: An influential scholar in queer studies, Sedgwick’s works, such as Epistemology of the Closet , have contributed to the understanding of queer identities and the impact of societal norms on the construction of sexuality.
• Michel Foucault: Although not exclusively a queer theorist, Foucault’s ideas on power, knowledge, and sexuality laid the groundwork for many aspects of queer theory. His works, including The History of Sexuality,  are foundational in queer studies.
• Teresa de Lauretis: An Italian-American scholar, de Lauretis has contributed significantly to feminist and queer theory. Her work Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities  explores the complexities of sexuality and identity.
• Jack Halberstam: A gender and queer studies scholar, Halberstam’s works, including Female Masculinity and In a Queer Time and Place,  engage with issues of gender nonconformity and the temporalities of queer experience.
• Annamarie Jagose: A New Zealand-born scholar, Jagose has written extensively on queer theory. Her book Queer Theory: An Introduction  provides a comprehensive overview of key concepts within the field.
• Leo Bersani: An American literary theorist, Bersani’s work often intersects with queer theory. His explorations of intimacy, desire, and the complexities of same-sex relationships have been influential in queer studies.

Further Reading

• Aravind, Athulya. Transformations of Sappho: Late 18th Century to 1900. Senior Thesis written for Department of English, Northeastern University. https://www.sfu.ca/~decaste/OISE/page2/files/deBeauvoirIntro.pdf  This is a wonderful example of a student-written feminist approach to English Romantic poetry.
• Banet-Weiser, Sarah, Rosalind Gill, and Catherine Rottenberg. “Postfeminism, Popular Feminism and Neoliberal Feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in Conversation.” Feminist Theory  21.1 (2020): 3-24.
• Butler, Judith.  Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex . Taylor & Francis, 2011.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble . Routledge, 2002.
• de Beauvoir, Simone.  The Second Sex.  Trans. H.M. Parshley. 1956.
• De Lauretis, Teresa. “Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and Historical Consciousness.” Feminist Studies  16.1 (1990): 115-150.
• Gill, Rosalind. “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies  10.2 (2007): 147-166.
• Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction.  Trans. Robert Hurley. Vintage, 1990.
• Foucault, Michel.  The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure . Vintage, 2012.
• Halberstam, Jack.  Trans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability . Vol. 3. Univ of California Press, 2017.
• hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center . Pluto Press, 2000.
• hooks, bell. “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness.” Women, Knowledge, and Reality . Routledge, 2015. 48-55.
• Jagose, Annamarie.  Queer Theory: An Introduction . NYU Press, 1996.
• Miller, Jennifer. “Thirty Years of Queer Theory.” In Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Pressbooks. https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/introlgbtqstudies/chapter/thirty-years-of-queer-theory/   
• Paglia, Camille.  Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson . Yale University Press, 1990.
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky.  Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity . Duke University Press, 2003.
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky.  Epistemology of the Closet . Univ of California Press, 2008.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty.  The Spivak Reader: Selected works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak . Psychology Press, 1996.

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In this episode Garth interviews Carol Tavris, an independent scholar from Los Angeles, CA. Carol recounts her eclectic career, highlighting her transition from academia to writing. She discusses the importance of accurately communicating psychological science to the public, emphasizing empirical evidence while criticizing the tendency of some popular writers to prioritize sensational ideas. She reflects on various topics, including her work on the psychology of anger, her skepticism toward unfounded scientific claims, and the dynamics of cognitive dissonance. The dialogue also covers Tavris's contributions to textbooks, particularly her efforts to incorporate critical thinking and a balanced view of gender and cultural issues in introductory psychology courses. Carol generously shares insights on maintaining scientific integrity amid societal pressures and changing academic landscapes. [Note. Portions of these show notes were generated by Descript AI.]

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Visiting Professors Moynagh and Caputi Edit Research Handbook on Feminist Political Thought

JCU Visiting Professors Patricia Moynagh and Mary Caputi recently co-edited a book called Research Handbook on Feminist Political Thought (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024). The Handbook focuses on the crucial role of feminism in envisioning a more equal world, with chapters that examine critical and care-based approaches to feminist political thought. Moynagh teaches in Wagner College’s Government & Politics Department, where she is also Director of Gender Studies. Caputi teaches in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach. The collaboration between the two scholars is tied to the time they spent in Rome while teaching at JCU during the summer of 2023.

Congratulations on the publication of your new co-edited book, Research Handbook on Feminist Political Thought. What sparked the idea for this project? Thank you. We were delighted and honored to accept the invitation from Edward Elgar Press to work together on what would become this book, Research Handbook on Feminist Political Thought. It was the publishers who reached out to us, but once this happened, the sparks never stopped. They are still igniting. And we hope our readers will have new sparks of their own. This is very much a collective effort to achieve greater freedom and a better life for all of us.

We’re both well-versed in the dynamic and growing field of feminist political thought. For this project, it was important for us to include as many voices as possible around some major themes that challenge us all today. In selecting these voices, we have deliberately included the work of emerging scholars who we are confident will one day be well-known in the field. At the same time, we were thrilled to include essays by prominent feminist authors and activists. And one contributor must remain unnamed due to fear of reprisal for her candid discussion of her activism in China. This appears in the one interview that we have included in the book. While the volume features essays by a broad array of scholars, activists, and artists from around the world, our guiding principle was to identify key contemporary themes to be subjected to new feminist critiques, ways of seeing and responding to difficult issues from the analytic strengths and insights that we were keen to highlight. We were also ever intent to underscore and reveal the collective power that we both observe in feminist approaches. So this runs throughout the works such that, bleak as some of our problems are right now – be they political, social, economic, or environmental – we find tremendous resources in feminist scholarship and activism for achieving more “livable lives,” to quote American philosopher Judith Butler, rising from critiques that inspire solutions to the deeply troubled world that we all share.

There are many voices arising in these nearly 500 pages, each voice itself enhanced by the influence of other feminist voices. And clearly, there is great variety here. However, the commitment to a better world never wavers. And it should be said that a draft of each of these pieces was read by other feminist and gender studies scholars, all of whom have varieties of expertise from their particular specialties. Convention prohibits our listing the dozens of readers who helped us in our editorial tasks, but they are by no means invisible in the final product, and we are grateful for their collaboration. So, the voices are again multiple, not all speaking in the same way, but speaking against oppression and for emancipation. Persisting. Persisters, resisters who see something better as possible and are fighting for it in one way or another. We find much joy in these efforts that emanate from a willingness to cultivate a different vision of our world, one informed by an ethic of care, a validation of relationships, and a refusal to accept the way things are. 

How did you go about selecting the topics and contributors? We wanted to be a complement to so much already existing great feminist political theory. And, once again, it was our sense that we needed to speak to the moment, this moment of continued violence against women, the poor, the environment, minorities, the trans population, and any number of other groups that make up the lived reality of this historical moment. We selected topics and authors whom we felt could challenge this violence in meaningful ways, thereby illustrating the richness and usefulness of feminist thought and activism in today’s world. We should also note that Edward Elgar, our press, and the series editor, Professor John Kane, were keen to have our contributors address these troubled times. Thus, we very deliberately sought out feminist scholars who could speak about such pressing contemporary topics as the rise of the far right in various parts of the world, the repeal of Roe v. Wade in the United States, the debt crisis in Latin America, the impact of social media on gender relations, etc. Moreover, we wanted scholars to address lived experiences of variously situated women and men who suffered at the hands of police violence and the challenges they subsequently pose to point to a “politics otherwise.” 

There are essays that discuss transmisogyny, feminist music criticism, and the realities of Native American dispossessions. Additionally, we also have contributions on care ethics, the urgent need to eradicate the conditions that create bereaved Black mothers, the appropriation of feminist politics by conservative women who claim to represent a truer form of “feminism,” and the pandemic. Speaking of the pandemic, we lost two contributors on account of Covid-19, one who sadly passed away and another who fell ill and could not submit a critical piece on the environment.  However, the book was and remains a source of connection for many of us who wrote during the fraught time of the pandemic. And one of our contributors, Julie White, in her opening essay, reveals what were already the harshly gendered, raced, and classed realities of work during Covid-19. Despite the abundant diversity of topics selected, the book connected many of us who were isolated and socially distancing while numerous others were afflicted and even died from the virus.

What were the main challenges that you encountered while editing the book? One challenge centered around our narrowing down the many topics from which to choose, and then identifying appropriate authors to write on them. As mentioned, we strove to select timely, important matters that typify this historical moment, and we wanted to invite scholars who could write on these with authority and from an explicitly feminist angle. Yet as also mentioned, we wanted to include an array of feminist voices and not only select the best-known and widely published scholars. There is so much important work being done by junior scholars today and we were eager to make them heard. Their work illustrates just how much feminism has changed since its earliest days and how it continues to evolve. We are pleased with the themes that we identified as contributing to the volume, including critical essays on the carceral state, motherhood, Korean pop culture, #MeToo, misogyny and transmisogyny, decolonization, dispossession, racialized state violence, institutional sexism, versions of Arab and African feminism, feminist strikes, far-right extremism and the upsurge of feminist activism in Iran. 

Another challenge was to offer feminist critiques of this world while not despairing of it. This is why readers will encounter a clear rejection of what has been called “carceral feminism,” which our many contributors regard as perpetuating violence against those rendered most vulnerable to the state at any given time. Our authors build upon and are part of a larger project that commits to finding multiple resources to co-create better lives for all of us. The political thought running through this research handbook is about achieving collective, not merely individual, freedom. Our contributors address and confront our many challenges rather than flee from them or adapt to them. We wanted strong voices to be heard and reverberate. 

In many ways, this research handbook is an invitation to continue locating resources for this shared goal of emancipation. This goal takes to task all that reduces or impedes our abilities to care about our shared existence and instead enjoins us to enhance such abilities to care. Thus while such a feminist handbook will necessarily include such urgent and dire matters as economic precarity, bereavement, perpetual war, and displacement, we simultaneously wanted to highlight the themes of resistance and persistence, and the need to take action. The essays by Verónica Gago, Erica Lawson, and Françoise Vergès exemplify the feminist ability to name and confront various horrors while demanding change and a vision that insists on building a different and better world. 

In your opinion, how can this handbook better equip readers to address the issues of our times? Who do you think will find the book most useful? We are very proud of the way in which our authors have completed articles that offer fresh insights into the world’s most pressing problems using feminist analyses. They neither seek to minimize the magnitude of these problems nor capitulate to apolitical despair. Rather, consistent with the theme of “persisters,” the essays illustrate how feminism offers a way out of entrenched difficulties. For example, Claudia Leeb’s essay illustrates the hopefulness contained in critical theory given that the latter underscores the tenuousness of all social norms and the malleability of even the most ingrained conventions. The female political actor has options open to her even in the face of long-standing traditions, for as both Jacques Derrida and Theodor Adorno argue, the need to shore up conventions often reveals anxiety regarding their fragile nature and permeability. This argument made by Leeb is also borne out in Mary Ziegler’s essay on the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 . In her essay, Ziegler demonstrates how the current Supreme Court presents an unconvincing argument regarding abortion’s unprotected status, for it relies on the Court’s highly selective, highly partisan reading of American legal and cultural history. Alternative interpretations of both American legal documents and their political sensibility are readily available to those with a different viewpoint, Ziegler argues. Thus, the current status of abortion could easily be revisited and reinterpreted by a more progressive Supreme Court. 

Given the above, we think the handbook will be extremely useful not only to scholars interested in gender and sexuality but to anyone interested in contemporary politics throughout various geographic locations. The essays all hone analytic angles that speak to the current moment, encouraging persistence and a creative open-mindedness that insists change is both desirable and possible.  

We anticipate a wide readership. Scholars and students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels will find that feminism is a vital and variegated tool for sharpening perspectives on a host of issues, both concrete and theoretical. The handbook will interest those versed in the humanities, the hard and social sciences, the fine arts – both visual and performing – as well as emerging disciplines informed by feminist perspectives. The volume demonstrates how feminism both enriches these emerging disciplines and radically challenges some prevailing conventions that still define traditional academic practices. By way of conclusion, then, we regard this handbook as an educational tool with a feminist edge whose broad array of critiques promotes a more free, caring, and intellectually vibrant world.

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