Women and Children First

Smithgr

Description

This diverse collection explores the rhetoric of a wide range of public policies that propose "to put women and children first," including homeland security, school violence, gun control, medical intervention of intersex infants, and policies that aim to distinguish "good" from "bad" mothers. Using various feminist philosophical analyses, the contributors uncover a logic of paternalistic treatment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary popular policy discourse and affects the way that people understand and respond to social and political issues. Contributors rethink basic philosophical assumptions concerning subjectivity, difference, and dualistic logic in order to read the rhetoric of contemporary public policy discourse and develop new ways of talking and acting in the policy domain.

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Women and Children First
Patrice DiQuinzio and Sharon M. Meagher

PART I: (Mis)representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions

2. Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse
Elizabeth F. Randol

3. Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse Around Cohabitation and Single-Motherhood
Kirsten Isgro

4. Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights
Jennifer A. Reich

PART II: Medical Discourses and Social Ills

5. Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex
Ellen K. Feder

6. Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation
Kelly Oliver

PART III: Subjects of Violence

7. Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence
Sharon M. Meagher

8. Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Advocacy
Sally J. Scholz

PART IV: Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children

9. Bad Mothers as "Brown" Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance-Abusing Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls
Norma L. Buydens

10. Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm
Tricha Shivas and Sonya Charles

PART V: Protesting Mothers: Politics Under the Sign of Motherhood

11. (M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War
Tina Managhan

12. Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference
Patrice DiQuinzio

List of Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791482858
• Langue: English

Extrait

women and children first feminism, rhetoric, and public policy

sharon m. meagher and patrice diquinzio, editors

W O M E N A N D C H I L D R E N F I R S T

SUNY series in Gender Theory Tina Chanter, editor

W O M E N A N D C H I L D R E N F I R S T

Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy

Edited by Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2005 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384

Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Women and children first : feminism, rhetoric, and public policy / edited by Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio. p. cm. — (SUNY series in gender theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6539-X (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6540-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Feminist theory. 2. United States—Social policy—1993– 3. Canada—Social policy I. Meagher, Sharon M. II. DiQuinzio, Patrice, 1955– III. Series.

HQ1190.W653 2005 305.42'01—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2004024569

Acknowledgments

Contents

1. Introduction: Women and Children First Patrice DiQuinzio and Sharon M. Meagher

PART I (Mis)representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions

2. Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse Elizabeth F. Randol

3. Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse around Cohabitation and Single-Motherhood Kirsten Isgro

4. Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights Jennifer A. Reich

PART II Medical Discourses and Social Ills

5. Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex Ellen K. Feder

6. Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation Kelly Oliver

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Contents

PART III Subjects of Violence

7. Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence Sharon M. Meagher

8. Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Advocacy Sally J. Scholz

PART IV Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children

9. Bad Mothers as “Brown” Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance-Abusing Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls Norma L. Buydens

10. Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm Tricha Shivas and Sonya Charles

PART V Protesting Mothers: Politics under the Sign of Motherhood

11. (M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War Tina Managhan

12. Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference Patrice DiQuinzio

List of Contributors

Index

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137

159

183

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Acknowledgments

Both editors would like to thank Tina Chanter, who heard versions of some of the chapters that appear in this book at a Society for Phenom- enology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) conference and encouraged us to develop the panel into a book for her series. We also thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Jane Bunker, SUNY Press Acquisitions Editor, for supporting us in our work and providing suggestions for improvement. We also want to thank each contributing author for their diligence and patience in seeing this project through. Sharon M. Meagher would like to thank her partner Gail McGrew, who consistently has provided the love and support necessary for this project; she knows how to truly put women first. She also thanks student research assistants Sara Shoener and David Fine for their support. She offers this book in dedication and thanks to her parents, Joan and Richard Meagher, on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. This project was completed in part thanks to support from Dean Joseph Dreisbach, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Scranton, who provided research release time for this project. Much thanks also to Patrice DiQuinzio, an able and trustworthy coeditor and colleague. Patrice DiQuinzio thanks her family, especially P. J. and Bernice DiQuinzio, who put her first when it mattered, Tom and Brian Waitzman, the children she puts first in her personal life, and Mary DiQuinzio, a sister in every sense. She also thanks Francesca Coppa and Michael Carbone, dear friends and colleagues, for their invaluable support. And thanks very much to Sharon M. Meagher, an insightful and meticulous coeditor, for the pleasure of working together and for the initiative she took on this project.

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C H A P T E R

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Introduction: Women and Children First

PATRICE DiQUINZIO and SHARON M. MEAGHER

“Women and children first.” James Cameron’s film epicTitanic(1997) reminds us of this phrase that guided the ship’s evacuation policy. His- tory bears witness to the fact that some women and children were saved from the sinking ship when their husbands or fathers were not. But in the film, the women and children are portrayed as ungrateful, and even callous, refusing (except for Molly Brown) to take the lifeboats back to pick up survivors. The essays in this book analyze the rhetoric of a wide range of American and Canadian public policies that propose “to put women and children first.” They uncover a logic of paternalistic treat- ment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary policy discourse, and it affects how people understand, and respond to, those policies and the problems they are meant to address. Cultural discourse shapes, and is shaped by, both aca- demic and public policy discourses. At least since the release of the Moynihan Report in 1965 (U.S. Department of Labor) and the ensuing debates surrounding it, we have become increasingly sensitive to the role of rhetoric in public policy as well as the way that policy rhetoric shapes both popular and academic discourses. The Moynihan Report pathologized black family life and culture, arguing that African-Americans were caught in a cycle of poverty fueled by female-headed households, delinquency, and crime. While the report also included a socioeconomic analysis, civil rights advocates rightly understood that such an analysis would likely be ignored in favor of the “culture of poverty” thesis, given the racist society in which it was received (Rainwater and Yancy 1967). Today, the culture of poverty the- sis is still popular in conservative discourse, where the socioeconomic analysis is ignored and blacks are assigned complete responsibility for their poverty (Curran 2003). This rhetoric of blame and responsibility

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