From jlo@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu Tue Jan 3 11:20:20 MST 1995 Date: Tue, 03 Jan 1995 13:23:39 EST From: JUDITH LORBER To: MATFEM@CSF.COLORADO.EDU Subject: ORDER INFO -- PARADOXES OF GENDER IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ORDERING LORBER, PARADOXES OF GENDER -- ISBN 0-300-05807-1 $30 (20% academic discount) Yale University Press Box 209040 New Haven, CT 06520-9040 203-432-0960 PAPERBACK VERSION WILL BE OUT SEPT 1995 _________________________________________________________________________ Judith Lorber Sociology, CUNY Graduate School 33 West 42 Street, NY, NY 10036 212-642-2416 FAX:212-642-2420 JLO@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU From jlo@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu Tue Jan 3 11:21:01 MST 1995 Date: Tue, 03 Jan 1995 13:22:57 EST From: JUDITH LORBER To: MATFEM@CSF.COLORADO.EDU Subject: NEW BOOK NEW BOOK -- Lorber, Judith: PARADOXES OF GENDER, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994 Paradoxes of Gender presents a new paradigm of gender -- gender as a social institution. Its focus is the analysis of gender as a social structure that has its origins in the development of human culture, not biology or procreative differences. Like any social institution, gender exhibits both universal features and chronological and cross- cultural variation and affects individual lives in major ways. As an institution, gender's history can be traced, its structure can be examined, and its changing effects can be researched. Paradoxes of Gender challenges what is taken for granted about sex, sexuality, and gender, arguing that there are many mixes of chromosomes and genitalia, that many people have a variety of sexual identities during their lifetime, and that the sexes, sexualities, and genders are separately constructed categories. Western ideology takes biology as the cause, and behavior and social statuses as the effects, and then proceeds to construct biological dichotomies in order to justify the "naturalness" of gendered behavior and gendered social statuses. What we see is what we believe: two biological sexes producing two genders that are either heterosexual or homosexual. The process, however, goes the other way: gender constructs social bodies to be different and unequal and intersects with sexuality to produce a multiplicity of "opposites". The content of the two sets of constructed social categories, "females and males", "heterosexual and homosexual", "women and men" is so varied that their use in research without further specification renders the results spurious. The concept of gender in this book differs from previous conceptualizations in that it is not located it in the individual or in interpersonal relations, although the construction and maintenance of gender are manifest in personal identities and in social interaction. Rather, gender is main building block of social orders that is wholly socially constructed. The whole point of the gender system today is to maintain structured gender inequality -- to produce a subordinate class (women) that cen be exploited as workers, sexual partners, and emotional nurturers. The book ends with the question of whether a society can have gender (the system that produces invidious differences) and equality. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION What aspects of gender make it a full-fledged social institution? What is paradoxical about gender processes and effects? PART I. PRODUCING GENDER CHAPTER 1. "NIGHT TO HIS DAY": THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER What is gender? In what ways can we say that gender is socially constructed? Why is the production of difference essential to gender? How fluid are gender categories? What are the components of gender? How do these components produce gender as a social institution? CHAPTER 2. BELIEVING IS SEEING: BIOLOGY AS IDEOLOGY Why is gender different from sex? Are biological and physiological differences between women and men socially created, in that they are "marked" for attention? How does gender affect such physiologically based phenomena like illness, sports, physical labor, and technical competence? How is biology used to justify women's secondary social status? CHAPTER 3. HOW MANY OPPOSITES? GENDERED SEXUALITY Given the variety of sexual behaviors and relationships, why do we speak of only two "opposite sexes"? How have heterosexuality and homosexuality been constructed in Western cultures? In non-Western cultures? What is the relationship in Western societies between sexuality and violence? What is the connection in our culture between the social domination of men and masculine sexuality, and between the social oppression of women and feminine sexuality? CHAPTER 4. MEN AS WOMEN AND WOMEN AS MEN: DISRUPTING GENDER How do hermaphrodites, pseudohermaphrodites, transsexuals, transvestites, and bisexuals disrupt Western culture's belief in two sexes, two sexualities, and two genders, fixed for life? CHAPTER 5. WAITING FOR THE GODDESS: CULTURAL IMAGES OF GENDER How are the meanings of male and female, feminine and masculine produced in myths and in high and popular culture? How can women producers of culture change images of gender? PART II. GENDER IN PRACTICE CHAPTER 6. OUT OF EDEN: THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF GENDER How did humans become socially gendered? Why? What is the interconnection among gender, kinship, and the division of labor in non-industrial societies? Is male dominance universal? What are the conditions under which women become significantly unequal? CHAPTER 7. ROCKING THE CRADLE: GENDERED PARENTING Is there a natural division of labor in parenting? If there isn't, why are women usually the primary parent? Do single fathers parent differently? Do homosexual parents? Do parents in dual-career marriages? Will the new procreative technologies disrupt parenting as we know it, or will they be used to perpetuate the gendered family? What are the emotional consequences of the gendered division of parenting for women and men? Is the gender order internalized in women by holding them hostages through parenting? CHAPTER 8. DAILY BREAD: GENDER AND DOMESTIC LABOR Why are women primarily responsible for domestic labor in modern societies, even in dual-career families? What is the relationship between production, social reproduction, property, and work for the family? How do race, class, and gender stratification structure domestic labor? Under what circumstances do men do housework? CHAPTER 9. SEPARATE AND NOT EQUAL: THE GENDERED DIVISION OF PAID WORK In what ways are work organizations gendered? Why is the division of labor by gender endemic, pervasive, and virtually ineradicable in modern societies? If jobs can't be desegregated, will a wage scale based on the worth of jobs be a solution to gender inequalities in the marketplace? How can the worth of women's and men's jobs be measured and compared? In what ways is work throughout the world gendered? Why are women, and particularly women of color, necessary for capital accumulation? Are women the world over "the last colony"? PART III. THE POLITICS OF GENDER CHAPTER 10. GUARDING THE GATES: THE MICROPOLITICS OF GENDER Why are there so few women in positions of power and prestige? How is the "glass ceiling" produced? What is the effect of the "mommy track" on women's career mobility? What happens when women can't be excluded from the workplace and don't choose to put family before career, but instead become men's competitors? Are men so much more acceptable in positions of authority because women "do power" differently? What is the relationship between sexual harassment and gender discrimination? CHAPTER 11. THE VISIBLE HAND: GENDER, LAW, AND THE STATE In what ways does the state, through policies and law, perpetuate the gender system? Why haven't women leaders affected the position of women in their countries? Why haven't women ever benefited from revolutions? Why haven't women who participated in revolutions been central in governing after the revolution? How did Russia and China subvert their gender-egalitarian constitutions? CHAPTER 12. DISMANTLING NOAH'S ARK: GENDER AND EQUALITY Can a social order exist without gender categories, gender differences, a gendered division of labor in the home and in the marketplace? If a gender system is not necessary to social orders, why do gender systems persist historically, pervade institutions, and dominate everyday life? Who does gender as a social institution serve? What would it take to dismantle gender? To structure a social order for equality? BIBLIOGRAPHY -- 100 PAGES  _________________________________________________________________________ Judith Lorber Sociology, CUNY Graduate School 33 West 42 Street, NY, NY 10036 212-642-2416 FAX:212-642-2420 JLO@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU From gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU Tue Jan 3 12:06:52 MST 1995 Date: Tue, 3 Jan 1995 12:11:20 -0700 (MST) From: Martha Gimenez To: matfem@csf.Colorado.EDU Subject: Gender Issues (FWD) I am forwarding this message on behalf of Judith Lorber. _________________________________________________________________________ Does anyone know anything about soc.gender-issues? If you subscribe could you please forward me subscribing info? Thanks. JL _________________________________________________________________________ Judith Lorber Sociology, CUNY Graduate School 33 West 42 Street, NY, NY 10036 212-642-2416 FAX:212-642-2420 JLO@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU From gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU Fri Jan 6 12:03:20 MST 1995 From: INGRAHAM@ALBNYVMS.BITNET Date: Fri, 06 Jan 1995 14:08:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: Book recommendation! To: matfem@csf.colorado.EDU From: IN%"gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU" 31-DEC-1994 12:42:39.12 CC: Subj: RE: Book Announcement (fwd) Return-path: by albnyvms.BITNET (PMDF V4.3-7 #5424) 31 Dec 1994 10:40:51 -0700 (MST) Date: Sat, 31 Dec 1994 10:35:55 -0700 From: Martha Gimenez Subject: Re: Book Announcement (fwd) Sender: psn@csf.colorado.EDU Reply-to: gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU Originator: psn@csf.colorado.edu Precedence: bulk X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK I am forwarding this message on behalf of Rick Wolff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MARXISM IN THE POSTMODERN AGE: Confronting the New World Order is a book of readings of altogether new work by over 50 Marxists in all kinds of areas/topics. Edited by Antonio Callari, Stephen Cullenberg, and Carole Biewener, it is worth reading, debating, and using in course teaching (as I am doing with great results). It is available in paperback from Guilford Publications in New York. I ordered it by calling their 800 number (800-365-7006) and using a credit card. The essays could readily be used as bases for a worthwhile discussion over this network. Rick Wolff From gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU Fri Jan 6 12:04:33 MST 1995 From: INGRAHAM@ALBNYVMS.BITNET Date: Fri, 06 Jan 1995 14:09:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: Linda Gordon on welfare reform To: matfem@csf.colorado.EDU From: IN%"gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU" 31-DEC-1994 12:46:44.22 CC: Subj: RE: Opposition to Republican Welfare Proposal (fwd) Return-path: by albnyvms.BITNET (PMDF V4.3-7 #5424) 31 Dec 1994 10:44:50 -0700 (MST) Date: Sat, 31 Dec 1994 10:39:41 -0700 From: Martha Gimenez Subject: Re: Opposition to Republican Welfare Proposal (fwd) Sender: psn@csf.colorado.EDU Reply-to: gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU Originator: psn@csf.colorado.edu Precedence: bulk X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK I am forwarding this message on behalf of Celia Winkler. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thought this would be of interest to psners. Celia Winkler cwinkler@oregon.uoregon.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 06:55:36 -0500 (EST) >From:LIZ@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU Subject: Opposition to Republican Welfare Proposal I don't think this has been crossposted to our list and surely we want to know and act on it. liz mcculloch ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Dec 1994 11:06 -0500 (CDT) >From: Linda Gordon Univ of Wis >From: IN%"EKITTAY@ccmail.sunysb.edu" "Eva F Kittay" To: ilgordon@macc.wisc.edu A WAKE-UP CALL TO WOMEN THE REPUBLICAN WELFARE PROPOSAL: REFORM? OR DESTRUCTION? **CHILDREN BORN TO YOUNG UNWED MOTHERS WILL BE DENIED AID PERMANENTLY: Unmarried women under eighteen who have children out of wedlock will be denied welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFDC) benefits and housing assistance. The child born out of wedlock remains ineligible for cash assistance for the *entirety* of his or her life, unless the mother marries the father or a man who will adopt the child. States have the option of expanding denial to children born out-of-wedlock to women under 21. **INELIGIBILITY FOR CHILDREN WHOSE PATERNITY HAS NOT BEEN ESTABLISHED: The children of women 18 to 21 born out-of- wedlock will be permanently denied assistance unless the mother succeeds in establishing the child's paternity. The only exceptions are women who have been the victim of rape or incest. **INELIGIBILITY FOR CHILDREN BORN TO AFDC PARENTS: *Any* child born to an AFDC recipient and *any* child born to an individual who received AFDC at any time during the ten month period ending with the birth of the child will be denied aid. ** DROP-DEAD TIME-LIMITS: Anyone who has received aid for 60 months, taking effect immediately, becomes permanently ineligible for AFDC. States can choose to end AFDC after two years if an individual had participated in a work program for at least one year. This is a *lifetime* time- limit with *no exceptions.* If this bill were to take immediate effect, this provision would permanently disqualify *nearly half* of the women and children now receiving assistance. Where do these propositions come from? They are among the key provisions of the PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT, the Republican proposal for welfare reform. It is a direct assault on the right of women to control their own sexuality; to establish families free of abusive relations; and to survive outside of the patriarchical families favored by the Conservative Right. If Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans have their way, it will reach the House floor for a vote in less than two months. Most Americans have little knowledge of the Draconian measures that the bill contains. Below are some more of the main provisions of the bill. They should outrage all Americans. To feminists, however, the bill is of special urgency. This bill affects poor women and children. They are the most vulnerable and hence most easily targeted for control. But this is only the first step of an agenda aimed at women s gains in controlling their own sexuality and family arrangements. If we do not support the most vulnerable women now, all women will soon face the consequences of a meaner, more repressive, and more patriarchical society. The Personal Responsibility Act is part of the Contract for America. The contract consists of ten far-reaching bills introduced by Republican members of the House of Representatives. They have vowed to vote on all within the first 100 days of the new Congress. Welfare reform is on the fastest of these fast track items: to be introduced into subcommitte by JANUARY 5 and to be on the floor of the House by FEBRUARY 1. The bill primarily concerns the state and federally financed cash grants, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), that are the mainstay of impoverished families. Here are some more of the alarming measures. **OUT-OF-WEDLOCK CHILDBEARING PROVISIONS: *RETROACTIVE PROVISIONS: Women who had children when they were under 18 (or in some states, under 21), prior to the passage of this bill, will become ineligible once the bill took effect, as will the child born to the young mother out- of-wedock. Those currently receiving AFDC will not be terminated, but if they go off assistance, they will lose eligibility. *MONEY FOR ORPHANAGES, BUT NOT ABORTIONS: Money saved from these provisions will be returned to the states as a block grant that can be used for orphanages, pregnancy prevention, homes for unwed mothers, but not for abortion services or counselling. *DENIAL OF MEDICAL SERVICES TO AFDC MOTHERS: Since AFDC and Medicaid are linked, these mothers can not get medicaid coverage. Only children will remain covered because medicaid eligibility has been extended to all poor children born after September 1983. **WORK REQUIREMENTS EXCEEDING ANY STATE-TESTED PROGRAMS *Work requirements for participants are 35 hours per week in exchange for benefits. In a median state, a parent receives $367 per month. Earnings will then be $2.43 per hour. *Working for less than 30 hours per week will not count. Nor will participation in education, training or fulltime job-search. *No categories of recipients are exempt from the work requirement, such as parents who are caring for disabled children or who are temporarily disabled themselves. **DENIAL OF ASSISTANCE TO *LEGAL* IMMIGRANTS *Most legal immigrants will become ineligible for 60 federally-assisted programs including non-emergency Medicaid services, community health centers, family planning, child welfare services, foster care and adoption assistance, school lunches, elderly nutrition, immunization, lead poisoning screening and referral, job training, housing assistance, emergency food and shelter and child care. **SPENDING CAPS ENDING ENTITLEMENTS *The federal government now must match all allowable state AFDC spending. The Republican proposal will instead set a yearly state allocation, disallowing flexibility for economic or demographic contingencies. *Individual welfare entitlements will also be terminated. AFDC, Supplementary Security Income, Child Support Enforcement and At-Risk Child Care will no longer be entitlement programs. *What if state funds are insufficient? The options include states imposing waiting lists, or imposing cross-the board benefit cuts, and ending assistance to categories of persons. You are urged to: Write your House and Senate representatives; Call the White House; Organize delegations to meet with your Congressperson and Senator in their home offices; Contact Congresspersons who also oppose the bill. **Tell them that you are opposed to welfare reform measures that shred the safety net for poor women and children. **ACT NOW. Organize Teach-Ins for the first weeks of the Spring semester. For more information on the proposed legislation, contact: Coalition on Human Values 202-342-0726 Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law 212-633-6967 Center on Law and Social Policy 202-328-5140 Let us speak as women who support women and children on welfare. Eva Feder Kittay, Professor, CUNY, Stony Brook and Francis Fox Piven From INGRAHAM@ALBNYVMS.BITNET Sun Jan 8 12:25:04 MST 1995 From: INGRAHAM@ALBNYVMS.BITNET Date: Sun, 08 Jan 1995 14:30:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Materialist perspectives on social movements To: matfem@csf.colorado.EDU Dear all...I am about to teach a course on social movements and am quite stunned by what appears to be a serious lack of books on theories of social movements/change. Can anyone make some recommendations or comment on this topic? Thanks Chrys Ingraham Ingraham@albnyvms From socjacx@gsusgi2.gsu.edu Mon Jan 9 20:43:32 MST 1995 Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 22:32:57 -0500 (EST) From: "Jamie A. Carboy" Subject: Response to Social Movements question (fwd) To: matfem@csf.colorado.edu I had trouble sending this message directly to Ingraham, so I am doing a general post... please disregard if you are not interested in social movement theory... Thanks! JAC ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 12:22:11 -0500 (EST) From: Jamie A. Carboy To: INGRAM%ALBNYVMS.BITNET@VAXF.Colorado.EDU Subject: Response to Social Movements question Hello! In response to your question concerning social movements, I have a few suggestions: Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. 1979. Cambridge University Press. This book provides a structural approach to revolution, looking at the state as the central element. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. 1985. University of Chicago Press. McAdam basically illustrates the current statement in Social Movements: Resource Mobilization Theory (although he labels it something different, it's really the same), utilizing resources to create mobilization for social action. Another text which also uses Resource Mob. to examine both the women's suffrage movement and the "second wave" women's movement of the sixties is: Steven M. Buechler, Women's Movements in the United States. (I think it's Rutgers U. Press). Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society. 1989. Temple U. Press. This book highlights "new social movement theory" which takes a post modern approach. Morris and Mueller, Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. 1992. Yale U. Press. Incorporates Resource Mob. theories with structuralist theory. Also, these names might be helpful: Marx: the Communist Manifesto, German Ideology de Tocqueville: study of the French revolution Hannah Arendt: On Revolution, 1965 Smelser: rational choice theory Hope this has been helpful... If you have any further questions please feel free to e-mail me! Jaimie Ann Carboy socjacx@gsusgi2.gsu.edu From rleidner@sas.upenn.edu Tue Jan 10 10:10:52 MST 1995 Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 17:15:16 GMT To: matfem@csf.colorado.edu From: rleidner@sas.upenn.edu (Robin Leidner) Subject: Re: Materialist perspectives on social movements >Dear all...I am about to teach a course on social movements and am >quite stunned by what appears to be a serious lack of books on theories >of social movements/change. Can anyone make some recommendations or >comment on this topic? >Thanks >Chrys Ingraham >Ingraham@albnyvms Dear Chrys Ingraham: Have you looked at _Frontiers in Social Movement Theory_? It's quite a good anthology edited by Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (Yale Univ Press, 1992). I taught a course on Women and Political Activism last year, and found one anthology especially helpful: _Women and Social Protest_, eds. Guida West and Rhoda Blumberg, 1990. If you think the syllabus for that course would be helpful, I'll try to e-mail it. Robin Leidner, Sociology, U. of Penn From INGRAHAM@ALBNYVMS.BITNET Tue Jan 10 11:16:53 MST 1995 From: INGRAHAM@ALBNYVMS.BITNET Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 13:22:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Materialist perspectives on social movements To: matfem@csf.colorado.EDU And how!!!! Please email me your syllabus. I was going to use the Morris and Mueller book but found it too much for what we're going to do in class. But i didn't know about the West and Blumber book. Right now I'm planning to use a small Prentice Hall text on theory and several case studies in the form of Twayne Publishers books: civil rights, gay/lesbian rights and the Routledge book on Feminism and the Women's Movement. I'm not happy with most of the the choices and have found the theory work somewhat uninspiring. How about a syllabus exchange and we can give each other comments. Thanks...Chrys From gimenez@csf.Colorado.EDU Sat Jan 28 13:03:28 MST 1995 Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 13:03:26 -0700 (MST) From: Martha Gimenez To: matfem@csf.Colorado.EDU Subject: Women-Online: a new mailing list! (fwd) I am forwarding an announcement about a list that promises to be quite useful, not only as a forum to discuss women's issues but also as a source of information and support for women interested in strengthening their skills to use the internet. meet you there ! :-) Martha E. Gimenez Sociology University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO 80309 303-492-7080/6427 ____________________________________________ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 00:51:17 -0800 (PST) From: Jennifer Gagliardi To: hangout@wwire.net Subject: Women-Online: a new mailing list! (fwd) From: The List Mistress Subject: Women-Online: a new mailing list! Here's the info file on a new list of interest to women. **Please post this note wherever women are online!** To subscribe to women-online, send an email address to: listserv@netcom.com with ONLY these words in the body of your message: subscribe women-online firstname lastname emailaddress. <--- fill in the appropriate names/emails here, of course! Women-Online is a women ONLY mailing list designed to meet the needs of women who have questions about a wide variety of internet related issues, from the basics of email and gopher to the more advanced commands for UNIX. It is my hope that women of all levels of internet/computer expertise will join the list so that this can be a true "helping" space as well as a resource for information about women's issues on the internet. Discussions topics will include not only questions/answers about "how to's" but also comments/analyses of gender and sexism on the net and the possibilities of gender-neutral cyberspace. Please feel free to foward to the list any information you think is directly related to women and the internet, such as lists of www sites and internet mailing lists for women/feminists. Men who want to send info. to the list may do so by sending their messages to me privately and I'll forward them (if they're relavent, of course!) Since any discussion of the internet also entails a discussion of computers, questions/posts about basic Macintosh, Windows, or DOS functions/applications are also welcome. The main motivation behind the creation of this list is the fact that women are vastly under-represented on the internet, due to a variety of societal pressures (another topic of conversation?), and it is my aim to provide a service to help empower women to use the 'Net both for fun and for research, business, whatever. I will soon be opening a Macintosh/Internet consulting service for women in San Francisco, most likely under the name of Women Online, and I encourage other small business types (not in SF of course!) to consider doing something similar. The internet is the power-tool of the future, and this is our chance to achieve gender equity early on!! If you have any questions about the list, you can contact me (the listowner) at: owner-women-online@netcom.com Please feel free to distribute copies of this info file wherever you think women will read it, even if it means printing it out and distribuing PAPER copies ! Your cybersister, Amy Goodloe ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Amy T. Goodloe ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The List Mistress ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ lesac-net * ba-cyberdykes * lesbian-studies * women-online ~~~ ~~~ send message: info to listserv@netcom.com ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ agoodloe@netcom.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ lesac profile #30 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~