Physically frail, badly educated girls, brought up to lead useless lives as idle gentlewomen, married to dominant husbands, and relegated to "separate spheres" of life—these phrases have often been used to describe Victorian upper-middle-class women. M. Jeanne Peterson rejects such formulations and the received wisdom they embody in favor of a careful examination of Victorian ladies and their lives. Focusing on a network of urban professional families over three generations, this book examines the scope and quality of gentlewomen's education, their physical lives, their relationship to money, their experience of family illness and death, and their relationships to men (brothers and friends as well as fathers and husbands). Peterson also examines the prominent place of work in the lives of these "leisured" Victorian ladies, both single and married. Far from idle, the mothers, wives, and daughters of Victorian clergymen, doctors, lawyers, university dons, and others were accomplished and productive members of society who made substantial public and private contributions to virtually every sphere of Victorian life.

This book looks at five major beliefs about woman's nature generally accepted by Western philosophers, theologians, and scientists from the classical period to the nineteenth century. These are that: woman is less perfect than man, woman possesses inferior rational capacities, woman has a defective moral sense, man is the primary creative force, and that woman is in need of control.

This book looks at five major beliefs about woman's nature generally accepted by Western philosophers, theologians, and scientists from the classical period to the nineteenth century. These are that: woman is less perfect than man, woman possesses inferior rational capacities, woman has a defective moral sense, man is the primary creative force, and that woman is in need of control.

A gifted poet, a women's rights activist, and an expert on moral and natural philosophy, Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653) was known throughout Italy as the leading female intellectual of her age. Born into a family of Venetian physicians, she was encouraged to study, and, fortunately, she did not share the fate of many of her female contemporaries, who were forced to join convents or were pressured to marry early. Marinella enjoyed a long literary career, writing mainly religious, epic, and pastoral poetry, and biographies of famous women in both verse and prose. Marinella's masterpiece, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men was first published in 1600, composed at a furious pace in answer to Giusepe Passi's diatribe about women's alleged defects. This polemic displays Marinella's vast knowledge of the Italian poetic tradition and demonstrates her ability to argue against authors of the misogynist tradition from Boccaccio to Torquato Tasso. Trying to effect real social change, Marinella argued that morally, intellectually, and in many other ways, women are superior to men.

This book defends the thesis that Kant’s normative ethics and his practical ethics of sex and marriage can be valuable resources for people engaged in the contemporary debate over same-sex marriage. It does so by first developing a reading of Kant’s normative ethics that explains the way in which Kant’s notions of human moral imperfection unsocial sociability inform his ethical thinking. The book then offers a systematic treatment of Kant’s views of sex and marriage, arguing that Kant’s views are more defensible than some of his critics have made them out to be. Drawing on Kant’s account of marriage and his conception of moral friendship, the book argues that Kant’s ethics can be used to develop a defense of same-sex marriage.

A comprehensive account of the concept of woman in Western thought, from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, to today In her sweeping, three-volume study, Sister Prudence Allen examined how women and men have been defined in relation to one another scientifically, philosophically, and theologically. Now synthesized for students, The Concept of Woman is the ideal textbook for classes on gender in Catholic thought. Allen surveys Greek philosophers, medieval saints, and modern thinkers to trace the development of integral gender complementarity. This doctrine—a living idea according to the criteria of John Henry Newman—affirms the equal dignity of men and women and the synergetic relationship between them. Allen pays special attention to John Paul II’s contributions to this holistic idea of gender. Readers will gain valuable context for current debates over womanhood and come to a greater appreciation of human personhood.

The Sexual Alarm System explores the mental shield that develops around many womens bodies to protect them from real and perceived sexual intrusions and dangers. Leavitt discusses how the Alarm functions, how it develops, what triggers it, and how it interferes with a womans ability to be sexual in an intimate partnership.

The Disability Studies Reader collects, for the first time, representative texts from the newly emerging field of disability studies. This volume represents a major advance in presenting the most important writings about disability with an emphasis on those writers working from a materialist and postmodernist perspective. Drawing together experts in cultural studies, literary criticism, sociology, biology, the visual arts, pedagogy and post-colonial studies, the collection provides a comprehensive approach to the issue of disability. Contributors include Erving Goffman, Susan Sontag, Michelle Fine and Susan Wendell.

Sex, Gender and the Sacred presents a multi-faith, multi-disciplinary collection of essays that explore the interlocking narratives of religion and gender encompassing 4,000 years of history. Contains readings relating to sex and religion that encompass 4,000 years of gender history Features new research in religion and gender across diverse cultures, periods, and religious traditions Presents multi-faith and multi-disciplinary perspectives with significant comparative potential Offers original theories and concepts relating to gender, religion, and sexuality Includes innovative interpretations of the connections between visual, verbal, and material aspects of particular religious traditions

When seeking approaches for sex education, few look to the past for guidance. But Susan K. Freeman's investigation of the classrooms of the 1940s and 1950s offers numerous insights into the potential for sex education to address adolescent challenges, particularly for girls. From rural Toms River, New Jersey, to urban San Diego and many places in between, the use of discussion-based classes fostered an environment that focused less on strictly biological matters of human reproduction and more on the social dimensions of the gendered and sexual worlds that the students inhabited. Although the classes reinforced normative heterosexual gender roles that could prove repressive, the discussion-based approach also emphasized a potentially liberating sense of personal choice and responsibility in young women's relationship decisions. In addition to the biological and psychological underpinnings of normative sexuality, teachers presented girls' sex lives and gendered behavior as critical to the success of American families and, by extension, the entire way of life of American democracy. The approaches of teachers and students were sometimes predictable and other times surprising, yet almost wholly without controversy in the two decades before the so-called Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. Sex Goes to School illuminates the tensions between and among adults and youth attempting to make sense of sex in a society that was then, as much as today, both sex-phobic and sex-saturated.