Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-r5d9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-18T10:47:08.236Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking about the Plurality of Genders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Cheshire Calhoun
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Linda Nicholson argues that because gender is socially constructed, feminist theorizing must be about an expansive multiplicity of subjects called “woman” that bear a family resemblance to each other. But why did feminism expand its category of analysis to apply to all cultures and time periods when social constructionism led lesbian and gay studies to narrow the categories “homosexual” and “lesbian”? And given the multiplicity of genders, why insist that feminist subjects are different, resembling women rather than a multiplicity including women as well as not-women and not-men?

Information

Type
Author Greets Critics
Information
Hypatia , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Spring 2001 , pp. 67 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Card, Claudia. 1985. Lesbian choices. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Arnold. 1992. Sex and the emergence of sexuality.In Forms of desire: Sexual orientation and the social constructionist controversy, ed. Stein, Edward. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Feinberg, Leslie. 1993. Stone butch blues: A novel. Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books.Google Scholar
Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Linda. 1999. The play of reason: From the modern to the postmodern. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. Inessential woman: Problems o/exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Wittig, Monique. 1992. One is not born a woman. In The straight mind and other essays. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar