Early women’s education advocates kept reason masculine and only expanded the feminine sphere
Evidence
These new discourses on women and on knowledge did not challenge men’s exclusive capacity for Reason. Rather, appropriating the very meaning system that subordinated them, these white middle class women stressed that due to women’s essential reproductive function—her body— education for women would differ as much from that of men as her “character and duties” differed from men’s. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 708
Categorization
- QUESTION: This double-edged move — gaining education by reinscribing women as bodily/reproductive — is worth chasing into how similar tradeoffs recur in later feminist and ecofeminist education.
- XREF: Parallels how colonized/subordinated groups in the polyad texts redeploy the master’s categories to gain entry without dismantling them. — connects to: Gender is constructed meaning assigned to sex, not given by biology — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 673; The Cult of True Womanhood redeployed subordinating metaphors to justify women’s education — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 704; Exalting feminine intuition instead of reason damaged the feminist cause
Broader Connections
- The Cult of True Womanhood redeployed subordinating metaphors to justify women’s education
#qualifies(0.75) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 704 - Exalting feminine intuition instead of reason damaged the feminist cause
#expands(0.70)