Questions for September 29

from WIAS
  1. Why is it impportant to consider the implications of difference when studying Women's Studies?
  2. Explain the double-image of women in Western society, often called the "Mother-Whore dichotomy."
  3. What is the contradiction inherent in the concept of the "domestic angel"?
  4. Are stereotypes the same for all women? Give an example that supports your answer.
  5. Sapiro discusses four approaches to understanding the simultaneous effects of multiple "-isms." Which of these four models does she most closely agree with?
  6. Explain how and why, in today's American society, white people can forget their race while members of other racial groups cannot. What are two consequences of this?
from FTMC
  1. hooks names three entities that perpetuate sexism. Name two of them.
  2. Explain hooks' notion of false Sisterhood; give a brief description of what it looks like.
  3. According to hooks, on what should women base their shared bonding?
  4. According to hooks, how is sexism expressed between women?
  5. Why does hooks believe that racism is a feminist issue?
  6. When hooks intimates that suffering does not equal oppression, what does she mean by this?
  7. How does hooks distinguish the terms "solidarity" and "support"?
  8. According to hooks, what is the benefit of code switching?
from FT
  1. Using no more than one sentence for each selection, identify the main ideas of each of today's readings (selections 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31). You may want to make a habit of doing this for all readings in this book -- the original intended audience of these writings were not college students, and they may take a bit more effort on your part to comprehend.
  2. According to Sanger, in an ideal society, whose concern would birth control be?
  3. Write a fictional response that you think would best express hooks' reaction to Sanger's writing that "a free race cannot be born out of slave mothers."
  4. According to Woolf, what two things do women need in order to be independent?
  5. On which side of the nature-nurture debate would Mead most likely fall? Give an example from her writing that supports your answer.
  6. On which side of the nature-nurture debate would de Beauvoir most likely fall? Give an example from her writing that supports your answer.
  7. Explain what de Beauvoir means when she writes "every female human being is not necessarily a woman."
  8. Explain one of the ways that, according to de Beauvoir, men profit from the alterity of women.
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