Feminist Philosophy of Disability: A Genealogical Intervention

This article is a feminist intervention into the ways that disability is researched and represented in philosophy at present. Nevertheless, some of the claims that I make over the course of the article are also pertinent to the marginalization in philosophy of other areas of inquiry, including philosophy of race, feminist philosophy more broadly, indigenous philosophies, and LGBTQI philosophy. Although the discipline of philosophy largely continues to operate under the guise of neutrality, rationality, and objectivity, the institutionalized structure of the discipline implicitly and explicitly promotes certain ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies as bona fide philosophy, while casting the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of marginalized philosophies as mere simulacra of allegedly fundamental ways of knowing and doing philosophy and thus rendering these marginalized philosophies more or less expendable. This article is designed to show that legitimized philosophical discourses are vital mechanisms in the problematization of disability.     

Feminist Interventions: Accountability Beyond Symptom Reduction

Feminist interventions to facilitate women's psychological well-being are forging new pathways to achieving the goals of the Decade of Behavior. In emphasizing the complex interplay between internal and external factors in women's lives, feminist interventions are designed to promote women's safety, health, positive life styles, personal strength, competence, and resilience. In contrast, prevailing medical models locate the problem within the woman by concentrating on diagnosis and treatment of pathology and internal disorders. I offer a model here for implementing and assessing intervention strategies that targets both the effects of unsupportive or negative environments and the imperative to strengthen and empower girls and women, their families, and their communities. The obligation to be accountable for the outcomes of feminist interventions encompasses a major focus of this article. Evolving developments in research on accountability are reviewed in relation to conceptualization, goal setting, and assessment of feminist interventions. I encourage continuing collaboration between the feminist-informed research and practitioner communities to promote women's health, safety, and well-being in the Decade of Behavior.     

Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist Practice

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception’ of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.     

Beyond Revolt: A Horizon for Feminist Ethics

The suggestion here is that casting the project of feminist ethics in confrontational language, rooted in a rebellion picture of moral epistemology, impedes the further development of that very project. Four commonplace examples are offered to make this suggestion plausible. I urge instead a pluralistic approach to styles of moral thinking and propose that the project of feminist ethics would be better served by casting it in the language of reconciliation.     

Self-Determination and Empowerment: A Feminist Standpoint Analysis of Talk about Disability

In this paper we offer a feminist analysis of talk about self-determination and empowerment in the context of disability, focusing on the case of developmental disabilities. We find strains of the same patterns feminist epistemologists have argued shape the organization of formal knowledge from the standpoint of the privileged. At the extreme, people with developmental disabilities appear as objects without selves, outside of the context of interpersonal and social structural relationships that constrain who they can be by defining them as other, often in multiple and interacting ways. Empowerment, from the dominant standpoint, becomes an abstract attribute or condition; something a person has or does not have. Taking the standpoint of women and other marginalized people offers a view of self-determination as a person's development of his or her self. Empowerment becomes a potential characteristic of a social relationship, one that facilitates the development of someone's self. The most empowering relationships are mutual, recognizing and building on the diverse contributions and needs of participants in ways that seek to minimize inequalities over time. The reason some of us are self-determining is that we are in interpersonal and social structural relationships that empower us. To construct interpersonal and social structural relationships that empower people with developmental disabilities requires challenging the way dominant conceptualizations of independence and productivity also express the standpoint of the privileged. The standpoint of women allows all of us to talk more of how we connect with and facilitate one another's developing selves within communities.     

尊严平等与关怀:女性主义生命伦理学

女性主义生命伦理学试图从根本上颠覆男尊女卑的传统伦理观念,倡导从制度层面确保女性独立的社会地位,捍卫女性权利与尊严.女性主义生命伦理学还以其特有的关怀主义特征,呼吁性别平等,强调人文关怀,注重社会公平,成为构建和谐社会的重要理论思潮.     

Scholarship on Gender and Sport in Sex Roles and Beyond

In this paper we critically review how research on girls or women and sport has developed over the last 35 years. We use a post-positivist lens to explore the content of the papers published in Sex Roles in the area of women, gender and sport and examine the shifts in how gender and sport have been conceptualized in these accounts. In order to initiate a broader dialogue about the scholarly analysis of gender and sport, we subsequently explore ideas inspired by feminist theorizing that have dominated/guided related research in other outlets over this time period but have received relatively little attention in papers published in Sex Roles. We conclude by briefly making suggestions for further research in this area.     

Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies

In his contribution, “Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies,” Robert McRuer calls for the recognition of the points of convergence between AIDS theory, queer theory, and disability theory. McRuer points out ways in which minority identity groups such as people with AIDS, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and those with so-called disabilities, whose status has been described by others as “impaired,” have resisted this judgment by calling its ideological underpinnings into question. He contends that a critical alliance between AIDS theory, queer theory, and disability theory will ultimately help us to realize the full range of different kinds of bodies and corporeal experiences, while also combating the application of normativizing judgments.     

Building Bridges: Teresa of Avila and self psychology

Utilizing concepts from self psychology, the author demonstrates the ways in which God functioned as a selfobject for Teresa of Avila. In addition, parallels are drawn between the spiritual journey as described by Teresa of Avila and the psychotherapeutic journey. Building bridges between the psychological and spiritual realms of experience can greatly increase our understanding of each, and enable us to help our clients become more integrated, whole persons.     

Attitudes of Health Care Trainees About Genetics and Disability: Issues of Access, Health Care Communication, and Decision Making

Prior studies suggest that knowledge and attitudes of health care professionals influence patient communication and medical decision making. To study this dynamic in the context of genetic disability, we developed a survey on health professionals' attitudes regarding disability and genetic screening and pilot-tested it on a sample of medical students, residents, and genetic counseling students (N = 85). Despite minimal experience with disability or genetics, most respondents reported feeling comfortable dealing with genetics (59%) and disability (75%). The majority felt that disability caused significant suffering for both the person (51%) and family (64%), and that research should be directed toward preventing genetic disability (62%). Similar to prior literature, perceived Quality of Life was most often based on degrees of physical and cognitive functioning, pain, and social support. However, differences were found between genetic counseling trainees and other medical trainees in their relative emphasis of social versus medical issues in questions of disability and genetic testing, and these response patterns were associated with differences in the groups' priorities for offering information about social resources. Respondents agreed that access to genetic testing and information is personal and that testing should be available upon request for oneself (68%) and to a lesser degree for one's fetus (55%) or child (41%). However, the same individuals frequently stated that society should regulate access to such technologies. Although most felt that the patient and professional should jointly make such decisions on a case-by-case basis, it was also seen as appropriate for the health care professional to occasionally decline genetic testing. It seems apparent that training and experience influence knowledge and attitudes. Therefore, it is critical to document knowledge and attitudes of various health care providers and trainees, including differences between various specialties, to improve educational interventions geared to this area.     

Medical Education and Disability Studies

The biomedicalist conceptualization of disablement as a personal medical tragedy has been criticized by disability studies scholars for discounting the difference between disability and impairment and the ways disability is produced by socio-environmental factors. This paper discusses prospects for partnerships between disability studies teaching/research and medical education; addresses some of the themes around the necessity of critical disability studies training for medical students; and examines a selection of issues and themes that have arisen from disability education courses within medical schools globally. The paper concludes that providing there is a commitment from senior management, universities are well positioned to apply both vertical and horizontal approaches to teaching disability studies to medical students.     

Disability as Abject: Kristeva,Disability, and Resistance

In this essay, I develop an account of disability exclusion that, though inspired by Julia Kristeva, diverges from her account in several important ways. I first offer a brief interpretation of Kristeva's essays “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and … Vulnerability” and “A Tragedy and a Dream: Disability Revisited” and, using this interpretation, I assess certain criticisms of Kristeva's position made by Jan Grue in his “Rhetorics of Difference: Julia Kristeva and Disability.” I then argue that Kristeva's concept of abjection, especially as developed by Sara Ahmed and Tina Chanter, offers important insights into disability oppression; Ahmed's and Chanter's contributions improve upon Kristeva's account. Understanding disability as abject helps to explain both resistances to interacting with disabled others and ways to resist disability oppression. Finally, I argue that understanding disability as abject is preferable to recent deployments of Lacanian theory in disability studies and that this account is compatible with social models of disability.     

Affirmation and Care: A Feminist Account of Bullying and Bullying Prevention

Despite the amount of attention that activists, educators, psychologists, and the media place on bullying and bullying prevention, there has been no sustained philosophical reflection on bullying, nor has there been a feminist analysis of the growing literature on bullying. This essay seeks to satisfy those two needs. The first section is a broad introduction to the literature on bullying. I define bullying and distinguish it from teasing, sassing, roughhousing, and other more benign interactions. I also outline two common solutions to bullying: zero‐tolerance policies and “ecological” interventions. The second section uses feminist ethics of care to analyze the effectiveness of each approach. I argue that ecological approaches to bullying are preferable to zero‐tolerance policies because they operate on a relational model of the self and identity‐formation. I elaborate a notion of affirmation as the mechanism that stabilizes and solidifies our sense of self across time. I then use affirmation to analyze three things: why people bully one another, the specific harm inflicted by bullying, and why ecological approaches are more effective in reducing bullying. The third section uses my account of affirmation to critique the scientism and troublingly gendered assumptions that underlie much of the work on bullying.