Postmodernism: What One Needs to Know

This essay is an introduction to postmodernism and deconstruction as they relate to the special challenges of scholarship and teaching in the science and religion multidiscipline.     

Relationship Satisfaction: Impact and Consequences for Women's Emotional Health and Treatment

This study uses feminist theory to examine the variables of relationship length and relationship satisfaction as predicators of both self-esteem and emotional functioning for women. Using a national sample of data gathered from 1,257 female survey respondents this study found significant relationships between emotional functioning, self-esteem, and self-reported relationship satisfaction which was supported by regression testing and path analysis. In addition, a significant negative relationship was noted between a woman's self-esteem and her with-holding of verbalized displeasure or disagreement with her partner. Implications for women in therapy were discussed.     

Muslims and Meat‐Eating

Religious thinking, including among Muslims, connects food and sex, as well as women and animals; both food practices and gender norms are significant for communal identity and boundary construction. Female bodies (properly covered) and animal bodies (properly slaughtered) serve as potent signifiers of Muslim identity, as patriarchal thought sustains the hierarchical cosmologies that affirm male dominance in family and society and allow humans to view animals as legitimately subject to human violence. I argue that Muslims in the industrialized West—especially those concerned with gender justice—ought to be vegetarians and that feminist ethics provides underutilized resources for Muslim thinking about ethics generally and food ethics in particular. Much contemporary Muslim thought about meat is at least as concerned with demonstrating the primacy of “Islamic” identity as with general questions about the formation of virtuous subjects and the development of good societies. This defensive concern with religious authenticity poses a stumbling block to richer thinking. Engagement with non‐Islamic (though not “un‐Islamic”) ethics provides a model for productive dialogue and engagement among parties who disagree about basic presumptions but agree on desirable outcomes, including the development of individuals' ethical sensibilities and the construction of societies conducive to human flourishing.     

Is Therapeutic Alliance Influenced by a Feminist Approach to Therapy?

Although the feminist critique of marriage and family therapy has been a significant part of the literature for many years, its impact has been blunted by two criticisms. The first suggests that the feminist critique lacks empirical support. The second suggests that the feminist critique promotes an alliance with women clients at the expense of men. The first criticism has been addressed in recent years. The present study examined the relationship between feminist principles and therapeutic alliance. Results suggest that feminist principles actually enhance therapeutic relationship for men clients but has no effect on therapeutic relationship for women clients.of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program     

Christ as Chrism,Christ Given Away

This article develops the concept of Christ not as static body but as chrism for bodies. Christ as chrism travels in the matrix of relationality, on a vector toward the benefit of others. Conceptualizing christ as chrism potentially avoids both exclusionary and colonizing tendencies in Christian polity, and frames a Christian ethics that, while vulnerable and risky, marks the sanctity of the one giving Christ away.     

Rehabilitating Self-Sacrifice: Care Ethics and the Politics of Resistance

ABSTRACT

How should feminists view acts of self-sacrifice performed by women? According to a long-standing critique of care ethics such acts ought to be viewed with scepticism. Care ethics, it is claimed, celebrates acts of self-sacrifice on the part of carers and in doing so encourages women to choose caring for others over their own self-development. In doing so, care ethics frustrates attempts to liberate women from the oppression of patriarchy. Care ethicists have responded to this critique by noting limits on the level, form, or scope of self-sacrifice that work to restrict its role in their theories. While we do not here take issue with the initial feminist critiques of self-sacrifice, we suspect that the strategies offered by Care ethicists in response are importantly flawed. Specifically, these responses undervalue the positive roles that self-sacrifice can play in fighting patriarchal oppression. As a result, in attempting to restrict an oppressive norm, these responses risk foreclosing on valuable means of resistance. Our aim is to explore these positive roles for self-sacrifice and thereby rehabilitate its standing with feminists.     

‘Disempowered by Nature’: Spinoza on The Political Capabilities of Women

This paper examines Spinoza's remarks on women in the Political Treatise in the context of his views in the Ethics about human community and similitude. Although these remarks appear to exclude women from democratic participation on the basis of essential incapacities, I aim to show that Spinoza intended these remarks not as true statements, but as prompts for critical consideration of the place of women in the progressive democratic polity. In common with other scholars, I argue that women, in Spinoza's system, are deprived of freedom and political participation not by their essential natures, but by their social and historical circumstances. I differ from other scholars, however, in basing this conclusion on the different critical functions of the Political Treatise and the Ethics. Following that critical comparison, I consider Spinoza's views on the `natural right' of women and their equal capacity for political participation in terms of his arguments for the compositional similarity of men and women. Finally, I argue that Spinoza offers an explanation for women's actual disempowerment through his account of economic dependence within marriage.     

Editorial

No abstract available for this article.     

Conceptualizations of Social Class in Afrtican American Women:

This article addresses the multiple definitions of social class in African American people and how the therapist's understanding of these definitions is important in therapeutic interventions with African American women. The article discusses: (a) the traditional ways in which social class has been defined in social science and the limits of these conceptualizations; (b) the multiple definitions of class within the African American community; and (c) treatment concerns for African American women based on class issues. Clinicians working with African American and other women who vary by class should be able to assess how class variables influence their therapeutic interventions with these women.     

Women on the Ropes

Although the ropes course has been used for many "special populations" it can be used as a powerful tool for learning and increasing self-awareness and esteem for many women in our society. Sexism and oppression of women create internal and external fears and mistrust. Leadership development is stifled in some women while others feel the pressure of having to lead. The all-women's ropes course experience presents an opportunity forwomen to explore these fears, build trust in themselves and others, and try out their leaderhsip skills within a safe and supportive environment. Women gain a new sense of possibility through the experience of seeing other women do what society says we should not be doing.