Laurie Jeanne Shrage

This chapter explores two concerns that are commonly deployed to justify existing criminal sanctions against bigamists and bans that deny polygamists access to civil marriage. Many progressives worry that the practices of bigamy and polygamy promote the subordination of women, while many conservatives worry that sexual relations with more than one partner undermine critical forms of privacy necessary for forming stable marital bonds. It is argued that legal bigamy and polygamy could be structured in ways similar to civil monogamy, so that their impact on gender equality and marital privacy would be, at worst, neutral and, at best, empowering for all involved.

I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world‐old habit; I shall forgive its fighting for a well‐lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; I shall forgive its so‐called “pride of race,” the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust. (W.E.B. DuBois) The assumption that one can privilege gender, in advance, as a category, setting the terms of inclusion without fully considering those for whom gender alone fails to capture the multiplicity of experience, is itself an Orientalist move. (Dorinne Kondo)

In the post‐civil rights era in the United States, it is common to see included in a job announcement a declaration of the following sort: “we are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.” The ideal of equal opportunity has a complex relationship to the idea and practice of affirmative action, which is taken for granted in a typical job ad. I will explore the notion of equal opportunity insofar as it has figured in feminist philosophical writings about practical agendas and programs for change, such as affirmative action, pregnancy and maternity leave, and comparable worth. As the concept of equal opportunity has gained moral and legal authority, social theorists have concentrated on what is practically required to guarantee equal opportunity. Identifying and articulating the practical requirements depends upon some conception of the obstacles to equal opportunity, such as discrimination based on race and sex, poverty, unequal needs and abilities, and so on. I will especially concentrate on how feminist philosophers have grappled with sex‐based discrimination and needs in proposing or advocating programs intended to broaden women's opportunities.

This paper examines an issue at the centre of feminist debates about pornography and sex work, and that is whether these practices reduce women to sex objects. I question the assumption that the expression of sexual desire is unique in its power to degrade and dehumanize persons. I show that this assumption underlies Catharine MacKinnon’s attack on pornography by considering MacKinnon’s intellectual debt to the philosopher Immanuel Kant. I then examine recent discussions of sexual objectification in the philosophical literature and argue that MacKinnon’s adaptation of Kant has flaws comparable to Kant’s original account of sexual desire.

This article argues for separating the institutions of marriage and parenting, conceptually and legally. Marriage is neither necessary nor adequate for fostering cooperative and stable co-parenting. Because promoting marriage fails to protect all children, the state should develop a more suitable formal mechanism whereby co-parents can commit to cooperate in good faith in order to best serve the interests of their children. Like civil marriage, many of the terms of these contracts are aspirational and not enforceable, though they can guide arrangements for custody and financial support. Co-parenting agreements need not be limited to two parents, nor need they be limited to legal parents, but can include de facto parents, such as stepparents, foster parents, and other support parents. One important aim of these agreements is to recognise and support the valuable work that married or unmarried co-parents perform, and to protect the parental rights of caregivers in different kinds of situations.

This paper considers some problems with text-centered psychoanalytic and semiotic approaches to film that have dominated feminist film criticism, and develops an alternative contextual approach. I claim that a contextual approach should explore the interaction of film texts with viewers' culturally formed sensibilities and should attempt to render visible the plurality of meaning in art. I argue that the latter approach will allow us to see the virtues of some classical Hollywood films that the former approach has overlooked, and I demonstrate this thesis with an analysis of the film Christopher Strong.

I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; I shall forgive its so-called “pride of race,” the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust. The assumption that one can privilege gender, in advance, as a category, setting the terms of inclusion without fully considering those for whom gender alone fails to capture the multiplicity of experience, is itself an Orientalist move

Ancient Greek philosophers, medieval theologians, Enlightenment thinkers, and contemporary humanists alike have debated all aspects of human sexuality, including its purpose, permissibility, normalcy, and risks. _Philosophizing About Sex_ provides a philosophical guide to those longstanding and important debates. Each chapter takes a general issue (freedom, privacy, objectification, etc.) and shows how ongoing public discussions of sexuality can be illuminated by careful philosophical investigation. Debates over topics such as sexual assault, sexual orientation, sex education, prostitution, and “sexting” involve larger questions about morality, law, science, and politics and cannot be intelligently discussed in isolation from broader issues. By asking deceptively simple questions, this book shows how difficult but important it is to arrive at satisfying answers.