I think there are problems with the framing of the conference call, but 
not exactly the one that Emanuela Bianchi points to.  Rather, taking the 
comma seriously ("there are women, who are being harmed...."), along 
with the rest of the text, I think the intent is to argue that the core 
idea of feminism is that women exist as an identifiable group and that 
they/we (i.e., all women) are being harmed and are in need of help 
(presumably collective self-help).

naomi scheman

Norlock, Kathryn J wrote:
> It is interesting to hear another perspective, since I took the same statement ["who...need help"] so differently.  I have been working hard in two different classes this semester to bring (mostly white, mostly male) philosophy students around to more sympathetically reading arguments that all humans are dependent, that self-sufficiency is neither possible nor a desirable ideal, and that needing help is entirely compatible with having agency.  So the idea at the core seems essentially correct to me.
>  
> Kathryn J. Norlock
> Associate Professor of Philosophy
> St. Mary's College of Maryland
> 18952 E. Fisher Rd.
> St. Mary's City, MD 20686
> 240-895-4337 (ph)
> 240-895-4436 (fax)
> [log in to unmask]
>  
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Feminist ethics and social theory on behalf of Emanuela Bianchi
> Sent: Thu 11/20/2008 9:55 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Feminism is simple?
>
>
>
> I find the following statement (among others) extremely
> problematic in the recently circulated SWIP-UK call for papers for the
> conference "Feminism Made Simple": " At [feminism's] core,
> it needs the idea that there are women, who are being harmed and need
> help."  This gesture seems to repeat (as much recent transnational work
> has brought to our attention) stereotypes of women (possibly poor,
> disenfranchised, uneducated, domesticated, brown and black, duped and
> tricked) who are without agency and who require "our" (presumptively
> white, Western, neo-Imperialist, and "liberated") hand to lift them from
> their condition.
>  On a day when the British Home Secretary has announced that paying for
> sex with illegally trafficked women will be treated as rape (thereby
> erasing any possibility of agency on the part of the sex worker), I find
> this statement particularly disturbing.   A cursory glance at Chandra
> Mohanty's
> "Under Western Eyes" or recent work on the global sex industry such as
> Kamala Kempadoo and Joe Doezema' _Global Sex Workers: Rights,
> Resistance, and Redefinition_ or Laura Maria Agustin's _Sex at the
> Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry_ shows that
> the need for feminists in the academy to listen to and respond to
> subaltern voices is more pressing than ever.  The necessity to attend to
> and respect the very epistemic marginality(ies?) we theorize as
> feminists is a far from simple matter.
>
> Best,
> Emma
> --
>   Emanuela Bianchi
>   Visiting Assistant Professor
>   Department of Philosophy
>   Haverford College
>  
>   

-- 

Naomi Scheman, Professor of Philosophy and of Gender, Women's, & 
Sexuality Studies

Director of Graduate Studies in Feminist Studies

University of Minnesota

Philosophy Department, 801 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis MN 
55455

612-625-3430, 612-626-8380 (fax), [log in to unmask]

http://www.philosophy.umn.edu/TrustworthyExpertise/home.html