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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)
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________________________________

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