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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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39. See Alcoff, "Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism," 325; also see Harding,
Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?
, 185. For more on the ways in which defining the socially constructed parameters of a feminist cognitive framework escapes both relativism and objectivism, see Mary Hawkesworth, "Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth," in Malson et al.,
Feminist Theory in Practice and Process
, 32751.
40. I have based this summary of the context for the development of an adequate feminist philosophy of sex on Carole S. Vance and Ann Barr Snitow, "Toward a Conversation about Sex in Feminism: A Modest Proposal," in Ferguson et al., "Forum," 135.
41. See Harding, "The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory," 19.
Chapter 2
1. See Deirdre English, "The Fear That Feminism Will Free Men First," in
Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality
, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 480; Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs,
Remaking Love: The Feminization of Sex
(New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1986), 170, quoting a
Cosmopolitan
reader: "In the past a man used to have to offer a relationship in order to get sex. Tat for tit. But now, since so many women give sex so freely, the
 
Page 227
men offer nothingand we women must accept this, even if we don't like it. Throughout the centuries women have gotten the short end of the stick. We're still getting it."
2. See Kathleen Barry,
Female Sexual Slavery
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1979).
3. See Marilyn Murphy,
Are You Girls Traveling Alone?: Adventures in Lesbianic Logic
(Los Angeles: Clothespin Fever Press, 1991); Irena Klepfisz, "they're always curious," in Snitow et al.,
Powers of Desire
, 228; Paul Gregory, "Against Couples,"
Journal of Applied Philosophy
1, no. 2 (1984): 26368.
4. See Naomi Wolf,
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women
(New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1991), 28488; Ehrenreich et al.,
Remaking Love
, chap. 5.
5. For the function that sexual exclusivity in monogamous marriage serves under patriarchy, see Shulamith Firestone,
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
(New York: Bantam Books, 1970); Kate Millett,
Sexual Politics
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970); Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, eds.,
Radical Feminism
(New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973). For excellent overviews of both the radical and conservative backlash to sexual liberation, often referred to as "the sexual counterrevolution," see Steven Seidman,
Embattled Eros: Sexual Politics and Ethics in Contemporary America
(New York: Routledge, 1992), chaps. 2 and 3, and Ehrenreich et al.,
Remaking Love
, chap. 6. For ways in which the AIDS epidemic has fueled this backlash, see Seidman,
Embattled Eros
, chap. 4, and chapter 2 in this book, "Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases."
6. Seidman,
Embattled Eros
, chap. 3; also see the selections in Snitow et al.,
Powers of Desire
, and in Carol S. Vance, ed.,
Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality
(London: Pandora Press, 1989).
7. Frederick Elliston, whose analysis I take to task in the pages that follow, is one of the few philosophers in the last twenty years who has written a detailed conceptual and moral analysis of sexual promiscuity; see his "In Defense of Promiscuity," in
Philosophy and Sex
, ed. Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1975), 22243. This article does not appear in the second edition of Baker and Elliston,
Philosophy and Sex
(1984).
8. Elliston uses the example of a married man widowed two times or more to show the dangers of trying to stipulate a numerical criterion for promiscuity, "In Defense of Promiscuity," 224.
9. Our "craving for generality" that prompts the philosophically dangerous search for such definitions is discussed in Ludwig Wittgenstein,
The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the "Philosophical Investigations"
(New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1965), 1719. For a discussion of how the resemblances, but not identity, among English language uses of a single term mark out the particular contexts of its use and so the "language game" in which the term appears, see Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 67, 11, 19, 3134, 48.
10. Examples of using the notion of family resemblance to do conceptual analysis in the philosophy of sex can be found in Janice Moulton, "Sexual Behavior: Another Position," in
The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings
, 2d ed., ed. Alan Soble (Savage, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 6371; Richard Wasserstrom, "Is Adultery Immoral?," in Baker and Elliston,
Philosophy and Sex
(1984),1023.
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