The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women

In an inventive and controversial collection of essays, sociologist Susan Krieger considers the many forms of wealth, both material and emotional, that women pass on to each other. This domestic heritage--the "family silver"--is the keystone for a discussion of mother-daughter relationships, intimate relationships between lesbians, ties between students and feminist teachers, the dilemmas of women in academia as well as in the broader work world, and the importance of female separatism. Drawing on her experiences as a lesbian, a feminist, and a teacher, Krieger presents a stunning critique of higher education. She argues for acknowledging gender in all areas of women's lives and for valuing women's inner realities and outer forms of expression. Krieger has developed a distinctly feminist approach to understanding and scholarship. Her style is self-revelatory, emotional, and at the same time deeply analytical. Her essays pioneer a new method of locating, defining, and honoring female values. The Family Silver includes a thought-provoking discussion of gender roles among women, including the author's experience of being mistaken for a man; an exploration of teaching in a feminist classroom; and a description of the controversy that resulted when the author refused to allow a hostile male student to take one of her courses. Beautifully written,The Family Silver addresses issues of central concern to feminists, postmodernists, and queer theorists and encourages new insights into how gender profoundly affects us all.

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Title of ebook: The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women
ISBN: 9780520900967
Publisher: University of California Press
Internet download file size: 1612 kb
Released online for download: 10-01-1996
Author of eBook: Krieger, Susan

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The Family Silver

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Gender Roles Among Women

I AM INTERESTED IN HOW ideas about gender organize identity and social relationships among women. Perhaps because I am a lesbian and have noticed how women who are lesbian adopt one gender role or the other (female or male), then discard it, combine roles, and act in ways that confuse me, I feel a need to come to better terms with the use of gender roles by women. Why am I fascinated, confused, repulsed, and drawn in when a woman acts like a stereotypical man, or like a stereotypical woman, for instance? Why do I hate, at one moment, to see stereotypical gender roles among women, and then take satisfaction from seeing these same roles the next?

Do I want to be a woman or a man? To be seen as a woman or a man? Do I have to be seen as one or the other? Do I have to choose; do I have a choice? Do people like me because I am a woman, or because I am a woman who is also like a man? Do I really know which gender I am? Why do I perpetuate a rigid gender system despite my wishes to the contrary, saying, with my choice of women, that gender really does define pe ... read full excerpt from The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women ebook

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