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“Women”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2023

Kimberly Cox
Affiliation:
Chadron State College, Nebraska, United States; Siena College, New York, United States; North Carolina Wesleyan University, United States; Depauw University, Indiana, United States
Shannon Draucker
Affiliation:
Chadron State College, Nebraska, United States; Siena College, New York, United States; North Carolina Wesleyan University, United States; Depauw University, Indiana, United States
Doreen Thierauf
Affiliation:
Chadron State College, Nebraska, United States; Siena College, New York, United States; North Carolina Wesleyan University, United States; Depauw University, Indiana, United States
Victoria Wiet
Affiliation:
Chadron State College, Nebraska, United States; Siena College, New York, United States; North Carolina Wesleyan University, United States; Depauw University, Indiana, United States

Abstract

This keyword essay on "women" responds to heated debates surrounding the term “pregnant person” in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision and argues for the continued usefulness of “women” to Victorian studies. While “pregnant person” allows institutions and thinkers to signal their recognition that the population requiring reproductive services includes trans men and nonbinary people, the curtailment of reproductive rights is often fueled by misogyny, which cannot be conceptualized without “women” as a category. Here, we are witnessing the reemergence of a field of discursive tension: between the coalitional power of the term “women” as used by feminists, on one hand, and the feminist goal to normalize inclusive language to honor and make visible marginalized experiences, on the other. We want to highlight that, first, such categories need not be mutually exclusive and that, second, the category “women” remains relevant to Victorian studies. We advocate not for the ascendancy of the term “women,” nor its dominance over other, crucial terms such as “trans” and “queer,” but simply for keeping “women” in play. Doing so makes space for strategic forms of coalition, historically precise scholarship, the recognition of trans women's identities, and intersectional analyses.

Type
Keywords Redux
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Helen Lewis, “Why I'll Keep Saying ‘Pregnant Woman,’” Atlantic, Oct. 26, 2021, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/pregnant-women-people-feminism-language/620468.

2. Lewis, “Why I'll Keep.”

3. Hager, Lisa, “A Case for a Trans Studies Turn in Victorian Studies: ‘Female Husbands’ of the Nineteenth Century,” Victorian Review 44, no. 1 (2018): 3754CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joyce, Simon, LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Grosz, Elizabeth, “Criticism, Feminism and the Institution. An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,” Thesis Eleven 10/11, no. 1 (1985): 185Google Scholar.

5. Stryker, Susan, “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory's Evil Twin,” GLQ 10, no. 2 (2004): 212Google Scholar.

6. Serano, Julia, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Cypress: Seal, 2007), 11Google Scholar.

7. Serano, Whipping Girl, 13, 16.

8. Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, and Amy Wong, “Undisciplining Victorian Studies,” LARB, July 10, 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/undisciplining-victorian-studies.

9. Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 15.