262 books match the query 'Sex role' and 3 start with l

cover of Like a Captive Bird: Gender and Virtue in Plutarch

Like a Captive Bird

Gender and Virtue in Plutarch

Lunette Warren

Lever Press, 2023

The full extent of Plutarch’s moral educational program remains largely understudied, at least in those aspects pertaining to women and the gendered other. As a result, scholarship on his views on women have differed significantly in their conclusions, with some scholars suggesting that he is overwhelmingly positive towards women and marriage and perhaps even a “precursor to feminism,”  and others arguing that he was rather negative on the issue. Like a Captive Bird: Gender and Virtue in Plutarch is an examination of these educational methods employed in Plutarch’s work to regulate the expression of gender identity in women and men. In six chapters, author Lunette Warren analyzes Plutarch’s ideas about women and gender in Moralia and Lives. The book examines the divergences between real and ideal, the aims and methods of moral philosophy and psychagogic practice as they relate to identity formation, and Plutarch’s theoretical philosophy and metaphysics. 

Warren argues that gender is a flexible mode of being that expresses a relation between body and soul, and that gender and virtue are inextricably entwined. Plutarch’s expression of gender is also an expression of a moral condition that signifies relationships of power, Warren claims, especially power relationships between the husband and wife. Uncovered in these texts is evidence of a redistribution of power, which allows some women to dominate other women and, in rare cases, men too. Like a Captive Bird offers a unique and fresh interpretation of Plutarch’s metaphysics which centers gender as one of the organizational principles of nature. It is aimed at scholars of Plutarch, ancient philosophy, and ancient gender studies, especially those who are interested in feminist studies of antiquity.

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cover of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability

Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt

Navigating the Margins of Respectability

By L. L. Wynn

University of Texas Press, 2018

Cairo is a city obsessed with honor and respectability—and love affairs. Sara, a working-class woman, has an affair with a married man and becomes pregnant, only to be abandoned by him; Ayah and Zeid, a respectably engaged couple, argue over whether Ayah’s friend is a prostitute or a virgin; Malak, a European belly dancer who sometimes gets paid for sex, wants to be loved by a man who won’t treat her like a whore just because she’s a dancer; and Alia, a Christian banker who left her abusive husband, is the mistress of a wealthy Muslim man, Haroun, who encourages business by hosting risqué parties for other men and their mistresses.

Set in transnational Cairo over two decades, Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt is an ethnography that explores female respectability, male honor, and Western theories and fantasies about Arab society. L. L. Wynn uses stories of love affairs to interrogate three areas of classic anthropological theory: mimesis, kinship, and gift. She develops a broad picture of how individuals love and desire within a cultural and political system that structures the possibilities of, and penalties for, going against sexual and gender norms. Wynn demonstrates that love is at once a moral horizon, an attribute that “naturally” inheres in particular social relations, a social phenomenon strengthened through cultural concepts of gift and kinship, and an emotion deeply felt and desired by individuals.

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cover of L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women

L’Honnête Femme

The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women

Jacques Du Bosc

Iter Press, 2014

I heartily recommend this translation and edition of the two works by Jacques Du Bosc. The introduction provides a solid, erudite entry to Du Bosc and his world, with a clear emphasis on the gender issues central to the Other Voice. Especially good is the detailed study ofthe reception of these works. Moreover, the translation is clear and readable. A great deal of work was required to transform the periodic sentences and paragraphs of seventeenthcentury French prose into an English work that is so readable and lucid for a contemporary reader who is not a specialist in the field. The long, informative titles to the essays and letters (already transparent in the table of contents) further situate material that can seem obscure to a contemporary reader. The informative notes, especially the biographical tags and the excellent use of Furetière to explore ambiguous or archaic phrases, illuminate a world that would otherwise seem opaque to many contemporary readers.
—Reverend John J. Conley, SJ
Knott Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University Maryland
 
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