Sex, Gender, and the Body The Student Edition of What Is a Woman [Paperback]

This affordable, compact edition, designed specially for use in university courses, consists of two of the most celebrated essays from Toril Moi's highly-acclaimedWhat Is a Woman?

What is a woman? Does it make sense to think of a woman as the combination of sex and gender? Is I am a woman the same kind of declaration as I am a man ? What does it mean to speak as a woman ? In these essays Moi rethinks the contribution of Simone de Beauvoir to feminist theory, and shows thatThe Second Sex, properly read, offers inspiring solutions to urgent contemporary problems. By suggesting that we think of the body as a situation, the first essay offers a serious challenge to dominant poststructuralist theories of sex and gender. The second essay investigates the place of the personal in theory. What is the status of references to personal experiences, or to one's person (one's race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality) in theoretical debates? Both essays provide, in vivid and compelling detail, a third way for feminism, beyond the current stalemate between essentialism and constructionism. This is a major and truly original contribution to feminist theory.

Introduction
1. What Is a Woman? Sex, Gender, and the Body in Feminist Theory
2. 'I Am a Woman': The Personal and the Philosophical

In these two essays Moi goes beyond her previous writings and shows the reader in great detail how Beauvoir can help us get past the stagnation that has come to characterize feminist theory. They provide, in vivid and compelling detail, a 'third way' for feminism. --Nancy Bauer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University

Each of the two chapters offers a very well-constructed argument that clarifies an important issue in contemporary feminism. Toril Moi has a very high public profile, and the quality of these essays shows her reputation is based on substance. --Emily R. Grosholz, Associate Professor of Philosophy, PennsylvanialC*