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Women's History essay Joan Scott Joan Scott is one of the leading feminist philosophers today. Her ideas, expressed in Gender and the Politics of History are very good example of feminists approach to history. Basically, Scott says that difference between men and women has no role in defining the historical process. In her view, the notion of womens role in society is socially motivated and has nothing to with two genders being biologically different. These concepts are not new or original feminists always tended to credit genders issue with foremost importance, ignoring scientific data that proves them to be wrong. Joan Scott is no exception she wants to appear logical, yet shes doing a poor job.
We get to realize her true motivations for promoting feminism when she says: My motive was and is one I share with other feminists and it is avowedly political: to point out and change inequalities between women and men. It is a motive, moreover, that feminists share those concerned to change the representation of other groups left out of history because of race, ethnicity and class as well as gender. According to Scott, it is not only that historical disciplines need to be corrected t eliminate its bias towards women, but also the whole principle of attributing genders differences to man and women needs to be disposed with as discriminatory. Gender refers to the historical and cultural constructions of roles assigned to the biological differences and attributes of men and women this phrase is the key to understanding Scotts concept of history. She adopts skepticism as philosophical method, to analyze surrounding reality notions of social nature have relative value to her, as being heavily influenced by peoples perception. The notion of traditional role of genders is nothing but a sexist idea to her she asserts that peoples nature is genderless, and therefore our modern politically correct society needs to part with this notion as such that undermines women as social group, with its own social agenda.
The main fallacy of her concepts is the fact that while trying to sound rational, Scott appears to be overly idealistic while dealing with issues that according to her, need to be addressed from the position of pure logic. She talks of behavioral differences between men and women as been assigned to them socially. Assigned by whom? Obviously by nature, since Scott rejects the idea of higher power behind historical process.
But if is this is so, than it contradicts her idea of biological aspects of difference between genders being secondary. Nowadays, feminism as social philosophy has lost much of its credibility because of its failure to become womens philosophy. Despite of all of its efforts to liberate women, majority of them simply dont want to be freed from male dominance. This effectively proves that biological factors are only the ones that truly define relation between men and women. Scott insists: history's representations of the past construct gender for the present, meaning that social roles, assigned to two genders are products of historical voluntarism. Yet in my opinion, Scott just deals with her own personal problem of feeling unattached from her gender.
Like every other feminist, she simply hides her psychological inadequacy behind shallow philosophizing that describes the thousand years historical process as such that has taken wrong course! In the light of recent discoveries in biology that effectively prove differences between genders on molecular level, Scotts feminist views cannot be considered as having any value by an educated individual. It appears that most of feminism promoters, including Scott, deal with deep-seated complexes basically we talk of men being trapped in womens bodies. Even Scott appearance short haircut, absence of make up, mannish wear style gives away her true motivations for promoting genderless theory. Even though feminism seems to be having another upsurge nowadays, it will inevitably fail like it did before, for being utterly unnatural. One can go great length defying the laws of nature, but these laws will still enjoy the right of final word in the end.
Bibliography: Scott, Joan Wallach. Gender and the Politics of History. Columbia University Press. 1999.
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Research essay sample on Women History Joan Scott
