Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-txr5j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T17:03:40.919Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sophie Doesn't: Families and Counterstories of Self-Trust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Abstract

Girls learn the lesson of cognitive deference most clearly, perhaps, growing up in patriarchal families. Taught to discount their own judgments and to depend on those of the family's dominantmen, they lose self-trust and cannot take themselves seriously as moral deliberators. I argue that through the telling of counterstories, which undermine normative stories of oppression, it is sometimes possible for women to reclaim these families as places where they have cognitive authority.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Addelson, Kathryn Pyne. 1994. Moral passages: Toward a collectivist moral theory. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Alcoff, Linda, and Potter, Elizabeth, eds. 1993. Feminist epistemologies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baier, Annette C. 1986. Trust and antitrust. Ethics 96(1): 231–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenobgy of oppression. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benson, Paul. 1990. Feminist second thoughts about free agency. Hypatia 5(3): 4764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire. 1989. Responsibility and reproach. Ethics 99(2): 389406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire. 1995. Standing for something. journal of Philosophy 92(5): 235–61.10.2307/2940917CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 1991. What can she know? Feminist theory and the construction of knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and punish. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. In and out of harm's way. In The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Freedom CA: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hardwig, John. Forthcoming. Privacy, self‐knowledge, and pluralistic communes: An invitation to the epistemology of the family. In Feminism and families, ed. Nelson, Hilde Lindemann. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Minuchin, Salvador. 1974. Families and family therapy. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Hilde Lindemann. 1995. Resistance and insubordination. Hypatia 10(2): 2340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques. 1979. Emile; or, On education. Trans. Bloom, Allan. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Scheman, Naomi. 1993. Engenderings. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban. Forthcoming a. Feminist skepticism, authority, and transparency. In Moral knowledge? New essays in moral epistemology. ed. Armstrong, Walter Sinnott and Timmons, Mark. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban. Forthcoming b. Picking up pieces: Lives, stories, and integrity. In Feminists rethink the self, ed. Meyers, Diana. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Margaret Urban. 1987. Moral particularity. Metaphilosophy 18(3&4): 171–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1993. Shame and necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar