Linda Alcoff holds you to definitely feminism faces a character drama: the course of females is actually feminism’s first rung on the ladder, but certain ratings throughout the gender possess disconnected the class and it isn’t clear how feminists should understand the goals to help you be a woman (2006, section 5). In response, Alcoff expands a merchant account of gender given that positionality whereby “gender was, among other things, a situation you to definitely occupies and you may at which one can possibly work politically” (2006, 148). Particularly, she requires your personal standing in order to promote the introduction of especially gendered identities (otherwise care about-conceptions): “The subjectivity (otherwise subjective experience of are a woman) while the extremely label of females was constituted because of the ladies’ status” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff holds that there’s a goal basis for determining people on the basis of (actual otherwise requested) reproductive positions:
The thought is the fact those individuals standardly categorized because biologically feminine, while they might not in fact be able to replicate, commonly run into “a new set of strategies, standard, and attitude regarding breeding” as opposed to those standardly classified since the men (Alcoff 2006, 172). Next, it differential relation to the potential for reproduction is utilized once the the foundation for the majority of social and you can personal phenomena you to definitely condition feminine and you will dudes: it could be
the basis away from a number of social segregations, it will engender the introduction of differential kinds of embodiment experienced during lives, and it may make a wide variety of affective responses, regarding pleasure, joy, shame, guilt, regret, otherwise high relief from having successfully avoided breeding. (Alcoff 2006, 172)