Linda Alcoff holds one feminism faces a character drama: the category of females try feminism’s first faltering step, however, certain reviews on gender features fragmented the category plus it is not clear exactly how feminists should understand the goals to getting a female (2006, section 5). In reaction, Alcoff grows a free account of gender as the positionality which “gender is actually, among other things, a position one to occupies and you can of which it’s possible to act politically” (2006, 148). In particular, she takes an individual’s societal updates so you can promote the development of specifically gendered identities (or mind-conceptions): “The very subjectivity (or personal experience of becoming a female) plus the extremely name of females are constituted because of the women’s reputation” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff keeps that there is a goal cause for identifying somebody on the grounds of (actual or questioned) reproductive spots:
People is classified because of the advantage of their different dating out-of possibility to biological breeding, with physiological reproduction writing on conceiving, giving birth, and you will breast-eating, associated with the human body. (Alcoff 2006, 172, italics from inside the new)
Thinking would be the fact those individuals standardly classified as the naturally feminine, although they may well not actually manage to duplicate, commonly come across “a different sort of selection of means, standard, and you will thinking regarding reproduction” compared to those standardly categorized while the male (Alcoff 2006, 172).