Linda Alcoff retains you to definitely feminism faces a personality drama: the course of women try feminism’s first step, but some product reviews in the gender have fragmented the course also it isn’t clear just how feminists should comprehend what it is so you’re able to getting a woman (2006, chapter 5). As a result, Alcoff grows a free account out-of gender due to the fact positionality in which “gender was, among other things, a position you to definitely occupies and you will from which one can possibly work politically” (2006, 148). Particularly, she requires an individual’s social status so you’re able to foster the introduction of specifically gendered identities (or worry about-conceptions): “The subjectivity (otherwise personal connection with becoming a female) while the very name of females are constituted by the ladies updates” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff keeps that there is a goal cause for identifying someone due to (actual otherwise requested) reproductive spots:
The thought is that those people standardly classified because naturally feminine, even though they may well not indeed be able to replicate, will stumble on “another selection of practices, requirement, and you may ideas in regard to breeding” compared to those standardly classified given that male (Alcoff 2006, 172). Further, that it differential reference to the potential for reproduction is employed because the cornerstone for some social and you may public phenomena one to condition female and you may men: it can be
the cornerstone out-of many personal segregations, it can engender the introduction of differential different embodiment educated during lives, and it will create numerous types of affective solutions, from pleasure, pleasure, guilt, guilt, feel dissapointed about, or great rest from with successfully prevented breeding. (Alcoff 2006, 172)