Women and children first : feminism, rhetoric, and public policy / edited by Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: women and children first / Patrice DiQuinzio and Sharon M. Meagher -- Homeland security and the co-optation of feminist discourse / Elizabeth F. Randol -- Unsanctioned (bedroom) commitments: the 2000 U.S. Census discourse around cohabitation and single-motherhood / Kirsten Isgro -- Enemies of the state: poor white mothers and the discourse of universal human rights / Jennifer A. Reich -- Fixing sex: medical discourse and the management of intersex / Ellen K. Feder -- Social melancholy, shame, and sublimation / Kelly Oliver -- Predators and protectors: the rhetoric of school violence / Sharon M. Meagher -- Battered Woman Syndrome: locating the subject amidst the advocacy / Sally J. Scholz -- Bad mothers as "brown" mothers in western Canadian policy discourse: substance-abusing mothers and sexually exploited girls / Norma L. Buydens -- Behind bars or up on a pedestal: motherhood and fetal harm / Tricha Shivas and Sonya Charles -- (M)others, biopolitics, and the Gulf War / Tina Managhan -- Love and reason in the public sphere: maternalist civic engagement and the dilemma of difference / Patrice DiQuinzio.

Print version record.

"This diverse collection explores the rhetoric of a wide range of public policies that propose "to put women and children first," including homeland security, school violence, gun control, medical intervention of intersex infants, and policies that aim to distinguish "good" from "bad" mothers. Using various feminist philosophical analyses, the contributors uncover a logic of paternalistic treatment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary popular policy discourse and affects the way that people understand and respond to social and political issues. Contributors rethink basic philosophical assumptions concerning subjectivity, difference, and dualistic logic in order to read the rhetoric of contemporary public policy discourse and develop new ways of talking and acting in the policy domain."--Jacket.

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