Famous Feminists K-L

David Kahane: Male Feminism as Oxymoron

Author of Male Feminism As Oxymoron, in Men Doing Feminism, Tom Digby, ed.(1998).

Elizabeth Ann Kaplan

Professor of English and Comparative Studies at State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she also founded and directs the Humanities Institute.

Evelyn Fox Keller: Making Gender Visible in Pursuit of Nature’s Secrets

She received her Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Harvard University, worked for a number of years at the interface of physics and biology, and is now Professor of History and Philosophy of Science in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT. Her current research is on the history and philosophy of developmental biology. She is the author of A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock; Reflections on Gender and Science; Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender and Science; and, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth Century Biology. http://www.womenwriters.net/archives/whittoned1.htm

Michael Kimmel: Who’s Afraid of Men Doing Feminism?

Ynestra King: The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology

An ecofeminist. She does a lot of writing on the subject. "The domination of nature originates in society and therefore must be resolved in society . . . it is the embodied woman as social historical agent, rather than as a product of natural law, who is the subject of ecofeminism . . . In ecofeminism, nature is the central category of analysis. An analysis of the interrelated dominations of nature - psyche and sexuality, human oppression, and nonhuman nature - and the historic position of women in relation to those forms of domination, is the starting point of ecofeminist theory." (Ynestra King, "Healing the Wounds" in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, p. 117.)

Kenneth Kipnis and Milton Diamond: “Pediatric Ethics and the Surgical Assignment of Sex”

Kipnis and Diamond (1998) have identified a number of limitations to clinically managing intersexuality. First, the line that decisively and non-arbitrarily separates male from female is unclear. Second, the psychosocial development of a gender is not alterable in the same manner as the physical genitalia. Third, it is not possible to predict confidently the gender that an intersexed newborn will settle into during adulthood.

Julia Kristeva: Powers of Horror

The psychoanalyst, linguist, semiotician, novelist, and rhetorician, was born in Bulgaria. In 1965, she emigrated to Paris for doctoral studies and joined the "Tel Quel group." As a part of their editorial board, she was exposed to Lacan. In 1990, her novel Les Samourais was published.

Gary Lemons: Reclaiming Feminist Forefather, Becoming Womanist Sons

Listen Up edited by Barbara Findlen

Audre Lorde: Poetry Is Not a Luxury

A writer, an activist, an educator. She held numerous teaching positions and toured the world as a lecturer. She was born in New York to parents of West India heritage. She formed coalitions between Afro-German and Afro-Dutch women, founded a sisterhood in South Africa, began Women of Color Press, and established the St. Croix Women's Coalition. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature.

Maria C. Lugones: Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for The Woman’s Voice

Feminist philosopher, activist, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and of Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture and of Philosophy and of Women's Studies: Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of race and gender at Binghamton University. She collaborated with Pat Alake Rosezelle in Sisterhood and Friendship as Feminist Models. (1993) She co-authored an article with Elizabeth Spelman entitled Have We Got a Theory for You!: Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for 'The Woman's Voice'. Writing separately and together in carefully labeled sections, Lugones and Spelman argue that the central theme of feminist theory--a demand that the woman's voice be heard--is problematic; there is no a single voice that can represent women, but many different voices. By assuming such a unified voice, feminist theory silences the voices of those women who are in the minority. The result is that a majority of more privileged white middle-class women end up theorizing not only about themselves, but also about the lives of women of color and poor women about whom they are relatively ignorant. The authors argue that the only model for writing feminist theory is friendship, which requires both reciprocity and deep knowledge of another woman's life.

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