Reconcilable Differences: Confronting Beauty, Pornography, and the Future of Feminism FROM THE PUBLISHER
This volume examines controversial faultlines in contemporary feminism—pornography, the beauty myth, sadomasochism, prostitution, and the issue of rape—from an original and provocative perspective. Lynn Chancer focuses on how, among many feminists, the concepts of sex and sexism became fragmented and mutually exclusive. Exploring the dichotomy between sex and sexism as it has developed through five current feminist debates, Chancer seeks to forge positions that bridge oppositions between unnecessary (and sometimes unwitting) "either/or" binaries. Chancer's book attempts to incorporate both the need for sexual freedom and the depth of sexist subordination into feminist thought and politics.
FROM THE CRITICS
Tikkun
For Third Wave feminists to suceed at "filling out feminism" by accomodating the broadest range of views, it will be necessary to avoid strategies that foiled Second Wave feminists' attempts at dialogue and activism across sexual differences. This important task is made easier by the recent publication of feminist sociologist Lynn S. Chancer's new book, Reconciliable Differences. Chancer...argues that the future of feminism depends on a more productive attitude toward difference: "Two things must again become possible for feminists both to disagree from within and to focus on effecting the desperately needed changes that require collective action."...According to Chancer, the split within Second Wave feminism can best be understood as a difference of political emphasis—whether to prioritize "sex" or "sexism." These quickly became positioned as mutually exclusive choices: either to focus on the pursuit of sexual freedom, personal power, and individual pleasure in the midst of a hierarchically organized sexist society, or to be committed to fighting social and structural inequality at the expense of individual sources of pleasure and power.
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