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The Subordinated Sex: A History of Attitudes Toward Women
Vern L. Bullough, Brenda Shelton and Sarah SlavinAcclaimed as a pioneering study when first published in 1973, Vern Bullough's work has since established itself as a standard in historical literature on women. Updated and revised with Sarah Slavin and Brenda Shelton, The Subordinated Sex is a vast survey ranging from prehistoric to contemporary times, examining a diversity of cultures, and taking into account writings from a great variety of sources. From a consideration of Babylonian legal codes to Victorian prescriptive medical pamphlets, medieval clerical treatises to Islamic erotic poetry, Bullough and his coauthors recount not only how men have portrayed women but also how they have justified their subordination of the opposite sex.
In recent years, women have successfully challenged males' self-designated role as gatekeepers of written records and have found within the past a more complete view of how women lived, what they thought, and what they achieved. By focusing, however, not on women's history but on the history of men's attitudes toward their female companions, The Subordinated Sex reveals, more than any other single work, the conditions that sparked the feminist movement and the reasons it must inspire a change in the lives of men as well as women.
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Title Page
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Copyright Page
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Dedication
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Table of Contents
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Preface to the Revised Edition
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1. The Background
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2. Formation of Western Attitudes
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3. The Pedestal with a Base of Clay
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4. The “Rise” of Women and the Fall Rome
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5. Christianity, Sex, and Women
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6. Byzantium: Actuality Versus the Ideal
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7. Sex Is Not Enough: Women in Islam
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8. On the Pedestal: The Beginning of the Feminine Mystique
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9. The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same
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10. China and India: Inferiority Is Not Only Western
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11. Role Change and Urbanization
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12. Women in Colonial America
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13. Growth of Feminine Consciousness in the United States and Movement Toward Equality
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14. Biology, Femininity, Sex, and Change
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Postscript
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Notes
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Bibliographical Note
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Index
- 9780820323695 (paperback)