The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America

Bloch, R. Howard

doi:10.1086/494385

Cited by 133 publications

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“…6 Helen Haste argues that the idea of gender difference serves as a sort of master metaphor that gives meaning to myriad dualities at the center of Western culture, including public-private, rational-intuitive, active-passive, hard-soft, thinking-feeling, and many more (1993). On the role of gender ideals in the politics of the American founding and early republic, see Kann (1998), Kerber (1986), Kang (2009), andBloch (1987). characteristics such as greedy, hostile, and self-interested, and stereotypes of women include negative traits like spineless and gullible.…”

Section: Masculinity and Femininity In American Culture And Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

2010

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During the past three decades Americans have come to view the parties increasingly in gendered terms of masculinity and femininity. Utilizing three decades of American National Election Studies data and the results of a cognitive reaction-time experiment, this paper demonstrates empirically that these connections between party images and gender stereotypes have been forged at the explicit level of the traits that Americans associate with each party, and also at the implicit level of unconscious cognitive connections between gender and party stereotypes. These connections between the parties and masculinity and femininity have important implications for citizens' political cognition and for the study of American political behavior.Over the past 40 years American society has experienced huge and controversial shifts in women's rights and in men's and women's roles. Over this period the two major political parties have presented substantially different gender images to the public: they have polarized on women's rights and abortion, female candidates have become both more common and more likely to be Democrats, a gender gap has Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the

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Section: Masculinity and Femininity In American Culture And Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

2010

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“…In all of these ways, moreover, gymnastics appeared to intensively prepare US women and girls to undertake their (quasi-)civic charge as guarantors of public virtuewhich was conceptualized increasingly as a product of private benevolence and personal manners -while reinvigorating aspects of Republican motherhood. [156] Conclusions Nancy Struna, as we know, has contextualized nineteenth-century gymnastics for US women within the historical development of a separate sphere of women's sport 1294 A. Chisholm conducted in 'private settings' that ultimately were sanctioned by the cult of domesticity -a concept that was not divorced entirely from public implications or manifestations. [157] This essay has elaborated Struna's assertions by examining discourses that advanced gymnastics for US women between 1830 and 1870 in relation to two sites of proposed and actual institutionalization respectively: within families and within single-sex secondary schools conceptualized in terms of familial structures that were largely defined by the dynamics of maternal care.…”

Section: Housework and Mannersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gymnastics and the reconstitution of Republican motherhood among true women of civic virtue, 1830–1870

Chisholm¹

2006

The International Journal of the History of Sport

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“…Similarly, according to Jan Lewis (1998: 62), the leaders of the early republic believed that female passions or 'affections' were crucial to binding together society, as long as such emotions did not become too intense nor spill over into the public realm. Ultimately, as Ruth Bloch (1987) traces, women even became the guardians of republican virtue in the private sphere, freeing up men to pursue their individual economic interests in the public sphere. This liberal conception was a far cry from Bolívar's commitment to the classical association of virtue with public masculinity.…”

Section: Bolívar's Proposals In Comparative Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The centrality of virtue to republican philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been widely analysed, and in recent decades feminist scholars have explored its gendered nature (Bloch 1987;Blum 1986;Zerilli 1994).1 Equally ubiquitous in the political texts of the period are references to the role of passions as the motivation of human action, and yet their significance and meaning has been much less studied (Hirschman 1997). A major concern of statesmen in Europe and the Americas during this revolutionary period was how to establish governments that could survive factionalism and would devolve neither into tyranny nor anarchy: controlling men's passions was seen as the key.…”

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confidence: 99%

Masculine Virtues and Feminine Passions: Gender and Race in the Republicanism of Simón Bolívar

Chambers¹

2006

Hispanic Research Journal

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This article explores how gender and race infused meanings of the key concepts of virtue and passion in the writings of Simón Bolívar (1783Bolívar ( -1830. Even when coding dangerous passions as feminine, Bolívar was chiefly concerned with masculinity. Influenced by European moral philosophy, he believed that the passions of vengeance, jealousy, and ambition, which held sway over weak civilian politicians and ambitious men of colour, gave rise to political factions that threatened national order. His solution was to inculcate republican morality in the citizenry through institutions such as a hereditary senate, a moral power, or a chamber of censors. Such political ideas and models of masculinity, rooted in classical republicanism, differed from liberalism's faith that if men were free to pursue their economic interests, the passions would neutralize each other. Although Bolívar's most radical proposals were not enacted, his moralizing goals were widely shared and shaped Spanish American political traditions.Usurpations by the rich, robbery by the poor, and the unbridled passions of both, suppressed the cries of natural compassion and the still feeble voice of justice, and filled men with avarice, ambition, and vice. (Rousseau 1973: 87) In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. (The Federalist No. 55, in Hamilton, Madison & Jay 2003: 270) Cuando los sucesos no están asegurados, cuando el Estado es débil, y cuando las empresas son remotas, todos los hombres vacilan; las opiniones dividen, las pasiones las agitan, y los enemigos las animan para triunfar por este fácil medio. (La carta de Jamaica, Bolívar 1984, I: 174)

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The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America

Cited by 133 publications

References 0 publications

Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

Gymnastics and the reconstitution of Republican motherhood among true women of civic virtue, 1830–1870

Masculine Virtues and Feminine Passions: Gender and Race in the Republicanism of Simón Bolívar

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