Self-sacrificing mothers and forgiving wives, caretaking lesbians, and vigilant maternal surrogates-these good women are all familiar figures in the visual and print culture relating to AIDS. In a probing critique of that culture, Katie Hogan demonstrates ways in which literary and popular works use the classic image of the nurturing female to render queer AIDS more acceptable, while consigning women to conventional roles and reinforcing the idea that everyone with this disease is somehow suspect.In times of crisis, the figure of the idealized woman who is modest and selfless has repeatedly surfaced in Western culture as a balm and a source of comfort-and as a means of mediating controversial issues. Drawing on examples from journalism, medical discourse, fiction, drama, film, television, and documentaries, Hogan describes how texts on AIDS reproduce this historically entrenched paradigm of sacrifice and care, a paradigm that reinforces biases about race and sexuality. Hogan believes that the growing nostalgia for women's traditional roles has deflected attention away from women's own health needs. Throughout her book, she depicts caretaking as a fundamental human obligation, but one that currently falls primarily to those members of society with the least power. Only by rejecting the stereotype of the good woman, she says, can Americans begin to view caretaking as the responsibility of the entire society.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Cornell University Press
ISBN-13
9780801487538
eBay Product ID (ePID)
96750757
Product Key Features
Author
Katie Hogan
Publication Name
Women Take Care: Gender, Race, and the Culture of Aids