How Does Joan Scott Only Paradoxes To Offer French Feminism

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Following this trend, Joan Wallach Scott’s Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man attempts to understand French feminism by reading for paradoxes within the actions and doctrines of prominent female activists of women’s rights like Olympe de Gouges in 1789, Jeanne Deroin in 1848, Hubertine Auclert during the Third Republic, and Madeline Pelletier in the 20th century. Scott argues that “feminist agency is paradoxical in its expression” and it is “an effect of ambiguities, inconsistencies, contradictions within particular epistemologies.” This paradox, she claims, is that women who argued for female inclusion in politics were forced to both deny and emphasize sexual difference; in order to justify women enjoying the