The ABC TV series The Bionic Woman, created by Kenneth Johnson, was a 1970s pop culture phenomenon. Starring Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, the groundbreaking series follows Jaime's evolution from a young woman vulnerable to an exploitative social order, to a fierce individualist defying a government that sees her as property. Beneath the action-packed surface of Jaime's battles with Fembots, themes such as the chosen family, technophobia, class passing, the cyborg, artificial beings, and a growing racial consciousness receive a sophisticated treatment. This book links the series to precedents such as classical mythology, first-wave feminist literature, and the Hollywood woman's film, to place The Bionic Woman in a tradition of feminist ethics deeply concerned with female autonomy, community, and the rights of nonhuman animals. Seen through the lens of feminist philosophy and gender studies, Jaime's constantly changing disguises, attempts to pass as human, and struggles to accept her new bionic abilities offer provocative engagement with issues of identity. Jaime Sommers is a feminist icon who continues to speak to women and queer audiences, and her struggles and triumphs resonate with a worldwide fanbase that still remains enthralled and represented by The Bionic Woman.

The ABC TV series The Bionic Woman, created by Kenneth Johnson, was a 1970s pop culture phenomenon. Starring Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, the groundbreaking series follows Jaime's evolution from a young woman vulnerable to an exploitative social order, to a fierce individualist defying a government that sees her as property. Beneath the action-packed surface of Jaime's battles with Fembots, themes such as the chosen family, technophobia, class passing, the cyborg, artificial beings, and a growing racial consciousness receive a sophisticated treatment. This book links the series to precedents such as classical mythology, first-wave feminist literature, and the Hollywood woman's film, to place The Bionic Woman in a tradition of feminist ethics deeply concerned with female autonomy, community, and the rights of nonhuman animals. Seen through the lens of feminist philosophy and gender studies, Jaime's constantly changing disguises, attempts to pass as human, and struggles to accept her new bionic abilities offer provocative engagement with issues of identity. Jaime Sommers is a feminist icon who continues to speak to women and queer audiences, and her struggles and triumphs resonate with a worldwide fanbase that still remains enthralled and represented by The Bionic Woman.

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than reproduction. Feminism & Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction aims to counterbalance this one-sided approach. A breakthrough volume of original essays authored by leading figures in bioethics and feminist theory, it moves beyond reproduction and nursing, taking bioethics into new territory. The book starts with an investigation of the relationship between feminism and bioethics and introduces different approaches to the problem. Chapters stress the importance of liberal feminism which prefers feminist over feminine analysis, integrate the experience of women of color, draw from the women's self-help movement, and apply feminist standpoint theory. In the second part of the book, contributors view various bioethical problems from a feminist perspective: euthanasia, AIDS, the definition of health, doctor-patient communication, the Human Genome Project, the conduct of biomedical research, and health care reform. They examine the pros and cons of the application of gender and feminism to bioethics. This provocative volume is bound to change and broaden the way bioethicists, students, patients, and the public consider bioethical issues.

No other cluster of medical issues affects the genders as differently as those related to procreation—contraception, sterilization, abortion, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and genetic screening. Yet the moral diversity among feminists has led to political fragmentation, foiling efforts to create policies that are likely to serve the interests of the largest possible number of women. In this remarkable book, Rosemarie Tong offers an approach to feminist bioethics that serves as a catalyst, bringing together varied perspectives on choice, control, and connection. Emphasizing the complexity of feminist debates, she guides feminists toward consensus in thought, cooperation in action, and a world that would have no room for domination and subordination. Tong fairly and comprehensively presents the traditions of both feminist and nonfeminist ethics and bioethics. Although feminist approaches to bioethics derive many insights from nonfeminist ethics and bioethics, Tong shows that their primary source of inspiration is feminist ethics, leading feminist bioethicists to ask the so-called woman question in order to raise women’s consciousness about the systems, structures, and relationships that oppress them. Feminist bioethicists are, naturally, committed to acting locally in the worlds of medicine and science. But their different feminist voices must also be raised at the policy table in order to make gender equity a present reality rather than a mere future possibility. Inability to define a plan that guarantees liberation for all women must not prevent feminists from offering a plan that promises to improve the welfare of many women. Otherwise, a perspective less appealing to women may fill the gap.

Drawing on postmodernist analyses, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries presents a feminist investigation into the marginalization of women within western discourse that denies female moral agency and embodiment. With reference to contemporary and historical issues in biomedicine, the book argues that the boundaries of both the subject and the body are no longer secure. The aim is both to valorise women and to suggest that 'leakiness' may be the very ground for a postmodern feminist ethic. The contribution made by Leaky Bodies and Boundaries is to go beyond modernist feminisms to radically displace the mechanisms by which women are devalued. The anxiety that postmodernism cannot yield an ethics, nor advance feminist concerns is addressed. This book will provide invaluable reading for those studying feminist philosophy, cultural studies and sociology.

What sort of ethics do we need? Rosalyn Diprose argues that the usual approaches to ethics both perpetuate and remain blind to the mechanisms of the subordination of women. In Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Differences, she claims that injustice against women is found in the social discourses and practices which both evaluate and constitute their modes of embodiment as improper in relation to men. Diprose critically analyses the attempts in both feminist and non-feminist ethics to recognise the role of sexual difference and the biomedical discourses whose descriptions mask a constitution and regulation of the 'body'. Her critiques draw on insights from Anglophone feminist theory and continental philosophy, and are supported by critical readings of Irigaray, Cornell and Fraser, Hegel, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Foucault. What emerges is a new ethics of sexual difference which not only better locates the mechanisms of discrimination but also provides the means to subvert them.

Direct outcome of a meeting sponsored by the International Association of Bioethics in 1992--Preface.