Reddit reviews Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind 10th Anniversary Edition

"Feminist ways of knowing and writing."

https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Ways-Knowing-Development-Anniversary/dp/0465090990

> Women's Ways of Knowing offers new and useful understandings of the epistemology (methods and basis) of the development of women's knowledge.

There is no difference between women's knowledge and men's knowledge. We're all evidence-based...unless we're not, in which case we're practicing woo.

> The authors, instead of speaking from the distant land of "objectivity" and the omnipotent "one," say "we" and talk about their process: how and why they did this study, the details of their planning, what surprised them, how the results affected their thinking, plans, and progress. A good example of what's possible when love informs science,

If this isn't all you need to be convinced of their insanity, I can do nothing for you.

Sure. And a place has been carved out (somewhat) without displacing rationality. The trend in French feminism is to avoid these masculine concepts because they only provoke further oppression (this can be defended on much different grounds). There is an entire field of feminist epistemology that doesn't follow this strain of critique. Here are some examples:

Women's Ways of Knowing

Tuana, Engendering Rationalities

Alcoff and Potter, Feminist Epistemologies

Feminist Philosophy of Science exists too, but I am much less familiar with that form of this movement.

Yeah, that's some bullshit.

I haven't read the other comments, because I'm sure they're full of more stories of shitty parents, and if I read too much of that I'll end up ragequitting and then being useless for anything else for the rest of the day, because rage. I'm not going to go into details of my story, either, because I'm sure you have enough of that kind of thing by now, but suffice it to say that I spent a reasonable chunk of the last decade trying to figure out if and how I could have a relationship with my mother, and here's what I figured out for myself. Hopefully you'll find it useful, too.

• Her behavior now, and my ability to trust her now, are paramount. If she's pulling bullshit now, that's a dealbreaker. If I don't trust her now, that's also a dealbreaker, unless she's fully accepting of that and working on resolving it. (This last thing might be me - I don't maintain relationships with people I don't trust to at least a moderate degree. But this policy is one that I think most people would do well to adopt.)
  
  
• Why she used to do things is mostly irrelevant - it takes a truly amazing excuse to make abuse acceptable behavior, so, failing that, if there's any chance of us having a relationship, I do need to forgive it, and if I can't, that's that and there's no further question.
  
  
• Why she's doing things now is relevant only insofar as it affects my ability to trust her for the future. This means, translated to your situation, that the fact that she's refusing to talk about the past because of religion probably doesn't matter. The fact that you can't trust her newfound religion to keep her from going back to being an ass does matter, though.
  
  
• It is exceptionally hard to trust someone not to re-start bad behavior without significant evidence that they have actually dealt with the original cause of the behavior. This means, in your case, that no matter why she was refusing to talk about the past, that refusal is probably a dealbreaker.
  
  Now, playing devil's advocate for a moment, I don't think it's entirely impossible that your mother could progress through this stage to a point where she's capable of making real changes that you can trust. I don't think it's very likely, but none of what you've said seems to rule it out entirely. If you're still struggling with wanting to have a mother/daughter relationship with her - which is something that I struggled with for a long time with my mother - then you might find it useful to see if you can figure out what her deal is and what exactly would need to change for you to be confident that she's over it, and then back off until you see actual evidence that that change has happened. I really only recommend that if you're really struggling with wanting the relationship, though - if you're comfortable with writing the whole thing off as a bad deal, that's probably the wiser response. (Or go with a hybrid, which is what I ended up doing. I actually found a book that gave me enough insight into my mother's issues that I was able to go 'yeah, that's not going to change', and stop hoping for it to. Which has been nice.)