Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts
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Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts

Shyness, Power, and Intimacy in the United States, 1950-1995

Patricia McDaniel

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eBook - ePub

Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts

Shyness, Power, and Intimacy in the United States, 1950-1995

Patricia McDaniel

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About This Book

Since World War II Americans’ attitudes towards shyness have changed. The women’s movement and the sexual revolution raised questions about communication, self-expression, intimacy, and personality, leading to new concerns about shyness. At the same time, the growth of psychotherapy and the mental health industry brought shyness to the attention of professionals who began to regard it as an illness in need of a cure. But what is shyness? How is it related to gender, race, and class identities? And what does its stigmatization say about our culture?

In Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts, Patricia McDaniel tells the story of shyness. Using popular self-help books and magazine articles she shows how prevailing attitudes toward shyness frequently work to disempower women. She draws on evidence as diverse as 1950s views of shyness as a womanly virtue to contemporary views of shyness as a barrier to intimacy to highlight how cultural standards governing shyness reproduce and maintain power differences between and among women and men.

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Information

Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2003
ISBN
9780814761212

Index

Abolitionists, 35
Abortion, 17, 18
gag rule, 19
Aggression: in men, 35, 62, 85, 86, 110, 127, 128, 129
in women, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, 61, 75, 78, 79
Agoraphobia, 122
AIDS, 18
American Psychological Association, 17–18
Andelin, Helen, 53, 54
Anxiety Disorders Association of America, 8
Assertiveness: American colonists and, 31
black men and, 73, 129
communication and, 57, 126
dating and, 54–56, 61
intimacy and, 120, 121
men’s authority and, 27, 74, 78–79, 81–82, 129
views of black women’s, 38, 39, 67–68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80–81, 82, 129
at work, 91–96, 100, 101, 127, 128
Assertiveness training, 7, 17, 95, 121
Avoidant personality disorder, 171n. 6
Backlash, 18, 114
Baker, Ella, 71
Bashfulness: modesty and, 37, 53
reserve and, 58
shyness and, 22, 33
young men and, 48, 61, 65
Biology: and communication, 63–64, 66
and sex roles, 52, 53, 62–63
Birth control pills, 16
Black men: as heads of households, 73
images of, 35, 39, 41, 68–69, 72, 73, 77, 82, 129
unemployment, 16, 70
Black nationalists, 78, 81, 82
Black Panthers, 73
Black Power, 72
Black women: and domesticity, 16, 70, 72, 73
as heads of households, 16
images of, 38, 67–68, 72, 75, 78–79, 106, 111...

Table of contents