Social Construction of Sex and Gender

The present article argues that despite growing rates of single living worldwide, alternative representations of the single women who do not necessarily spend their life 'waiting for the one' are regularly absent from public view. By exploring the injunction as well as the option of non-waiting, this paper contributes to time studies by stressing how understandings of waiting inform hegemonic and alternative forms of temporal subjectivity and sociality. In the first part of this paper, I explore the ways in which the injunction to stop waiting is articulated in het-eronormative imagery. This call is regularly expressed with temporal urgency, and from this vantage point waiting comes to represent passivity and immobility. Accordingly, women are expected to 'move on' and be active in their own self-governance, which adapts to conventional norms of femininity. In the second part of this article, I demonstrate how the option of non-waiting dismantles and reworks heteronormative life scripts, and offers new subject positions for single women. These reflections propose alternative timetables that allow single women to reclaim their temporal agency and redefine their own temporal rhythms and life trajectories.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the opinions of educational administrators about the factors that arise from the glass ceiling syndrome which prevents women from becoming senior managers in educational organizations. In addition, in this study, suggestions have been developed for women to overcome the obstacles they face in reaching senior management positions. Qualitative method was used in this research. The research was conducted as a descriptive study in the survey model. The participants of the study consisted of educational administrators working in Niğde province. Semi-structured interview technique was used to examine and reveal the views of the participants in depth. Content analysis method was used in the analysis of data. According to the results, all participants think that women face glass ceiling barriers in the promotion of senior managerial positions. Obstacles to the glass ceiling are mostly due to individual factors. Individual factors were followed by organizational and social factors, respectively. Among the individual factors, the most important obstacles are women's negative view of management and their family responsibilities. Women do not aspire to management tasks because they require more workload and responsibility. In addition, male-dominated organizational policies and the sexist approach, which sees management as man's job are barriers for women. It has been suggested that women should be more willing and challenging to overcome the glass ceiling barriers. In addition, suggestions were made for senior management positions such as allocating quotas and providing flexible working hours for women.

Abstract: By appropriating both medical and communication technologies, the gender- reveal party has recently emerged as a ritual performance centered on a dramatically staged disclosure of the sex of a gestating fetus. The gender-reveal party is an example of the new forms of ritualization that take place during pregnancy in 21st-century North America. Typically, the focal point of the party is when the future parents cut a cake whose inside color (blue or pink) reveals the sex of the fetus. This article examines the ritual dynamics and creativity at work in the preparation, the performance and the mediated dissemination of this festive occasion. Key elements of the ritual will be described, as well as its conditions of emergence in a context where neither medical nor religious institutions offer ritual options deemed appropriate enough for celebrating joyfully and emotionally during pregnancy.

Résumé : À travers une appropriation combinée de technologies médicales et des technologies de communication, la gender-reveal party (« la fête où l’on révèle le genre ») a récemment émergé comme une performance rituelle centrée sur la révélation par une mise en scène dramatique du sexe du fœtus en gestation. La gender-reveal party est un exemple des nouvelles formes de ritualisation qui prennent place pendant la grossesse au 21ème siècle en Amérique du Nord. Son point culminant consiste généralement à découper un gâteau dont la couleur intérieure (bleue ou rose) révèle le sexe du fœtus. Cet article examine les dynamiques rituelles et la créativité à l’œuvre dans la préparation, la performance et la dissémination médiatisée de cette occasion festive. Les éléments clés de ce rituel seront soulignés, ainsi que ses conditions d’émergence dans un contexte où ni les institutions médicales ni les institutions religieuses n’offrent d’options rituelles considérées comme appropriées pour des célébrations joyeuses et émotionnelles pendant la grossesse.

Study of the construct of masculinity has undergone substantial change since the feminist critique of gender in the 1960–70s. This review focuses on constancies and changes within empirical psychological theories and measurement because measures represent masculinity and their underlying assumptions are often obscured. After a brief historical introduction, 5 distinct movements are identified by their assumptions. These movements discuss masculinity as a unipolar construct, an ideology, a source of strain, a socially constructed entity, and, most recently, as a blend of these different movements. The lack of developmental accounts of masculinity and the positioning of masculinity as an acontextual, superordinate organizing element of individual lives are also addressed. Concluding comments address the lack of influence by masculinity researchers on broader psychological thought.

Everyone is indebted to those who help them along the way, and so am I. I have had people guiding and helping me with this dissertation to whom I would like to express my deepest gratitude. First of all I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens without whom I could not have finished this dissertation. I thank him for his commitment to his students, his time and understanding he has devoted to me, and most of all for his encouragement and support these last two years. He encouraged me to stick to Harry Potter and the gender-issue even when I doubted a study like this to be possible. He gave me great insights without which my dissertation would have been incomplete and unnuanced. Furthermore I would like to express my thanks to Dr.

Looking over the historical emergence of the concept of “race,” critical race theorists remind us that this concept arose concurrently with the advent of European exploration as a justification and rationale for conquest and domination of the globe beginning in the fifteenth century of the Common Era (CE), and reaching its apex in the early twentieth century CE. Geneticists tell us that there is often more variability within a given so-called “race” than between “races,” and that there are no essential genetic markers linked specifically to “race.” This paper investigates the social construction of “race” in historical perspective.

In my attempt to come to an understanding why so many people oppose and resist common sense firearms safety regulations, I have developed a proposition that regulations on firearms challenge the promises of a patriarchal system based on notions of hypermasculinity with the elements taken to the extreme of control, domination over others and the environment, competitiveness, autonomy, rugged individualism, strength, toughness, forcefulness, and decisiveness, and, of course, never having to ask for help or assistance. Concepts of cooperation and community responsibility are pushed to the sidelines and discarded. To test out my theory, I distributed to several Facebook pages my understanding for the reasons why the United States remains among the last of the more developed Western countries to institute meaningful and appropriate firearms safety measures. This article discusses participants’ comments from a Facebook group that opposes firearms safety measures by highlighting the gendered connections of firearms violence.

Queer Archives
   
        By the nineteenth century a vast array of ethnographies such as racialization, class, sexuality, gender and criminology had become the cornerstone to the social sciences. The body became a site of social regulation, and the notion of truth and its manifestations on the body became culturally realized through systemic ideologies. The social body was the triumph of Bourgeois order, where the political economy of Industrialism, Capitalism and Imperialism were entwined with the individual and the state, and where sexual conduct was converted to economic and political behavior.
        The category of homosexuality was a device meant to control and regulate. Foucaultian analysis asserts that nineteenth century prohibitions established far reaching oppressive sexual discourses, however, through systems set out to control sexuality - homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf (Foucault 1980).   
      The queer archive provides a site of memory that historically has been entrenched in erasure, inscribing both the archives and their users with political power. Without knowledge of the past, what can we expect of future queer subjectivities?

"Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality" is the translation of a Japanese 2005 bestseller, "Kanjinai Otoko." Soon after the publication, this book stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male “frigidity,” and its connection to the “Lolita complex.” Today, this work is considered a classic in Japanese men’s studies.

The most striking feature of this book is that it was written from the author’s first-person perspective. The author is a professor who teaches philosophy and ethics at a university in Japan, and in this book he talks about his own sexual fetishism, his feeling of emptiness after ejaculation, and his huge obsession with young girls and their developing female bodies. He undertakes a philosophical investigation of how and why sexuality took such a form within a person who had grown up as a “normal,” heterosexual man.

This may be the first case in which a philosopher delves deep into his own sexuality and poses an ambitious hypothesis about the formation of male “frigid” sexuality, which might actually be shared by many “normal” men in our society in a hidden way. Reading this book, female readers will come to know, for the first time, some hidden aspects of male sexuality which men have skillfully submerged in a deep layer of their psyches.

Table of Contents

Foreword to English Readers
Preface
Chapter 1: As Long as There’s a Miniskirt I Don’t Need a Flesh and Blood Woman!?
Chapter 2: Men Who Avert Their Eyes from “Male Frigidity”
Chapter 3: Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms?
Chapter 4: Delving into the Psychology of Men with “Lolita Complexes”
Chapter 5: Moving Beyond Being a “Frigid Man”
Epilogue: Further Thoughts on a Frigid Man – Year 2013

* You can read a newspaper article on this book entitled "Professor examines Lolita complex by first looking at his own experience" in Japan Times, May 5, 2017.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/05/national/social-issues/professor-examines-lolita-complex-first-looking-experience/#.WQ7-Xvnyipo

From "Preface"

"In this book I am going to write about the idea that men may not feel much sexual pleasure or satisfaction, and that it is because of this lack of feeling that they become absorbed in sexual fantasies involving things like miniskirts, uniforms, “lolicon” [a Japanese term for “Lolita complex”], and rape. In order to support this assertion I will speak extensively about myself. I intend to consider this issue not in terms of a general theory of male sexuality but rather from the point of view of my own specific case.

But I hope male readers read this text as if it were written just for them. I hope female readers read it with a sense of urgency, imagining that the man they are with may be subject to some of the same psychological workings it describes. I have resolved to speak with complete frankness; I intend to explore this unknown world without any fear or reservation. ....."

There is no specific trans perspective on romantic love. Trans people love and do not love, fall in love and fall out of love, just like everyone else. Trans people inhabit different sexual identities, different relationship types, and different kinds of loving. When it comes to falling in love as or with a trans person, however, things can get more complicated, as questions of gender and sexual identity emerge. In a study by Blair & Hoskin from 2018, 87.5% of the interviewed participants said they would not consider dating a trans person (Blair & Hoskin, 2018). Among those who were open to dating trans people, a pattern emerged: the subjects were disproportionately willing to date trans men but not trans women, even if this preference did not match their own sexual identity; for example, a woman who identifies as a lesbian may be open to dating a trans man but not a trans woman. This seems like a clash of sexual and gender identities: why are women who identify as lesbians willing to date men? This chapter aims to analyze this phenomenon: love between clashing sexual and gender identities – e.g., the love between a man, who identifies as being romantically interested in men, and a trans woman, –  and thereby evaluates the limits of romantic love for trans people. Limits of love, in this chapter, are conceived of as normative restrictions on whom and how we love. By exploring cases of clashing sexual and gender identities in romantic love, this chapter analyzes how trans people’s opportunities for love are often limited.

This dissertation proposes to explore the ways in which the literary device of genderfuck is used to deconstruct gender and associated concepts. Particularly focusing on the limiting effects of gender on persons, real and not, who happen to be female and on destabilizing genderfuck mechanisms and its alternative identities found in literature.
Genderfuck questions the gender divide by unearthing both its arbitrariness and its instability. It originates from a number of theoretical fields, such as feminism and queer theory, itself inspired by structuralism and post-structuralism. In this case it refers to the transformation of a character into a different sex or gender or even both, providing the reader with a person who experiences both sides of the divide and offering the writer an opportunity to show (and question) the effects of both society and biology on the constitution of subjectivity.

Psychological essentialism suggests that categories are stable, fixed at birth, and based on biological factors. The present paper examined some factors that encourage gender essentialism among US college students. In two studies (Study 1: 53 female, 22 male; Study 2: 55 female, 48 male), participants completed questionnaires assessing essentialist beliefs regarding a range of gendered concepts. They also completed several questionnaire measures of gender stereotyping and gender beliefs. Results revealed: (1) greater essentialism among men than women; (2) greater essentialism of masculine (vs. feminine) concepts, and; (3) for men, greater essentialism among those who report greater conformity to masculine norms. These data suggest that masculinity is more narrowly defined than femininity, not only in stereotyped beliefs but also in essentializing.

This paper aims to challenge the assumption of the law's impartiality to gender. Gendered identity is constructed and confined by social discourse, and is expressed through homogenizing binary gender norms which prescribe the ‘appropriate’ means of gender performance. The definition of the ‘feminine’ role expected of women is given by men, who in a patriarchal modern society are the dominant gender. I will examine what ‘performativity’ means in terms of gender discourse, and analyse how exclusionary this can be for the gender dysphoric and the transsexual. I will look at the relevant legislation for allowing them legal acknowledgement of their acquired gender, and provide commentary on its ineffectiveness because it perpetuates the gender binary dichotomy. Pursuant to this, I will deconstruct how girls become ‘feminine’; a learning process which crystallizes in childhood rather than any innately biological attributes they may have. I will consider how society responds to deviance from these gender-appropriate norms with condemnation and pathology; none more demonstrably so than in the case of women who kill.

In this course, we survey recent work in social metaphysics within the analytic tradition, with the goal of gaining deeper insight into the ontology of the social world – conceived broadly to include facts about social objects (United Nations, #MeToo Movement), kinds and properties (mayor, unemployed), events and processes (Olympic Games, Brexit), states and relations (groupthink, oppression), institutions (family, prison), practices (helicopter parenting, potlucks), actions and attitudes (class-action lawsuits, collective intentionality), and artifacts (money, peer-to-peer networks). The metaphysical investigation of these facts is unified by a common theme: how exactly are individual people related to the social world? In what sense do they depend on one another, and the material and symbolic environments which they inhabit? In recent years, philosophers in the analytic tradition have developed a variety of frameworks and tools for thinking about these questions. In the first half of the course, we sneak up on our theme by considering two widely held “standard” views about social ontology: a) the view that social entities are “made up” of interacting people, in possibly emergent ways, much like traffic being made up of cars; and b) the view that social entities are rooted in “collective projections” of our attitudes onto the non-social world, such as certain pieces of paper being treated as dollar bills. After raising a host of problems for these views, we then work through an alternative “non-anthropocentric” view of social ontology as proposed by Brian Epstein and others.

In the second half of the course, we turn our attention to the ontology of social construction. Over the past few decades, the list of things that have been said to be “socially constructed” has expanded tremendously. Although these claims are made in different contexts, and different disciplines, a central thrust of social-constructionist explanations is to call into question the presumption that “the way things are” – e.g., concerning gender, race, disability – is fixed by the natural world, including human nature. By revealing how certain seemingly “natural” categories and distinctions are in fact produced by unacknowledged parts of the social world, social constructionists aim to show that they are not exempted from critique, and identify levers for ameliorative social change. Despite yielding important insights, the sheer diversity in how the term “social construction” is used, and what it is taken to imply, has produced much confusion and heated debates over the import and scope of social-constructionist claims (cf. the “science wars”). In our course, we strive to disentangle some of these conceptual knots, first by considering the vexed history of the term, and by distinguishing types and grades of social construction. We then examine the thesis – defended by Sally Haslanger, Ron Mallon, and others – that important varieties of social constructionism, without losing their critical edge, are compatible with significant forms of realism, objectivism about social kinds, and philosophical naturalism. In doing so, we also draw on extant work in psychology, cognitive science, and the philosophy of language to shed light on the plurality of mechanisms by which socially constructed kinds are produced and sustained. This will prompt a general reflection on the relationship between (what one might call) explanation-driven and justice-driven social metaphysics.

Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre was designed as a critique of the tensions between sex and violence in digital games. It was created as a part of the Critical Gameplay project. The project is an ongoing effort to create alternate play experiences that critique the conventions of digital play. The games in the collection are designed to reevaluate player perspective on gameplay experiences. They are offered as social critique demonstrating that conventional play is riddled with its own problems, complications and assumptions. Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre is unique to the 10 game collection in that it relies on conventional mechanics, but unique content. The game contains a collection of sexual images, innuendo and cultural references that are explicitly sophomoric and hyper-masculine.

Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre was designed as a critique of the tensions between sex and violence in digital games. It was created as a part of the Critical Gameplay project. The project is an ongoing effort to create alternate play experiences that critique the conventions of digital play. The games in the collection are designed to reevaluate player perspective on gameplay experiences. They are offered as social critique demonstrating that conventional play is riddled with its own problems, complications and assumptions. Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre is unique to the 10 game collection in that it relies on conventional mechanics, but unique content. The game contains a collection of sexual images, innuendo and cultural references that are explicitly sophomoric and hyper-masculine.

Using cases and legal precedent on transgender employment discrimination in the US-American context, this article investigates the epistemological consequences of creating a gendered legal subject. It interrogates the ways that courts enact certain kinds of knowledge claims that deny the experiences of transgender litigants as transgender. It argues how judicial reasoning tends to create conditions of transgender legibility that reproduces preconceived notions of normative, cisgender sex/gender experiences and knowledges, contributing to hermeneutical injustice.

Heteronormativity denotes a state whereby the hetero, i.e. an individual being 'straight', is the socially accepted being - and those who display any other means of sexual attraction are seen as deviant. This essay explores the ideas of gender being a construct and, through that, how heteronormativity has defined what is acceptable gendered behaviour and what is, indeed, deviant.

Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre was designed as a critique of the tensions between sex and violence in digital games.  It was created as a part of the Critical Gameplay project.  The project is an ongoing effort to create alternate play experiences that critique the conventions of digital play.  The games in the collection are designed to reevaluate player perspective on gameplay experiences.  They are offered as social critique demonstrating that conventional play is riddled with its own problems, complications and assumptions.  Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre is unique to the 10 game collection in that it relies on conventional mechanics, but unique content.  The game contains a collection of sexual images, innuendo and cultural references that are explicitly sophomoric and hyper-masculine.

Contextualized studies of gender have been published, but these studies typically compare men and women in a single context. In this study, we examined men’s expectations for women across two interpersonal contexts, dating and the workplace, with particular attention to the gender-related traits of expressiveness and instrumentality. Data were provided by eighty-seven unmarried, heterosexual young adult males. Significant differences were found for trait preference as a function of context, with young men reporting stronger preference for expressive traits in the romantic context and stronger preference for instrumental traits in the work context. Contextual differences became nonsignificant when egalitarian beliefs were added to the model. Discussion focuses on the importance of context for understanding gender.

Brenda Hernandez
Rhet 250 Proff. Hille
Construct of Gender Roles Men and Women or Women and Men? Which comes first? Two types of human beings or a single one? Throughout history there has been a well defined line between the two sexes, a boundary that decides the gender roles of what men and women are. For example, when comparing bone structures anthropologists conclude that women are typically much smaller in frame compared to men when examining structural differences in the pelvic bone, skull, jaw, shoulders, or legs. Biologists would agree that hormones, chromosomes, the brain, and genetics are not the same therefore outwardly these two genders perform differently among one another. Psychologists would say that men have higher levels of aggression and women are more gentle/ passive, men are more logical and women are more emotional, therefore these two genders will behave differently towards one another. Now that we have gathered the logic behind men and women through the Anthropologists, Biologists, and Psychologists point of view how does such information influence society? Let's imagine for a minute about the typical gender roles of men and women. Arthur and Maggie have been married for 15 years and they finally decide to have a child, they end up having twins a boy and a girl. Arthur and Maggie are completely in love with one another and are willing to give it their all to their children. Due to more expenses around the house Arthur decides to get a second job and Maggie watches after the children followed by cooking and cleaning. These gender roles define femininity and masculinity, Maggie in this case scenario is expected to be gentle, kind, passive, and nurturing while Arthur is expected to be the economic provider, the superior, and the protector. If both Maggie and Arthur do not uphold these expectations .....

This study evaluated pre-and postadjudication behavior of 220 male defendants convicted of a domestic violence-related offense using court records and police department data. Our goal was the identification of possible pre-dictors for continued criminal behavior that could pose a risk of further harm to victims. Factors identified as significant predictors of defendant recidivism were having two or more court reports of noncompliance with domestic violence treatment, two or more warrants issued by the court for noncompliance, and two or more reports to law enforcement of new criminal activity involving the defendant. Law enforcement reports were the strongest predictor of recidivism, with an odds ratio of 7.7 and confidence interval of 3.0-19.7. These results illustrate the importance of monitoring multiple dimensions of defendant behavior while under court supervision and of communicating information on noncompliance with victims and advocates to assist in safety planning efforts. Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume XX Number X Month XXXX xx-xx

Humanist conceptions of the person evolve across history. Whereas humanism has served a pivotal role in the caregiving professions, its individualist emphasis now stands as an impediment to its future. Proposed is a relational reconceptualization of the person, placing relational as opposed to individual well-being at the forefront of humanists' concerns.

Imagine the following scenario: You are a man walking down the street wearing lipstick, heels and a skirt. People look at you -- some casting sidelong glances, others openly staring -- attempting to make sense of the “social aberration” they see before them. They may well decide that you are (a) a transgender person who (perhaps deliberately) didn’t get it quite “right”; (b) a gay man heading for a drag club; or (c) a straight man in fancy dress for a stag night. Gender limits how we view the world and people in it and what we can do with our lives. It is not considered “normal” for men to routinely wear what are perceived as “women’s” clothing or makeup -- there has to be some sort of explanation for it. In order to acceptably engage in such “gender-bending” behavior, you are seen as either a special category of person (e.g., gay, transgender) or in an exceptional context which allows or demands deviations from “the norm” (e.g., a stag night).

This chapter introduces a critical psychology of gender. We aim to provide you with tools for critically analyzing the construction of gender in mainstream psychology and in everyday life. First we demonstrate why gender is a critical social issue and discuss what we mean by gender. Next we illustrate some of the core assumptions underpinning mainstream psychological approaches, using the example of Victoria’s research on lesbian-mother families. We then consider assumptions about gender in the wider culture, using the example of Virginia’s research on dictionary definitions of female and male genitalia. Finally, we outline features of a critical psychology of gender. However, we do not want to suggest simply that “critical is good, mainstream is bad.” Some mainstream psychological work has been very important. More to the point, few examples of critical psychological work on gender have made practical contributions to social change. We end by considering whether critical psychologists can make effective interventions into our two-sexed, two-gendered world, and describe one positive example.

The relationship between masculinity and migration is attracting growing academic attention. However, the scope for investigation is vast, given the fact that in the existing research the gender–migration nexus has to date been largely female and/or family oriented. In the context of emigration from Poland after 2004, a plethora of studies concerning Polish migrants has discussed female- and family-related issues, and as a result, less is known about the specific experience of male migrants. The paper addresses this gap; drawing upon 20 biographical interviews with Polish men in the UK and five with Polish community workers, it provides an insight into negotiations in the sphere of masculinity. Applying an intersectional perspective, it discusses how certain aspects of their social identities turn from assets into downsides. Finally, it shows how some of their narratives about their experience of living in Britain are tied to Polish gender ideology. The paper contributes to the research stream on the variety of masculinities practices in migration from the CEE region and adds to the discussion on how gender practices and ideals are practiced and negotiated in the new settings.

ENGLISH tries to demonstrated , that advertisements are not only a way of selling products but they also helps construct ubiquitous models and patterns of behaviour. Until very recently, research had mainly concentrated on general issues overlooking the relationship between food and the construction of gender identities.

This paper explores the internet community 'The Red Pill' on the platform 'Reddit'. The Red Pill is a self-described counter movement to feminism. I want to analyze the way in which this community thinks about gender in this paper and draw conclusions about the way in which the dialectical construction of gender altogether is changing.

This article foregrounds Judy Grahn's commitment to social justice and chiefly considers her nine-part poems: “A Woman is Talking to Death” and “Mental.” These poems illuminate the socially constructed nature of mental illness and challenge readers to consider how and why the characters within them are deemed mentally ill. Little, if any, scholarship has been devoted to using Grahn's poetry, and particularly “Mental,” as a framework for analyzing the pathologization of people, especially women, relative to the system of mental health. Her work remains relevant to critical conversations that illuminate contemporary issues of oppression that still haunt us today.

This article describes the construction of the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory (CFNI), which was designed to assess women's conformity to an array of feminine norms found in the dominant culture in the United States. In addition, we present four studies in which the psychometric properties of the CFNI were examined. In Study 1, factor analysis indicated that the CFNI is comprised of eight distinct factors labeled as Nice in Relationships, Thinness, Modesty, Domestic, Care for Children, Romantic Relationship, Sexual Fidelity, and Invest in Appearance. Results from Study 2 indicated that the CFNI has strong internal consistency estimates and differentiates college women from college men. In addition, Study 2 demonstrated that the CFNI Total score and subscale scores relate to Bem Sex Role Inventory and Feminist Identity Development Scale scores in theoretically consistent patterns. Study 3 indicated that the CFNI Total score and several of the subscales significantly and positively relate to scores on the Eating Disorder Inventory. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that the CFNI Total score and subscale scores have high test-retest estimates for a 2-3 week period. The discussion focuses on potential uses of the CFNI, limitations to the study, and suggestions for future research.

The present essay sets out to investigate the convoluted societal processes to which the individual is exposed from an early age in order to form and acquire their sense of identity and aims at dismantling these very processes by exhibiting their flimsy and unsubstantiated underpinning rationale. The compelling role of gender has often been excluded from deliberations and studies regarding the issue of national identity and nationalism as culturally constructed forms of identity and "imaginary" figments of historical unity (Rodó-Zárate, n.d.). In this light, the scope of this paper is threefold; firstly, to investigate the idea of identity under the prism of gender and explore the correlation of national identity with that of the gender identity; secondly, to consider the significance of intersectionality in the formation processes of identification and identity; thirdly, to discuss vulnerability in terms of social positions by providing a brief illustration of the current Greek political landscape in order to associate the socially and culturally enforced identification as vulnerable bodies imposed upon certain individuals as an impediment in their living livable lives. In this essay, national identities are perceived as another form of oppression functioning in tandem with patriarchal notions and the normativities asserted by white male hegemony. In other words, national identities, as well as gender identities are conceptualized as conditioned identities that are socially and politically constructed. Keywords: gender, nation, nationality, patriotism, state of exception, vulnerability

Sex shops in England have traditionally been perceived as masculinised consumption spaces, located at the margins of both the city and the clock (in decaying urban zones, hidden from view and frequented under the cover of darkness). Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of fashion conscious and female-orientated ‘erotic boutiques’, keen to disassociate themselves away from negative stereotypical representations of sex shops, through marketing themselves as stylish, fun, acceptable and safe, and, above all, empowering spaces for women to explore their sexuality. This article considers how erotic boutiques offer a post-feminist sexual address to women through claims of female empowerment, an embrace of traditional femininity and an endorsement of the aestheticisation of the female body. More specifically, I explore the post-feminist tensions between female sexual subjectivity and objectivity, by unpacking, and reflecting on, the relations between erotic boutiques and the space of the body. This is achieved by an analysis of how the products and services (and how they are marketed and displayed) promote idealised representations of female bodily sexual pleasure, adornment and knowledge that can apparently be obtained by the consumption of specific products and commodified sexual knowledges. The article consequently considers and questions a seeming inextricable entwinement of post-feminist sexual empowerment with sexual consumerism.

The theory of feminism is translated into an ideological phenomenon that begins with women's demand for equal rights with men and defines women's individuality. Like any grand theory (all social theories in macro level), it exhibits ideological qualities and it inevitably interacts with other ideologies. There is a never-ending conflict between conservative ideology and feminism. In Turkey, there is a distinction between rising conservatism and feminism from the point of view definitions of family and women that arose from religious and cultural perspectives.This study applied content analysis to comments on video that aimed to prevent violence against women and published on the presidential twitter page. As a result of the analysis, it was found that those who wrote supporting comments did not support the conservative party but found the video correct; it was seen that those who wrote critical comments supported the relevant political party and think the feminism is damaging the conservative ideology. Another result of this study is women made the most criticism of feminism.

Öz: Feminizm teorisi kadınların erkeklerle eşit haklara sahip olma talebiyle başlayan ve kadınların bireyselliklerini tanımlayan ideolojik bir olguya çevrilmiş durumdadır. Her tür grand (makro boyuttaki tüm sosyal teoriler) teori gibi ideolojik nitelikler sergiler ve diğer ideolojilerle etkileşim içerisine girmesi kaçınılmazdır. Muhafazakar ideoloji ve feminizm arasında hiç bitmeyen bir çatışma vardır. Türkiye'de, artan muhafazakarlık ile feminizm arasında ailenin ve kadınların dini ve kültürel açıdan ortaya çıkan tanımları açısından bir ayrım bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışma, kadına yönelik şiddeti önlemeyi amaçlayan ve Cumhurbaşkanlığı Twitter sayfasında yayınlanan bir video hakkındaki yorumlara içerik analizi uygulanmıştır. İçerik analizi kullanıcıların birbirine verdiği kişisel yanıtları ve argo ifade içeren söylemleri çalışma dışında bırakmıştır. Yapılan analiz sonucunda iki ayrı kutup olarak destekleyici ve eleştirel yorumlar tespit edilmiştir. Destekleyici yorumların videoyu yayınlayan siyasi partiyi desteklemediği fakat şiddete karşı birleştikleri görülmüştür. Öte yandan eleştirel yorum yapanların ilgili siyasi partiyi destekledikleri fakat feminizmin muhafazakarlığa zarar verdiği noktasında birleştikleri görülmüştür. Feminizm eleştirilerinin en fazla kadınlardan gelmesi de, çalışmanın bir diğer sonucu olmuştur.

In Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire, Lara Blanchard analyzes images of women in painting and poetry of China’s middle imperial period, focusing on works that represent female figures as preoccupied with romance. She discusses examples of visual and literary culture in regard to their authorship and audience, examining the role of interiority in constructions of gender, exploring the rhetorical functions of romantic images, and considering connections between subjectivity and representation. The paintings in particular have sometimes been interpreted as simple representations of the daily lives of women, or as straightforward artifacts of heteroerotic desire; Blanchard proposes that such works could additionally be interpreted as political allegories, representations of the artist’s or patron’s interiorities, or models of idealized femininity.

(Sorry for the poor English editing - A/N)

In what sense has “Gender studies” as an academic field changed since the 1970s?
Starting from the influence of three critiques - namely Postmodernism, Post-structuralism and Deconstructionism - in this essay I will try to give an overview of the academic redefinition in the last decades, tracing the evolution of “Gender Studies” within the Scholarship developed in the field, in the Euro-American context, as well as in the Asian one.

https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/essays/excerpt-chapter-6-villains-and-laughing-stocks-the-gender-jackpot-transgressing-the-boundaries#comments-5cecca5924a6943113216170=

Obviously, I had by now known and accepted the premise that English Studies was a battlefield of “textual politics,” and that the players made no bones about their agendas. Previously, critics in the field, like the old New Critics with their plodding close reading of texts, had pretended to be neutral, but their neutrality was merely a thin scrim for cultural domination. Dead white men had ruled the English canon long enough. But this was only the most flagrant of offenses. Other suspects were singled out for prosecution – including an exclusive focus on the text itself (New Criticism), assuming the centrality or superiority of European culture (Eurocentrism), implicitly endorsing heterosexuality as a norm (heteronormativity), believing that humanity is exceptional and that individual humans have unitary selves (humanism), believing in an essence of human nature and/or in the essence of essential types of humans such as racial groups and women and men (essentialism), the belief that neutral knowledge is discoverable by scientific means (positivism), the belief that words might faithfully represent an external reality (logocentrism), and the privileging of the masculine in the construction of meaning (phallogocentrism) – among others. Every one of these notions or beliefs has been treated as a villain, a laughing stock, or both.

In this paper we suggest that older adults undergo a misalignment between societal age norms and personal lived experience, and attempt reconciliation through discursive strategies: They rewrite how they frame chronological age as well as their subjective relations to it. Using a sample of 4041 midlife and older adults from the 2004–2006 wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II), we explore associations of age and gender with subjective age and at what age respondents felt people enter later life. Our results confirm that as men and women age, they push up the age at which they think people enter later life, and slow down subjective aging (there is a growing gap between subjective and chronological age). Relations between a person's age and at what age they think people enter later life were stronger for men than for women. For every year they get older get older, men push up when they think people enter later life by 0.24 years, women by 0.16 years. Age norms surrounding the transition to later life may be more prominent for men than for women, and the difference in their tendencies to push up when they mark entry into later life may be a reflection of this greater prominence.

This interdisciplinary collection crosses a variety of boundaries (social, cultural, and political) in examining a range of topics and issues, including women in the workplace and the push toward wage equity; support for working mothers and the importance of universal, affordable childcare; gender in relation to media, education and politics; the Montreal Massacre; aging as a gendered experience; the experiences of girls where the presence of feminism in their lives is, and has been, taken for granted; gender in relation to media and advertising; the international sex trade in women and girls; pornography; women and human rights within both local and global contexts.