Kissing the Cactus: Dancing Gender and Politics in Spain

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 124-131
Author(s):  
Eva Aymamí Reñé
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Cultural Symbol ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Contemporary Spain

In Bésame el Cactus (2004), Sol Picó, modern dancer and choreographer, simultaneously performs flamenco music and dance. Using her body, her shoes, castanets, and hands, she is integrating flamenco—as a cultural symbol of Spain—into a contemporary performance. In a Spain impacted by Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975), the peculiar ambiguous choice of using flamenco in a modern performance raises questions about the construction of national and gender identity, both during the dictatorship and now. Franco's regime promoted a centralized nationalism, and imposed it on the other cultures that were part of the Spanish state. These were cultural regionalisms linked to the historic communities of Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque Country. During Francoism, popular and folk music and dances were employed as an effort to construct a unified Spanish culture. This paper will address the problems of gender and national construction in contemporary Spain through a close reading of this choreographic piece. A methodological analysis of Bésame el Cactus will be presented using applied performing arts theories. I will also draw upon interview material with the choreographer/performer, Sol Picó. In conclusion, this paper will illustrate the ways in which the heritage of Francoism still informs choreographers' choices, and thereby creates an artificial national music and dance in Spain.

Populism and Gender

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahar Abi-Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Gendered Discourse ◽  
Male Leadership ◽  
And Gender

Despite the breadth and depth of inquiries into populism, its relationship with gender issues remains a widely understudied topic. On one hand, focus has been almost entirely on male leadership, despite the presence of a significant number of female populist leaders. On the other hand, procedural definitions of populism ignore the substantive and symbolic elements that emerge from a populist gendered discourse. Through a generalized discussion and references to specific examples in Europe and Latin America, this chapter explores three major topics at the intersection of populism and gender: populist supporters, populist gendered representation, and the subordination of personal (gender) identity in populist discourse. Consistent with previous studies, it illustrates the difficulty in finding common patterns in the populist treatment of gender issues, and where they emerge it is an instance of trends in gendered discourse, not populist discourse.

scholarly journals Eating the Asian Other? Pedagogies of Food Multiculturalism in Australia

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Flowers ◽  
Elaine Swan
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
White People ◽  
Home Building ◽  
Ethnic Food ◽  
Intercultural Encounters ◽  
And Gender ◽  
At Home

Public pedagogies in tourism and education in Australia suggest that food is a medium through which we learn more about each other’s cultures: in other words food is a pedagogy of multiculturalism. Drawing on a white Anglo Australian man’s memories of food in different intercultural encounters, this paper prises open the concept of eating the Other. There has been trenchant critique of food multiculturalism and the consuming cosmopolitan in Australia (Hage 1997; Probyn 2004; Duruz 2010). Thus, several writers critique the prevailing idea that eating ethnic food is a sign of cosmopolitanism, and even anti-racism, in individuals and cities in Australia (Hage 1997; Sheridan 2002; Duruz 2010). Hence, the notion of eating the Other has been taken up to discuss how ethnicity becomes an object of enrichment for white people through the eating of ethnic food in restaurants (Hage 1997) and cooking ethnic food at home (Heldke 2003). In this paper we present an ‘entangled’ story of Frank which includes white expatriate masculinity, multiculturalism with ethnics and what Heldke calls ‘colonial food adventuring’. Drawing on a close reading of Frank’s story, we argue that an evaluation of food multiculturalism needs to historicise, gender and racialise inter-cultural food encounters. Thus, we argue that there are ethnic food socialities other than those of home-building or restaurant multiculturalisms. We suggest that culturalist and political economy pedagogies of food multiculturalism could be augmented by one that attends to the production of whiteness and gender.

Gender dysphoria and the controversy over the Safe Schools program

Sexual Health ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Parkinson
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Dysphoria ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Medical Advice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Safe Schools ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
And Gender

The Safe Schools program has attracted great controversy. On one end of the spectrum, it is defended as an anti-bullying program for young people who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, or have issues concerning their gender identity. On the other end of the spectrum, it is regarded as social engineering. This article seeks to promote a discussion of the way in which gender identity issues are addressed in the Safe Schools program. It is argued that the information in this program to Principals, teachers and young people is inaccurate and misleading. The program, as presently designed, may actually cause harm to children and young people who experience gender identity issues because it promotes gender transitioning without expert medical advice. The Safe Schools materials do not acknowledge that the great majority of children resolve gender dysphoria issues around the time of puberty. It may be much more difficult for a child to accept his or her gender at puberty if he or she has already changed name and gender identity in primary school. These deficits need to be addressed if the program is to continue.

Scholarship in Student Affairs: Thinking Outside the Triangle, or Tabasco on Cantaloupe

NASPA Journal ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronni Sanlo
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Student Affairs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Research Development ◽  
Administrator Training ◽  
And Gender

How do we make meaning of the experiences and lives of our students, and how do questions of meaning relate to scholarship? This article expresses a concern about language and whether we as professionals examine the language we use. It explores a concern about the deafening silence on our campuses and in our professional organizations, about allies who do not speak out for the "other." And it ponders how we learned what we know about marginalization of populations on our campuses; or, more accurately, what we don’t know. This article then briefly explores eight areas within student affairs, specifically for sexual orientation and gender identity content: Curriculum, Staff and Administrator Training, Mentoring, Research, Development, Leadership, Service, and Balance and Renewal. It is a completely biased, onesided view as seen through the eyes, heart, and scholarship of one university's professional gay-for-pay.

scholarly journals Gendering Sarai: Reading Beyond Cisnormativity in Genesis 11:29–12:20 and 20:1–18

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 496-509
Author(s):  
Jo Henderson-Merrygold
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
The Third ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article explores the way assumptions about gender prevalent in twenty-first century readers impact our understanding of Sarai. It interrogates the way a mere glimpse allows us to instantaneously assign a person gender, something trans theorist Julia Serano calls gendering. Through this article, we see how the third-party accounts of Sarai in Genesis 11:19–12:20 parallel the experience of that introductory glance today. By undertaking a close reading, different themes emerge that work to both confirm and challenge her fit within dominant gender norms. Indeed, Sarai cannot easily be subsumed into cisnormative gender expectations that privilege consistent coherence between the sex assigned at birth and gender identity and expression. Genesis 20:1–20 is then placed in discussion with the earlier portion of Sarai’s story. It provides the opportunity to revisit how observers within the text see and understand her. In turn new details emerge that seek to confirm Sarai’s fit within cisnormativity; but in doing so, they end up disrupting our perception that Sarai is a cisnormative woman. Ultimately, this reading establishes that Sarai does not neatly fit our preconceptions, which opens up the potential to consider her a transgender or a gender-diverse figure.

scholarly journals Sappho in Lyric IV: Michael Field’s Spatial Poetics of Desire and Defeat

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Mayron Estefan Cantillo-Lucuara
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Spatial Poetics ◽  
Edith Cooper ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Katharine Bradley

In this article, I offer a close reading of Michael Field’s Long Ago (1889), specifically of lyric IV, with the primary aim of showing how Katharine Bradley and her niece Edith Cooper appropriate the archaic figure of Sappho, dramatise her Ovidian romantic tragedy and, in so doing, reconceptualise the notional category of spacein two complementary ways: on the one hand, lyric space becomes a tense locus of contention between form-as-hope and content-as-despair and, on the other, the correlation established between space, nature and gender results in a transgressive topography in which, as I conclude, a new Sappho emerges both as a tragic heroine and as an extremely possessive consciousness laden with sheer Hegelian desire.

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Iran

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

Since the 1979 Revolution that brought clerics into power, the struggle for women’s rights in Iran has conventionally been framed as a polarized conflict between “Islamist” and “secularist” ideologies. This view has masked the real battle, which has been between despotism and patriarchy, on the one hand, and democracy, pluralism, and gender equality, on the other. An unintended consequence of the revolutionaries’ merger of religious and political authority has been a growing popular understanding of this struggle. This chapter examines the shifting dynamics of relations between theology, gender, and politics in the Iranian Islamic state, which, in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election, gave birth to a rights movement with women at the forefront. By then, the traditional cultural value of namus (sexual honor) for many Iranians was outweighed by the notion of haqq (rights), especially the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.

Aberrant sexualities: Others under the gaze of transnational documentary

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072093133
Author(s):  
Shehram Mokhtar
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Minorities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Gender Variance ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Normative Ideals

This article examines the discourse of non-normative sexuality and gender variance in Pakistan produced through commissioned transnational documentaries. While the documentary apparatus is mobilized to make visible gender and sexual minorities in Pakistan, they deploy self-othering schema within which the other is defined in comparison to the Euro-American center and its politics of normative citizenship. Sexual practices and gender embodiments that do not match up to the normative ideals are deemed aberrant and rendered abject, while simultaneously Muslim cultures are metonymically linked with homophobia and oppression. I demonstrate through a close reading of three documentaries that the optics and modalities that they employ do not make intelligible the other and their relationalities but rather circumscribe them. I argue that the discourse is not constituted to empower but instead functions to subordinate, impoverish, and incapacitate the other.

scholarly journals Patterns of Genital Sexual Arousal in Transgender Men

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762097165
Author(s):  
Jamie Raines ◽  
Luke Holmes ◽  
Tuesday M. Watts-Overall ◽  
Erlend Slettevold ◽  
Dragos C. Gruia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Sexual Arousal ◽  
Male Gender ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Sexual Preferences ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Female Birth ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Transgender Men

Most men show genital sexual arousal to one preferred gender. Most women show genital arousal to both genders, regardless of their sexual preferences. There is limited knowledge of whether this difference is driven by biological sex or gender identity. Transgender individuals, whose birth sex and gender identity are incongruent, provide a unique opportunity to address this question. We tested whether the genital responses of 25 (female-to-male) transgender men followed their female birth sex or male gender identity. Depending on their surgical status, arousal was assessed with penile gauges or vaginal plethysmographs. Transgender men’s sexual arousal showed both male-typical and female-typical patterns. Across measures, they responded more strongly to their preferred gender than to the other gender, similar to (but not entirely like) 145 cisgender (nontransgender) men. However, they still responded to both genders, similar to 178 cisgender women. In birth-assigned women, both gender identity and biological sex may influence sexual-arousal patterns.

Effects of Gender, Parental Role, and Time on Infant- and Adult-Directed Read and Spontaneous Speech

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (11) ◽  
pp. 4001-4014
Author(s):  
Melanie Weirich ◽  
Adrian Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Parental Involvement ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
First Year ◽  
Space Size ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Description Task

Purpose The study sets out to investigate inter- and intraspeaker variation in German infant-directed speech (IDS) and considers the potential impact that the factors gender, parental involvement, and speech material (read vs. spontaneous speech) may have. In addition, we analyze data from 3 time points prior to and after the birth of the child to examine potential changes in the features of IDS and, particularly also, of adult-directed speech (ADS). Here, the gender identity of a speaker is considered as an additional factor. Method IDS and ADS data from 34 participants (15 mothers, 19 fathers) is gathered by means of a reading and a picture description task. For IDS, 2 recordings were made when the baby was approximately 6 and 9 months old, respectively. For ADS, an additional recording was made before the baby was born. Phonetic analyses comprise mean fundamental frequency (f0), variation in f0, the 1st 2 formants measured in /i: ɛ a u:/, and the vowel space size. Moreover, social and behavioral data were gathered regarding parental involvement and gender identity. Results German IDS is characterized by an increase in mean f0, a larger variation in f0, vowel- and formant-specific differences, and a larger acoustic vowel space. No effect of gender or parental involvement was found. Also, the phonetic features of IDS were found in both spontaneous and read speech. Regarding ADS, changes in vowel space size in some of the fathers and in mean f0 in mothers were found. Conclusion Phonetic features of German IDS are robust with respect to the factors gender, parental involvement, speech material (read vs. spontaneous speech), and time. Some phonetic features of ADS changed within the child's first year depending on gender and parental involvement/gender identity. Thus, further research on IDS needs to address also potential changes in ADS.

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