Feminist Psychology in North America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Sheese
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Feminist Psychology ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Gender

Feminist psychology as an institutionalized field in North America has a relatively recent history. Its formalization remains geographically uneven and its institutionalization remains a contested endeavor. Women’s liberation movements, anticolonial struggles, and the civil rights movement acted as galvanizing forces in bringing feminism formally into psychology, transforming not only its sexist institutional practices but also its theories, and radically challenging its epistemological and methodological commitments and constraints. Since the late 1960s, feminists in psychology have produced radically new understandings of sex and gender, have recovered women’s history in psychology, have developed new historiographical methods, have engaged with and developed innovative approaches to theory and research, and have rendered previously invisibilized issues and experiences central to women’s lives intelligible and worthy of scholarly inquiry. Heated debates about the potential of feminist psychology to bring about radical social and political change are ongoing as feminists in the discipline negotiate threats and dilemmas related to collusion, colonialism, and co-optation in the face of ongoing commitments to positivism and individualism in psychology and as the theory and practice of psychology remains embedded within broader structures of neoliberalism and global capitalism.

Socialist/Marxist Feminism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Lynne Lee
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The 1960S

The long arc of Marxist scholarship certainly reaches many domains—economics, sociology, political ecology. However, few scholarly projects have likely benefited more, or offered more, to sustaining the relevance of Marx and Marxism than the feminist analysis, interpretation, and application of the Marxist critique of capitalism. From the earliest translations of Marxist thought into revolutionary action, socialist feminists have sought to introduce sex and gender as salient categories of capitalist oppression, arguing that being a woman bound to patriarchal institutions such as marriage is comparable to a working-class laborer bound to the wage. Friedrich Engels also plays a key role in the socialist feminist appropriation of Marxist ideas. By showing the extent to which marriage is about the maintenance and expansion of property, Engels opens the door to a wide range of analysis concerning the material conditions of women’s lives and labors. Marxist ideas become the focus of renewed interest over the course of the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. It is thus unsurprising that a wealth of new feminist and antiracist theories begin to develop during this period, as well as analyses of structural inequality, including oppression with respect to the LGBTQ community. It is perhaps the most recent work among socialist feminists, in league with other activists and theorists, however, that is both truest to Marx’s original intent and that demonstrates the relevance of his ideas to the future fortunes of human societies, namely, the application of Marxist critique to environmental deterioration—especially anthropogenic climate change. Hence, the following is organized historically but also topically. It begins with the work of early socialist feminists, looking to include women within Marxist categories of class analysis but quickly moves to arguments that sex and gender—and then race/ethnicity and sexual identity—constitute their own salient categories of oppression. This explosion of theory and activism deserves to be treated topically so that the variety and breadth of socialist feminist ideas as well as the divisions and debates among its representatives becomes clear. The critique of capitalism has, of course, always been an essentially global enterprise. It is thus not surprising that the extension of socialist feminist analyses to the Global North and Global South would produce a wealth of insight and activism. For many of the same reasons, the same is true of the rise of socialist ecofeminism. The last section comes full circle. Devoted to arguments whose focus is the justification and fomenting of revolution, The Communist Manifesto finds its place next to contemporary socialist ecofeminist calls for workers from all regions of the planet to unite to overthrow once and for all the capitalist economic system responsible for jeopardizing the planet’s capacity to support life.

Gender, Anticolonialism, and Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Logue
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Freedom Schools ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

Anticolonialism is a revolutionary philosophy, a philosophy of revolution. Simply put, it is the struggle for freedom from slavery, settler colonialism, and imperialism. It is the theory and practice of the decolonization of nation-states, as well as of the decolonization of practices of knowledge production, consumption, dissemination, and the entire enterprise of education. It also works to decolonize minds, bodies, and imaginations. Anticolonialism challenges dominant practices of knowledge (and ignorance) production to highlight the intersection of gender, race, and class in what is known and not known about the past as it plays out in the present in education and beyond. Anticolonial scholarship and activism focus on intersectional accounts of history to investigate class- and gender-based forms of violence in some of the most celebrated nonviolent movements. Highlighting the psychic dimensions of domination and resistance is central to the anticolonial project, which elaborates on the boomerang effects of domination and the perils of privilege. This insight is central to imagining a sustainable world of social solidarity and reciprocity. The success of an anticolonial approach to education lies in creating capacities to critically reflect on colonial discourses, institutional structures, educational policy, practice, and pedagogical strategies. The anticolonial project brings to light the psychic life of domination and resistance, which colludes with flaws in the criminal justice system that work to funnel too many children of color out of school and into juvenile and justice systems. Anticolonial educational strategies begin with an intersectional approach to disrupting the school to prison pipeline—a devastating neocolonial formation. Twenty-first-century anticolonial educators and activists learn from the work of student activists in the Mississippi civil rights movement and their creation of Freedom Schools. The radical conceptions of pedagogy, citizenship, and power developed in Freedom Schools have important implications for thinking about the role of education in building a multiracial/multisexual anticolonial democracy in the 21st century.

Monumental Constructions: Statues, Identity, and Gabrielle Roy’s “L’arbre”

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Holly Collins
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Live Oak ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Significant Attention

Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans garnered significant attention for his book In the Shadow of Statues (2018), observing that many Confederate monuments were erected to buttress Jim Crow laws and serve as a warning to those who supported the civil rights movement. Likewise, there are a number of monuments in Québec that serve a particular political or religious purpose, seeking to reinforce a pure laine ideology. In this article, I explore the parallels between the literal and figurative construction and deconstruction of monuments that have fortified invented ideas on identity in francophone North America. Further, Gabrielle Roy’s short story “L’arbre,” which describes a “living monument,” tells the story of a racialized past in North America and unveils the falsities that have been preserved through the construction of statues that perpetuate racial myth. “L’arbre” examines the natural, unconstructed monument of the Live Oak: a tree that witnessed and holds the visible scars of the many terrible realities that took place in its shadows. I use Roy’s short story to show how she sought to deconstruct a whitewashed history of the post-Civil War American South and suggest that her broader corpus rejects determinism wholesale.

Giving Hegemonic Masculinity a Face Lift: Masquerade in John Woo's Face/Off and the Somatechnics of Masculinity in Crisis

Somatechnics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Kate Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Plastic Surgery ◽  
American History ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Face Lift ◽  
White Masculinity ◽  
New Man ◽  
And Gender

In 1990s America, the question of what made a ‘real’ man was at the forefront of debates about sex and gender. During this pivotal moment in American history, hegemonic masculinity in particular was experiencing numerous threats to its ontological security. For instance, masculinity was infamously pronounced in crisis, the advent of the ‘new man’ betrayed anxieties about an image-conscious and feminine performance of masculinity, and there was mounting social pressure from civil rights, feminist, and queer groups for straight, white, masculinity to be challenged as the centre of the patriarchal stage. In short, the issue for masculinity in the 90s was that of legitimacy. The response from Hollywood was an influx of films which featured leading men in costume, disguise, or masquerade. John Woo's Face/Off is one such film that betrays anxieties about the constructedness of hegemonic masculinity. Face/Off does so through the motif of plastic surgery. In this article, I will explore how Face/Off uses the image of plastic surgery to represent the masculinities of its male protagonists as masquerades. I will demonstrate how plastic surgery in Face/Off is a device which transforms hegemonic masculinity so that it may adapt to the climate of crisis and secure its continuation. Face/Off demonstrates that masculinity is a construct which masquerades as an ontology.

The Heart of the Movement

2018 ◽  
pp. 54-88
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
White People ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
The Face ◽  
Taxi Service ◽  
Martin Luther King

The chapter reveals the violence associated with the Civil Rights Movement, the courage of African American activists (Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers) and the small minority of southern white ministers who joined them. In Montgomery, Alabama, Robert Graetz provided taxi service for demonstrators. Andrew Turnipseed paid the salary of James Love, who signed the Mobile bus petition, when his parishioners would not. No southern white minister would participate in freedom rides, but John Morris organized a Freedom Ride after the violence subsided. The group was arrested. Joseph Ellwanger was harassed in Birmingham. Hundreds of black protestors were arrested and tortured. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Edwin King was arrested and tortured. The Klan and other white supremacist groups flourished. Black activists and some whites were murdered in Mississippi. As Edwin King commented, “Good white people could do nothing in the face of madness.”

The Changing Demographics of the South and Its Impact on National Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-49
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
High Growth ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Economic Diversification ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Changing Demographics ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Racial Ethnic

The South has grown more in the past fifty years than any other region, leading to major changes in its economy and the racial/ethnic, gender, generational, socioeconomic, and political composition of its electorate. In the fifty years since the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the South’s politics have become more polarized, with sharp differences by race, place of birth, age, education, income, and gender. Most of the changes occurred during a period of realignment, during which Republicans expanded their regional dominance. But continued in-migration, accompanied by economic diversification and racial/ethnic and generational shifts, is beginning to push the political pendulum in the opposite direction. This “redirection” is most noticeable in the region’s high growth states, particularly in their fast-growing metropolitan areas characterized by larger concentrations of young, minority (and more Democratic-leaning) voters. Overall, this chapter lends credibility to the “demographics is destiny” thesis.

scholarly journals Feminist theory in Feminism & Psychology [Part I]: Dealing with differences and negotiating the biological

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Lorraine Radtke
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Psychology ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Theoretical Issues

Theory is an important preoccupation of articles published in Feminism & Psychology. This Virtual Special Issue includes 10 of those published since the journal’s inception that have a primary focus on theoretical issues related to two related topics – differences and the biological. The concern with differences includes the socially constructed categories sex and gender, as well as sexuality and social class. Those articles addressing the biological represent critical scholarship that is working to negotiate a place for the biology within feminist psychology and entails moving away from the view that the biological is natural and innate. This introductory article addresses how theory fits within feminist psychology and offers a brief history of debates concerning differences and the biological before offering summaries and observations related to each selected article. The featured articles can be located on the Feminism & Psychology website and are listed in Appendix 1 at the end of this article.

The Future of Labor Localism in an Age of Preemption

ILR Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 001979392097093
Author(s):  
Olatunde C. A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Local Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Regulation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sick Leave Policies ◽  
State Legislative

In recent years, labor and civil rights groups have successfully pushed for local regulation raising the minimum wage, creating new parenting and sick leave policies, and broadening anti-discrimination protections to address sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. This article examines the viability of this worker-protective regulation at the local level in the face of current legal and political challenges. In particular, it considers the rise of state preemption laws that overturn local ordinances, which is the product of anti-regulatory mobilization at the state legislative level. The article provides case studies of state preemption and offers potential legal arguments for challenging preemption and safeguarding labor and civil rights localism. The author concludes, however, that given the uncertainty of whether these legal arguments will prevail in court, civil rights and labor advocates will need to engage politics at the state level to preserve and expand local innovations.

In Favor of the 2019 Equality Act: A Comment on Burt

2021 ◽  
pp. 155708512199133
Author(s):  
Susan Gluck Mezey
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Sex Discrimination ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
And Gender

There are three reason why I disagree with the author’s premise that 2019 Equality Act disadvantages women by blurring the distinction between sex and gender identity. First, it ignores current legal theory and practice that sex discrimination encompasses gender identity discrimination in federal law; second, it has not made a sufficient case that the Act’s interpretation of sex would harm women; third, it incorrectly assumes gender equality in the workplace can be achieved while sex-segregated spaces remain segregated by biological sex. In sum, revising the Equality Act to exempt women’s spaces would sacrifice the principle of gender equality upon which the Act is based.

Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Black Art ◽  
And Gender

Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical paradox by which unprecedented civil rights gains coexist with novel impediments to collectivist black liberation projects. At the beginning of the 1970s, the ethos animating the juridical achievements of the civil rights movement began to wane, and the rise of neoliberalism, a powerful conservative backlash, the co-optation of “race-blind” rhetoric, and the pathologization and criminalization of poverty helped to retrench black inequality in the post-civil rights era. This book uncovers the intricate ways that black cultural production kept imagining how black people could achieve their dreams for freedom, despite abject social and political conditions. While black writers, artists, historians, and critics have taken renewed interest in the historical roots of black un-freedom, Black Cultural Production insists that the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies. Black cultural production and producers help us think about how black people might achieve freedom by centralizing the roles black art and artists have had in expanding notions of freedom, democracy, equity, and gender equality. Black cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics.

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