Sexuality, Gender Identity, Fluidity, and Embodiment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shae Miller
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Sexual Fluidity ◽  
Political Protests ◽  
Everyday Resistance ◽  
A Site

Social movement activists have frequently used a variety of embodied tactics to negotiate cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality, which are in constant flux. This chapter attends to the ways that new social formations of gender and sexuality—including the recent emphases on gender and sexual fluidity—have impacted the politics, goals, tactics, and identities of contemporary women’s movements. Incorporating queer, transgender, critical race, and disability studies, this chapter emphasizes the ways that women seeking to attain gender and sexual justice have used the body both as a site of everyday resistance against repressive gender and sexual norms and as a tool for performing overt political protests. It illustrates how gender and sexual fluidity have gained new traction within social movements and discusses the implications for conceptualizing women’s activism.

scholarly journals Sexuality, Feminism and Polish Cinema in Maria Kornatowska’s "Eros i film"

Panoptikum ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 117-130
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Radkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Film Critic

The text addresses the issue of feminist film criticism in Poland in the 1980s, represented by the book by Maria Kornatowska Eros i  film [Eros and Film, 1986]. In her analysis Kornatowska focused mostly on Polish cinema, examined through a feminist and psychoanalytic lens. As a film critic, she followed international cinematic offerings and the latest trends in film studies, which is why she decided to fill the gap in Polish writings on gender and sexuality in cinema, and share her knowledge and ideas on the relationship between Eros and Film. The purpose of the text on Kornatowska’s book was to present her individual interpretations of the approach of Polish and foreign filmmakers to the body, sexuality, gender identity, eroticism, the question of violence and death. Secondly, it was important to emphasize her skills and creative potential as a film critic who was able to use many diverse repositories of thought (including feminist theories, philosophy and anthropology) to create a multi-faceted lens, which she then uses to perform a subjective, critical analysis of selected films.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 661-670
Author(s):  
David W. Kling
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Socioeconomic Factors ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
A Site ◽  
Autobiographical Impulse

The concluding chapter provides summary observations of the book’s themes that highlight the complex, multifaceted dimension of conversion throughout twenty centuries of Christian history. These include the convert’s cognizance of divine presence; the crucial importance of historical context (political, religious, institutional, and socioeconomic factors); continuity and discontinuity (how much of the new displaces the old in conversion?); nominal, incomplete, and “true” conversions; personal testimonies and narratives (the autobiographical impulse attests to the converted life); the role of gender; identity and the self; agency (are converts actors or are they being acted upon?); the mechanisms behind and the motivations for conversion; the body as a site of conversion; the role of music; conversion as event and process; coercive practices; and forms of communication in the converting process.

scholarly journals Bodies in Confinement: Negotiating Queer, Gender Nonconforming, and Transwomen’s Gender and Sexuality behind Bars

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Nicole A. Francisco
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Medical Condition ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Transgender Identity ◽  
Knowledge Support

The criminal punishment system plays a critical role in the production of race, gender, and sexuality in the United States. The regulation of marginalized women’s bodies—transwomen, butches, and lesbians—in confinement reproduces cis-heteronormativity. Echoing the paternalistic claims of protection that have inspired “bathroom bills,” gender-segregated prison facilities have notoriously condemned transwomen prisoners to men’s prisons for the “safety” of women’s prisons, constructing cisgender women as “at risk” of sexual assault and transgender women as “risky”, overlooking the reality of transwomen as the most at risk of experience sexual violence in prisons. Prisons use legal and medical constructions of gender that pathologize transgender identity in order to legitimize health concerns; for example, the mutilation of the body in an effort to remove unwanted genitalia as evidence to warrant a diagnosis of gender identity disorder, or later gender dysphoria. This construction of transgender identity as a medical condition that warrants treatment forces prisoners to pathologize their gender identity in order to access adequate gender-affirming care. By exploring the writings of queer and trans prisoners, we can glean how heteronormativity structures gender and sexuality behind bars and discover how trans prisoners work to assemble knowledge, support, and resources toward survival.

scholarly journals Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Fabian ◽  
Louise Yung Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Substantial Impact ◽  
Everyday Resistance ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Analytical Frameworks

This special issue of Conjunctions bears the title Feminism, Gender, Social Movements and Everyday Resistance. This introduction will analyse chosen relations between these four phenomena, amongst others by showing how feminism and women’s movements have made a substantial impact on different societies and cultures all over the world and have inspired the protest repertoires and analytical frameworks of both social movements and more informal forms of everyday resistance. The introduction introduces, explores and links the intersectional turn in feminism, different theories of everyday resistance and the role of culture in politics and resistance. After mapping out this more general theoretical landscape of gendered activism, the introduction introduces and reflects on a number of the recurring themes in the contributions to this special issue. These themes are ‘mediatised activism’, ‘mobilisation of affect’, ‘online misogyny and reactionary movements of the far right’, ‘the body as a political site’ and ‘citizenship and the rights to have rights’. By showing how feminism and feminist theory have developed over time through different movements, actors and different forms of activism working to promote more equal political, cultural, social and economic rights and opportunities for all genders, the introduction also raises more fundamental questions about the relationship between theory and activism. Amongst others it shows that the way we define and understand politics and what we recognise and acknowledges as politics is in itself a political act and an important part of the politics of knowledge construction.

scholarly journals Women’s Movements and Feminism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laure Bereni
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Social Movement Theory ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Movement Theory

This chapter starts by exploring the ways in which comparative research on women’s movements has challenged dominant conceptions in social movement theory, notably the antagonism between movements and institutions and the conflation of protest and disruption. The chapter then turns to the specific insights of French research on the women’s movement and feminism. First, a series of studies have explored the politicization of gender identity and the the historical interplay between mobilizing as women and doing so for women. Second, there has been considerable examination of the complex ways in which feminist protest has become ingrained in state institutions. Third, several works have focused on the process of diffusion and individual appropriation of feminist ideas outside the women’s movement. A recent line of research has placed the emphasis on the intersecting power relationships that shape the contemporary women’s movement.

The Space of Difference in Law: Inquests into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherene H. Razack
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The Body ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Clear Sign ◽  
A Site ◽  
Deaths In Custody

Paul Alphonse, a 67 year-old Aboriginal died in hospital while in police custody. A significant contributing factor to his death was that he was stomped on so hard that there was a boot print on his chest and several ribs were broken. His family alleged police brutality. The inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse offers an opportunity to explore the contemporary relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian society and, significantly, how law operates as a site for managing that relationship. I suggest that we consider the boot print on Alphonse's chest and its significance at the inquest in these two different ways. First, although it cannot be traced to the boot of the arresting officer, we can examine the boot print as an event around which swirls Aboriginal/police relations in Williams Lake, both the specific relation between the arresting officer and Alphonse, and the wider relations between the Aboriginal community and the police. Second, the response to the boot print at the inquest sheds light on how law is a site for obscuring the violence in Aboriginal people's lives. A boot print on the chest of an Aboriginal man, a clear sign of violence, comes to mean little because Aboriginal bodies are considered violable – both prone to violence, and bodies that can be violated with impunity. Law, in this instance in the form of an inquest, stages Aboriginal abjection, installing Aboriginal bodies as too damaged to be helped and, simultaneously to harm. In this sense, the Aboriginal body is homo sacer, the body that maybe killed but not murdered. I propose that the construction of the Aboriginal body as inherently violable is required in order for settlers to become owners of the land.

Queering Gender Identity Work: A Life History of a Black Transgender Woman

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esethu Monakali
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This article offers an analysis of the identity work of a black transgender woman through life history research. Identity work pertains to the ongoing effort of authoring oneself and positions the individual as the agent; not a passive recipient of identity scripts. The findings draw from three life history interviews. Using thematic analysis, the following themes emerge: institutionalisation of gender norms; gender and sexuality unintelligibility; transitioning and passing; and lastly, gender expression and public spaces. The discussion follows from a poststructuralist conception of identity, which frames identity as fluid and as being continually established. The study contends that identity work is a complex and fragmented process, which is shaped by other social identities. To that end, the study also acknowledges the role of collective agency in shaping gender identity.

The role of the female body in contesting and negotiating space in sports for women in rural and urban Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Obert Bernard Mlambo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
School Sports ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Gender Ideals ◽  
A Site ◽  
Embodied Practice

This article examined attitudes, knowledge, behavior and practices of men and society on Gender bias in sports. The paper examined how the African female body was made into an object of contest between African patriarchy and the colonial system and also shows how the battle for the female body eventually extended into the sporting field. It also explored the postcolonial period and the effects on Zimbabwean society of the colonial ideals of the Victorian culture of morality. The study focused on school sports and the participation of the girl child in sports such as netball, volleyball and football. Reference was made to other sports but emphasis was given to where women were affected. It is in this case where reference to the senior women soccer team was made to provide a case study for purposes of illustration. Selected rural community and urban schools were served as case references for ethnographic accounts which provided the qualitative data used in the analysis. In terms of methodology and theoretical framework, the paper adopted the political economy of the female body as an analytical viewing point in order to examine the body of the girl child and of women in action on the sporting field in Zimbabwe. In this context, the female body is viewed as deeply contested and as a medium that functions as a site for the redirection, profusion and transvaluation of gender ideals. Using the concept of embodiment, involving demeanor, body shape and perceptions of the female body in its social context, the paper attempted to establish a connection between gender ideologies and embodied practice. The results of the study showed the prevalence of condescending attitudes towards girls and women participation in sports.

The Resurrection Body

2019 ◽  
pp. 660-674
Author(s):  
Taylor G. Petrey
Keyword(s):  
Radical Change ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Early Christian

This chapter surveys the relevant ancient Christian and Jewish texts on the resurrection that discuss gender and sexuality and the scholarship about these topics. It provides particular emphasis on the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, and the early Christian reception of their ideas in the second through fourth centuries. The saying of Jesus that those who are resurrected shall be “as angels” is central to early Christian theologies of the body and sexuality. Paul’s discussion of the nature of the resurrected body and the importance of the parts also informs how early Christians developed these ideas. The tension in early Christian writing about the resurrection was between those who emphasized continuity between the mortal and resurrected self, and those who emphasized a radical change between the two. Further, the chapter provides an overview to major scholarly methods and approaches to studying the resurrection, including feminist scholarship.

scholarly journals Caring for affective subjects produced in intimate healthcare examinations

2021 ◽  
pp. 136345932110200
Author(s):  
Jenny Gleisner ◽  
Ericka Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Digital Rectal Exam ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Work Spaces ◽  
Pelvic Exam ◽  
Care Practices

This article is about the feelings – affect – induced by the digital rectal exam of the prostate and the gynaecological bimanual pelvic exam, and the care doctors are or are not instructed to give. The exams are both invasive, intimate exams located at a part of the body often charged with norms and emotions related to gender and sexuality. By using the concept affective subject, we analyse how these examinations are taught to medical students, bringing attention to how bodies and affect are cared for as patients are observed and touched. Our findings show both the role care practices play in generating and handling affect in the students’ learning and the importance of the affect that the exam is (or is not) imagined to produce in the patient. Ours is a material-discursive analysis that includes the material affordances of the patient and doctor bodies in the affective work spaces observed.

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