“I Believe We Are the Fewer, the Prouder”: Women’s Agency in Meaning-Making after Military Sexual Assault

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 624-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Hannagan
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Military Sexual Assault ◽  
Theoretical Significance ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
The Many

This article draws on ethnographic evidence and argues for the theoretical significance of that evidence regarding concepts of personal agency vis-à-vis rhetorics of victimhood. The problem discussed in this article is that a dominant discourse that positions women primarily or exclusively as victims in response to their experience of sexual assault not only works to re-victimize women but imposes unnecessary boundaries on the meaning of these experiences for the women involved. Instead of privileging the dominant discourse, this article seeks to privilege the voices of women who have experienced sexual assault. How women make sense of their experiences and themselves is constituted by their discourses. Among the many ways women choose to make sense of their experience and (re)construct the self is by drawing on the alternative available discourses including their military values and identity.

Norm Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Brysk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
The Many ◽  
Norm Change

Changes in attitudes, values, and beliefs about the many manifestations of violence against women are a necessary complement to globalizing rights standards, law enforcement, public policy, and grassroots empowerment. In Chapter 10, we will analyze the requisites and results of campaigns for norm change in women’s agency, masculine identities, and sexual self-determination. Communication campaigns aim to reshape community consciousness of gender regimes in South Africa, India, and Brazil. Global programs adopted by local movements promote women’s agency and empowerment to resist violence in India and Pakistan. Both global programs and transnational coalitions work to engage men and transform violent masculinities in India, South Africa, and Brazil. Finally, we will trace a variety of civil society cultural initiatives asserting sexual self-determination in Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, and China.

Feminism and Agency

2002 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 129-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Isaacs
Keyword(s):  
Free Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
Feminist Agency

Given conditions of oppression presupposed by a feminist understanding of social structures, feminist agency is paradoxical. I am going to understand feminist agency as women's ability to be effective agents against their own oppression. The paradox of feminist agency arises because feminist assumptions about women's socialization seem to entail that women's agency is compromised by sexist oppression. In particular, women's agency appears to be diminished in ways that interfere with their capacity for feminist action, that is, action against sexist oppression.Feminist philosophers have taken issue with traditional conceptions of agency, claiming that these conceptions are overly individualistic and valorize an illusory and unattractive ideal of agents and agency. If the paradox arises because women do not attain traditional ideals of independence, control, choice, and free action, then, if we reject the tradition, we may be able to articulate a preferable ideal of agency. This alternative may be one that women satisfy. Hence, a feminist reconstrual of the self could dispel the paradox.

Monkey on My Back. An Autoethnographic Narrative of a Therapeutic Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Wiesner
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Therapeutic Experience ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Global Uncertainty

With a conscious attempt to contribute to contemporary discussions in mad/trans/queer/monster studies, the monograph approaches complex postmodern theories and contextualizes them from an autoethnographic methodological perspective. As the self-explanatory subtitle reads, the book introduces several topics as revelatory fields for the author’s self-exploration at the moment of an intense epistemological and ontological crisis. Reflexively written, it does not solely focus on a personal experience, as it also aims at bridging the gap between the individual and the collective in times of global uncertainty. There are no solid outcomes defined; nevertheless, the narrative points to a certain—more fluid—way out. Through introducing alternative ways of hermeneutics and meaning-making, the book offers a synthesis of postmodern philosophy and therapy, evolutionary astrology as a symbolic language, embodied inquiry, and Buddhist thought that together represent a critical attempt to challenge the pathologizing discursive practices of modern disciplines during the neoliberal capitalist era.

The Women's Agency Scale 61 (Was-61): A Comprehensive Measure of Women's Intrinsic, Instrumental, and Collective Agency

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. Yount ◽  
Zara Khan ◽  
Stephanie Miedema ◽  
Yuk Fai Cheong ◽  
Ruchira T. Naved
Keyword(s):  
Collective Agency ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Women’S Agency

Nuanced and Dissenting Voices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy J. Miller ◽  
Grace E. Cho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Self ◽  
African American Parents ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Bakhtinian Theory

Chapter 4, “Nuanced and Dissenting Voices,” examines the nuances diverse parents brought to their understandings of childrearing and self-esteem. Framed within Bakhtinian theory, this chapter gives voice to African American parents, working-class parents, conservative Christian parents, and mothers, particularly women who had experienced low self-esteem. These parents endorsed self-esteem, but refracted the language of the self-esteem imaginary in ways that made sense, given their diverse values and ideological commitments, social positioning, and idiosyncratic experiences. This chapter also describes the perspectives of two groups from the larger study who challenged key elements of the dominant discourse: grandmothers of Centerville children who raised their children in an earlier era, and Taiwanese parents who grew up in a different cultural context but were temporarily residing and raising their children in Centerville. These two groups of dissenters underscore again the book’s theme that self-esteem is rooted in time and place.

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