“Both Body and Meaning Can Do a Cartwheel”1

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Megan Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Method Acting ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Crisis Of Masculinity ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Stable Categories

This chapter examines the crisis of masculinity as represented in Hollywood and on film. Evolving representations of masculinity were framed by the psychoanalytic turn in Hollywood, the objectification and eroticization of male bodies, the dominance of method acting, and questions about the nature of identity. These images uncoupled the stable categories of gender and sexuality, giving rise to more nuanced and anxiety-ridden representations of masculinity. The chapter considers how postwar Hollywood films charted a perceived breakdown of secure gender categories and by implication, a breakdown of sexuality. It discusses how “crisis of masculinity” films produced ambiguous masculine ideals, epitomized by the postwar “sigh guys.” Films that explore the passing guises of masculinity, such as The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Rebel without a Cause, Vertigo, and Some Like It Hot, are analyzed.

Hollywood’s Postwar Feminine Masquerades

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Megan Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Gender Representations ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Calamity Jane

This chapter examines representations of women and issues of femininity and feminine performance with respect to anxieties about authenticity and passing. A number of Hollywood films featured masculine women who played with categories of masculinity, such as Calamity Jane, Johnny Guitar, Touch of Evil, and Sayonara. Other films, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Peyton Place, and All about Eve, implied that women were performing femininity or raised the issue of “passing for normal.” The chapter considers how idealized, overly constructed gender representations in Hollywood films reinforced rather than negated the ambiguity of gender and how femininity itself was suggestively constructed as a passing performance. It explains how Hollywood's images of feminine masculinity lent credence to perceptions that gender categories were breaking down and how representations of ambiguous women in Hollywood films refused to focus on anxiety.

scholarly journals Social transformation of gender and sexuality as viewed by I.S. Kon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina N. Tartakovskaya ◽  
Igor I. Lunin
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Sexual Preferences ◽  
Current State ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Canadian Researcher ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Normative Models

The article examines the influence of Igor Kon on many aspects of modern research in the field of gender and sexuality. The authors conclude that it was Igor Kon who identified several key trends describing the current state of gender order in sexuality, namely, individualization and pluralization of cultures and lifestyles. It seems that the better way to speak about sexuality is not to refer to single or “normative models” but about a set of sexualities. In the proposed work, the variety of combinations of different gender identities with a multitude of sexual preferences is shown on the example of the theory of sexual configurations proposed by Canadian researcher Sari van Anders. The article emphasizes that, as I. Kon warned, it is gender relations and sexuality that are currently at the center of the agenda, since many more serious social problems are extrapolated to them. Cultural and, in particular, gender diversity is perceived by many people as the threat of losing the most basic landmarks in an unpredictable and changeable world. The article provides examples of different types of public policy in relation to binary and non-binary gender categories in different countries of Europe, Asia and North America.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Megan Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Crisis Of Masculinity ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Racial Ethnic

This book examines the contradictions and anxieties of passing in Hollywood films during the postwar era. It shows how the postwar anxiety about passing extended to virtually every facet of identity, whether it was women passing as men, blacks passing as whites, gays passing as straight, Jews passing as gentiles, communists passing as good Americans, or even aliens passing as humans (and vice versa). By analyzing films in the postwar years, the book shows why anxieties about passing resonated on so many levels in the long 1950s. It looks at representations of racial/ethnic passing in movies produced in the late 1940s and how the specter of passing was utilized in films produced in the context of the Cold War. Finally, it discusses the crisis of masculinity as represented in Hollywood and on film as well as issues of femininity and feminine performance with respect to anxieties about authenticity and passing.

On the Semantic Content of Grammatical Gender and Its Impact on the Representation of Human Referents

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 367-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Irmen ◽  
Julia Kurovskaja
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Masculine Role ◽  
Feminine Role ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Open Question

Grammatical gender has been shown to provide natural gender information about human referents. However, due to formal and conceptual differences between masculine and feminine forms, it remains an open question whether these gender categories influence the processing of person information to the same degree. Experiment 1 compared the semantic content of masculine and feminine grammatical gender by combining masculine and feminine role names with either gender congruent or incongruent referents (e.g., Dieser Lehrer [masc.]/Diese Lehrerin [fem.] ist mein Mann/meine Frau; This teacher is my husband/my wife). Participants rated sentences in terms of correctness and customariness. In Experiment 2, in addition to ratings reading times were recorded to assess processing more directly. Both experiments were run in German. Sentences with grammatically feminine role names and gender incongruent referents were rated as less correct and less customary than those with masculine forms and incongruent referents. Combining a masculine role name with an incongruent referent slowed down reading to a greater extent than combining a feminine role name with an incongruent referent. Results thus specify the differential effects of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in denoting human referents.

Retrospective feelings of difference based on gender and sexuality among emerging adults.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Kyle A. Simon ◽  
Cassandra P. Vázquez ◽  
Samuel T. Bruun ◽  
Rachel H. Farr
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Gender And Sexuality

Gender, Technology and the New Woman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Wånggren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Woman ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender And Technology ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Grant Allen

This book examines late nineteenth-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality. The New Woman, the fin de siècle cultural archetype of early feminism, became the focal figure for key nineteenth-century debates concerning issues such as gender and sexuality, evolution and degeneration, science, empire and modernity. While the New Woman is located in the debates concerning the ‘crisis in gender’ or ‘sexual anarchy’ of the time, the period also saw an upsurge of new technologies of communication, transport and medicine. This book explores the interlinking of gender and technology in writings by overlooked authors such as Grant Allen, Tom Gallon, H. G. Wells, Margaret Todd and Mathias McDonnell Bodkin. As the book demonstrates, literature of the time is inevitably caught up in a technological modernity: technologies such as the typewriter, the bicycle, and medical technologies, through literary texts come to work as freedom machines, as harbingers of female emancipation.

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