scholarly journals NEGOTIATED MASCULINITIES. TRANS MEN’S ATTITUDES TOWARD DOMINANT NOTIONS OF MASCULINITY IN POLAND AND THE UNITED STATES

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
Anna M. Kłonkowska

The paper is based on a qualitative research project carried out in Poland and the United States. It intends to compare the attitudes of trans men toward dominant notions of masculinity in their respective countries. Focusing on people who had been recognized as female at birth but whose experienced gender is male, the paper addresses their definitions of masculinity, attitudes toward accomplishing socially acknowledged patterns of maleness and re-defining their gender identity. For this purpose, the study compares the ways in which dominant models of masculinity are conceptualized by the research participants, their childhood socialization to locally and globally defined gender roles, the cultural context they grew up in, and its influence on negotiating one’s own gender identity. As a result, conclusions from the study present a comparison of Polish and US trans men’s efforts to negotiate personal and social identity in light of dominant masculine ideals (e.g., their potential reworking, acceptance, and rejection of various elements of those ideals and explore how alternative notions of masculinity shape different experiences of female-to-male transition in both countries.

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Andrew Reilly ◽  
Jory Catalpa ◽  
Jenifer McGuire

As many as nine million people identify as a transperson in the United States, yet mass clothing designing and manufacturing do not meet the needs of this consumer group. This research examines the role of fit in ready-to-wear (RTW) clothing using qualitative research methods. 90 transpeople from the United States, Canada, and Ireland participated in interviews and data from interviews were analyzed using line-by-line analysis, resulting in three themes. Theme 1 explored current fit problems with RTW clothing, Theme 2 explored the desire to use clothing to hide parts of the body that did not align with one’s gender identity, and Theme 3 explored the desire to use clothing to highlight parts of the body that did align with one’s gender identity. Findings from this research confirm the assumption that current RTW clothing does not meet the needs of the transperson population and offers areas where designers and manufactures can reassess their methods relative to this consumer group.


Author(s):  
Maria S. Plakhotnik

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how instructors could use autoethnography as a course assignment to help students understand their cultural identities and build their intercultural communication competences in higher education classroom. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that helps people examine their relationship with a group or a culture. The chapter provides an overview of literature relevant to intercultural communication competences, social identity, and autoethnography and then describes the author's use of autoethnography in an undergraduate course “Social and Cultural Foundations of Education” taught at a large public university in the United States. In her class, the author uses this method to help students examine their cultural identity, or relationship with groups based on their religion, culture, nationality, ethnicity, or other groups relevant to the course.


Author(s):  
Maria S. Plakhotnik

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how instructors could use autoethnography as a course assignment to help students understand their cultural identities and build their intercultural communication competences in higher education classroom. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that helps people examine their relationship with a group or a culture. The chapter provides an overview of literature relevant to intercultural communication competences, social identity, and autoethnography and then describes the author's use of autoethnography in an undergraduate course “Social and Cultural Foundations of Education” taught at a large public university in the United States. In her class, the author uses this method to help students examine their cultural identity, or relationship with groups based on their religion, culture, nationality, ethnicity, or other groups relevant to the course.


Author(s):  
Ella Inglebret ◽  
Amy Skinder-Meredith ◽  
Shana Bailey ◽  
Carla Jones ◽  
Ashley France

The authors in this article first identify the extent to which research articles published in three American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) journals included participants, age birth to 18 years, from international backgrounds (i.e., residence outside of the United States), and go on to describe associated publication patterns over the past 12 years. These patterns then provide a context for examining variation in the conceptualization of ethnicity on an international scale. Further, the authors examine terminology and categories used by 11 countries where research participants resided. Each country uses a unique classification system. Thus, it can be expected that descriptions of the ethnic characteristics of international participants involved in research published in ASHA journal articles will widely vary.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.


2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Goggin

Interest in the fate of the German psychoanalysts who had to flee Hitler's Germany and find refuge in a new nation, such as the United States, has increased. The ‘émigré research’ shows that several themes recur: (1) the theme of ‘loss’ of one's culture, homeland, language, and family; and (2) the ambiva-lent welcome these émigrés received in their new country. We describe the political-social-cultural context that existed in the United States during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Documentary evidence found in the FBI files of three émigré psychoanalysts, Clara Happel, Martin Grotjahn, and Otto Fenichel, are then presented in combination with other source material. This provides a provisional impression of how each of these three individuals experienced their emigration. As such, it gives us elements of a history. The FBI documents suggest that the American atmosphere of political insecurity and fear-based ethnocentric nationalism may have reinforced their old fears of National Socialism, and contributed to their inclination to inhibit or seal off parts of them-selves and their personal histories in order to adapt to their new home and become Americanized. They abandoned the rich social, cultural, political tradition that was part of European psychoanalysis. Finally, we look at these elements of a history in order to ask a larger question about the appropriate balance between a liberal democratic government's right to protect itself from internal and external threats on the one hand, or crossover into the blatant invasion of civil rights and due process on the other.


Author(s):  
Sara Moslener

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.


Author(s):  
Lionel K. McPherson

Understanding black American social identity has suffered from association with the race idea. Being black American is not a racial designation. The tendency to reduce color-conscious social identity to racial classification is a mistake. Black American social identity gets its “blackness” from traceable African ancestry and is marked by the legacy of slavery. Yet being black American has become an elective identity: Americans with visible African ancestry no longer must count as black. But this hardly threatens black social identity and black solidarity, which continue to represent resistance to dishonor and mistreatment attaching to blackness in the United States.


Author(s):  
Robbee Wedow ◽  
Daniel A. Briley ◽  
Susan E. Short ◽  
Jason Boardman

This chapter uses twin pairs from the Midlife in the United States study to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on perceived weight status for midlife adults. The inquiry builds on previous work investigating the same phenomenon in adolescents, and it shows that perceived weight status is not only heritable, but also heritable beyond objective weight. Subjective assessment of physical weight is independent of one’s physical weight and described as “weight identity.” Importantly, significant differences are shown in the heritability of weight identity among men and women. The chapter ends by discussing the potential relevance of these findings for broader social identity research.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jin You ◽  
Qian Lu ◽  
Michael J. Zvolensky ◽  
Zhiqiang Meng ◽  
Kay Garcia ◽  
...  

Purpose Literature has documented the prevalence of anxiety and its adverse effect on quality of life among patients with breast cancer from Western countries, yet cross-cultural examinations with non-Western patients are rare. This cross-cultural study investigated differences in anxiety and its association with quality of life between US and Chinese patients with breast cancer. Methods Patients with breast cancer from the United States and China completed measures for anxiety (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) and quality of life (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast). Results After controlling for demographic and medical characteristics, Chinese patients reported higher levels of trait and state anxiety than US patients. Although there was an association between anxiety and quality of life in both groups of patients, the association between state anxiety and quality of life was stronger among Chinese patients than among US patients, with the association between trait anxiety and quality of life the same between the two cultural samples. Conclusion These findings suggest that anxiety and its association with quality of life among patients with breast cancer varies depending on cultural context, which reveals greater anxiety and poorer quality of life among Chinese patients compared with US patients. This suggests greater unmet psychosocial needs among Chinese patients and highlights the need to build comprehensive cancer care systems for a better quality of life in Chinese populations.


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