scholarly journals The Drama‐Free Performance of Authentic Friends: Exploring how New Zealand men make sense of their friendships

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Maree Harete Martinussen
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Heterosexual Hegemony ◽  
Critical Discursive Psychology

<p>In contemporary New Zealand, the cultural tropes surrounding the ‘good kiwi bloke’ and his ‘mates’ might seem as solid and steadfast as conceptions of kiwi mateship itself. However, the stability of masculinities and femininities is considered in this thesis as an illusion enabled by ongoing reflexive accomplishment, and I focus on how that illusion is achieved through the discursive construction of intimacies within friendships. A synthesis of ethnomethodological and poststructuralist theory informs the discourse analytic approach taken -­ critical discursive psychology. Drawing on insights from discursive psychological research, particularly Margaret Wetherell’s work, I apply the tools of this method to data collected from focus groups. Although my analysis is sociological, I engage with a wide range of theoretical claims from diverse disciplines in discussing my findings. I find that participant justifications for not engaging in some intimacies are constructed though interpretive repertoires that de‐value women’s friendship relating. However, I point to the re-­signification of intimacies relating to emotional self-­‐disclosing in men’s friendships; the task of aligning these ‘traditionally’ feminine intimacies with heteromasculine identity is achieved through an interpretive repertoire of authenticity. An authenticity repertoire is bolstered by the reproduction of understandings that uphold ideal friendships as being based on non-­obligatory interactions, which are carried out by rational, autonomous subjects. I suggest that these understandings of men’s friendships foster a sense of ontological security, but that they inhibit greater responsiveness between friends. The ways in which intimacy of friendships are mediated by discourses of sexism and heterosexism are also explored. The data indicates that mobilisation of sexist discourses functions to build shared masculine identity, with the subtleties of humour working to obscure prejudiced content. Elsewhere, humour is used to manage intimacies in friendships, via an ambiguous ‘homo-­play’ repertoire, where the contingent linking of sex and gender is exposed. I highlight the complex and context-­specific ways repertoires are used and question tendencies within studies of masculinities to map out typologies of masculinities, such as ‘softer’ or ‘orthodox’ masculinities, which are often attached to ‘types’ of men. Overall, I suggest that the careful management of talk about men’s friendships generally supports the ideological thrust of the current gender order, in line with Judith Butler’s conceptions of heterosexual hegemony. However, simultaneously, the relentless accounting in­‐talk around what constitutes men’s friendship is indicative of the need to continually perform (heterosexual) man‐friend, highlighting the intrinsic vulnerability of heterosexual hegemony.</p>

scholarly journals The Drama‐Free Performance of Authentic Friends: Exploring how New Zealand men make sense of their friendships

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Maree Harete Martinussen
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Heterosexual Hegemony ◽  
Critical Discursive Psychology

<p>In contemporary New Zealand, the cultural tropes surrounding the ‘good kiwi bloke’ and his ‘mates’ might seem as solid and steadfast as conceptions of kiwi mateship itself. However, the stability of masculinities and femininities is considered in this thesis as an illusion enabled by ongoing reflexive accomplishment, and I focus on how that illusion is achieved through the discursive construction of intimacies within friendships. A synthesis of ethnomethodological and poststructuralist theory informs the discourse analytic approach taken -­ critical discursive psychology. Drawing on insights from discursive psychological research, particularly Margaret Wetherell’s work, I apply the tools of this method to data collected from focus groups. Although my analysis is sociological, I engage with a wide range of theoretical claims from diverse disciplines in discussing my findings. I find that participant justifications for not engaging in some intimacies are constructed though interpretive repertoires that de‐value women’s friendship relating. However, I point to the re-­signification of intimacies relating to emotional self-­‐disclosing in men’s friendships; the task of aligning these ‘traditionally’ feminine intimacies with heteromasculine identity is achieved through an interpretive repertoire of authenticity. An authenticity repertoire is bolstered by the reproduction of understandings that uphold ideal friendships as being based on non-­obligatory interactions, which are carried out by rational, autonomous subjects. I suggest that these understandings of men’s friendships foster a sense of ontological security, but that they inhibit greater responsiveness between friends. The ways in which intimacy of friendships are mediated by discourses of sexism and heterosexism are also explored. The data indicates that mobilisation of sexist discourses functions to build shared masculine identity, with the subtleties of humour working to obscure prejudiced content. Elsewhere, humour is used to manage intimacies in friendships, via an ambiguous ‘homo-­play’ repertoire, where the contingent linking of sex and gender is exposed. I highlight the complex and context-­specific ways repertoires are used and question tendencies within studies of masculinities to map out typologies of masculinities, such as ‘softer’ or ‘orthodox’ masculinities, which are often attached to ‘types’ of men. Overall, I suggest that the careful management of talk about men’s friendships generally supports the ideological thrust of the current gender order, in line with Judith Butler’s conceptions of heterosexual hegemony. However, simultaneously, the relentless accounting in­‐talk around what constitutes men’s friendship is indicative of the need to continually perform (heterosexual) man‐friend, highlighting the intrinsic vulnerability of heterosexual hegemony.</p>

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.

scholarly journals Sex and Gender Interactions on the Use and Impact of Recreational Cannabis

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Greaves ◽  
Natalie Hemsing
Keyword(s):  
Cannabis Use ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Precise Integration ◽  
Routes Of Administration ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Scoping Reviews ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

Cannabis is the second most frequently used substance in the world and regulated or legalized for recreational use in Canada and fourteen US states and territories. As with all substances, a wide range of sex and gender related factors have an influence on how substances are consumed, their physical, mental and social impacts, and how men and women respond to treatment, health promotion, and policies. Given the widespread use of cannabis, and in the context of its increasing regulation, it is important to better understand the sex and gender related factors associated with recreational cannabis use in order to make more precise clinical, programming, and policy decisions. However, sex and gender related factors include a wide variety of processes, features and influences that are rarely fully considered in research. This article explores myriad features of both sex and gender as concepts, illustrates their impact on cannabis use, and focuses on the interactions of sex and gender that affect three main areas of public interest: the development of cannabis use dependence, the impact on various routes of administration (ROA), and the impact on impaired driving. We draw on two separate scoping reviews to examine available evidence in regard to these issues. These three examples are described and illustrate the need for more comprehensive and precise integration of sex and gender in substance use research, as well as serious consideration of the results of doing so, when addressing a major public health issue such as recreational cannabis use.

Gender

Anthropology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca L. Upton
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Health And Human Rights ◽  
Feminist Anthropology ◽  
Distinct Area ◽  
Family Issues ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Biological Differences

Gender is a key concept in the discipline of anthropology. Sex and gender are defined differently in anthropology, the former as grounded in perceived biological differences and the latter as the cultural constructions observed, performed, and understood in any given society, often based on those perceived biological differences. Throughout the 20th century and the rise of sociocultural anthropology, the meaning and significance of gender to the discipline has shifted. In early ethnographic studies, gender was often synonymous with kinship or family, and a monograph might include just a single chapter on women or family issues. Despite early female pioneers in the field, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s and the real rise of feminist anthropology that gender as a distinct area of theoretical and methodological interest took hold within the discipline. Women were no longer seen as a category of culture and society outside of the realm of the everyday. While some focused on divisions between the domestic and the public, feminist anthropologists and those interested in the study of gender began to challenge the simple “add women and stir” model of ethnography and sought to bring attention to structural inequalities, the role of economic disparities, global dimensions to gender politics, the role of language, sexuality and masculinity studies, and health and human rights. Gradually the most recent works in gender and anthropology came to encompass a wide range of perspectives that challenge Western or monolithic assumptions about women and the experience of gender. For example, non-Western writing on gender illustrates how varied the experience of feminism can be in contemporary contexts where religious beliefs, development experiences, and the very role of language can influence understandings of gender. The study of women, men, and the intersections of gender across cultures has become a key aspect of any holistic study or methodological approach in anthropology today.

The Social Psychology of Sex and Gender

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hegarty ◽  
Emma Sarter
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Gender Differences And Similarities ◽  
Conceptual Relationship

Between the late 1960s and early 1980s, gender became an important topic in U.S. social psychology, raising questions about the conceptual relationship between “sex” and “gender.” A second-wave feminist project to describe differences between women and men as previously exaggerated and currently changeable was aligned with social psychology’s emphasis on the distorting power of stereotypes and the strong influence of immediate situations on human behavior. Feminism and social psychology both suggested psychology could foment social transformation, and the authors and participants of psychological research have undoubtedly become far less “womanless” in the past half-century. By the late 1980s several incommensurate social psychologies of gender existed, creating debates about the meaning of emphasizing gender differences and similarities and the gendered social psychology of psychological science itself. However, psychology remained largely a “white space” in the 1970s and 1980s, which were also “difficult decades” in transgender history. The increasing recognition of intersectional feminism and trans-affirmative perspectives in the 2010s set the context for regarding this history from different contemporary standpoints.

Goodbye to Sex and Gender

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hood-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Base ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Biological Differences

The sociological distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ has been paradigmatic for twenty years and is still taken for granted within the discipline. However it is a distinction that will no longer serve. Doubts about its continued usefulness surfaced as a result of a variety of influences. This paper refers specifically to the history of sex and to recent work in genetics in order to demonstrate that sex, like gender is a discursive construction. I argue that the sex/gender problematic is wrong to assume biological differences are naturally given and that sex cannot operate as a natural base in a theory of difference.

scholarly journals Kønnets regerende dronning - en introduktion til køn og krop i Judith Butlers forfatterskab

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christel Stormhøj
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Critical Resource ◽  
And Gender

This article introduces the work of Judith Butler, whose theory of gender performativity has become highly influential in contemporary studies of gender and sexuality. Her main thesis is that both gender and sex are produced by discourse. In order to deal with the discursive construction of bodies, it is necessary to move beyond the opposition between sex and gender long upheld in feminist theory. Butler's theory is intended as an improvement on constructionism. Understanding construction as involving the materialization of determinate types of bodies through the iteration of gender-constituting performatives, she argues that both sex and gender are co-original effects of this process. The function of performatives is to create heterosexually structured bodies and subjects, and these performatives operate by prescribing other identifications. Because there is never any easy fit between the stream of identifications and desires and the performativity of prescribtions and proscribtions, identities are always phantasmatic. The constitution of a heterosexually organized, gender differentiated identity rests on that which has been excluded and abjection figures as a critical resource on the struggle to rearticulate the terms of symbolic intelligibility and legitimacy in Butler's political vision.

Anthropology of Catholicism

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Gender

A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and technologies of mediation.

scholarly journals Intersections of Gender and Cognition in Older Adults

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 696-696
Author(s):  
Shana Stites ◽  
Jason Flatt ◽  
Carol Derby
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Research Participant ◽  
Cognitive Outcomes ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
Dichotomous Variable ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sociocultural Effects

Abstract The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is committed to supporting rigorous science that advances what is understood about the influences of sex and gender in health and disease in order to inform the development of prevention strategies and treatment interventions. In research on aging and Alzheimer’s disease, sex/gender disparities in key outcomes are common. But, much of this research hinges on asking a single question: Is the patient or research participant male or female, man or woman? This practice offers few options for disambiguating sociocultural effects associated with gender from those related to biologic sex. It also assumes that self-reports are a suitable proxy for social phenotypes and that a dichotomous variable adequately captures the wide-range of sociocultural effects attributable to gender. The premise of this symposium is to evaluate how gender interacts with cognitive outcomes in order to advance measurement. This symposium will review evidence from five distinct lines of research on associations between gender and cognition for individuals and for individual’s interactions with their family members: (1) effects of normative shifts in American education on cognition in older adults; (2) hospitalization as a risk factor for cognitive decline in racially diverse American men and women; (3) caregivers who identify as sexual and gender minorities (SGM or LGBTQ+) and care for persons with dementia; (4) correlates of cognitive function in SGM older adults; and (5) differences in adults’ cognition based on childhood exposure to women’s social empowerment in 30+ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

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