A CHALLENGE AGAINST STEREOTYPICAL PERCEPTION OF GENDER ROLES: DECONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IN JOANNA RUSS’ THE FEMALE MAN

“Joanna Russ: Trans-Temp Agent” describes Joanna’s New York childhood in a close-knit (secular) Ashkenazi Jewish community; the precocious, passionate “sense of wonder” that informed her love of science, and science fiction; and the disillusion with stifling 1950s gender-roles that led young women of her generation to feminism. After Cornell University and a difficult, male-dominated theater course at Yale, she struggled with depression, experimented in the gothic mode, and sold uncanny tales to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. An invitation to the Milford conference marked her entry to the literary sf community. The chapter discusses published fiction from 1959-1970, with emphasis on “The Forever House” (1959) and the life-changing “Alyx” series, including the short novel Picnic on Paradise.

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Sex Differences in Cardiovascular Reactivity

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803.23.2.77 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 77-84 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Matthew C. Whited ◽

Kevin T. Larkin

Keyword(s):

Blood Pressure ◽

Heart Rate ◽

Sex Differences ◽

Gender Roles ◽

Cardiovascular Reactivity ◽

Task Type ◽

Conflict Task ◽

Men And Women ◽

Conflicting Evidence ◽

Blood Pressure Responses

Sex differences in cardiovascular reactivity to stress are well documented, with some studies showing women having greater heart rate responses than men, and men having greater blood pressure responses than women, while other studies show conflicting evidence. Few studies have attended to the gender relevance of tasks employed in these studies. This study investigated cardiovascular reactivity to two interpersonal stressors consistent with different gender roles to determine whether response differences exist between men and women. A total of 26 men and 31 women were assigned to either a traditional male-oriented task that involved interpersonal conflict (Conflict Task) or a traditional female-oriented task that involved comforting another person (Comfort Task). Results demonstrated that women exhibited greater heart rate reactions than men independent of the task type, and that men did not display a higher reactivity than women on any measure. These findings indicate that sex of participant was more important than gender relevance of the task in eliciting sex differences in cardiovascular responding.

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