Mobilizing Genre

Queer Timing ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 80-98
Author(s):  
Susan Potter
Keyword(s):  
Same Sex ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Transition To Sound ◽  
Sexual Category

This chapter considers the sexuality effects of a film released on the cusp of the transition to sound and which redeploys the codes of a nearly exhausted genre, the flapper film. While several scholars have read The Wild Party (dir. Dorothy Arzner, Paramount Lasky, 1929) in terms of its lesbian subtext, a mode of interpretation shaped by a representational regime that postdates the film’s release, this chapter traces how the visual erotics mobilized across the entire film render such scenes sexually legible. “Mobilizing Genre” argues that the site through which lesbian possibilities are paradoxically screened—that is, both projected and hidden from view—is the sexualized and kinetic body of the feminine flapper. In failing to anchor same-sex desire definitively to any one sexual category, The Wild Party’s sexual kinesthetics demonstrate the centrality of same-sex desire to female spectatorship in Hollywood cinema, and its intimate and productive relation to new erotic discourses of both homo- and heterosexuality.

Vanilla democracy: Sexuality, parenthood, and kinship in Greece

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072097861
Author(s):  
Aspa Chalkidou
Keyword(s):  
Labor Law ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Legal Recognition ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Civil Partnership ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Sexual Category

This article analyzes how parenthood gets established as a defined sexual category predicated on the exclusion of imagined deviance. Examining the Greek state's policies on reproduction, public discourses over non-heterosexual kinship, and the LGBT movement’s claims for the institutional recognition of same-sex parenthood, I analyze the circulation of sexual concepts and ideas through the cultural notion of parenthood, their imbrication with policies on family and reproduction, and their connection to broader national, political, and reproductive imaginaries. Through a careful reading of the “Greek case,” a nation where same-sex couples can now enter a civil partnership, but who nevertheless lack any legal recognition of same-sex parenting, I argue that political attachments to parenthood have implications for understanding other forms of institutionalized reproduction, including the academic re/production of scholarship on kinship and sexuality, labor law, and the reproduction of state authority.

Romanticism and Gender Criticism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan J. Wolfson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
Feminist Criticism ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Criticism

Gender criticism, an evolution from feminist criticism, studies representations of gender and gender difference in literary representation and, more broadly, in the ‘social text’, the languages and systems of representation in culture at large. Gender language is conspicuous in the binaries masculine and feminine, allied to manly, unmanly, effeminate, boyish, girlish, womanish, womanly, etc. It also involves the complications and challenges to these binaries by same-sex associations and intimacies, ‘queer’ configurations (unreadable by traditional measures), trans- or fluid figures, and performativity in all these aspects – including ventures in cross-dressing or cross-living, closeted or coterie-identifiable. In the Romantic era, gender criticism suggests that the sex/gender coordinates male/masculine and female/feminine are historically specific determinations, not inevitabilities. This essay focuses on dismantling critiques and attendant reinforcements. Critique often takes the form of satires of the ‘feminine’ qualities of delicacy, sentiment, soft-headedness, and dependence, ‘girls’ for life, even in a adult woman’s body; it also satirizes masculine swagger and presumption. It becomes interested in aberrant but not necessarily stigmatized variants – say, the rational woman and the man who respects such a woman, without being unmanned. Traditional understandings get put into question and into play, with critical implications.

Decolonizing Indigenous Sexualities

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Manuela L. Picq
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Binary Fluid ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Sexual Control

Indigenous societies were never straight. Hundreds of languages across the Americas had words referring to same-sex practices and non-binary, fluid understandings of gender long before the emergence of international LGBT rights. The muxes in Juchitán are neither men nor women but a Zapotec gender hybridity. Across the Pacific in Hawaii, the māhū embrace both the feminine and masculine. Global sexual rights frameworks did not introduce referents to recognize alternative sexualities; Indigenous languages already had them, as their terminologies indicate. Indigenous sexualities both predate and defy contemporary LGBT and queer frameworks. It is not the idioms that are untranslatable but the cultural and political fabric they represent. This chapter shows the plurality of gender roles and sexual practices in Indigenous societies not to contribute sexual repertoires but to expand the imagination with new epistemologies. The analysis suggests that codes of heteronormativity were central tenets of the colonial project. Sexuality was a terrain to frame the Native as pervert and validate European violence against the non-Christian other, labeled as savage, heretic, and sodomite. The repression of sexual diversity shows how sexual control followed colonial logics of dispossession like the doctrine of discovery and why resisting heteronormative codification is a decolonial practice. This chapter recognizes the significance of the existence and resistance of Indigenous sexualities. It analyzes colonial processes of heterosexualization and approaches Native sexualities as sites of resurgence and self-determination to resist ongoing forms of dispossession.

PERCEPTIONS OF SAME-VERSUS CROSS-SEX-TYPED PHYSICAL STANCE

1986 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-192
Author(s):  
Sheila Fling Maria M. Prieto ◽  
Shirley M. Rosenwasser
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Semantic Differential ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Cross

Seventy-five undergraduates did semantic differential ratings on one of four pictures: a male or female in a “masculine” or “feminine” stance as described by Wex (1979). The results generally supported the four hypotheses. The “masculine” stance was perceived as (1) more masculine (p < .000) as well as (2) more potent (p < .000), active (p < .000), happy (p < .05), and well-adjusted (p < .05) than the ‘feminine’ stance. (3) The cross-sex-typed stance was seen as less heterosexual, than the same-sex typed one (p < .05). (4) Interactions on masculinity, potency, activity (p s < .0001), happiness, adjustment (p s < .05), and successfulness (p < .07) indicated that the cross-sex-typed male tended to be rated less favorably but the cross-sex-typed female more favorably than their same-sex-typed counterparts. A bias against “masculine” personality traits in females (Broverman et al., 1972) thus did not hold true for physical stance.

Language Policies and In-group Favoritism

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
Language Policies ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Negative Valence ◽  
The Feminine

This study investigates the influence of sex of respondent, context valence, and type of generic on the naming of female personalities in Norway where the feminine suffixing has dropped away in reaction to the problem of linguistic sexism. A total of 162 participants were asked to name either their most- or least-liked personalities. The survey employed either the generic form only or the generic form together with the obsolete feminine forms. Adding the feminine forms led to a significant increase in the number of female personalities named, suggesting that the Norwegian policy of gender neutralization has not (yet) been successful. Furthermore, the sex of respondent was positively related to the naming of same-sex personalities in the positive but not in the negative valence condition, thus documenting malleability in the interpretation of generics.

scholarly journals The impact of sound technology on the distribution of shot lengths in Hollywood cinema, 1920 to 1933

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Redfern
Keyword(s):  
Robust Estimator ◽  
Silent Films ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Transition To Sound ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Sound Technology

The impact of sound technology on Hollywood is analysed through looking at the median shot lengths of silent films from the 1920s (n = 54) and early sound films (n = 106). The results show a large increase in the median shot lengths with the introduction of sound (Mann Whitney U = 554.0, Z = -8.33, p = <0.01, PS = 0.0968), estimated to be 2.0s (95% CI: 1.6, 2.4). The dispersion of shot lengths measured using the robust estimator Qn shows a similarly large increase in the dispersion of shot lengths with the transition to sound (Mann Whitney U = 319.0, Z = -9.18, p = <0.01, PS = 0.0557), estimated to be 2.0s (95% CI: 1.7, 2.4).

The feminine target: Gender expression in same-sex relationships as a predictor of experiences with public displays of affection

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210024
Author(s):  
Lauren Matheson ◽  
Drexler L. Ortiz ◽  
Rhea Ashley Hoskin ◽  
Diane Holmberg ◽  
Karen L. Blair
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Perceived Support ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Public Displays ◽  
Gender Expression ◽  
Homophobic Violence ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Partner Perceptions

The extent to which sexual minority individuals present publicly as masculine, feminine, or both has been associated with their perceptions of threat and safety in public spaces. The current study investigates the role of gender expression in men and women’s experiences of public displays of affection (PDAs) in same-sex relationships. Participants (N = 528) reported their own gender expression as well as that of their partner, perceptions of support for PDAs, PDA-related vigilance, general vigilance and overall PDA frequency. Men in same-sex relationships reported less frequent PDAs and greater PDA-related vigilance than women, while women reported greater overall variability in their gender expression than men. Multiple regression analyses show femininity within the participant (for men) or their partner (for both men and women) was associated with greater general and PDA-related vigilance. These findings align with previous research on femmephobia, in which femininity is described as making individuals feel ‘targeted’ for other forms of oppression (e.g., homophobia, sexism, transphobia; Hoskin, 2019). Although femininity was associated with greater vigilance, the association between masculinity within a same-sex relationship and vigilance was more tenuous, demonstrating evidence of masculinity serving as both a potential target for homophobic violence as well as a source of protection. The dual nature of masculinity was particularly salient among women in same-sex relationships, where masculinity tempered by femininity was associated with greater perceived support for PDAs but for women with partners low in femininity, the more masculine their partner, the greater their reported levels of vigilance.

scholarly journals “Queering” the Nation?

Prism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-69
Author(s):  
Jasmine Yu-Hsing Chen
Keyword(s):  
Female Character ◽  
Male Character ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
Queer Performance

Abstract This article explores how gendered Chineseness is represented, circulated, and received in Huangmei musical films for audiences in martial-law Taiwan. Focusing on Love Eterne (1963), the analysis examines how theatrical impersonations in the film provided a “queer” social commentary on aspects of Chinese nationalism that conflicted with the Kuomintang's military masculinities. Love Eterne features dual layers of male impersonations: diegetically, the female character Zhu Yingtai masquerades as a man to attend school with other men; nondiegetically, the actress Ling Po performs the male character Liang Shanbo, Zhu's lover. In addition to the “queer” imagination generated by Ling's cross-dressing performance, the author considers how the feminine tone of Love Eterne allowed the Taiwanese audience to escape from masculine war preparations. Although the Kuomintang promoted Ling as a model patriotic actress, it was her background, similar to many Taiwanese adopted daughters, that attracted the most attention from female audiences. This female empathy and the queer subjectivity arguably disturbed the Kuomintang's political propaganda. Hence, this study adds to the breadth of queerness in studies on the cinematic performance of same-sex subjectivities and invites new understandings of queer performance in Love Eterne as a vehicle that can inspire alternative imaginings of gendered selfhoods and nations.

Language Onset and Concomitant Speech and Language Problems in Subgroups of Stutterers and Their Siblings

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin A. Seider ◽  
Keith L. Gladstien ◽  
Kenneth K. Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Speech And Language ◽  
Negative Family History ◽  
Late Talkers ◽  
Language Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Language Onset

Time of language onset and frequencies of speech and language problems were examined in stutterers and their nonstuttering siblings. These families were grouped according to six characteristics of the index stutterer: sex, recovery or persistence of stuttering, and positive or negative family history of stuttering. Stutterers and their nonstuttering same-sex siblings were found to be distributed identically in early, average, and late categories of language onset. Comparisons of six subgroups of stutterers and their respective nonstuttering siblings showed no significant differences in the number of their reported articulation problems. Stutterers who were reported to be late talkers did not differ from their nonstuttering siblings in the frequency of their articulation problems, but these two groups had significantly higher frequencies of articulation problems than did stutterers who were early or average talkers and their siblings.

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