Gender, Bodies and Cyberstalking: Embodying Theory, Developing Methodology

<p>The exponential growth of advanced communication technologies has corresponded with diverse opportunities for criminal offending within this arena. New forms of deviance are supported by the unique characteristics of the Internet environment, whilst pre-existing crimes are also paralleled online. Research indicates that content related offences, including cyberstalking and online sexual harassment, mirror offline gender disparities, although research addressing this disparity is minimal. The disparate victimisation of women, and the characteristics of cyberstalking, facilitates the recognition of this offence as a gendered form of harassment and the development of a theoretical framework responsive to this disparity. However, current theories addressing the Internet often display concepts concurrent with what is commonly referred to as the online disembodiment thesis. These concepts, namely the promotion of an absolute demarcation between the online and offline environment and the notion that bodies can be transcended online, are problematic when addressing the online victimisation of women as feminist theorists have located much of women's power in the centrality of the body. To inform the development of a gendered framework appropriate for an assessment of cyberstalking this thesis rejected the online disembodiment thesis, alternatively employing the theories of the body to develop a theoretical framework appropriate for an examination of cyberstalking. Criminologists are currently in an exploratory research era in regards to cybercrime, the growth of which has thus far not been matched by criminological scholarship. Consequently, there currently exists little methodological precedent for the researcher intending to qualitatively examine the online victimisation of women. The lack of methodological precedent prioritised the development of a methodological framework suitable for researching the online victimisation of women. The development of an alternative theoretical framework that recognised the immutability of bodies online subsequently informed the development of two key methodological considerations. The methodological considerations developed in this thesis lay the foundations for additional research on cyberstalking and prioritise a gendered assessment of this crime.</p>

Gender, Bodies and Cyberstalking: Embodying Theory, Developing Methodology

<p>The exponential growth of advanced communication technologies has corresponded with diverse opportunities for criminal offending within this arena. New forms of deviance are supported by the unique characteristics of the Internet environment, whilst pre-existing crimes are also paralleled online. Research indicates that content related offences, including cyberstalking and online sexual harassment, mirror offline gender disparities, although research addressing this disparity is minimal. The disparate victimisation of women, and the characteristics of cyberstalking, facilitates the recognition of this offence as a gendered form of harassment and the development of a theoretical framework responsive to this disparity. However, current theories addressing the Internet often display concepts concurrent with what is commonly referred to as the online disembodiment thesis. These concepts, namely the promotion of an absolute demarcation between the online and offline environment and the notion that bodies can be transcended online, are problematic when addressing the online victimisation of women as feminist theorists have located much of women's power in the centrality of the body. To inform the development of a gendered framework appropriate for an assessment of cyberstalking this thesis rejected the online disembodiment thesis, alternatively employing the theories of the body to develop a theoretical framework appropriate for an examination of cyberstalking. Criminologists are currently in an exploratory research era in regards to cybercrime, the growth of which has thus far not been matched by criminological scholarship. Consequently, there currently exists little methodological precedent for the researcher intending to qualitatively examine the online victimisation of women. The lack of methodological precedent prioritised the development of a methodological framework suitable for researching the online victimisation of women. The development of an alternative theoretical framework that recognised the immutability of bodies online subsequently informed the development of two key methodological considerations. The methodological considerations developed in this thesis lay the foundations for additional research on cyberstalking and prioritise a gendered assessment of this crime.</p>

The Power of Women in Gabriel García Márquez’s World

A palette of vibrant and resilient female characters delineates García Márquez’s work. His heroines are the material and spiritual axis of families and communities whose survival depends on women’s most ordinary skills as much as on the supernatural expressions of their strength, fecundity, and knowledge. Yet echoing the tensions surrounding women and women’s power in Caribbean and Latin American cultures, most of García Márquez’s protagonists are primarily defined by their roles in the lives of the men they are intimately linked to. A complex hierarchy of women, and men, emerges from those intimate relationships. This article delves into García Márquez’s portrayal of women both to celebrate his powerful female protagonists and to explore the contradictions that the notions of gender, love, and sexuality embedded in his work impose on women’s bodies and subjectivities. Although many of his characters are fully desiring women reluctant to surrender their autonomy and their right to pleasure, those who openly defy social conventions or fail to subjugate their desires to the needs and initiatives of men are often faced by a variety of reprisals, ranging from isolation to magical disappearances and not excluding physical violence and death. Beyond the private negotiations of power, affective and sexual relations in García Márquez’s work speak of the intimate anchors of social (public) power. By grounding the reading of García Marquez’s women in studies of gender and sexuality in the Caribbean, this article also contributes to the analysis of two other major topics of his work, power and love.

Mistresses as Masters?

Recent texts in the historiography of slavery have focused on slave-owning women in an attempt to overturn the paradigm of the benevolent mistress. While “benevolence” has silenced and exceptionalized mistresses’ violence, newer interpretations draw from slave testimony to establish forms of equivalence between the power of the mistress and that of the master. Because this normalization of white women’s power nonetheless relies on standards of historiographical interpretation—the predominance of political economy, the imperatives of affect and agency—it does not sufficiently access how historiographical methods participate in stabilizing gender and pathologizing black rage. This article proposes that the difference between the mistress and master is a fantasy necessary to the circulation of the libidinal economy of slavery. In doing so, it pursues an inquiry into the pleasures of interpretation and speculates on the ways historiography invests in the white woman in order to extend its interlocutory life.

THE DESCENT OF WOMEN TO THE POWER OF DOMESTICITY

Is the virtue of domesticity a way for women to access civic power or is it a slippery slope to dependence and female subservience? Here I look at a number of philosophical responses to domesticity and trace a historical path from Aristotle to the 19th century Cult of Domesticity. Central to the Cult was the idea that women’s power was better used in the home, keeping everybody safe, alive, and virtuous. While this attitude seems to us very conservative, I want to argue that it has its roots in the republican thought of eighteenth-century France. I will show how the status of women before the French Revolutions did not allow even for power exercised in the home, and how the advent of republican ideals in France offered women non-negligible power despite their not having a right to vote.

How Do You Listen?: The Relationship Between How Men Listen and Women’s Power and Respect in the U.S.

As American culture confronts the issues raised by #MeToo, some ask, what can men do in interpersonal interactions to become allies and empower women? Building on research in linguistics, communication, sociology, as well as psychology, seven pre-registered studies investigate the relationship between how men listen during troubles talk (i.e., communication about problems) and women’s sense of power and respect. We theorize and compare two styles of effective listening: more other-focused interdependent listening (e.g., asking a question) and more self-focused independent listening (e.g., giving advice). We find that though men are less likely than women to do interdependent listening during troubles talk (Study 1), men can be encouraged to ask questions (Study 2). When investigating the effect on women of how men listen, we found that women anticipate feeling more powerful and respected when listened to by a man friend doing interdependent (vs. independent) listening (Studies 3a – 3c), particularly those women who do not endorse stereotypic gender roles (Study 3c). We partially replicated these findings in two live interaction studies involving strangers communicating over text: women felt more powerful and respected when listened to by men who asked open-ended questions compared to men who gave prescriptive, unsolicited advice (Study 5), though they did not when men simply asked more questions (Study 4). We suggest that listening can assume multiple productive forms, but that compared to independent listening, interdependent listening can serve as an everyday anti-sexist practice to attenuate rather than accentuate the gender hierarchy.

Why Women’s Power Matters

This chapter studies how women's power is one of the fundamental determinants of not only economic growth but also education levels, ecological sustainability, and social peace. Why does women's power produce social and economic benefit? A key consideration is that women who are highly educated or have access to their own sources of income have lower fertility. Women with money and career opportunities are less dependent on their husbands for economic survival and can afford to stand up to argue for their own interests. However, fertility reduction tells part of the story about why empowering women produces social development; there are other considerations at work as well. If women are educated, they become more productive, and the labor force becomes more productive. Women's labor force participation is linked to the presence of industries that employ a lot of women. Women's power also increases the human capital of future generations. Meanwhile, the statistical correlation between female social power and reduced warfare is explained in part by the historical record of women participating in peacekeeping activities.

Women, Bridal Girdles, and the Household in Renaissance Prague

This article addresses early modern women's power through an object study of the wedding girdle, a thickly embellished belt that was the most costly, emblematic, and intimate item in a Renaissance bride's trousseau, and which uniquely illuminates the lives of women. Building on the work that women's history has done to uncover how women navigated the patriarchal system, I propose that a focus on the household is vital to understanding the socially specific ways in which burgher women – members of the citizen class of Renaissance Prague – exerted agency in their daily lives. Burgher sensibilities, specifically the desire to display the prosperity, industry, and piety of their households, created distinct mechanisms for women to assert themselves. This article sets women's lives against the interwoven structures of the household, namely, gendered roles and expectations, the legal property system, and moral discourses surrounding marriage. By levering these structures, the same that constrained them, burgher women were able to express power.