Silencing the single woman: Negotiating the ‘failed’ feminine subject in contemporary UK society

Despite a growth in single women in UK society over the past two decades, single femininity continues to be highly stigmatised. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the heterosexual matrix and applying this to qualitative interview data with 25 single women, I argue that single femininity is produced as abject through processes of silencing which render the single female a ‘failed’ subject and reinscribe heteronormative coupled femininity. Yet while deeply painful, such ‘failures’ may also be productive, offering moments where the boundaries of heteronormative feminine subjectivity and hierarchies of intimate life are troubled and transformed. This article complicates understandings of stigma and resistance through a nuanced analysis of processes of abjectification and ambivalence.

Writing a Feminine Subject: The Auto/Biographical Narratives of Indonesian Female Celebrities

Situated in popular culture, celebrity auto/biography becomes both space and instrument for self-representation that illuminates the issues of public/private, global/local, normative/disruptive, and fact/fiction dichotomies. This article works on five auto/biographies of Indonesian female celebrities published in the 2000s, namely, Lenny Marlina, Krisdayanti, Tiara Lestari, Yuni Shara, and Dorce Gamalama. By conducting a close reading of the texts and how the celebrities present their lives, the article seeks to argue that the auto/biographies represent the complexity of Indonesian celebrity femininities that are culturally intertwined. The article also shows that the auto/biographies contribute to establishing their celebrity status and how they present their lives as exemplary. Finally, this study aims at contributing to the understanding of how celebrity auto/biographies complicate the notion of the feminine within Indonesian celebrity culture.

All About Eve – Les Miroirs d’Eve et au-delà

"All About Eve – Mirrors of Eve and What Lies Beyond. Taking as a starting point the play of identifications in All About Eve, this paper focuses on theatre as a function in the constitution of the feminine subject. Something emerges in the relation between the characters, but also something is produced beyond this relation. The theatre-function is complemented by the scansion introduced by the mirror; the mirror is a place of disjunction on the journey of the subject. Further on, we look at how this theatre-function has a correspondent in the cinematic succession of repeating, enacting and creating in Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s movie Nun va goldoon, which allows its characters to exit the series of identifications. Keywords: mirror stage, self, subject, identification, desire. "

Tracking Cross-Cultural Gender Bias in Reputations

While ethnologists have long noted that females lack access to social capital across cultures, the magnitude of this effect is rarely examined. Here, we investigate the nature of gender bias in one dimension of social capital, reputation. We extract data on reputations from the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF) database, specifically the societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, and analyze whether there are fewer instances of feminine reputation relative to masculine reputation. In addition, we assess whether aspects of social structure or institutional biases in the production of ethnography affect the rate at which feminine reputations occur. We find that (a) most reputations are gendered male; (b) patrilocality and matriliny increase the rate at which feminine reputations occur, while patriliny decreases their occurrence; and (c) as female authorship increases over time, inclusion of feminine subject matter increases, which resulted in a greater incidence of feminine reputations. Ultimately, our analyses highlight the need for increased focus on feminine subject matters and gendered social capital in the discipline of anthropology.

Purity

Having interrogated hegemonic white masculinity in the previous chapter, this chapter presents a critique of white femininity and the rise of postfeminism. Entrenched in imperialist notions of beauty, delicacy and purity, this chapter examines the fraught performances of white femininity in our current age as it attempts to balance between asserting dominance and maintaining an idealised innocence. The chapter investigates the ways organisations prioritise a white patriarchal feminine subject, for example, how research of women in leadership has overwhelmingly focussed on the needs and interests of elite professional women at the expense of queer, working-class and non-white women. Consequently, organisations waving the banner for ‘gender equality’ can often end up reproducing heterosexism, classism and racism. Carolyn McCall and Sheryl Sandberg’s media profiles are analysed to explore white femininities in leadership.

Beauty, Wisdom, and Handiwork in Proverbs 31:10–31

The book of Proverbs concludes with an alphabetic acrostic that describes and praises its feminine subject (Prov 31:10–31). The poem’s praise closes with a generalized critique of beauty, its deceptiveness and short-lived nature (v. 30). What function does this critique of beauty serve in light of the praise of the woman and her deeds? How do the poem and, specifically, this critique of beauty function in the broader organization of the book of Proverbs? This study argues that the poem rejects innate beauty in favor of acquired wisdom, a message that can be found elsewhere in Proverbs. The poem rejects beauty through an appeal to a rhetorical device—the “totalizing description”—which is used elsewhere to argue for a subject’s beauty or perfection. Through the structure of the alphabetic acrostic, the poem carefully embeds its message of willed action and acquired wisdom; using a description of the woman’s successive deeds, the poem shows how each deed leads to the enduring success of the woman’s family, her community, and the subsequent generation.

Women of the World: The Lady’s Pictorial and Its Sister Papers

In this essay, Gerry Beegan examines women’s columns in the illustrated papers produced by the Ingram Brothers in the 1880s and 1890s: The Illustrated London News (1842–1900), the Sketch (1893–1959), and the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (1874–1943). Images of women were ubiquitous in these weeklies, but it was in the women’s columns that feminist politics were most often addressed. The Illustrated London News, for example, sometimes addressed women’s employment and other topics affecting women–controversial subject matter that was safely embedded in an otherwise tame mixture of advice on fashion and cookery. The Lady’s Pictorial, founded by the Ingram Brothers in 1880, took a similar approach by mixing conventional feminine subject matter with debates on gender issues. However, while its sister papers were more likely to feature actresses and celebrities in their women’s columns, the Lady’s Pictorial depicted women ‘out in the world … enjoying the London social season, attending charitable events, participating in sports, and engaging in amateur drama’ (p. 248). Utilising both text and illustration, it defined a new brand of ‘modern mobile womanhood’ (p. 253).

ESTRAGO MADRE-HIJA Y SUPERYÓ

Resumen El estrago, referido específicamente al sujeto femenino, se sostiene en la observación resaltada por Lacan de que la niña parece buscar más subsistencia en la relación con la madre que con el padre, bien como en el carácter erotómano de la demanda de las mujeres, resultado de una falta estructural relativa a la inexistencia de un significante que represente el sexo femenino en el inconsciente. Bajo esa perspectiva, el presente artículo resalta el lugar del superyó en la problemática del estrago madre-hija.Palabras-clave: Estrago, Superyó, Deseo de la Madre, Feminidad.Abstract Ravage, specifically referred to the feminine subject, is based on this observation made by Lacan: the girl seems to look for subsistence more in her relationship with the mother than in the one with the father, as well as in the erotomaniacal character of women's demand, result of a structural lack relative to the non-existence of a signifier which represents the feminine sex in the unconscious. From such a perspective, this paper highlights the place of the superego in the issue of the mother-daughter ravage.Keywords: ravage, superego, desire of the mother, femininity.Résumé Le ravage, qui se réfère exclusivement au sujet féminin, trouve appui sur cette observation faite par Lacan : la petite fille semblerait chercher plus de survie dans le rapport à la mère qu'au père, ainsi que dans le caractère érotomane de la demande des femmes, résultant d'un manque structurel concernant l'inexistence d'un signifiant qui représente le sexe féminin dans l'inconscient. Sous cet angle, cet article met en relief la place du surmoi dans la problématique du ravage mère-fille.Mots-clés : ravage, surmoi, désir de la mère, féminité.

Divine Women? Irigaray, God, and the Subject

One of the central themes of contemporary feminist literature is the exclusion of the female subject from the Western tradition. Luce Irigaray has made significant contributions to this literature. In this article I examine one aspect of Irigaray’s work on the feminine subject, her discussion of divine women. She argues that in order to achieve full subjectivity women must worship a female god that will give them the divinity that they lack, the divinity that the patriarchal god provides for men. I argue that this thesis is both counterproductive and incoherent. It perpetuates the male/female binarism that is at the root of patriarchy. It also fails to define the concept of a female god which is at the centre of Irigaray’s argument. I conclude that the approach of process theology is much more successful in removing the maleness of God and providing women with a deity compatible with feminist beliefs.

Loud Ladies: Deterritorialising Femininity through Becoming-Animal

Modern feminist movements run the risk of being appropriated by capitalist agenda and commodified for mass appeal, thus stripping them of their revolutionary potential. I would propose that in order for feminism to challenge this, movements may want to consider the subversion of subjectivity. Deleuze and Guattari's notions of becoming-animal and becoming-woman emphasise a subjectivity not confined by rigid identity, such as man/woman. However, feminists have challenged this theory, suggesting it is difficult to both fight for and dispel the very same notion, that is, woman. I argue that in first considering the feminine subject via the Lacanian understanding of ‘Woman’, it can be argued that feminine subjects can engage with becoming-animal to destabilise the notion of ‘Woman’. Riot Grrls, FEMEN and Pussy Riot all demonstrate tactics which could be said to utilise becoming-animal and have had varying success in avoiding commodification.