The teaches of Peaches: rethinking the sex hierarchy and the limits of gender discourse

The goal of this Major Research paper is an exploration detailing how Canadian Electro-Pop artist Peaches Nisker transcends normative gender and sex politics through performance and frames the female erotic experience in a way that not only disempowers heterosexuality but also provides a broader more inclusive sexual politics. Through this analysis I focus specifically on three distinct spheres; performance, fandom and use of technology to argue that her critique of sexual conventions provides an cxpansive and transgressive new definition of female sexuality. Musical performances by female artists, particularly icons such as Madonna and Britney Spears, have demonstrated popular culture's inability to legitimize queer and non-compulsory heterosexual practices. These performances often function as limiting representations of the sexual female. Queerness in popular music culture is often showcased as non-traditional and used as a form of spectacle. The appropriation of homoerotic imagery has traditionally served the purpose of appeasing the mass patriarchal pornographic gaze. I argue that Peaches embodies the essential queer spirit, presenting a politics that builds upon a more fluid sexuality. She reconfigures queer and heterosexual imagery using the language and framework that has been provided by compulsory heterosexuality, to shatter the foundation so often used against women and thereby presenting a new female erotic.

The teaches of Peaches: rethinking the sex hierarchy and the limits of gender discourse

The goal of this Major Research paper is an exploration detailing how Canadian Electro-Pop artist Peaches Nisker transcends normative gender and sex politics through performance and frames the female erotic experience in a way that not only disempowers heterosexuality but also provides a broader more inclusive sexual politics. Through this analysis I focus specifically on three distinct spheres; performance, fandom and use of technology to argue that her critique of sexual conventions provides an cxpansive and transgressive new definition of female sexuality. Musical performances by female artists, particularly icons such as Madonna and Britney Spears, have demonstrated popular culture's inability to legitimize queer and non-compulsory heterosexual practices. These performances often function as limiting representations of the sexual female. Queerness in popular music culture is often showcased as non-traditional and used as a form of spectacle. The appropriation of homoerotic imagery has traditionally served the purpose of appeasing the mass patriarchal pornographic gaze. I argue that Peaches embodies the essential queer spirit, presenting a politics that builds upon a more fluid sexuality. She reconfigures queer and heterosexual imagery using the language and framework that has been provided by compulsory heterosexuality, to shatter the foundation so often used against women and thereby presenting a new female erotic.

Animals and Beauties: Zoomorphic Inscriptions of a Modern Gender Hierarchy

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with myriad other foundational changes taking place in China, attitudes to the role and significance of women and animals were also changing. This evolution is apparent in the artistic realm where both had featured in imperial-era Chinese art for centuries and continued to appear in the new Republic after 1911. This article examines animals and their paired depiction with women within one genre of art – the Baimei tu (One hundred beauties) – as it evolved from the late 1800s until the end of the 1910s. An examination of the works of leading commercial artists of this form reveals the importance of animals in the creation of a gendered modernity for China’s Republic – one that established a clear hierarchy of men over women. This article argues that the species-ist othering of animals was integral to the othering of women in the early Republican world of commercial art. It contributes to the literature on human-animal studies that shows the links between species-ism and sexism through the identical processes of variously othering animals and women. Identifying animals and women as special and different, reinforces a species hierarchy that places humans above other animals and a sex hierarchy that places men above women.

Neurogenetic and genomic approaches reveal roles for Dpr/DIP cell adhesion molecules in Drosophila reproductive behavior

Drosophila reproductive behaviors are directed by fruitless neurons (fru P1 isoforms). A reanalysis of genomic studies shows that genes encoding dpr and DIP Immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) members are expressed in fru P1 neurons. Each fru P1and dpr/DIP (fru P1 ∩ dpr/DIP) overlapping expression pattern is similar in both sexes, with dimorphism in neuronal morphology and cell number. Behavioral studies of fru P1 ∩ dpr/DIP perturbation genotypes point to the mushroom body functioning together with the lateral protocerebral complex. Functionally, we find that perturbations of sex hierarchy genes and DIP-ε changes sex-specific morphology of fru P1 ∩ DIP-α neurons. A single-cell RNA-seq analysis shows that the DIPs have high expression in a restricted set of fru P1 neurons, whereas the dprs are expressed in larger set of neurons at intermediate levels, with a myriad of combinations.

Is Feminism Yet a Theory of the Kind That Marxism Is?

On Catharine MacKinnon’s view, feminism aspires to be a theory of the kind that Marxism is: a theory of the organisation of the social world as sex hierarchy, just as Marxism is a theory of the organisation of the social world as class hierarchy. In 1982, MacKinnon observed that feminism was not yet such a theory, and set out to make it one. She did this by developing a theory of sexuality as to feminism what work is to Marxism. If one shares MacKinnon’s view that feminism aspires to be a theory of the kind that Marxism is, then one sees MacKinnon as, with her theory of sexuality, creating, albeit in beginning form, a feminist theory. One thus considers MacKinnon’s theory of sexuality a definitive moment in the history of feminist theory. Yet, for all its importance, no one, neither critics nor proponents, has analysed this theory on its own terms. It is therefore not clear whether MacKinnon’s theory of sexuality succeeds, and so whether feminism is yet a theory of the kind that Marxism is. In the spirit of progressing MacKinnon’s project, in this paper, I return to her theory and consider whether it succeeds.