American undergraduates rated masculinity, femininity, and likability of two men from a videotaped interaction. Participants were informed that both men were cat persons, dog persons, heterosexual, adopted, or gay, or were unlabeled. Participants rated the men less masculine when cat persons than when dog persons or unlabeled, and less masculine and more feminine when gay than when anything else or unlabeled. The more masculine man received lower feminine ratings when a dog person than when a heterosexual, and higher (...) masculine ratings when a dog person than when unlabeled. Labels did not affect likability. Overall, the gay label consistently promoted cross-gender attributions, the dog person label encouraged somewhat heightened gender-appropriate attributions, and the cat person label allowed for normative attributions. (shrink)

The feminine and masculine gender role stress — conclusions from Polish studies The concept of gender role stress is based on the assumption that some women and men might have problems adapting to the feminine and masculine gender roles imposed on them by society. 1515 people took part in the study to verify feminine and masculine gender role stress models in the Polish population. The studies show that the five-factor feminine and masculine stress models are justified. Men display higher stress (...) connected with "physical inadequacy" than women, whereas women score higher on other subscales associated with feminine and masculine gender role stress. Gender role stress is more connected with femininity. Personality correlates of gender role stress were sought. (shrink)

Mutual feedback between human-made environments and facets of thought throughout history has yielded two myths: the Garden and the Citadel. Both myths correspond to Jung’s feminine and masculine collective subconscious, as well as to Nietzsche’s premise of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in art. Nietzsche’s premise suggests, furthermore, that the feminine myth of the Garden is time-bound whereas the masculine myth of the Citadel, or the Ideal City, constitutes a spatial deportment. Throughout history the two myths have continually molded the built (...) environment and thought, but the myth of the Ideal City – from Plato to Descartes to modernity – came to dominate city-form and ensuing aspects of contemplation. This relationship seems to have shifted during the twentieth century. Intellectual dispositions have begun to be largely nurtured by an incongruous city-form emerging from the gap between the incessant promise for an automated, well-functioning city, on the one hand, and looming alienation, coupled with the factual, malfunctioning city, on the other hand. Urban decay, a persisting and time-bound urban event that is a byproduct of this configuration, suggests the ascent of the Garden myth in post-modern city-form. (shrink)

Authors have empirically evidenced that cultural stereotypes influence gender-typed behavior. With the present work, we have added to this literature by demonstrating that gender roles can explain sex differences in risk-taking, a stereotypically masculine domain. Our aim was to replicate previous findings and to analyze what variables affect women making risky decisions in the social domain. A sample composed of 417 Spanish participants, between 17 and 30 years old, answered a set of self-report measures referring to femininity, fear (...) of negative evaluation, and social risk-taking. According to the main results, sex indirectly linked to risk-taking in the social domain, through femininity and fear of negative evaluation. Specifically, women self-reported higher feminine traits, which were associated with increased fear of negative evaluation, which in turn was associated with less risky decisions in the social domain. Thus, we have showed the relationship between gender roles and women’s behaviors in a stereotypically masculine domain. Our findings highlight the necessity of considering a gender-based perspective in the field of risk-taking, showing that not all women make more risky decisions in the social domain. (shrink)

Bonaventure in his Itinerarium mentis in Deum traces the mystical journey of the spiritual wayfarer from the state of man posterior to the Fall of Adam and Eveto union with the Trinity as a partaker of the inter-Trinitarian love life. This journey takes the form of an ascent characterized by a Procline and Augustinian influenced ontology. I argue that the first two levels of the three-tiered ascent are understood ontologically as feminine and masculine principles, or evaluative metaphors, and mirror the (...) coinciding of the opposites of Good and Being in Bonaventure’s Trinitarian theology. Furthermore, the process of the ascent is operative by means of yearning, or desire, acting as a unitive force in the ascent. The ascent of the Itinerarium is best realized in the person of Francis of Assisi upon whose very corpus is the ascent impressed according to the signs of the crucified Christ, the stigmata. (shrink)

This article takes the linguistic space of North India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tries to see how a nationalistic linguistic ideology that was shaping up at that time, creating Hindi and Urdu linguistic communities, used gender as a tool to portray and assert a masculinist vision of language and nation. It involved not just censoring certain representations of women and their cultural spaces, but also using the issue of ‘vulgar’ representations as a premise to marginalize certain languages (...) and their literature. The article looks at the colonial ideology that worked as an enforcer for the nationalists to work towards achieving what they felt as a sanitized and moral form of literature and culture. The linguistic ideology that accompanied these revisions was of projecting Hindi (Khari Boli) as a national language while limiting spaces of other languages, such as Braj, Urdu and Bhojpuri, in the region, by criticizing either their use of sexual imagery or by stereotyping them in a gendered way. This article investigates the arguments of nationalist writers and highlights their masculinist and patriarchal ideas in their bid for the new national language. (shrink)

Existing evidence suggests that children from around the age of 8 years strategically alter their public image in accordance with known values and preferences of peers, through the self-descriptive information they convey. However, an important but neglected aspect of this 'self-presentation' is the medium through which such information is communicated: the voice itself. The present study explored peer audience effects on children's vocal productions. Fifty-six children were presented with vignettes where a fictional child, matched to the participant's age and sex, (...) is trying to make friends with a group of same-sex peers with stereotypically masculine or feminine interests. Participants were asked to impersonate the child in that situation and, as the child, to read out loud masculine, feminine and gender-neutral self-descriptive statements to these hypothetical audiences. They also had to decide which of those self-descriptive statements would be most helpful for making friends. In line with previous research, boys and girls preferentially selected masculine or feminine self-descriptive statements depending on the audience interests. Crucially, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency and formant frequency spacing revealed that children also spontaneously altered their vocal productions: they feminized their voices when speaking to members of the ballet club, while they masculinized their voices when speaking to members of the rugby club. Both sexes also feminized their voices when uttering feminine sentences, compared to when uttering masculine and gender-neutral sentences. Implications for the hitherto neglected role of acoustic qualities of children's vocal behaviour in peer interactions are discussed. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact '. (shrink)

Part III. Section 2. Feminine and Masculine Socialization: Two main problems are explored: 1) How are girls and boys socialized in contemporary western societies? and 2) What are adult women and men like? Meyers appropriates the main outlines of Simone de Beauvoir's account of feminine socialization in The Second Sex, but she also discusses more recent research.

The central role of the virtue of compassion in the shaping of the professional character of healthcare providers is a well-emphasized fact. On the other hand, the utmost obligation of physicians is to alleviate or eliminate human suffering. Traditionally, according to the Aristotelian understanding of virtues and virtue ethics, human virtues have been associated with masculinity. In recent decades, the founders of the ethics of care have introduced a set of virtues with feminine nature. This paper analyzes the notion (...) of compassion as a common virtue between the traditional/masculine and care/feminine sets of virtues and shows that compassion is a reunion and merging point of both sets of human virtues. This role can be actualized through the development and promotion of compassion as an important part of the character of an ideal physician/healthcare provider. In addition, this paper argues that the notion of compassion can shed light on some important aspects of the contemporary debates on healthcare provider-patient relationship and medical futility. Despite the recent technological and scientific transformations in medicine, the interpersonal relationship between healthcare providers and patients still plays a vital role in pursuing the goals of healthcare. The virtue of compassion plays a central role in the establishment of a trust-based physician-patient relationship. This central role is discernible in the debate of medical futility in which making difficult decisions, depends largely on trust and rapport which are achievable by compassion in the physician and the recognition of this compassion by the patients and their surrogate decision makers. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine the representation of masculinities and femininities in the renowned South Indian drama film The Great Indian Kitchen. The research construes the manner in which the two dominant genders promote and/or modify patriarchal norms within the institution of family. The functioning of women as ancillary members of patriarchy, the interplay between masculinities and femininities, their evolution in contemporary times, etc., are also critically engaged in the paper. The paper argues that the movie The Great Indian Kitchen (...) not only illustrates different masculinities and femininities but also reconstructs the patriarchal family structure which institutionalises gender inequality. It further argues that the movie proposes an alternative image of the family based on gender equality, where men and women live with mutual respect and complementation. (shrink)

Dynamics of perceiving oneself on femininity and masculinity dimensions in diverse contexts The article is about issues related to gender perceived as a result of social context and thus fits in the current, processual gender paradigm. Two studies have been conducted verifying hypotheses about perceiving oneself on the femininity and masculinity dimensions in various types of contexts. Expectations were that generic contexts would make perceiving oneself within the psychological gender dimensions more dynamic. Women were expected to (...) perceive themselves as more feminine and less masculine in contexts matching their gender, i.e. "feminine", comparing to "masculine", and men were expected to perceive themselves as more masculine and less feminine in "masculine" contexts comparing to "feminine" contexts. Research results do not confirm the above hypotheses and indicate dynamism in perceiving oneself on femininity and masculinity dimensions. However, the dynamism is perceived only on dimensions inconsistent with biological gender - situation affects women's perceiving of themselves on the masculinity dimension and men's - on femininity dimensions. (shrink)

Although there has been significant academic interest in the complex relationship between gender and migration, the relevant literature often focuses on women as victims of trafficking, sexism and racism in the host and sending societies. This article discusses instead the question of gender and migration as an open field of contestation within which transitory and incomplete identities are performed. Based on a series of focus group discussions with Albanian women working in the domestic sector in Athens, the article documents the (...) emergence of a discourse of `becoming masculine' while performing typically `feminine tasks'. Drawing from Judith Butler's theoretical challenge to subject formation, the analysis traces the development of gender relations within discourse. While Albanian women are doubly disadvantaged in the mind—body relationship, they gradually come to perform roles that redefine the space of domesticity where the limits between men/women, private/public and migrants/nationals lie. (shrink)

Hooking up is a term commonly used in contemporary American society to refer to sexual activity between two people who are not in a committed romantic relationship. Data show that although many college students are engaging in hookups, there is no consensus on how to define a hookup. The author uses the concept of “strategic ambiguity” to explore the intentionality and usefulness of the vagueness of this term. Specific to hookups, strategic ambiguity is when individuals use the term “hookup” to (...) describe their sexual activities rather than give details about their sexual activities as an impression management strategy to protect their sexual and social identities. Analyzing data gathered through interviews with heterosexual students at a mid-sized public university in the South, this article addresses the normative character and the myriad definitions of hookups; addresses the underlying heterosexist bias in the definitions of hookups; and analyzes how the ambiguity of the term “hookup” serves women and men in different ways and both reinforces and challenges the current gender order, allowing men to conform to and preserve components of hegemonic masculinity and women to conform to and preserve components of emphasized femininity. (shrink)

The heavy drinking of alcohol remains primarily a hegemonically masculine ritual worldwide. Yet scholarship has undertheorized women’s practices in shaping the boundaries of masculine rituals, including drinking. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 151 interviews with single mothers, married mothers, nonresident fathers, and grandmothers from diverse class backgrounds, I demonstrate that Russian women perform extensive invisible management labor in attempting to produce responsible men. Constrained by a starkly unequal gender division of domestic labor, wives and mothers engage in (...) varied “patriarchal bargains” as they shape men’s drinking practices, co-producing hegemonic masculinity. Whereas in the Soviet period women also managed men’s drinking, today new gender strategies have emerged. More women are held accountable to a collusive femininity involving both accommodation and resistance, upholding men’s drinking privileges only if breadwinning occurs. As women perform invisible labor, they end up reproducing the conditions that demand this labor from them in the first place. Some women embrace an alternative femininity by becoming single mothers and refusing to manage men’s drinking, especially when men fail as breadwinners. Theorizing collusive and alternative femininities, as well as women’s invisible labor, advances our knowledge of how multiple femininities shape, and may in time change, hegemonic masculinity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Social media has given way to information and prosumption-oriented discursive fields wherein individuals construct their own social identities. Although interactivity, multimodality, user-centeredness and accessibility are the unique aspects of digital media but the fact that digital media as effective spaces for representing extreme self/other representation while being anonymous and free from following social norms, can cause dysfunctional social behaviours such as cyber hate. Mirroring the normative notions of femininity, masculinity and gender stereotype allows groups and individuals to (...) connect and express similar manifestations of hate, which, often result in the emergence of a ‘discursive spiral of hate’, misogyny and sexism. This paper draws on the important caveats discussed around Social Media-Critical Discourse Studies understanding of the contemporary digital discourses to deconstruct the complex relations between gender, hate speech and celebrities’ discourses on social media. In particular, how Lena Dunham, American celebrity, portrays herself on her Instagram page by going against the hegemonic views and how the audiences, i.e. the digital prosumers perceive that portrayal. Analysing 2000 user-generated comments deconstruct how women are required to suppress their feeling and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind. (shrink)

One of the most robust findings in psychopathology is the fact that specific phobias are more prevalent in women than in men. Although there are several theoretical accounts for biological and social contributions to this gender difference, empirical data are surprisingly limited. Interestingly, there is evidence that individuals with stereotypical feminine characteristics are more fearful than those with stereotypical masculine characteristics; this is beyond biological sex. Because gender role stereotypes are reinforced by parental behavior, we aimed to examine the (...) relationship of maternal gender stereotypes and children’s fear. Dyads of 38 mothers and their daughters were included. We assessed maternal implicit and explicit gender stereotypes as well as their daughters’ self-reported general fearfulness, specific fear of snakes, and approach behavior toward a living snake. First, mothers’ fear of snakes significantly correlated with their daughters’ fear of snakes. Second, mothers’ gender stereotypes significantly correlated with their daughters’ self-reported fear. Specifically, maternal implicit gender stereotypes were associated with daughters’ fear of snakes and fear ratings in response to the snake. Moreover, in children, self-reported fear correlated with avoidance of the fear-relevant animal. Together, these results provide first evidence for a potential role of parental gender stereotypes in the development and maintenance of fear in their offspring. (shrink)

This study investigates the strategies employed in the representation of masculinity in a sample of 50 advertising campaigns launched between 1999 and 2020. The chosen posters advertise products targeted at men that fit into five categories: beverages, food, daily care products, male fragrances, and clothing. Among the brands advertised are American Apparel, Clinique, Coca-Cola, Dove, Givenchy, McDonald's, and Nike. The analysis of discursive strategies is complemented by an analysis of the Corpus of Contemporary American English that investigates the most (...) salient collocates of real man/men in US English; this search was conducted due to the frequent mention of the term real men in the slogans under investigation. The corpus analysis supports the key findings of the study by showing that language and advertising operate in a circular structure and mutually impact one another. The five major strategies identified as recurrent in the representation of masculinity include gentleman's look, gender equality and fatherhood, sex appeal, sex and dominance, and strength. The findings reveal the prevalence of stereotypical representations of masculinity that foreground sex appeal, strength, and dominance over women, and to a lesser extent, the image of the classic gentleman. The Dove Men Care Collection promotes the idea of fatherhood and gender equality, which might be considered a slight departure from the usual representations of masculinity in advertising, though it is still embedded within the dominant framework of hegemonic masculinity. (shrink)

Les quatre textes qui suivent tentent d'analyser dans la littérature québécoise et française récente les manifestations d'une société en mutation, désireuse ou non de rompre avec les stéréotypes de sexes, de revisiter et réconcilier féminin et masculin. Les écrivaines, avec quelques belles longueurs d'avance, continuent de vouloir à la fois le corps et l'esprit, la vie et la fiction, de jongler avec l'altérité et les identités plurielles et de travailler des textes ûctionnels, théoriques et incamés, qui prennent en compte le (...) réel Leur travail de réflexion et de création ne cesse, en fait, d'interroger les artifices de l'art, les mensonges de la petite et de la grande histoire, et de prouver qu'on ne peut impunément dissocier éthique et esthétique ! Le thème de l'autobiographie foetale qui hante la littérature masculine récente est très représentatif de la masculinité en crise; il cristallise ses angoisses, ses résistances ou sa nouvelle quête émotive, affective et corporelle.The following four-part paper try to analyse in recent quebecer and french littérature the manifestations of a changing society, wether it be willing or not to break with gender stereotypes and reconcile the masculine/feminine dichotomy. Female writers still show leadership in wanting both body and mind, life and fiction; in thinking ofalterity and multiple identities; and in working at fictionnal, theoretical and incarnate texts wich take reality into considerations. Their reflexion and creation in effect never stops questionning the artistic device, the lies of both small and big history to prove that we cannot inconsiderately dissociate Ethics from Esthetics ! The foetal autobiography team now haunting recent male littérature is very representative of the masculinity crisis; it cristallizes his anguish resistances or his new emotive, affective and corporeal quest. (shrink)

This essay offers a political reading of the artistic choices made by seventeenth-century painters in their depictions of the heroines of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. It discusses the political subtext of Tasso’s epic poem by exploring the roles Tasso assigns to his oriental heroines and their representation in seventeenth-century paintings. Painters and patrons alike were particularly enthusiastic about the love stories that developed around Jerusalem. But Tasso is promoting a crusade, and the visual focus of later painters on Tasso’s seductive female (...) protagonists and their submission to Christian warriors, suggests that their aim was to display the delights that await those who join a military expedition to conquer the Holy Land. (shrink)

The purpose of this text is to analyze the social representations of feminism in divinatory practices. Our research in a few Moldavian counties has identified two main types of social representations of the relationship between magic/divination and feminism. Therefore, there are some dual representations of the feminine divinatory agents versus the masculine ones. Even though women are well represented among clairvoyants, clients, and spectators, these valorizations function as negative stereotypes and do not serve the women. Another representation of feminism (...) in divinatory practices that does not necessarily imply negativism and damnation is a more recent one. Old stereotypes are tamed and attenuated. The results of our research have shown that women continue to be associated with the survival of these practices. This is proof that old myths and representations are still alive. They are discretely present in social expressions. Finally, they will dominate us completely. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of masculinities, I analyze how a U.S. government funded “responsible fatherhood” program utilized a political discourse of hybrid masculinity to shape disadvantaged men’s ideas of successful fathering. Using data from three sources that uniquely traces how this discourse traveled from policy to program implementation—including analysis of the curriculum, in-depth interviews with 10 staff, and in-depth interviews and focus groups with 64 participating fathers—I theorize hybrid fatherhood. As a discourse of paternal involvement that incorporates stereotypically feminine styles (...) such as emotional expressiveness, hybrid fatherhood discursively reconfigures patriarchy by drawing distinctions between mothering and fathering and dominant and subordinate forms of masculinity as they relate to men’s parenting. I analyze how the promotion of hybrid fatherhood for poor men of color legitimates and sustains gender, race, and class inequalities through U.S. welfare policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in ChinaKwai-Cheung LoTheorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. By Kam Louie. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 239. Hardcover U.S. $60.00.In Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China Kam Louie offers us a very clear and concise analysis of the cultural models of Chinese masculinity from ancient imperial times to the present age of transnational (...) contact. Although academic works on Chinese masculinity are not totally absent, systematic and thorough historical surveys of this topic are still rare. While gender studies of China are predominantly on femininity or other women-related issues, man as a gendered category has long escaped serious academic attention. Louie's book could be considered a pioneering effort to provide a rather comprehensive study of this subject. Besides describing in detail the historical development of the male image from premodern to contemporary times, Louie also focuses on the ways in which Chinese men have been represented under the Western gaze and how these representations have negotiated with the dominant Western culture.The fundamental structure of masculinity in China, according to Louie, operates according to the two poles of wen (literary attainment, cultural knowledge, the mental) and wu (martial valor, martial arts, the physical), which are far more complementary than antagonistic, although the wen polarity has always been prioritized over wu in the conventional Chinese mindset. wen maleness is exemplified by Confucius, the sage of the gentleman-scholar type, whereas Guan Yu, the God of War, represents the wu masculine ideal. These two archetypes of Chinese masculinity [End Page 497] converge in the stern observance of moral demands, self-restraint, and a resistance or even a misogynistic attitude to the faults associated with femininity (i.e., sexual pleasure, comfort, and loss of virility) in order to pursue lofty forms of justice and homosocial binding. The recent popularity of Hong Kong martial arts films in the West may help Western readers become accustomed to the traditional Chinese idea that the ideal balance of wen and wu places emphasis on strategy and learning as a means of avoiding the use of violence. Louie repeatedly asserts that, in the Chinese cultural context, all men by definition have some wen and/or some wu, thus negating a simplified dichotomy.The highest ideal of Chinese maleness is that of a single individual who can demonstrate at the highest level the cultural credentials and physical skills of wen and wu. That is to say, the great man who can hold a brush in his right hand and a sword or some other weapon in his left, demonstrating prowess in both kinds of effort. But in terms of their sex appeal, it is always the softer, cerebral, scholarly men of wen who are more attractive to Chinese women than their macho, brawny opposite. Other than analyzing the heterosexual relationships of Chinese manhood, Louie also provocatively suggests that brotherhood and passions between men are never simply homosocial but can have sexual implications. He supports this claim by making reference to many classical texts that depict men sleeping together, leading to strong emotional attachments and jealousy, as if they were in a romantic or erotic liaison. What distinguishes Louie's wen/wu duality from the conventional yin/yang binary opposition (which is also an artificial difference that defines the Chinese male in relation to Western men and reinforces the stereotype of a feminized Chinese masculinity) is that he believes his dyad of Chinese masculinity to be more resilient, flexible, and adaptable to historical change, hybridizing with Western culture while simultaneously exerting its own global influence on non-Chinese cultures.Covering a vast range of historical and contemporary materials and a variety of genres, from classical philosophy to traditional vernacular fiction (e.g., The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin), through Lao She's early twentieth-century novel The Two Mas, the subversive portrayals of men by modern Chinese women writers, to contemporary Hong Kong action cinema—all in a relatively slim volume—Louie is at his best, for example, when observing and depicting character, but he is not so good at analyzing his texts on a... (shrink)

Purpose. The paper aims at examining the phenomenon of the rebirth of the Goddess in the contemporary world. The author has used the hermeneutic approach and cultural-historical method, as well as the anthropological integrative approach. Theoretical basis. The study is based on the ideas of Carol Christ, Margot Adler, Miriam Simos, and Jean Shinoda Bolen. Originality. The rebirth of the Goddess is not a deconstruction of the God. The face of the Goddess is one side of the binary opposition "Goddess (...) – God". Life on the earthly plane presupposes masculine and feminine dualism. However, these polarities are not mutually exclusive and mutually suppressive, but complementary to each other. The return of the Goddess to the throne and a profound appreciation of Femininity is a necessary step forward in establishing true equality and restoring lost harmony. As humanity returns to the Absolute that transcends duality, as divinity is revealed in feminine and masculine forms, and, finally, as humans get in touch with their true self, the two faces, feminine and masculine, will inevitably merge. Conclusions. Identifying herself with the images of the Goddesses, a woman develops self-awareness and self-acceptance that contribute greatly to her reintegration with a wider spiritual reality. The cult of the Goddess finds practical application in women’s lives. These are magical rituals, work with the archetypes, life-changing tours. Recognizing her right to the fullness of being, a woman overcomes rigid gender roles and stereotypes, ceases to be an object of manipulation and becomes the supreme arbiter of her own life. (shrink)

Abstract The great german Scholar, Eduard Zeller, suggested that the reference to male and female in Parmenides B12.5-6 was probably an allusion to the physical principles of `mortal opinion': Night and Light. This suggestion has been rejected by some scholars because such an association would lead us to admit that, in B12, male was associated with Night and female with Light, a theory which would be at odds with the supposed misogyny of Greek culture. However, Parmenides' account of `mortal opinion' (...) certainly associates male with coldness and density, the attributes of Night, and female with hotness and greater rarity, the attibutes of Light. The aims of this paper are, then, first, to show that the association of female with Light and of male with Night is in fact right; and secondly to investigate the main dualistic features of Parmenides' `mortal opinion' (embryology, sleep, death, knowledge) in relation to this theme. This will lead us, finally, to focus our attention on the Proem, which introduces us to a world full of female divinities, among whom - beyond the gates of the ways of day and night - is the unnamed goddess who will initiate her young male auditor into the two `ways'. (shrink)

In the context of feminist and postmodern thought, traditional conceptions of masculinity and what it means to be a “Real Man” have been critiqued. In Genevieve Lloyd's The Man of Reason, this critique takes the form of exposing the effect that the distinctive masculinity of the “man of reason” has had on the history of philosophy. One major feature of the masculine-feminine dichotomy will emerge as a key notion for understanding the rest of the paper: the dichotomy of (...) reason-feeling, a parallel and a foundational aspect to the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity. In exploring the history of symbolic conceptions of masculinity in ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and the present, one finds that the oppression of women is integrally linked to the traditional tie between masculinity and reason. There have been many efforts in recent feminist philosophy to rewrite or redefine “Woman” in such a way as to alleviate the oppression of women. I argue that the effectiveness of rewriting Woman for this purpose is problematic, primarily because any rewriting of this type must occur in the current historical context of hierarchical dualisms, like Man-Woman, masculine-feminine, male-female. These binary oppositions arguably find their roots in Pythagorean philosophy and can be traced through the Renaissance to our current historical context. It is these dualisms that have traditionally valued the masculine side of the Man-Woman dichotomy more than the feminine. Further, it will be argued that the hierarchical dualism of Man and Woman is so pervasive that if we rewrite or redefine the inferior, deprivileged side of that dualism, we cannot correct its devalued status. Instead, we redefine that which is undervalued but retain its devalued status. This particular aspect of attempts to critique hierarchical dualisms like reason and feeling has been reflected in the writings of many feminists, male and female. This paper will show that in cases where women attempt to redefine the dichotomy by revaluing the traditionally feminine (like feelings and emotions) over the traditionally masculine (like reason) their work is often mistakenly criticized for being purely political; conversely, when men attempt to redefine the same dichotomy in an attempt to allow men to “get back in touch with their feelings,” to be nurturers, their work is described in terms of providing a better epistemology. The current literature on masculinity explores alternatives to rewriting or redefining Woman that try to avoid the problem of status remaining with redefinition. This alternative is rewriting or redefining Man. Through redefining Man, one may be able to reconceptualize the privileged side of the hierarchical dualism in such a way that it is no longer privileged. Deprivileging, as well as redefining Man, is argued by theorists of masculinity to be possible because while the devalued status of the inferior side of a hierarchical dualism tends to keep the same status when redefined, it may be possible to redefine the privileged side of the dualism in such a way that it loses its privileged status. Unfortunately, many of these attempts to rewrite or redefine masculinity have detrimental faults of their own. Finally, this paper will discuss more promising possibilities for new definitions of Man, as well as a vision for better interaction between the work of women and men in general. (shrink)

As the dominant media institution in South Asia, Bombay cinema's cultural production of narratives, images and spectacle plays a crucial role in the effort to consolidate and project definitions of the nation. Moreover, such images are exported to the South Asian diaspora worldwide as part of the processes associated with the globalized cultural product referred to as Bollywood. This discussion examines the production and reception of the 2008 film Jodhaa Akbar both as process and product of complex historical, cultural and (...) political nation-building projects in which gender plays a central role. (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of the androgyny presentation in current visual culture, in particular in fashion and its philosophical and culturological comprehension. Determination of the leading trends associated with the offset of gender stereotypes and denial of the established separation into the feminine and masculine beginnings is due to the attention to the latest theories, such as transfeminism. Theoretical basis is the works of contemporary authors who develop such concepts as "gender", "gender identity", "androgyne" (...) and move within the limits of the theories of transfeminism and transgenderism. The leading French thinker J. Baudrillard outlines philosophical measurements related to the justification of fashion. The interaction issues of the feminist theory, aesthetics of gender and androgyny, which are manifested in visual images, are presented in the writings of P. Auslander, R. Crepax. Transformation of the androgyny idea is considered in the works of B. Řiháková, F. J. Galarte. S. Stryker, T. Bettcher and J. Halberstam also address the problem of transgenderism and transfeminism in their writings. Originality is to highlight the main aspects associated with actualization of androgyny, its visual presentations in fashion, and the connections with contemporary theoretical discourse. A number of concepts related to the transformation of gender stereotypes have been identified. It was revealed that the logical continuation of changes in society, science and technical development is the actualization of androgyny as an individual’s freedom in self-presentation and self-identification. It was emphasized that during the last century androgyny also serves as the basis for forming new trends in theoretical discourse, in particular, transfeminism, as well as it finds many visual manifestations in fashion and fashion industry. Conclusions contain the results of the study that describes the role of androgyny in the context of today’s culture as a measurement of personal freedom, aimed at avoiding gender stereotypes and the usual dichotomy of masculinity and femininity, which manifests itself in contemporary visual practices. (shrink)

This paper examines gender aspects of tactics of the alter-globalization movement. Focusing mainly on two transnational collective actions in Prague in 2000 and in Genoa in 2001, the research draws on participant observation, interviews with activists and analysis of the movement's alternative media. The feminist activism within the movement, the gendered tactics and their representation in the alternative media are analysed using the concept of diffusion. Although feminists are involved in the protests, and local Czech feminist activism was incited by (...) the international mobilizations in Prague in 2000, they are often marginalized because of the emphasis on masculine confrontational and violent tactics used in demonstrations. The movement's alternative media further reproduce gender stereotypes. The visual representations of the tactics are traditionally gendered – women are depicted as fairies, men as fighters; this is because the movement does not want to appear weak and feminine, and seeks to be effective. (shrink)

The article provides a critical analysis of a postfeminist identity that is emergent in a set of beauty advertisements, called ‘entitled femininity’. Three major discursive themes are identified, which are constitutive of this postfeminist feminine identity: 1) ‘It’s about me!’ focuses on pampering and pleasuring the self; 2) ‘Celebrating femininity’ reclaims and rejoices in feminine stereotypes; and 3) ‘Girling women’ encourages a youthful disposition in women of all ages. The article shows that entitled femininity occupies an (...) ambivalent discursive space, which celebrates as well as repudiates feminism, and re-installs normative gendered stereotypes. The ambivalence, it is argued, contributes to fostering a culture of post-critique, which numbs resistance and deflects criticism. For all its appearances to be pro-women, feminine entitlement based squarely on an entitlement to consume offers a rather limited and problematic vision of femininity and gender equality. (shrink)

Research on grammatical gender processing has generally assumed that grammatical gender can be treated as a uniform construct, resulting in a body of literature in which different gender classes are collapsed into single analyses. The present work reviews linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic research on grammatical gender from different methodologies and across different profiles of Spanish speakers. Specifically, we examine distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, the resulting biases in gender assignment, and the consequences of these assignment strategies on (...) gender expectancy and processing. We discuss the implications of the findings for the design of future gender processing studies and, more broadly, for our understanding of the potential differences in the processing reflexes of grammatical gender classes within and across languages. (shrink)

This book presents an analysis of masculinity construction in a large corpus of women’s magazines, adopting a feminist Critical Stylistic approach to reveal how men are talked about and ‘sold’ to women as part of a successful performance of hegemonic femininity. This novel approach identifies women’s magazines as sites of ‘lad culture’ that perpetuate ideologies more commonly associated with the ‘laddism’ of male-targeted media. It examines how stereotypical images of men as naturally aggressive and obsessed with sex are (...) promoted, as well as considering some of the ways in which women’s magazines contribute to the social construction of normative understandings of gender and sexuality more broadly. This engaging work will offer fresh insights to students and scholars of Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Stylistics, and Gender and Communication Studies. (shrink)