Drawing together the broad range of theoretical issues posed in the new study of masculinity, contributors from diverse backgrounds address in this volume the different disciplinary roots of theories of masculinity - sociology, psychoanalysis, ethnography, and inequality studies. Subsequent chapters theoretically model many issues central to the study of men - power, ethnicity, feminism, homophobia - or develop theoretical explanations of some of the institutions most closely identified with men including the military and the men's movement.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists 1571 as the year of the first recorded use of the English word ‘masculinity’; the Ancient Greek ανδρεια (andreia), usually translated as ‘courage’, was also used to refer to manliness. The notion of manliness or masculinity is undoubtedly older still. Yet, despite this seeming familiarity, not only is the notion proving to be highly elusive, its understanding by the society being in a constant flux, but also one which is at the root of bitter (...) division and confrontation, and which has tangible and far-reaching real-world effects. At the same time, while masculinity has been attracting an increasing amount of attention in academia, the large body of published work seldom goes to the very foundations of the issue, failing to explicitly and with clarity reach a consensus as to how masculinity ought to be understood. Herein I critique the leading contemporary thought, showing it to be poorly conceived and confounded, and often lacking in substance which would raise it to the level of the actionable and constructive. Hence, I propose an alternative view which is void of the observed deficiencies, and discuss how its adoption would facilitate a conciliation between the currently warring factions, focusing everybody’s efforts on addressing the actual ethical, deconfounded of specious distractions. (shrink)

This fascinating collection of articles offers thoughtful reflections on issues of masculinity too often neglected in feminist philosophy.

The exploration and examination of the construction of masculinity is increasingly emerging as an integrated part of the study of gender in society in general, and in the Caribbean in particular. We are constantly in search for new sources of material which tell us about the ways in which men construct their masculinity in Caribbean society. In this paper I draw on the imagery and ideas provided by the literary text. I interrogate the novel The Dragon Can't Dance, written by (...) Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace. The writer uses the metaphor of the dragon, the costume donned by the main protagonist Aldrick in the yearly Carnival masquerade, as a mask which disguises the need for Aldrick to confront his own masculinity under poor, urban conditions in Trinidad. In the struggles and confrontations between urban working–class men and women in the community of Calvary in Trinidad, the novelist teases out the different constructions of masculinity in the various characters he portrays. I explore the novel, focusing particularly on the ways in which this construction is embedded in the struggles over issues of identity, ethnicity, reputation and honor. While the novelist is clearly able to read into the mind of the male in society, his renditions of the female are not so incisive. However, this is not a shortcoming as the women, though not as well-rounded characters in the novel, play key roles in the definition and shaping of masculinities. This reading of the novel illustrates that the literary text suggests itself as a critical site for further explorations of the illusive data on gender and especially that on masculinity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MASCULINITY AS VIRILITY IN TAHAR BEN JELLOUN'S WORK Lahoucine Ouzgane University ofAlberta To be a woman is a natural infirmity and every woman gets used to it. To be a man is an illusion, an act of violence that requires no justification. (Ben Jelloun, The Sand Child, 70) Inthe last ten to fifteen years, scholarly attention to gender issues in.the Middle East and North Africa has been focused (...) almost exclusively, sometimes obsessively,1 on a quest to understand femininity: what it is and how it is made and regulated—with Muslim women's oppression, the everlasting question of the veil, and the practice of female genital mutilation receiving most of the scrutiny.2 But while this attention—by female and male scholars—to the Muslim woman is indeed a salutary one,3 masculinity in Islamic cultures has so far remained an 1 An international conference on Contemporary Issues in Islamic Studies (to be held in Virginia in November 1996) is soliciting papers in these categories: 1) Islamic Law: Theory and Practice; 2) Fundamentalism; 3) Women in Islam. 2As a parody ofthis preoccupation, Fedwa Malti-Douglas writes: "The Arab woman is a most fascinating creature. Is she veiled? Is she not veiled? Is she oppressed? Is she not oppressed? Were her rights greater before Islam? Are her rights greater after Islam? Does she have a voice? Does she not have a voice?" (3) 3 Some ofthe most significant literature on this subject includes LeilaAhmed's Women and Gender in Islam (1992), a study of the development of Islamic discourses on women and gender from the ancientworld to the present, Mamia Lazreg's The Eloquence ofSilence (1994), a detailed analysis ofthe gender relations in Algeria from the precolonial era to the present; The Veil and the Male Elite (more commonly known in French as Le Harempolitique, 1987) by 2 Lahoucine Ouzgane unrecognized and an unacknowledged category that secures its power by refusing to identify itself. There are as yet no studies that make Muslim men visible as gendered subjects and that show that masculinity (like femininity) has a history and clear defining characteristics that are incomprehensible apart from the totality of gender relations in Islamic cultures. In this essay, I wish to consider masculinity as it is depicted in some ofTahar Ben Jelloun's major fiction. With more than twenty novels, two plays, and three poetry collections produced in the last thirty years, Ben Jelloun is undoubtedly the most prolific contemporary francophone North African writer. Though he had earned several important literary awards before, his rise to literary and public prominence began when he became the first African Arab writer to be awarded Le Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, for his novel La nuit sacrée published in 1987. Ever since, some of his works have been translated into fifteen languages (Daoud 62) and The SacredNight has recently been made into a film. Some critics have even begun to refer to Ben Jelloun as a future Nobel Prize candidate (Ndiaye 48). I will argue that in a world where the social has taken precedence over the religious, in a world where transcendence has given way to what René Girard describes as "mimetic rivalry,"4 Ben Jelloun's characters are unable to know love as an "experience of transcendence" (Gans). As a consequence they inevitably reduce masculinity to virility, a fragile attribute sustained only through repeated acts of violence. It is indeed possible to read masculinity in such a setting as a set of distinctive practices which emerge from men's positioning within a variety of social structures. In short, masculinity in Ben Jelloun's fiction is perhaps best Fatima Mernissi, an indictment of the way in which numerous Hadiths (or sayings by the prophet) have been manipulated by a male elite to maintain male privileges; Fatna Sabbah's Woman in theMuslim Unconscious(1984), a critique ofthe seemingly contradictory messages which the Islamic legal and erotic discourses imprint on the female body; and Fedwa Malti-Douglas' Woman's Body, Woman's Word (1991), a mapping out of the relationship of woman's voice in Arabo-Islamic discourse to sexuality and the body. 4Central to Girard's thought is... (shrink)

This article evaluates the usefulness of the concept of hegemony in theorizing men. The discussion is located within the framework of ‘Critical Studies on Men’ (CSM), in which the centrality of power issues is recognized, rather than that of ‘Men’s Studies’, where it is frequently not. Recent uses, as in ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in the analysis of masculinities, are subjected to a qualified critique. Instead a shift is proposed from masculinity to men, to focus on ‘the hegemony of men’. This (...) formulation seeks to address the double complexity that men are both a social category formed by the gender system and collective and individual agents, often dominant collective and individual agents, of social practices. This is explored mainly in relation to substantive studies on men, and briefly the institutional development of CSM. The concluding discussion examines how these arguments connect with debates in feminist theory and social theory. (shrink)

Drawing on the themes of men and masculinity, this article examines texts in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of local multinational enterprises (MNEs) in South Korea, an emerging economy. This article explores how Korean male hegemony is hidden and naturalized in CSR reporting. Focusing on the discursive construction of gender identity, we analyze how CSR reports portray gendered identities in ways that may foster gender inequality by examining how the texts reflect the inferior position of women and marginalized male (...) workers in the workplace. We review 15 CSR reports from Korean MNEs as a primary data source for examining corporate policies and disclosure on gender‐equality issues in the workplace. We explore the inherently embedded meaning of CSR reports to evaluate the masculine tone of gender relations in these texts. To deepen our understanding, we retrieved the original text segments, coded them by using a categorical framework and revisited our data to critically examine our interpretation of the narrative structures that we argue reflect and reproduce certain discourses of masculinity, through the (in)visibility of women, the marginalization of women and (part‐time) men, and the silencing of their voices by the Korean male hegemony. (shrink)

:Geophilosophy is a placeholder for things we cannot yet do, things we hope to do, and things that we have failed to do so far. This issue of Angelaki aspires towards ways of doing philosophy, geography and gender studies that stray from the analytical comforts of philosophical reasoning, and from the sociological certainties that dominate the study of masculinity. In particular, it brings a sexed and gendered body to extant Deleuze-Guattarian scholarship, while prompting a thirst for creativity and ambivalence to (...) masculinity research. Each article explores the ways in which lived cultures of masculinity might be read across uneven political formations and aesthetic practices, while calling into question tacit understandings of where “masculinity” begins and ends. In doing so, the collection teases out the ethical and methodological implications of poststructuralist approaches to gender in a range of disciplines, including cultural geography, art criticism, sociology, and disability studies. (shrink)

Domestic violence represents a crucial underpinning of women's continued subordination, which is why much scholarly and activist energy has been expended in designing, implementing, and evaluating programs to reduce it. On the basis of three years of fieldwork, the authors analyze the interactional processes through which masculinity was constructed in one such program. They find that facilitators had success in getting the men to agree to take responsibility, use egalitarian language, control anger, and choose nonviolence, but the men were successful (...) in resisting taking victims' perspectives, deflecting facilitators' overtures to be emotionally vulnerable, and defining themselves as hardworking men entitled to a patriarchal dividend. The authors' analysis contributes to understandings of how hegemonic masculinity is interactionally constituted, and it adds evidence to the debate about such programs' effectiveness by raising the issue of how well the program met its goal of transforming masculinity. (shrink)

The state of Alaska has a complex historical relationship with its wild wolf packs. The authors expand Connell's concept of frontier masculinity to interpret articles from the Anchorage Daily News as an alternative way to understand Alaska's shifting wolf policies. Originally, state policies were shaped by frontier masculinity and characterized by claims of sportsmen's rights to kill wolves. With the reinstitution of an aggressive wolf-eradication project, Alaska policy makers retooled frontier masculinity. This altered form of masculinity, retro frontier masculinity, is (...) constructed at the state level and deploys new strategic emphases: vilifying opponents as feminized sissies, casting wolf hunters as paternalist protectors, reifying the masculine family provider role, and framing the issue as fundamentally about competition. (shrink)

Early data from several countries regarding the gendered implications of COVID-19 suggest that men are more likely to die as an effect of infection. This has been explained by biological factors but also by behavioral and life-style issues characteristic mostly for men. What has not been widely discussed, however, is the analysis of the relationships between men’s responses to the crisis, their care activities, and certain models of masculinity that persist in many societies. In this paper, I use a (...) three dimensional model of care – a) self-care, b) care for others, and c) care for one’s society – in order to analyze how certain masculine behaviors, rooted in socially constructed gender performances, resonate with the COVID-19 pandemic. The data used in this paper are of secondary character and will serve to analyze the most common responses of men within the three dimensions of care mentioned above. The theoretical framework utilizes the notion of caring masculinity supported by an emerging theory of protective masculinity. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 34, Issue 5, Page 667-680, November 2019.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 431 Cynthia Belmont and Angela Stroud Bugging Out: Apocalyptic Masculinity and Disaster Consumerism in Offgrid Magazine Popular conceptions of survivalism in the United States typically feature the eccentric, backwoods, working-class figures found in television shows such as Doomsday Preppers and Prepper Hillbillies. Offgrid magazine, which first hit the stands in the summer of 2013, however, sells a compellingly (...) bourgeois personal connection to disaster in the vein of men’s self-improvement literature, wherein successful masculinity requires courage, preparedness for calamity, and the resources to shop. Each issue of Offgrid focuses on a “real-life” survivalist or a singular catastrophic event that is dramatically represented on the cover by a self-sufficient man decked out in gear that will allow him to survive a crash landing, escape a city devastated by an earthquake, navigate the hazards of a hacker-created blackout, or evade the destruction of an erupting volcano.1 Filled with articles offering tips on how to prepare, self-defense strategies, profiles of survivalists, disaster scenarios, gear reviews, and advertisements, Offgrid mainstreams prepper culture by retooling the The authors contributed equally to this article; the order listed is alphabetical and should not be construed as implying differing contributions. 1. The terms “survivalist” and “prepper” apply to anyone committed to honing the skills and acquiring the resources required to survive in any context, including disasters, and are used interchangeably in Offgrid. 432 Cynthia Belmont and Angela Stroud face of apocalyptic survival as a regular-guy protagonist whose low-profile normalcy disguises the smoldering heroic potential that will ignite within him when disaster strikes. In this article, drawing upon insights from the sociology of masculinity, environmental feminism, and ecocriticism, we examine the representation of gender, nature, and disaster in issues of Offgrid, spanning nearly three years, from June 2015 through February 2018. While vivid depictions of cataclysm might seem provocative enough to captivate the Offgrid reader, we argue that its principal appeal is that it gives its ninety -one-percent male audience the opportunity to engage directly in what Casey Kelly terms “apocalyptic manhood,” an emergent version of American masculinity that “confirm[s] the necessity of masculine skills as society meets its demise.”2 Thus, Offgrid provides an occasion for readers to salvage a masculinity that feels perpetually threatened within contemporary American culture—a highly effective strategy in promoting the expansion of what we term disaster consumerism. We concur with ecofeminist Greta Gaard’s contention that “masculine gender identity has been constructed as so very antiecological, and thus its interrogation and transformation seem especially crucial” at this time of environmental crisis; this concern resonates particularly poignantly with regard to the apocalyptic imaginary.3 Marketing Disaster, Selling Masculinity Scholars have long argued that commercial media play an important role in circulating gender ideals that are “rooted in consumer capitalism wherein profit can be produced by generating insecurity about one’s body and one’s consumer choices.”4 Of course, despite their influence, advertisers do not create insecurities out of whole cloth; rather, they operate within the context of shifting gender discourses and cultural anxieties. Whereas the authors of a 2005 study found that alcohol ads portrayed men as affable losers who, rejected by strong women, 2. “2018 Recoil Offgrid Media Kit,” Recoil Offgrid; Casey Ryan Kelly, “The Man-pocalypse: Doomsday Preppers and the Rituals of Apocalyptic Manhood,” Text and Performance Quarterly 36, no. 2–3 (2016): 96. 3. Greta Gaard, Critical Ecofeminism (New York: Lexington Books, 2017), 167 (italics in original). 4. Susan M. Alexander, “Stylish Hard Bodies: Branded Masculinity in Men’s Health Magazine,” Sociological Perspectives 46, no. 4 (2003): 551. Cynthia Belmont and Angela Stroud 433 were driven to drink with their buddies, an analysis of Super Bowl commercials just five years later demonstrated that the tone had become “a simpler, angrier one [that was] crafted to galvanize men to buy.”5 The authors of the latter study suggest that the masculine aggression in the ads they analyzed reflects men’s economic insecurities, which advertisers exploit by encouraging men to feel nostalgic for and frustrated about their diminished power. Ads telling men to “wear the pants” and take a stand... (shrink)

The argument that justice entails a form of what is deserved continues to inform attitudes about punishment. The belief in ‘just deserts’ is especially relevant in cases of punishment that are not court-ordered or officially prescribed, but nonetheless are considered deserved. Perhaps the most egregious example concerns incarcerated persons who are sexually assaulted. The belief in violence as justly deserved is ethically problematic, negatively affecting the health of incarcerated persons, as well as those outside of prisons. I argue that in (...) the context of prison sexual violence, acceptance and proffering of the just deserts position is founded upon and promulgates toxic masculinity, which undermines the personhood of prisoners and reinforces a culture of homophobia and sexism both within and beyond prison walls. I outline an alternative based on an Ubuntu ethic that rejects prison sexual violence as a form of just deserts and fosters an approach to justice that seeks reconciliation. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to consider a difficult issue: the triangular relationship between the subject, the object and the visual representations of masculinity in the context of male homosexual desire. I outline contemporary circumstances of society’s interaction with popular culture in which gay men form two images of an idealized masculine body: a concept of their own body and a concept of the body they feel sexually attracted to. My concern is to theorize these two kinds of desire (...) and position them in the chaotic landscape of contesting masculinities that increasingly often besiege men via visual media. I differentiate between “straight” and “gay” masculinities as historically they have been represented and negotiated independently. What I want to reflect on is in what ways these masculinities can impact on gay men’s desires—to be a man, and to have a man. Approaching this task produces a rather puzzling picture as interpreting contemporary visual culture poses more questions than it gives answers. I argue that some of these questions are worth pursuing as an empirical inquiry. My objective is to provide a theoretical background such work could be based on. I locate elements of this theory that I find problematic or out-of-date and mention certain aspects of the problem that I believe could be addressed further. (shrink)

In her recent case study, Elizabeth Potter attempts to show how Boyle's experimental method was biased by gender considerations. Part of her argument focuses on the combination of the “invisibility” of women in Boyle's published work together with his unpublished comments on female chastity, and part concerns Boyle's rejection of the animistic explanation of his air pump experiments by Francis Line. I argue that the historical and biographical elements of the case make Potter's arguments questionable. In addition, I address whether (...) and how such historical cases can shed light on current debates about gender issues and argue that Boyle's methodological writings could be used to better advantage in the feminist cause. (shrink)

The sport of wheelchair rugby is the subject of a recent film Murderball, which tells the story of the apparently intense rivalry between the Canadian and United States men's teams. In part, the story is told through the lives of some of the game's leading players and coaches. Murderball deals with a series of ethical and political questions concerned with conceptions of disability, articulations of sporting bodies, and the value attached to sporting performance. In this paper we offer a critique (...) of Murderball and explore a number of themes including: (1) What can disabled bodies do?; (2) This is not the Special Olympics; and (3) ?Hot? and disabled. We conclude that these themes offer us new intellectual challenges for thinking about the physical education experiences of young disabled people and progression in disability sport. Indeed, we argue that Murderball moves disability issues into new intellectual terrain, thus increasing the ways in which people who work with young people and sport might need to take account of disability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:No Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye: Transgression and Masculinity in Bataille and FoucaultJudith Surkis (bio)In August 1963 Critique published an “Hommage à Georges Bataille,” a special issue commemorating the death of its founder. How did the volume’s contributors go about the seemingly tricky business of pledging fealty to the philosopher of sovereignty? How did they profess loyalty to, in effect recognize, the sovereign subject known to (...) insistently refuse masterful identity?Apparently undisturbed by this difficulty, the articles written by Bataille’s acquaintances—Alfred Metraux, Michel Leiris, Raymond Queneau, André Masson, and Jean Piel amongst them—establish an explicitly fraternal relation to their contemporary. Piel begins his homage with an account of their initial encounter chez Queneau in 1927, noting his “impression of extraordinary fraternity, an impression which, through our last meeting days before his death, never diminished” [721]. Intermingling intellectual and personal history, these occasional pieces remember Bataille in a variety of contexts: the awakening of his interest in ethnology and work on Documents in the 1920s, his early “confrontations” with Hegel and work on Critique sociale and Contre-attaque in the 1930s, his sensitivity to events and developments in post-World-War-II Europe. While significantly diverse in focus, these articles manifest a similar approach, at once biographical and autobiographical, detailing the unfolding of shared intellectual amitié in favorite cafés, apartments, and studios. Bataille emerges here as a historical subject whose interests and investments, while multiple and, to use Leiris’s metonym, even “impossible,” are repeatedly linked to a variety of intellectual and political milieux.Michel Foucault’s “Preface to Transgression” assumes a more reverential tone than the pieces written by members of Bataille’s own generation. While framed as an explicit “homage” in its recognition of a certain debt to Bataille, Foucault’s essay also plays upon the contradiction of pledging loyalty to a “sovereign” who repeatedly renounces his own claim to mastery. Bataille’s death becomes an occasion on which to herald the “breakdown” and “shattering” of the masterful philosophical subject conventionally assumed to be in control of the “natural” language of dialectics [42–43]. For Foucault, a new possibility for philosophy is seen to arise in “the non-dialectical language of the limit which arises only in transgressing the one who speaks” [44], a transgression repeatedly performed, according to Foucault, in Bataille’s own writing and metaphorically enacted in and by his death. Bataille had, after all, proclaimed in the conclusion to Erotism: “To give transgression to philosophy as a foundation (it is the approach of my thought)...” Bataille’s theory of transgression aims to evoke a “world of play” in which “philosophy disintegrates” [275]. Yet, if the disintegration of philosophy in and through transgression is already Bataille’s “project,” we might inquire into why Foucault frames his article as a preface. [End Page 18]In introducing this presumably already achieved transgression, the “Preface” affects a curious, alternating temporality, a certain confusion of anteriority and posteriority. 1 At once following and preceding Bataille, Foucault remains out of sync and hence unable to coincide with Bataille in the shared amitié inscribed by the author’s contemporaries; it would appear that this generational gap introduces a certain shift in the recollection of Bataille’s legacy. Following in his footsteps, Foucault appropriates one of Bataille’s own disorienting gestures—the tactical use of prefaces, itself mentioned in the “Preface” [43]—in order to dislodge Bataille from his anterior position; instead, Bataille comes to epitomize the transgression predicted by Foucault’s “philosophical” preface. Bataille’s (and, by implication, Foucault’s own) “location” becomes confused and obscured; as I hope to show, Foucault is invested in achieving this state of indeterminacy for both himself and Bataille.To honor Bataille in death assumes a double significance for Foucault: it represents a “transgression of the philosopher’s being” which “has sent us to the pure transgression of his texts” [40] and simultaneously allows Foucault to sacralize Bataille. “Pure transgression” becomes liberated from the historically located being of the philosopher. And further, since the language of transgression is linked by Foucault to the “death of God,” Bataille becomes, in a sense, “deified” in the announcement and celebration of... (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to consider a difficult issue: the triangular relationship between the subject, the object and the visual representations of masculinity in the context of male homosexual desire. I outline contemporary circumstances of society’s interaction with popular culture in which gay men form two images of an idealized masculine body: a concept of their own body and a concept of the body they feel sexually attracted to. My concern is to theorize these two kinds of desire (...) and position them in the chaotic landscape of contesting masculinities that increasingly often besiege men via visual media. I differentiate between “straight” and “gay” masculinities as historically they have been represented and negotiated independently. What I want to reflect on is in what ways these masculinities can impact on gay men’s desires—to be a man, and to have a man. Approaching this task produces a rather puzzling picture as interpreting contemporary visual culture poses more questions than it gives answers. I argue that some of these questions are worth pursuing as an empirical inquiry. My objective is to provide a theoretical background such work could be based on. I locate elements of this theory that I find problematic or out-of-date and mention certain aspects of the problem that I believe could be addressed further. (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)

In most states in the U.S. it is legal to carry a concealed handgun in public, but little is known about why people want to do this. While the existing literature argues that guns symbolize masculinity, most research on the actual use of guns has focused on marginalized men. The issue of concealed handguns is interesting because they must remain concealed and because relatively privileged men are most likely to have a license to carry one. Using in-depth interviews with 20 (...) men, this article explores how they draw on discourses of masculinity to explain their use of concealed handguns. These men claim that they are motivated by a desire to protect their wives and children, to compensate for lost strength as they age, and to defend themselves against people and places they perceive as dangerous, especially those involving racial/ethnic minority men. These findings suggest that part of the appeal of carrying a concealed firearm is that it allows men to identify with hegemonic masculinity through fantasies of violence and self-defense. (shrink)

For a long time, female endorsers in advertising have been doing product information promotion in the market. However, with more and more highly educated women participating in the labor force, the conception of feminist depictions in advertising have become a perplexing issue. The traditional female role portrayals or stereotypes of the past are not able to totally reflect the expectations, behavior, attitudes, and beliefs of contemporary women. The author collected print ads as data from three types of the highest circulation (...) magazines: foreign women’s magazines, domestic women’s magazines, and domestic management magazines subscribed to in Taiwan to investigate what were the favorite feminine patterns and feminist depictions in a traditionally masculine society. The results showed classical beauty and girl-next-door images were “acceptable” gender-role behavior exposed highly in domestic magazines, which might contribute to conservative Confucian beliefs. On the other hand, being trendy was a significantly high preference for contemporary feminist depictions in foreign women's magazines; it might be considered as being due to the increased educational level of women and female labor participation rate in the work place as well as upgrading of social status. (shrink)

One of the intriguing issues connected to power relations in the world of cinema that has yet to be adequately explored is what has happened over the years concerning the dominance and privilege of masculinity as signifying preferred social status. This qualitative study explores this subject based on transcribed semi-structured interviews with 13 award-winning Israeli directors over the age of 55. The research examines two questions: How has the film industry changed its relation to leading, award-winning film directors as (...) they grow older? And, what challenges confront the directors, in terms of their own self-perceptions? These questions capture the collisional intersection between hegemonic masculinity and ageism, because they examine the loss of power attributed to men in the film industry as they reach the second half of their lives. The findings led to the formation of a theoretical model of ageism within the cinematic industry, allowing for the dismantling of the different factors that create obstacles for directors as they get older. The four layers of the model are: arbitrary ageism, manifested in the demands of a rapidly changing industry in a changing world; passive ageism, expressed through encounters with negative attitudes; active ageism, reflected in preventing older directors from receiving funding and from screening their films; and self-ageism, manifested in the directors’ attitudes toward themselves. (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)

In this article, Amy Shuffelton addresses school shootings through an investigation of honor and masculinity. Drawing on recent scholarship on honor, including Bernard Williams's Shame and Necessity and Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code, Shuffelton points out that honor has been misconstrued as exclusively a matter of hierarchical, competitive relationships. A second kind of honor, which exists within relationships of mutual respect between equals, she suggests, merits theorists' further consideration. In its hierarchical mode, honor is often a source of violent (...) action, but honor in its egalitarian mode can play an important role in peacemaking. Shuffelton turns to Homer's Iliad and Adrienne Rich's “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying” to explore honor's potential. Linking both kinds of honor to masculinity and the issue of gun violence, this article contends that to address gun violence in and outside of schools, masculine honor needs to be “reissued” as a matter of egalitarian relationships based on honest communication. (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)

This paper theorizes the relationship between women's studies and gender studies and will explore the increasing use of the category 'gender' to analyse sexual divisions and the related growth of gender studies courses. It will also examine the creation of 'men's studies' courses and an increasing emphasis on the deconstruction of masculinity within social theory. A number of questions are raised around these shifts and changes. Should we welcome them because they broaden the scope of theoretical enquiry, encompassing both female (...) and male experience, and further the institutionalization of gender issues within the academy? Or should we be critical of such developments because they may lead to a narrower political and theoretical agenda in terms of analyses of women's experience? (shrink)

Hip hop has grown into a worldwide genre in recent decades, often being associated with issues of race and class. However, as research on ‘hip hop feminism’ in the US context demonstrates, the categories of gender and sexuality are no less fundamental. In the growing body of international hip hop research, though, questions about gender have been relatively absent, and relatively little is known about how gender norms are negotiated and challenged in hip hop in Europe. This article seeks (...) to contribute to filling this gap in the literature by exploring how women negotiate the gender norms of hip hop in the case of Sweden. To this end, rap lyrics by 12 female rap artists are analysed through poststructuralist discourse analysis. The analysis focuses on intersectionality, feminism within and beyond hip hop, as well as the possibilities and limitations of female masculinity. It is shown how the masculine norms of the genre are simultaneously resisted and resignified as many female rappers incorporate some elements commonly associated with masculinity but mobilize them in their challenging of masculine norms. In this way, complying with the genre interestingly produces a hard and explicit feminism in which ‘all sexist pigs will be slaughtered”. (shrink)

Images and ideas associated with masculinity are forever in flux. In this book, Donald Moss addresses the never-ending effort of men—regardless of sexual orientation—to shape themselves in relation to the unstable notion of masculinity. Part 1 looks at the lifelong labor faced by boys and men of assessing themselves in relation to an always shifting, always receding, ideal of "masculinity." In Part 2, Moss considers a series of nested issues regarding homosexuality, homophobia and psychoanalysis. Part 3 focuses on the (...) interface between the body experienced as a private entity and the body experienced as a public entity—the body experienced as one’s own and the body subject to the judgments, regulations and punishments of the external world. The final part looks at men and violence. Men must contend with the entwined problems of regulating aggression and figuring out its proper level, aiming to avoid both excess and insufficiency. This section focuses on excessive aggression and its damaging consequences, both to its object and to its subjects. _Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Man _will be of great interest not only to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, but also to a much wider audience of readers interested in gender studies, queer studies, and masculinity. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 311-315 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity. By Aloysius Pieris, S. J. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996. Aloysius Pieris, Jesuit priest and Buddhist scholar, is well known in theological and interreligious dialogue circles in Asia, and this is the third collection of essays of (...) his to be published in the Faith Meets Faith Series of Orbis Books. The eighteen essays which make up this book, all previously published elsewhere, are conveniently put together in three sections, under the following headings: 1) Women and Religion: Buddhist and Christian Appropriation of Feminist Criticism; 2) issues in Theology, Religion and Society; and 3) questions of Spirituality and Human Liberation. To merely summarize the content of the essays and offer a third-party critique would do injustice to the book, and could even mislead one who peruses such a summary into thinking one thereby "knows" what the book or Pieris is about. Such a hasty conclusion would deprive a would-be reader of the powerful experience that awaits in wrestling with Pieris through each essay of this volume. Judith Berling puts it well in her blurb at the back, pointing out that the author "uses poetry, evocative symbolism, and humor to offer a theological call to action in a voice that is liberationist, Asian, and feminist." Indeed, this volume invites one to a way of seeing that can also transform one's way of being in this world marked by increasing violence, poverty, and a systemic kind of oppression dehumanizing to both the perpetrators as well as the victims.The title of the present volume, Fire and Water, alludes to a dynamic dipolarity, masterfully sketched for the reader by Paul Knitter in his foreword, which underlies the author's vision of reality and vivifies much of his writing. The masculine and the feminine, the (Buddhist) gnostic and the (Christian) agapeic, the metacosmic (transcendent) [End Page 311] and the cosmic (immanent), the prophetic and the mystical, are different ways of naming this dipolarity. The way to ultimate liberation is in the effective embrace of both poles in complementarity and mutual interplay, whereas taking one pole in preference over the other results in a warped vision or mode of being, in imbalance, or even in abuse.In this review I would like to simply echo some key themes that will jump at one perusing the essays, reiterating that the very act of reading them can of itself be a transformative experience for an open-minded, open-hearted, and open-handed reader.The thrust of the six essays comprising the first section can perhaps be summed up in the thesis as formulated by the author himself: "Religion cannot survive in the future without appropriating the feminist critique, just as feminism cannot achieve its liberative goal without the aid of a religion so critiqued" (p. 62). Behind this statement is Pieris' emphatically critical stance, on the one hand, against all forms of patriarchal religion, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or other, which has justified, lent a hand in, or continued to perpetrate the physical, psychological, and especially religious abuse of women, and on the other hand, against secularist (or anti-religious) kinds of feminist theory that take off on what he enumerates as "five false starts" (pp. 50-51), which only result in unnecessary dichotomies that truncate the understanding of the goal of liberation, and consequently of the human as such.Pieris offers a vision of liberation centered on what he terms the humanum. This refers to the point of ultimate perfection to which the human, that is, "whatever pertains to men and women as self-conscious, other-oriented, and dreaming components of the cosmos," has the capacity to carry the cosmos. In this context, the human is no other than "this self-transcendent capacity immanent in the cosmos, this power to unfold within itself the Other, which is ever present from the first moment of evolution." To be human is inherently to be endowed... (shrink)

"This book is based on new work relating gendered assumptions about rationality to men's mental health. It offers the reader a theoretical exploration of a topically and politically sensitive issue and provides a valuable critique of postmodern theory and theorists. It is relevant to practitioners and activists in the mental health field, will be of interest to profeminist theorists, and is essential reading for academics and students of sociology and allied disciplines."--Jacket.

Ce livre est issu de deux journées d'études organisées par D. Gardey et I. Löwy au Centre de Recherche en Histoire des sciences et des Techniques, journées tenues les 24 janvier et 24 avril 1997 à la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie à Paris. La première journée était consacrée au thème : « Genre et science. État de la question historique en France et à l'étranger » et proposait un bilan historiographique. La deuxième journée proposait une réflexion sur « (...) L'invention du naturel : le... (shrink)

Our proposal is to overcome the limited conception of the masculinity problem. Even when it is true that all women have suffered from the imposition of the patriarchal system, it is not true that all men have always benefited or participated in the power structure that the same offers, and the major..

SummaryPhilosophic questions about the adequacy of our prevailing Western conceptions of rationality have emerged from the growing recognition that one cannot simply “add women” as objects of knowledge to the existing bodies of our social and natural knowledge. Recent research in psychology and in moral development theory suggests that our understandings of the rationality of human activity are distorted and obscured by systematically identifying as universally desireable, as Human goals, conceptions of the self, others, and the appropriate relationships between the (...) two which are distinctively masculine. The essay suggests some implications of these research findings for the ways philosophers think about “the problems of philosophy”, moral theory, the role of formality and abstractness, and the “rational reconstructions” of the history of science.RésuméDes questions philosophiques se sont posées, a propos de ľadéquation de nos conceptions occidentales courantes de la rationalité, du fait de la reconnaissance qu'on ne peut pas simplement ajouter les femmes comme objets de connaissance aux corpus existants de notre connais‐sance sociale et naturelle. Des recherches récentes en psychologie et en théorie du développement moral suggèrent que notre comprèhension de la rationalité de ľactivité humaine est déformee et obscurcie par une identification systématique, comme universellement désirables, comme buts de ľhumanité, des conceptions de soi, des autres et des relations entre les deux qui sont distincte‐ment masculines. Cet essai suggère quelques applications de ces resultats de recherche quant à la maniere dont les philosophes pensent les problèmes de la philosophies la morale, le rôle du formel et de ľabstrait et les reconstuctions rationnelles de ľhistoire de la science.ZusammenfassungPhilosophische Fragen ïber die Angemessenheit unserer vorherrschenden Auffassungen von Rationalität im Westen sind durch die wachsende Einsicht entstanden, dass man nicht einfach Frauen als Objekte dem bestehenden Korpus unserer Sozial‐ und Naturwissenschaften hinzufügen kann. Neuere Forschungen in Psychologie und Theorien der moralischen Entwicklung legen nahe, dass unser Verstandnis der Rationalität von menschlichen Handlungen dadurch verzerrl und verdunkelt wird, dass systematische Auffassungen vom Selbst, den andern und den unter ihnen angebrachten Beziehungen als allgemein wünschbare Ziele anerkannt werden, die spezi‐fisch männlich sind. Es werden einige Implikationen dieser Forschungen t'iir die Art, wie Philoso‐phen über die Probleme der Philosophie denken, aufgezeigt – u.a. in bezug auf die Theorie der Moral, die Rolle der Formalisierung und Abstraktion, und die rationalen Rekonstruktionen der Geschichte der Wissenschaft. (shrink)

The questions considered in this book are common to philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists alike: What is man, and how does he differ from the animals? Is it true that man is less ruled by instinct than animals? How is man affected by heredity and environment? In particular, how are masculine and feminine "traits" affected by heredity and/or environment? Are there any relatively clear-cut stages in the evolution of the individual and of the human race? Does man have a mind (...) or soul distinct from the body, and does it entail the possibility of survival after physical death? Questions such as these posed throughout civilized time are examined anew in this book. Originally published by the University of Alabama Press in 1981. (shrink)

The international gender equality agenda evolved into one of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes. Within this process, the role of men gained increasing attention in the debates on gender equality. This resulted in the inclusion of ‘men's role’ as one of the themes of the agenda of the Commission on the Status of Women for the year 2004. While this is another step forward in the global efforts for achieving equality between women and men, its potential (...) risks should not be overlooked. Therefore, it is necessary to revisit the concept of gender and carefully assess and monitor how the role of men is included in the agenda. This article starts with the premise that gender inequalities are the product of historically determined gender order in which the differentially assigned male female attributes are unequally structured in layers of privileged and subordinate positions of masculinities and femininities. The concept of patriarchy is brought back into the analysis to capture the interlinkages between the various status hierarchies that lead to shifts in hegemonic forms of masculinity that reproduces itself under diverse and changing conditions. Thus, while the article attempts to account for the generic and universal characteristics of gender inequality, at the same time, it draws attention to its specific socio-cultural manifestations. Finally, policy guidelines are offered for the consideration of the role of men in gender agenda setting. Accordingly, it is suggested that men's initiatives for alternative masculinities are acknowledged and that the questions regarding which men, in what kinds of alliances and for which end are reflected upon in formulating policies. (shrink)

Revealing Male Bodies is the first scholarly collection to directly confront male lived experience. There has been an explosion of work in men's studies, masculinity issues, and male sexuality, in addition to a growing literature exploring female embodiment. Missing from the current literature, however, is a sustained analysis of the phenomenology of male-gendered bodies. Revealing Male Bodies addresses this omission by examining how male bodies are physically and experientially constituted by the economic, theoretical, and social practices in which men (...) are immersed. Contributors include Susan Bordo, William Cowling, Terry Goldie, Maurice Hamington, Don Ihde, Greg Johnson, Björn Krondorfer, Alphonso Lingis, Patrick McGann, Paul McIlvenny, Terrance MacMullan, Jim Perkinson, Steven P. Schacht, Richard Schmitt, Nancy Tuana, Craig L. Wilkins, and John Zuern. (shrink)

Masculinity and manhood ideologies remain a serious theological concern in the context of South Africa and the continent of Africa. The masculinity ideology perceives femaleness as a symbol to be lower than maleness and thereby uses this as a strategy to dominate and oppress women. While the oppression and domination of women is experienced in many parts of African society, such experiences also exist within the church walls. The androcentric culture creates an unbalanced theology which then brings the entire discourse (...) of theologisation into question. As this article grapples with these issues, it employs Mercy Oduyoye’s African women theology, particularly the model of ‘partnership between women and men’ in ministry, to reflect and respond to the issues raised. It further argues that as long as African women are subjected to oppression and domination by ideologies that are adiaphora, Oduyoye’s liberative hermeneutics remain relevant and necessary for doing inclusive theology in Africa. Contribution: While the article grapples with African women theologies within a theological terrain, the implications of the outcome are multidisciplinary as they aim to respond to challenges of oppression, masculinity and manhood ideologies that women face in their daily life. (shrink)

Analytic and feminist philosophers already uncomfortable with the practice of devoting special sessions at meetings and special issues of journals to "feminist aesthetics" may find that this piece adds to their uneasiness. If "feminist aesthetics" is treated as a special topic within aesthetics, then should we infer that the rest of the time we do masculine aesthetics? some feminists would argue for an affirmative answer to this question; the title acknowledges them in insinuating that if analytic aesthetics is (...) not feminist aesthetics, then it might be (or must be) masculine aesthetics. This essay will consider whether "feminist aesthetics" and analytic aesthetics are congenial, or at least compatible, activities, and in so doing, explore what constitutes "feminist aesthetics.". (shrink)

This thought-provoking book, first published in 1991, examines sexual politics in a world which is being radically changed by the challenges of feminism. Seidler explores how men have responded to feminism, and the contradictory feelings men have towards dominant forms of masculinity. Seidler’s stimulating and original analysis of social and political theory connects personally to everyday issues in people’s lives. It reflects the growing importance of sexual and personal politics within contemporary politics and culture, and demonstrates clearly the challenge (...) that feminism brings to our inherited forms of morality, politics and sexuality. (shrink)

This study examines the Qurʾān’s view towards gender and argues that all three masculine, feminine and egalitarian (gender-inclusive) discourses exist in its text, and that these discourses do not follow a simple and linear model but rather a nonlinear and complex one. It also provides evidence, showing that gender equality in the Qurʾān is achieved in two ways: firstly, through linguistic devices that are devoid of gender distinctions, and secondly, through concurrent use of masculine and feminine gender markers (...) in one context. The masculine discourse is, however, more prominent in the verses of this book and manifests itself to varying degrees in three ways: (1) in some verses, only masculine indicators are used but it can be inferred based on the (Taghlīb) principle that both men and women are the intended addressees; (2) in some verses, rules regarding women are stipulated, whilst men are, in fact, the main addressees and (3) in verses that state rules on reciprocal issues such as divorce and marriage but these rules are addressed to only men. The feminine discourse is also present in the Qurʾān and can be seen in verses that address women. Contribution: Revealing gender discourses in the Qurʾān requires not only a historical but also an integrative and holistic understanding of its text. This study attempts to identify the relation of the Qurʾān to the three gender discourses based on the linguistic elements of the text and their classification. (shrink)

The issue of gender and agriculture has been on the research agendas of civil society organisations, governments, and academia since the 1970s. Starting from the role of women in agriculture, research has mainly focused on the gendered division of work and the normative constitution of the farm as masculine. Although the gendered division of work has been questioned, the idea of binary gender has mostly been taken as a given. This explorative research shifts the attention from the production of (...) (traditional) gender roles to the making and unmaking of binary gender. An ethnographic study of four farms in Switzerland is drawn on to explore queer farming practices and investigate how queer farmers navigate gender normativity and what this tells us about gender in agriculture more broadly. After considering the mechanisms through which queer farmers are discouraged from farming as a livelihood on the basis of their sex, gender or sexuality, this article argues that queer farmers de- and re-construct gender and farming identities differently, which has research and policy implications for a more diverse and resilient rurality. (shrink)

Retrospective issues: the discursive approach to genre and the misdirection film -- -- The truth is out there: manufacturing conspiratorial narrative coherence -- Constructing the (im)perfect cover: masculine masquerade and narrative agency -- -- Start making sense: narrative complexity, DVD, and online fandom -- The masters of misdirection: branding M. Night Shyamalan and Christopher Nolan -- Genre prestige: the misdirection film as blockbuster and middlebrow art -- Conclusion.

The issue of underrepresentation of women in information technology (IT) is of national interest due to the rapid growth of IT in recent years, the impact of IT on growth and productivity, the shortage of IT workers, and the gender equity in IT. Scholarly research has pointed its finger at bias in early socialization, math anxiety, masculinity of computers, the scarcity of role models, and women’s preference for relational work. A study of students majoring in computer science and computer engineering (...) in a minority-serving university found some additional factors such as tension between demands imposed by IT curricula and students’family and work responsibilities. (shrink)

Approaching Simone de Beauvoir's feminism and social commentary as a toolkit to understand our current crises, Simone de Beauvoir: Toolkit for the 21st Century brings together established and emerging scholars to apply her insights to gender studies, political philosophy, decolonisation, intellectual history, age theory, and critical phenomenology. The essays in this collection start from key concepts in Beauvoir's oeuvre and relate them to contemporary debates, asking how her notion of ambiguity speaks to decolonial freedom struggles; how myths inform our notions (...) of collective, national identities; how masculinity and its violence has reached new levels with the emergence of 'Incels'. These and other issues are central to this critical appraisal of Beauvoir's legacy, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of her thought as it diagnoses the present and looks toward change for a better future. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to engage with the political content of Simone de Beauvoir's work and the timely application of her ideas. (shrink)

This paper addresses central issues in the debate about inclusive language for God by responding to Andrew Dell’Olio, who offered biblical, theological, linguistic, and ethical reasons for a “supplemental” use of feminine language for God. Since he leaves unclear whether “supplemental” means “secondary to” or “fully equal to” the masculine language of the biblical tradition, it is difficult to determine whether he makes his case. While a secondary role for feminine language for God is legitimate, I argue that (...) giving feminine language a status equal to the Bible’s masculine language for God is not warranted by the standard biblical and theological criteria of the Christian tradition. (shrink)