...Gender is a fundamental feature of popular music. It is evident that gender is one of the main factors in which shape ones identity. When discussing popular music, scholars often emphasize the “distinction between biological reality of sex and the cultural category of gender” (Magrini 2003:1). Your sex refers to your “biological phenomena”, whether you are heterosexual, homosexual etc, however, your gender insinuates the expected rules, behaviours and expectations considered appropriate for being a female or a male (Magrini 2003:1). In this essay I will discuss how, Judith Butler, Simon Frith, Angela McRobbie and Kristen Schilt explore how ‘traditional gender norms’ continue throughout popular music. Judith Butler looked at how gender is a ‘performance’ and that we need to break the traditional gender binaries. Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie discussed how Rock music is male dominated and that women are more or less in the background. Finally, Kristen Schilt discusses how the band Riot Grrrl portrayed girl power, and how Riot Grrrl associated bands tried to keep the girl power going, but still conformed to the traditional female stereotypes, the very thing they were trying to get away from. Describing gender, Butler states that gender is in fact ‘performed.’ We are performing gender as we behave, walk and talk in ways which connects human beings to impressions of being a male or being a female. She argues that there is “an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations”...
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...Bodies: Regulation And Subversion A Closer Look At Judith Bulter’s Drag Philosophy. Binita Kakati S133CGS09 IVth Semester Assignment submitted To Bindu K.C. for the course Bodies Department of Gender Studies School of Human Studies Ambedkar University, Delhi 25. March-2015 In this paper I wish to discuss Susan Bordo’s work to emphasise on the point of the body being a locus of societal control. The body being constructed, regulated and impressed upon by society putting to question the entire idea of ‘agency’. I discuss that in order to look at Judith Butler’s ideas on ‘drag’ and its possibility of subversion. At the time drag emerged, it was taken as a symbol of feminism...
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...Postcolonial/ Feminist Enquiry into the Identity of Indian Woman Kochurani Abraham “The home was the principal site for expressing the spiritual quality of the nation’s culture and women must take the main responsibility of protecting and nurturing this quality. No matter what the changes in the external conditions of life for women, they must not lose their essentially spiritual (ie feminine) virtues; they must not, in other words, become essentially westernized.” - Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question”* “What was gradually and carefully constituted, brick by brick, in the interaction between colonialism and nationalism is now so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the middle classes that ideas about the past have assumed the status of revealed truths…It has led to a narrow and limiting circle in which the image of Indian womanhood has become, both a shackle and a rhetorical device that nevertheless functions as a historical truth.” - Uma Chakravarti “Whatever happened to the Vedic Dasi?: Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past.”* Who/where is the Indian woman? Since this conference focuses on the theme “Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial...
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...States of America past president, Barack Obama, has fought for the lesbian, gay, transgender, and queer community and established legal protection for their lifestyle. Through this discourse, sexuality has emerged from just how one accept themselves, to how the world accept everyone since people are now able to express their sexuality more openly than before. Through this evolved sexuality, Michel Foucault, a French Philosopher who studies power and knowledge, reviews how sexuality became what it is by connecting power and sexuality together in his book The History of Sexuality. Similarly, Judith Butler, a feminist philosopher, argues that people should not be identified by gender, instead be viewed as a person through “Subjects of Sex/gender/Desire” in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In addition, a news report called “Born this way? Society, sexuality and the search for the 'gay gene'” by Simon Copland, suggests that genetics play a factor in homosexuality. As a result, the study of sexuality illuminates that power and sexuality do intertwine because oppressive power has shaped much of our understanding of sexuality. Foucault begins his study on sexuality through the lens of a scientist because he critiques that science is insufficient to explain sexuality since sex is more than reproduction. Science believes that sexuality is pleasure, the act of having sex, and sexual organs. But, Foucault reconstructs this scientistic ideology of sexuality by...
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...Feminist perspectives are slowly becoming the standard for deconstructing popular culture. When doing so issues of masculine hegemony, gender roles, heteronormativity, objectivity, and an abundance of other concepts that stir up controversy are brought to the surface. Popular culture allows for the challenging of problems women have faced for many years, but it some cases is adheres to these traditions. It is vital to be able to see the overall message in a pop culture text in order to understand its implications. Some texts hold messages that were not intended to be there in the first place. There will forever be controversy when it comes to pop culture, especially when it comes to television shows, as the average Canadian watches 30 hours of T.V a week. (Ryan, 2013) When being constantly exposed to these messages it is important to know what information you are being fed. Some shows are more complex than others, and consist of mixed messages when looking at them from a feminist standpoint. One example of this would be The Mindy Project, a sitcom that first aired in 2012, and has since gained an average of $2.34 million viewers per episode, (IMDb, 2012) The Mindy Project is packed full of messages that can be depicted from a feminist standpoint, but are often blurred behind the hilarity it is known for. To give a brief synopsis of the show, Mindy Lahiri, played by Mindy Kaling, also the director of the show is the main character and also the narrator. The show is about her...
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...Socialisation is similar to Social Darwinism. The application of evolutionary laws of natural selection to human societies to 'explain' social processes and behaviours. Spencer coined the term 'survival of the fittest' (often misattributed to Darwin) to describe how Darwin’s ideas about natural selection in nature can be used to explain social processes and behaviours. Socialisation as a term refers to a process that is of critical importance in development of the individual person and in the functioning of groups and societies. (Hunt, P. 3) A major theme is the socialisation process has been the of social structure and value orientations on patterns of child rearing. (P.30.) Agencies of socialisation are where socialisation occurs within, these agencies or social networks aid in the social construction of an individual. The primary socialisation (refers to the socialisation of babies and young children, and mainly occurs within the family) is the family. The family is a child’s first reference group. Families are diverse and their style of parenting reflects cultural, class, ethnic, and religious differences. (Rogoff, P55) Other members of the family’s social network, such as neighbours, also have an influence on behaviour, attitudes and values through their provision of positive and negative representations. It includes all those who are included in the family’s primary social network, such as neighbours, grandparents, close family friends, cousins. (Hunt, P. 33.) ...
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...The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1756-6266.htm Situating the subject: gender and entrepreneurship in international contexts Fidelma Ashe University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, UK, and Gender and entrepreneurship 185 Lorna Treanor Royal Veterinary College, University of London, London, UK Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a perspective to further the understanding of gender entrepreneurship. This paper considers the situatedness of the gendered entrepreneur within diverse international contexts marked by different constitutions of gender identities and networks of power, both within the context of contributions within this special issue but also more broadly within the field of gender and entrepreneurship research. Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopt a feminist perspective and analyse the different framings of identity within gender and entrepreneurship literature and their contributions to our understandings of the concepts of both power and gendered identities. Findings – The paper finds that power and identity are configured in different contexts in ways that open arenas for future analysis. Originality/value – The paper highlights the importance of considering masculinities within gender and entrepreneurship research offering support for further analyses of entrepreneurial masculinities by examining two studies that expose entrepreneurial masculinities as shifting subjectivities...
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...masculinity and femininity is by observing what men and women do, rather than what they are (Beynon 7). Superheroes in comics are burdened with “hyper-masculine character presentation” (Avery-Natale 72), their bodies becoming signs of power and prowess. The hyperbolically glorified masculine superhero figures Superman, Batman, Banshee, Black Panther, Captain America, Drax, Hercules and Hulk are drawn having bulging muscles symbolising physical strength and aggressiveness. They uphold an exaggerated manliness purged from attributes like physical weakness, dependence and emotionality – all vulnerable effeminate traits. Creeping through the psyche, the unrealistic representation instrumentalises a dominantly sexist propaganda perpetuating gender hierarchies. This chapter posits illustrated images of masculine and feminine bodies against each other, focusing on drawn comic panels showing action scenes in superhero narratives. The elaborately illustrated panels of comics become sites of struggle reaffirming “[s]tereotypes of women are much more offensive than stereotypes of men because, while masculine stereotypes are often fantasies of...
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...English we were always wogs and nigs and Pakis and the rest of it”. Write an essay exploring how Kureishi’s novel maps Englishness as a contested terrain of identities, politics and performance. Your discussion should refer to Stuart Hall’s work on ethnicities and on Judith Butler’s writing on performance as identity. Much of the Kureishi’s early work is grounded primarily in racial and cultural conflict between British mainstream culture and ethnic minority communities; the conflict between the cultural claims that the first-generation immigrants were prone to clinging onto and the sense of belonging, which they their children aspired to develop in mainstream British society. To the children of immigrants, particularly those who had migrated from British Commonwealth or ex-colonized countries, any reflection on Britain, or their parents’ homeland, in terms of “home” may differ significantly from that perceived by their parents. As a writer born and bred in Britain of a Pakistani father and an English mother, Kureishi reflects upon his own identity, affirming in an interview his own sense of identity be seeing himself as British: “Critics have written that I’m caught between two cultures. I’m not. I’m British; I’ve made it in England. It’s my father who’s caught. He can’t make it. Elsewhere he proclaims his British identity in a similar way: I’m British, as wrote in The Rainbow Sign. Just like Karim in the Buddha. But being British is a new thing now. It involves people with...
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...Carter, C. (2011) “Sex/Gender and the Media: From Sex Roles to Social Construction and Beyond,” in Ross, K. (ed) The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN-10: 1444338544; 365-82. ISBN-13: 978-1444338546 Sex/Gender and the Media From Sex Roles to Social Construction and Beyond Cynthia Carter Introduction In the early years of second-wave western feminism, many gender researchers and feminist scholars distinguished between the notion of sex, defined as biological differences between male and female, and ‘sex roles,’ referring to certain behaviors and characteristics attributed to each sex that was a social construction. The resulting media research centered on images of women in the media (much less emphasis was placed on men) in order to draw attention to inequities in their portrayal in relation to men (in quantitative terms as well as in terms of the use of stereotypes). Since the 1970s, however, the scope of social constructionism has greatly expanded in feminist theory. Some suggest that the distinction between the biological and the social has, as a result, eroded to such an extent that it is no longer possible to understand the difference, while others question the need for this distinction. For instance, in queer and transgender theory and feminist cultural studies, theorists have sought to make strange the ‘sex/gender’ distinction. The key argument made is that biology is no less a cultural construct than gender socialization into masculinity...
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...Comparing and Contrasting Essentialist Approaches to Social Psychology with Social Constructionist Approaches to Social Psychology. A widely recognised definition of social psychology is “an effort to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others” (Allport, 1985). However, how to measure this, the research methods to be used and what constitutes useful evidence has caused much debate in the history of social psychology. This essay will compare and contrast the two epistemologies of essentialist and social constructionist approaches to social psychology and the research methods of quantitative and qualitative used in each approach. Essentialists’ view of the world is that the properties possessed by a group are universal in that group and do not depend on context. However, a member of a group may possess other characteristics that are not required to include it as a group member but, it must not have characteristics that preclude it from being a member of the group (Burr, 1995). For example, essentialists believe that personality consists of a number of traits and personality of an individual is established by the level of each of these traits. Essentialists also believe that these traits remain more or less stable over time and it is our personality that influences behaviour (Maltby, 2010). As essentialists are able to classify groups as such, they use quantitative research...
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...Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research M A R Y B U C H O L T Z Department of Linguistics 3607 South Hall University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100 bucholtz@linguistics.ucsb.edu K I R A H A L L Department of Linguistics Campus Box 295 University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO 80309-0295 kira.hall@colorado.edu A B S T R A C T The field of language and sexuality has gained importance within socioculturally oriented linguistic scholarship. Much current work in this area emphasizes identity as one key aspect of sexuality. However, recent critiques of identity-based research advocate instead a desire-centered view of sexuality. Such an approach artificially restricts the scope of the field by overlooking the close relationship between identity and desire. This connection emerges clearly in queer linguistics, an approach to language and sexuality that incorporates insights from feminist, queer, and sociolinguistic theories to analyze sexuality as a broad sociocultural phenomenon. These intellectual approaches have shown that research on identity, sexual or otherwise, is most productive when the concept is understood as the outcome of intersubjectively negotiated practices and ideologies. To this end, an analytic framework for the semiotic study of social intersubjectivity is presented. (Sexuality, feminism, identity, desire, queer linguistics.)* I N T R O D U C T I O N Within the past decade the field of language...
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...psychiatry, the prison system, and the human sciences in general. Specifically he focused on how these institutions relate to power interactions. For a time he was associated with structuralism, which is an intellectual movement in which the culture of humanity is semiotically analyzed. However he distanced himself from the structuralism movement after the 60s. He wrote on a wide array of topics from knowledge to power and discourse. He considered himself "Nietzschean" (Fox 169). In viewing his own system of philosophy this way, he rejected the postmodernist label attributed to him. In fact, he held that his work was in line with the modernity of the philosophies of Kant. In The History of Sexuality Foucault examined the role of sex and gender in power relations. This three volume series was published in 1984. In the first volume, Foucault explores the functioning of sexuality as a way to analyze the relationship between power and the science of sexuality. Foucault's History defined sexuality as "the set of effects produced in bodies, behaviors, and...
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...The Preservation of Minstrel Ideas Despite the many contributions to society that black men and women have made, the portrayal of African-Americans in the media has rarely been a positive one. Drug dealers, abusers, and criminals are some of the common roles that the media associates them with. This leads others, specifically white people, to disassociate themselves from African-Americans. Black culture has not always been represented in the media, and when their culture was finally represented it was not at all flattering. Racist cartoons and minstrel shows portrayed African-Americans as ignorant, lazy and unintelligent fools, causing those who had never come in contact with an African-American to develop negative prejudgments against them. January 31st, 1843, when a group of white men painted their faces black and proceeded to imitate African-Americans and their culture, planted a ever-growing racist seed. The images portrayed in minstrel performances were considered comedic by the white people that they were performed in front of, despite the obvious racism that was showcased. Negative images were acted out for the purposes of entertainment, to maintain a feeling of white superiority, as a justification for slavery and an exploitation of black people. These images helped white people, both in the North and the South, create negative ideas about blacks, while convincing themselves that this proved their superiority over African-Americans. Minstrel images gave white...
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...50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies Jane Pilcher & Imelda Whelehan Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies i Recent volumes include: Key Concepts in Social Research Geoff Payne and Judy Payne Key Concepts in Medical Sociology Jonathan Gabe, Mike Bury and Mary Ann Elston Forthcoming titles include: Key Concepts in Leisure Studies David Harris Key Concepts in Critical Social Theory Nick Crossley Key Concepts in Urban Studies Mark Gottdiener The SAGE Key Concepts series provide students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensable study aids and guides to comprehension. JANE PILCHER AND IMELDA WHELEHAN Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi iii © Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42 Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 100 017 British Library...
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