...The Gender Politics of Narrative Modes I want to challenge two linked assumptions that most historians and critics of the English novel share. The first is that the burgeoning of capitalism and the ascension of the middle classes were mainly responsible for the development of the novel. The second is that realism represents the novel's dominant tradition. [note 1] I want to propose instead that, as surely as it marked a response to developing class relations, the novel came into being as a response to the sex-gender system that emerged in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [note 2] My thesis is that from its inception, the novel has been structured not by one but by two mutually defining traditions: the fantastic and the realistic. [note 3] The constitutive coexistence of these two impulses within a single, evolving form is in no sense accidental: their dynamic interaction was precisely the means by which the novel, from the eighteenth century on, sought to manage the strains and contradictions that the sex-gender system imposed on individual subjectivities. For this reason, to recover the centrality of sex and gender as the novel's defining concern is also to recover the dynamism of its bimodal complexity. Conversely, to explore the interplay of realist and fantastic narratives within the novelistic tradition is to explore the indeterminacy of subjectivities engaged in the task of imposing and rebelling against the constraining order of gender difference. ...
Words: 5434 - Pages: 22
...to grapple with how to treat gender-variant patients both physically and emotionally. As many patients seek to match their bodies with their minds, at times risky surgical and hormonal treatments must be prescribed. The physician is forced to weigh the risks and benefits to the patient and oftentimes it is the physician's decision that will determine if the transgender patient will complete the medical part of his, her, or hirtransition, allowing the individual to continue living his or her life in a body congruent with his or her gender expression. The psychiatrist’s recommendation for SRS and hormonal treatment is imperative in the process and this paper will examine the ethical implications of the essential causal diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and the recommendation of surgical treatment in order for patients to fit into the Western gender binary. A brief examination of co-morbidity of mental disorders and their affect on consent and provider views on competence and capacity are also warranted. Adolescent transgendered patients under the age of eighteen experience more difficulties with the sex reassignment process due to emerging autonomy and complications with adolescent assent, consent, and parental permission.The physician's consent has more weight in the absence of parental permission and in many cases transgender foster children and homeless teens must rely on recommendations from physician and mental health professionals.A discussion of the use of puberty-blockers...
Words: 5990 - Pages: 24
...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...
Words: 3936 - Pages: 16
...Vidya Sajna Hameed Assistant Professor, Dept. of English St. Aloysius College, Elthuruth Introduction “There exists no prohibition that cannot be transgressed.” - Georges Bataille “Concern over a rule is sometimes at its most acute when that rule is being broken, for it is harder to limit a disturbance already begun.” - Georges Bataille Blurring the boundaries of race, gender, nationality, and sexuality has become a common denominator in defining personal identity in the twenty-first century. Exploding previous notions of these categories as fixed and static, artists today are taking an active role in exposing them as mere constructions. Nevertheless, transgressing these boundaries is still a delicate dance, and individuals who succeed in walking the line between identity categories occupy a precarious position. The purpose of this study is to explore the resistance strategies that trans-genders utilize when met with adversity and the ways that trans-genders see their trans identity as providing them with a form of strength and resiliency. Trans-genders are often analyzed from a pathologizing lens within the sociological and psychological literature. I wish to investigate the ways that trans-genders are currently pushing back against the oppressive forces that they encounter every day in hopes of increasing awareness of trans-genders resiliency and strength within the sociological and psychological fields. Terminology Transgender is often used to refer...
Words: 2861 - Pages: 12
...Struggle from Gender Identity to Political Balance Long before Song Liling made her debut as M. Butterfly on stage, there was a woman called Cho-cho-san, playing Madama Butterfly with the fullest of her life. M. Butterfly’s counterpart Madama Butterfly presents readers Cho-cho-san, a pitiful and submissive Oriental Butterfly. Cho-cho-san’s character traits fit in almost every single aspect of the ideal of Oriental women, for instance, Cho-cho-san is a geisha, an exotic representation of Japanese women in the eyes of westerners, Cho-cho-san eventually dies of seppuku, which is the Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment, and her ultimate sacrifice of her everything from her religion to her very life. The attributes of Cho-cho-san are not exclusive to this character only but imposed on all Asian women. The western presupposition of some certain fixed and bounded Asian attributes defines the identity of Asian women and thus, creates an image of the sacrificial and submissive Oriental women. Moreover, the historical backgrounds of Hwang’s Butterfly and Puccini’s Butterfly are, in fact, the extension of gender tension to international power struggle. Cho-cho-san’s love story happens in the Meiji Period in which Japan first opened its door to foreigners; while Gallimard and Song Liling begins having an affair in the 1960s, in the midst of Cold War. Hwang’s M. Butterfly parodies Puccini’s Madama Butterfly by reversing the conventional narrative on the gender identities and the power...
Words: 1983 - Pages: 8
...Case Study: Bird Family Pg1 1. 3-generational genogram: Bird FamilyNotes on Map: Size of Icon determined by significance of relationship and/or influence Considered significant: information regarding Mavis’s deep distrust towards others Considered significant: information regarding John’s deep attraction towards the “instant family” Lack of information regarding relationship between Mavis with mother and siblings: assumed none Lack of information regarding relationship between John with father: assumed none Lack of information regarding relationship between April and biological father: assumed none PYC 4808 Assignment 03 Student 3350-133-5 August 2013 Fiure: Authors own Case Study: Bird Family Pg2 2. Eco map: Bird Family in ContextNotes on Map: Size of Icon determined by significance of relationship/influence to client Absence of arrows where direction of influence is uncertain Spheres of influence outside of family is assumed Lack of information regarding the interconnection between the two families of origin Lack of information regarding relationship between April and biological father: assumed none PYC 4808 Assignment 03 Student 3350-133-5 August 2013 Figure: Authors own Case Study: Bird Family Pg3 3. Perspectives:a. Perspective of each family member: Mavis Bird: Mavis Bird grew up in what appears to have been an unstable home. Mavis has two older siblings that wereremoved from the family home and placed in foster...
Words: 3393 - Pages: 14
...Ondaatje’s novel as a “mystery of identity” (449). Similarly, Aritha van Herk identifies “fear, unpredictability, secrecy, [and] loss” (44) as the central features of the novel and its female protagonist. Anil’s Ghost, van Herk argues, presents its readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated with the figure of the nomad rather than the diasporic subject — and thus raises questions about the novel’s regulatory politics of diasporic identity. In contrast, Anita Rau Badani’s...
Words: 12618 - Pages: 51
...A. Organization An organization is a consciously coordinated social entity with distinct boundaries which functions to achieve goals. It has an activity system linked to the external environment (it does not exist alone). An organization consists of people, things, knowledge and technologies. Modernists’ assumption of reality is objectivism and view organizations are real entities which exist in the objective world. Organizations are viewed as real entities driven by rationality to achieve efficiency and organizational objectives/goals. When organizations are well-managed, they are systems of decision and action driven by norms of rationality, efficiency and effectiveness for stated purposes. Similar to modernists, critical theorists’ ontology is also objectivism, and organizations are real entities which exist in the objective world. However, critical theorists view organizations as objects used by capitalists for the exploitation and alienation of workers and the environment. Symbolic interpretivists believe that reality is subjective, and only exists if we give meaning to it. As such, organizations are socially constructed realities which are constructed and reconstructed by their members through symbolically mediated interaction. Without its members giving meaning to it, an organization does not exist. Postmodernists suggest that reality is constructed through language and discourse. Organizations are ‘imagined’ entities whereby power and social arrangements are reinforced...
Words: 3930 - Pages: 16
...Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Nature and purposes The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a reference work consulted by psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians in clinical practice, social workers , medical and nursing students, pastoral counselors, and other professionals in health care and social service fields. The book's title is often shortened to DSM , or an abbreviation that also indicates edition, such as DSM-IV-TR, which indicates fourth edition, text revision of the manual, published in 2000. The DSM-IV-TR provides a classification of mental disorders, criteria sets to guide the process of differentialdiagnosis , and numerical codes for each disorder to facilitate medical record keeping. The stated purpose of the DSM is threefold: to provide "a helpful guide to clinical practice"; "to facilitate research and improve communication among clinicians and researchers"; and to serve as "an educational tool for teaching psychopathology." The multi-axial system The third edition of DSM , or DSM-III , which was published in 1980, introduced a system of five axes or dimensions for assessing all aspects of a patient's mental and emotional health. The multi-axial system is designed to provide a more comprehensive picture of complex or concurrent mental disorders. According to the DSM-IVTR, the system is also intended to "promote the application of the biopsychosocial model in clinical, educational and...
Words: 3417 - Pages: 14
...Sex and Gender are Different: Sexual Identity and Gender Identity are Different Milton Diamond, Ph.D. University of Hawaii, John A. Burns School of Medicine Department of Anatomy and Reproductive Biology Pacific Center for Sex and Society Clinical Child Psychology & Psychiatry - Special Issue In Press for July 2002 Special Editors: Bernadette Wren, Portman Clinic Fiona Tasker, University of London | | | | | | | |Sex and Gender are Different: | |Sexual Identity and Gender Identity | |are Different | | | |Abstract: | |This paper attempts to enhance understanding and communication about different sexual issues. It starts by offering definitions to| |common...
Words: 8070 - Pages: 33
...Is asexuality a lack of sexual orientation and analogous to other sexual orientations and identities? One of the most inescapable social assumptions is that all humans possess sexual desire (Cole, 1993; 192). A related assumption is that sexuality is not only something one does, but an identity or something one is (Weeks, 1986; Foucault, 1978, cited in Scherrer, 2008; 621). Most inquiries into asexuality have approached it as either behaviour (lack of sexual acts) or a lack of desire for sexual acts. However, Scherrer argues that the complexity and variability of asexuality also encompasses those who are interested in romantic attachment but with limited or no physical contact, along with others who are simply not interested in sex (Scherrer, 2008: 634), a discourse appears frequently in which self-identified asexuals participate. It is in this context where identity labels such as demisexual, hyposexual, romantic or aromantic asexual, hyporomantic, straight-A, gay-A, bi-A, grey-A, etc. take on meanings, as asexuals attempt to position themselves not only according to the genders of people to whom they experience romantic attraction, but also according to the degrees to which (and the ways in which) they do so (DeLuzio Chasin, 2011; 713). It is already clear from the language of asexuality that it positions itself as an alternative to sexual, instead of as an alternative to straight or queer, with significant variations in both ‘romantic orientation’ and the degree to...
Words: 4208 - Pages: 17
...STUDENTS’ CONSTRUCTION OF THE BODY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Kinesiology by Laura Azzarito B.S., Universita’ di Scienze Motorie di Torino, Italy, 1994 M.S., University of Maryland, College Park, 2000 December 2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I’m very grateful to all the students and teachers who are the subjects of this work. I greatly appreciate their willingness to participate in this research and the time they dedicated to all of the interviews and member checks. I also thank the principals who gave me permission to conduct this study. I especially acknowledge and thank physical education teachers Celeste Alfred, for welcoming me to her school, and Vickie Braud for her great help in making contacts necessary to complete my data collection. Both Vickie and Celeste were wonderful throughout my research process, helping me to observe classes and arrange student interviews at the schools. I greatly appreciate all the suggestions, insights and comments of my committee members. Thank you to all of them: Dr. Kuttruff, my external committee member, for her interest in following the steps of my dissertation; Dr. Magill, for bringing a very challenging and valuable perspective to my research; Dr. Lee, for her deep knowledge and expertise in the field of physical education;...
Words: 64949 - Pages: 260
...them by the Canadian government until they were pushed onto land that we know of today as reservations. First Nations people have had to endure the marginalization of their rights and their identities in favor of whom they could only view as invaders. One of the major attempts at trying to remove aboriginal culture was through the reservation schools. (Kavanagh, 2006) The government at the time attempted to “kill the Indian in the child” by forcibly taking them away from their families in order to educate and civilize them. (Milloy, 1999) The detrimental results of these actions to essentially erase First Nations culture from the children were massive and were carried over to the next generation. In class we referred to suffering that perpetuates down through different generations and generational trauma; this trauma still exists and effects the lives of aboriginals across Canada (Louie, 2015). Understanding the historical context of reserve schools and how their negative impact on aboriginal peoples is important for non-aboriginal teachers to understand why the community is hesitant in aiding him/her in the...
Words: 1863 - Pages: 8
...a novel, poem, report or article) or perhaps the particular literary period or movement, which will link all associated texts with underlying principles or stylistic traits, such as the Romantic era or Post-Colonial literature. However, due to a long-standing patriarchal tradition dominating the history of literature- a literary practice challenged and corrected by the rise of the Feminist movement, particularly following the introduction of universal suffrage in 1928- the gender of the author has also become a means by which works may be categorised and interpreted, forcing the modern-day critic to analyse the works of each sex in isolation from one another. Political and social discriminations against women, rising from the historical lack of sexual equality, have also produced long-standing...
Words: 4136 - Pages: 17
...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 influenced by men’s social power, but also by interactions between men and women and broader cultural contexts and transitions. In so doing, it contributes to the research agenda in relation to gender and entrepreneurship in different contexts. Keywords Gender, Entrepreneurialism, Women entrepreneurs, Masculinities, Identity, Power, Research work, Feminism Paper type Research paper...
Words: 8127 - Pages: 33
