Vulnerability and Ontology

The question of the possibility of an anti-foundationalist approach to ethics has come to the forefront in recent discussions in the humanities. Two questions dominate these discussions. The first is how we can define agency, the necessary ground of ethical action apart from a transcendental subject. The second is how we can define a secure foundation for ethical judgements without universals. A relativistic ethics seems, by definition, futile. I take up both of these questions here with reference to the work of Judith Butler. I argue that in her post-Gender Trouble work Butler has defined an agent, an ‘I’, that is neither a social dupe nor a transcendental subject but, rather, both discursive and material. This ‘I’ provides the basis for Butler's turn to ontology as well as her analyses of vulnerability, precarity and cohabitation. These conceptions form the basis of her ethical position. I examine Butler's central argument that the material/ontological facts of human life necessitate the equal treatment of all human beings. In conclusion, I question whether Butler's position provides a sufficient basis for an antifoundational ethics. I argue that Butler is headed in the right direction but has not yet achieved her goal.     

Feminism,masculinity and male rape: bringing male rape ‘out of the closet’

Feminist research has played a pivotal role in uncovering the extent and nature of male violence against women and suggests that the main motivations for rape are the need for power, control and domination. This paper argues that, although feminist explanations of rape are robust and comprehensive, male victims of rape have largely been excluded from this field of research. While feminism has enabled the victimisation of women to be recognised, further understanding of the victimisation of men is required. Some feminist writers (such as hooks, 2000) have argued that men's emancipation is an essential part of feminism since men are equally harmed by gender role expectations and sexism. This paper makes a contribution to current knowledge through evaluating the social constructions, stigma and phenomenological realities associated with male rape (by both men and women), arguing that there has been neglect in this area that functions to support, maintain and reinforce patriarchal power relations and hegemonic masculinities.     

Police officers’ perceptions of false allegations of rape

Abstract

The idea that women lie about rape is a long standing rape myth with little or no supporting evidence. Previous research has demonstrated a belief in high levels of false allegations among police officers, despite no evidence to suggest rape is falsely reported more than other crimes. This has implications for complainants’ willingness to report sexual violations, for the treatment of complainants within the justice system, and wider societal understandings about what constitutes rape. The data that informs this paper comes from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study that focussed on rape attrition and the institutional response to rape. Forty in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with serving police officers in a UK force who regularly deal with reported cases of rape, and explored perceptions, practices and processes around rape. The research found police officers’ estimate of false allegations varies widely from 5 to 90%. The paper will discuss how police officers make judgements about perceived veracity of complainants in rape cases. This will demonstrate that whilst significant progress has been made in how police officers and police forces respond to rape, gender stereotypes about women as deceitful, vengeful and ultimately regretful of sexual encounters, continue to pervade the thinking of some officers. It will show that police officers differentiate between ‘types’ of reports they consider to be false, and operate with a notional ‘hierarchy’ of presumed false allegations that ranges from vengeful/malicious to mistaken/confused, with a corresponding reducing level of culpability attributed to women for the supposedly false allegation. It concludes that this serves to reinforce a culture that both supports and reproduces gender inequality and its manifestation in the form of sexual violence, and that intervention, training and institutional and policy frameworks are not wholly successful in addressing sexual violence in this context.     

Rape Myths and Gender Stereotypes in Croatian Rape Laws and Judicial Practice

In this paper I examine the presence of rape myths and gender stereotypes, and the norms of sexuality they reflect and reinforce, in Croatian rape laws, as exemplified by the recent practice of the Zagreb County Court. I begin with a general discussion of the gendered myths and stereotypes that have shaped the content and application of the criminal law of rape everywhere. I then briefly introduce the definition of rape under the 1997 Croatian Criminal Code which was in force at the time of my research, after which I proceed to the critical analysis and the assessment of the Zagreb County Court practice. Next, I turn to the changes in the new Criminal Code to see how they address the identified problems. I offer a model of an affirmative consent standard, based on a communicative model of sexuality, which values reciprocal responsibility, communication and mutuality of sexual desire. I argue that this standard has greater potential to challenge rape myths and gender stereotypes and to promote sexual freedom and gender equality.     

``Is Alec a Rapist?' – Cultural Connotations of `Rape' and `Seduction' – A Reply to Professor John Sutherland

This article is a response to an essay written by an academic in English Literature, Professor John Sutherland. Through close textual analysis,Sutherland purports to resolve a well-known literary question: whether the sexual encounter outlined in the Victorian novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles should be classified as rape or seduction. The present article rejects his conclusion on the matter. An(equally) close analysis of the fictional text in question and of Sutherland's gloss, demonstrates the partiality of his critique, both in literary-critical and critical-legal terms. In addition, examination of the conceptual and historico-legal context regarding the notions of rape and seduction on both sides of the Atlantic highlights parallels between Sutherland's own partiality and that of the law. In short, the apparent objectivity of the textual analysis and subsequent critique undertaken by Sutherland is revealed as a continuation of legal and patriarchal prejudices defining rape and seduction. The use of close textual analysis as the key critical device promotes the apparent probity of his findings. Locating them in an essay collection designed for mass lay public consumption completes the circle – from partisan scholarship to `informed' popular prejudice. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Gender,risk and the Wall Street Alpha Male

From the outset, analyses of the 2008 financial crisis, in mainstream as well as feminist discussions, have been gendered. In particular, rampant risk taking in an unregulated environment, widely deemed to be a principle cause of the crash, has been associated with masculine characteristics. In this article, I explore how the concepts of gender and risk entwine in two films on the financial crisis – The Other Guys and Margin Call. By looking at how gender is used to dramatise financial risk, I explore how understandings of high-risk behaviour are gendered, and the implications this has in the context of finance. Fictional representations mediate public understanding of this notoriously complex field as the number of films and documentaries on the crisis demonstrates. Exploring how gender is used to communicate risk reminds us that risk taking is part of a performance of masculinity that needs to be established by constructing a feminine, risk-averse other. The contention of this paper is that, to address gender bias in finance and the economy, gendered meanings of risk need to be openly challenged, and cultural and material analyses of gendered inequality brought into dialogue.     

The `Ideal' Victim v Successful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect

This article proposes that feminist legal critics need to be able to explain how some rape cases succeed in securing convictions. The means by which rape cases are routinely disqualified in the criminal justice system have received widespread attention. It is well established in feminist legal critique that female complainants are discredited if they fail to conform to an archaic stereotype of the genuine or ‘real’ rape victim. This victim is not only morally and sexually virtuous she is also cautious, unprovocative, and consistent. Defence tactics for discrediting rape testimony involve exposing the complainant's alleged failure to comply with the sexual and behavioural standards of the normative victim. This understanding of how rape complain(an)ts are disqualified is not predictive, however, of the complainants whose cases succeed in securing convictions. This article reviews some successful Australian rape cases and considers the ways in which they disturb feminist understandings of how rape complaints are discredited in the criminal justice system. It proposes that recent research analysing the discourse of rape trials provides a way of explaining the apparent discrepancies between the ‘ideal’ rape victim and successful complainants. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Gender discrimination in Vietnam: the role of personal face

This paper examines gender discrimination using two novel perspectives: its relationship with personal face and its manifestation in contemporary Vietnam. Interviews with a sample of college teachers in Nha Trang city suggest that gender discrimination is reflected in and institutionalised through learning and enacting ‘acceptable’ face-related behaviours. These processes are exemplified in gender based linguistic conventions, role differentiation and segregation, the higher value associated with male roles, the (surface) acceptance of double standards by both genders and the recognition of public sanctions as effective reinforcers of gender inequality. Despite limitations in generalising from this research, an approach based on personal face-related language, behaviour and attitudes has promise for understanding how gender inequality functions at both individual and societal levels.     

Chōra/Chōros: Samuel R. Delany and the masculine semiotic in Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2012)

Julia Kristeva’s idea of the semiotic chōra continues to haunt gender, literary, and political theory and practice. Reaching what some might consider its controversial climax in the early to middle 1990s – following its introduction in La revolution du langage poétique – the fate of the chōra was left mainly with Judith Butler’s deconstruction of Kristeva’s use of the term in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. Respectively Butler argues: (a) ‘Kristeva restricts herself to an exclusively prohibitive conception of the paternal law, [and] is unable to account for the ways in which the paternal law generates certain desires in the form of natural drives’ and (b) ‘Kristeva insists upon [the] identification of the chora with the maternal body.’ The present article seeks to resurrect this debate with a critique of Kristeva’s as well as Butler’s position regarding the chōra; my argument is twofold: (i) Kristeva is guilty of being unable to account for the generative capacity of the paternal law and (ii) Kristeva’s use of the semiotic chōra does indeed resonate uncomfortably close to certain frequencies of essentialism in gender theory; however, both criticism can be overcome by adding chōros, the masculine form of chōra, to Kristeva’s theoretical lexicon. In order to sketch out the implications for gender, literary, and political theory and practice I turn to American author and critic Samuel R. Delany’s Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.     

Foreclosed Matter – On the Material Melancholy of Feminist New Materialism

In this article I investigate the need to provide feminism with a theory of matter. I argue that the attention to matter given by New Materialist Karen Barad is symptomatic of a refusal to accept the limits of matter and its constituting effects. I suggest that a critical definition of matter can be found in the works of Judith Butler and especially in her definition of melancholy in relation to performativity. I argue that melancholy is central for the understanding of not only gendered desire, but also matter. Matter is an intrinsic part of Butler’s theory on gender and desire which she presents in opposition to both social constructivism and biologism. I also read performativity as a concept introduced by Butler to point towards the foreclosure of matter as necessary for comprehensible bodies. I relate my reading of matter in Butler’s texts to Barad’s ‘matter as performative’. This ‘misconstruction’ I see as symptomatic of a ‘material melancholy’ in the works of Barad. My main intention is to show how we as feminist researchers need to see that matter can be defined and analysed in many different manners and that there is not one (old nor new) way to do this.     

Gender,ethnicity and feminism: an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences feminist academic women in UK higher education

Studies have begun to explore how those women academics committed to social justice, namely feminist academics, are navigating the increasingly managerial Academy. To understand how these multiple social identities, including gender and ethnicity, interact and intersect, this paper adopts an intersectional approach to understanding the heterogeneity of women’s experiences in academia. Five focus groups with feminist academics (n = 6–10 in each focus group) reveal concerns of hampered career progression as a consequence of being female and openly feminist. Some ethnic minority academics felt that they were forced to choose between a feminist identity or that of their ethnic background. For some women, their feminist identity provided opportunities for challenging dominant practices. The paper concludes that the heterogeneity of feminist academics’ experiences within academia is under-researched and that the lens of intersectionality helps to illuminate this. This paper advances understanding of multiple identities at work, though demonstrating that intersectionality can lead to the accumulation of advantage as well as disadvantage in relation to social identities such as gender and ethnicity, and a political identity such as feminist.     

On being the ‘gender person’ in an academic department: constructions,configurations and implications

The term ‘gender person’ in an academic department is a colloquial expression which refers to someone who researches and/or teaches about gender, but whose primary affiliation is not to a gender studies department or centre. This role has particularly been discussed in relation to international development organisations, but has been neglected in relation to higher education institutions. The article reapplies Lucy Ferguson’s ‘gender person’ framework to academics working as ‘gender people’ in the conditions of contemporary academia. Three cases of different manifestations of the ‘gender person’ role are explored in detail and analysed for the ways in which occupying the ‘gender person’ role impacts upon academic careers and gender knowledge. The article contributes an elaborated concept of the ‘gender person’ in academia and provides empirical evidence of being the ‘gender person’. The article particularly shows that relying on a ‘gender person’ as a form of gender mainstreaming renders both gender academics and academic departments vulnerable in different ways.     

Biography and the search for women's subjectivity

This paper considers women's biography as an important connecting link between the study of microinteractions of social history and macropolitical structures and transformations. As the search for women's subjectivity requires the fullest possible historical contextualization for the subject of women's biography, identifying the sex-class conditions of women is essential. In studying the structuring of sex classes, it is found that both sexism and racism produce domination by essentializing physical or biological differences. But the dyadic character of gender domination differentiates sexism from all other conditions of exploitation. Because gender power is basically dyadic, interpretative interaction is offered as an appropriate methodological approach to women's biography. Further, when meaning and situation are extended to consciousness and praxis, interpretive interaction can encompass the full range of historical structure which shape sex-class. This theoretical-methodological approach forms the basis for a critique of deconstruction which depoliticized gender research by decentering the subject and dismissing binary oppositions such as gender dyads.     

“Gender is No Substitute for Sex”: A Comparative Human Rights Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Sexual Identity

U.K. regulation of sexual identity within a marriage context has traditionally been linked to biological sex. In response to the European Court of Human Rights decisions in Goodwin and I.,² and in order to address the question of whether a transsexual person can be treated as a “real” member of their adoptive sex, the U.K. has recently passed the Gender Recognition Act 2004. While the Act appears to signal a move away from biology and towards a conception of sexual identity based on gender rather than sex, questions of sexual identity remain rooted in medico-legal assessments of the individual transsexual body/mind. In contrast, because transsexual people in some parts of Canada have been able to marry in their post-operative sex since 1990, contemporary debates on the sexual identity of transsexual people in British Columbia and Ontario do not focus on the validity of marriage, and more frequently centre upon the provision of goods and services, in human rights contexts where sex is said to matter. Currently in Canada this is prompting questions of what it means to be a woman in society, how the law should interpret sex and gender, and how, if at all, the parameters of sexual identity should be established in law. This article seeks to compare recent U.K. legal conceptualisations of transsexuality with Canadian law in this area. As human rights discourse begins to grow in the U.K., the question remains as to whether or not gender will become an adequate substitute for sex.See Johnson “Gender is no substitute for Sex” Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2004. I am being disingenuous here as the author of the article is arguing that replacing the term sex with gender in relation to transsexuality is erroneous and an annoying Americanism, whereas I am arguing that neither term is adequate. Goodwin v. U.K. [2002] 35 E.H.R.R. 18; I. v.U.K. [2002] 2 F.L.R. 518.     

crisis,austerity and gendered governance: a feminist perspective

Feminist scholars have been highly attentive to the ways that crises have become an everyday technique of global governance. They are particularly sensitive to the mechanisms through which ‘crisis management’ entrenches the power of particular economic orders and constrains the possibilities, and space, for contestation and critique. This paper seeks to contribute to but also to extend existing feminist research on financial crisis by arguing that, over the course of what has commonly been labelled the ‘global financial crisis’, the emergence of ‘crisis governance feminism’ has enabled existing structures and mechanisms of gendered privilege, such as the global financial industry, to suppress calls for their overhaul and to re-entrench their power in the global political economy. Adopting a discursive approach to gender and governance that situates gender centrally in understanding governance discourses and their reproduction of common sense (about what people do, how they labour, where they invest and so on), this paper argues that the governance of crisis in the contemporary era, in particular the various actors, institutions, policies and ideas that have sought to describe and ‘contain’ the global financial crisis, are gendered. Gender has become, in the contemporary global political economy, a technique of governance, and with deleterious effects. Despite inciting more discussion of ‘gender’ in economic systems than ever before (particularly in terms of discussions of ‘economic competitiveness’), this paper argues that the ‘global financial crisis’ has precipitated and continues to reproduce techniques of governance that trivialise feminist concerns while further embedding a masculinised, white and elitist culture of global financial privilege.     

Young people,friendships and gender learning: insight from student-produced microfilms and curricular implications

Friendship microfilms produced by students can be used to understand how students make their relationships meaningful. Hence, in this study, friendship microfilms made by Taiwanese students from 2000 to 2013 and uploaded on YouTube were collected and evaluated through a textual analysis aimed at deriving suggestions for relationship education curricula. Four types of narrative were identified in these films. A common theme was addressing romantic concerns among close friends and the effects that follow. The films present scenarios such as ‘I want to be more than merely your friend’ and ‘A conflict arises from a love triangle’, and the predicaments related to trust, honesty, loyalty and supportiveness that consequently arise. The films also reveal the anxiety of gay adolescents trapped in dilemmas involving being neither a love interest nor a best friend and wondering whether to come out of the closet. Moreover, the practices of homosociality in the film manifest gender differences. On the basis of the research findings, this paper provides suggestions for gender and relationship education.     

Feminism and Utopia: Irigaray Reading Kant

The student revolution of the late 1960s and the early 1970s was a major impetus for the development of new academic disciplines. Topics that had not been considered'proper academic material' only a few years earlier, such as women's studies and Holocaust studies, received recognition and began to be taught in American universities. Soon, universities throughout the world followed suit. Sometime during the early 1990s initial attempts were made in the United States and Israel to prepare courses that incorporated themes from women's studies or gender studies into the study of the Holocaust. The result was a number of courses dealing with women and the Holocaust located in the fields of history, sociology or literature. Taught initially in only a few institutions, the topic was slowly taken up by scholars throughout the world. After a decade of research and teaching the subject in academic institutions throughout the world, scholars of the Holocaust and gender suddenly found themselves facing opposition from historians and public figures. Baumel deals with the more common attitudes towards the subject, experienced by those dealing with the topic. She provides a short survey of the arguments used against scholars of the Holocaust and gender, an overview of the state of research on the topic and guidelines for future research.     

‘Doing gender and gender equality’ through emotional expressions during a research interview. Views of highly educated Swedish young adults

The aim of this article is to contribute to the knowledge on how concepts of gender and gender equality are constructed within research interviews, deepening our understanding of the underlying gender system in society. We focus on emotions and emotional processes expressed during interviews on work and family when specific questions originating in the World Value Survey were asked. Our study is based on interviews with highly educated women and men, in two metropolitan areas of Sweden. In this article, we seek to shed more light on how incorporating emotional expressions and the evaluation of these emotions can grasp the construction of gender and gender equality. We highlight the range of emotional expressions that appear during the interviews, differences in their usage by women and men and the links to the construction of gender and gender equality. We explore how the specific situation of the interview influences ‘doing gender and gender equality’ through emotions. Our results reveal that men and women use similar but also different emotional expressions in conforming to the gender equality norm. Men and women, interviewers and interviewees agreed on this norm, but the ways they ’performed’ the norm are gender based.     

Gender flexible pedagogy in early childhood education

Early childhood education (ECE) has long been recognized as one of the most gendered professions. This paper aims to examine how far ECE can become a space to deliver ‘gender flexible pedagogy’, a concept that incorporates ideas about staff modelling of alternative forms of masculinities and femininities, the value of a mixed gender workforce, and explicit gender teaching within curricula. The theoretical underpinnings of this concept are discussed drawing on data collected in discussions with pre-school teachers in order to understand the potential of this principle and identify how it can be practiced. The paper is based on two different interview based studies, one conducted in an Indonesian kindergarten and the other with Swedish preschool pedagogues. The findings suggest that gendered practices in ECE are rooted in teachers’ implicit gender beliefs influenced by larger socio-political discourses. Early childhood educators must develop an explicit gender consciousness before they can deliver a gender conscious pedagogy.     

Gender and the law of provocation in the long twentieth century

ABSTRACT

Provocation was an important common law doctrine, separating murder from manslaughter: a matter of life and death. It was particularly significant in the context of ‘domestic violence’. This article examines the doctrine as a lens through which to view gender relations in the long twentieth century. The doctrine developed from its origins in the early modern period until mid-twentieth century. Throughout this lengthy period provocation was narrowly confined for both genders. However, case law developments in mid-twentieth century gave rise to a doctrine which was unforgiving for abused women. At about the same time, statutory and case law changes produced a much broader partial defence of provocation available to men who had killed their wives. It was not until the very end of the century, and the beginning of the twenty-first century, that a more gender-neutral concept of provocation began to emerge as a result of feminist campaigning.