Sex differences in the resolution of the identity crisis

Based on Erikson's view of the importance of inner space in feminine identity, researchers have added an interview on premarital sex to the standard ego identity interview on occupation, religion, and politics used for males. This study was designed to investigate the relative importance of premarital sexual ideology for males and females, as well as sex differences in identity status on occupation, religion, and politics. Marcia's semi-structured ego identity status interview was given to 70 male and 70 female college students, with premarital sex questions included for both sexes. Consistent with Erikson's theory, females were more likely than males to have experienced a sexual identity crisis, whereas males were very likely to be foreclosed in this area. Males as well as females were more likely to be committed about sex than about any other area. In all areas except sex, female identity followed basically the same pattern as male identity.Received her Ph.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo. Current research interests are ego identity and human sexuality.Received his Ph. D. from State University of New York at Albany. Current research interests are mental health evaluation and behavior therapy.     

Male adolescent birth control behavior: The importance of developmental factors and sex differences

A survey of sex and birth control behavior of 51 male adolescents aged 15–17 was conducted utilizing a structured interview protocol. The purpose of the study was to describe male adolescent birth control behavior incorporating developmental issues, and to interpret the findings in light of what is known about female birth control behavior. Based on research with teenage females, three social influences were examined for their possible impact on male birth control behavior. A new operational definition ofmale effective birth control usage involving the effectiveness of the method and the consistency of its usage was developed. Findings similar to those obtained from research on females suggest that adolescent sexual partners may be the only direct social influence on adolescents' birth control usage. Results indicating differences from research with females suggest that in general: male birth control behavior is primarily self-oriented, males are more likely to be effective contraceptors with casual partners than with girl friends, males are more likely to communicate about sex and birth control with similar age peers than with family members and/or other adults, and that teen males view sex and birth control decisions as female decisions.He also conducts private psychotherapy, specializing in marital and family therapy. His doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania is from a unique joint program in marital/family therapy and sex education. His interests include sex roles and their impact on intimate relationships, adolescent development, and male sexuality. This article is based on his doctoral dissertation.faculty member in the Human Sexuality Program. Dr. Rose served as supervisor on Dr. Cohen's doctoral dissertation.     

The experience of breast development and girls' stories about the purchase of a bra

Girls' experiences of secondary sexual characteristic development were explored via direct interview and protective techniques. In a pilot study (Study 1), 30 White middle to upper middle class 6th–8th-grade girls were interviewed about how they felt about breast and pubic hair growth, their comfort discussing these events, and their information acquisition. Breast growth was perceived as more important than hair growth, in part because the former is perceived as a more public event. Few girls reported intensely negative feelings to either change. Since responses to the direct questions were limited, 80 White 6th–9th graders were asked to tell a story (using a semi structured interview technique) about a picture of an adolescent girl, adult female, and adult male in which the adult female was taking a bra out of a shopping bag (Study 2). Affect, attitudes, and character alliances were coded. More girls attributed negative feelings to the father than to the mother character. Almost all girls describe the adolescent in the story as embarrassed. The daughter and father characters were described as uncomfortable more often than the mother character (50% vs. 10%). Positive maternal affect in the stories was associated with more advanced pubertal status, positive body images, more positive emotional tone, and lower anxiety scores. Affect ascribed to the father and daughter characters was less likely to be associated with girls' psychological functioning. Results are discussed in term sof the possible role of puberty upon parent-child relationships and communication.We wish to thank the W. T. Grant Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for their generous support of our research. This article was written while the first author was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation; the support of the foundation is appreciated.Received Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.Received M.D. from Columbia University.     

Commentary: Food regime analysis and agrarian questions: widening the conversation

The central disagreement between McMichael and Bernstein boils down to how each of them analyses food and agriculture in relation to capitalist dynamics. McMichael thinks the main contradictions of capitalism now stem from agriculture, and any positive future will be guided by farmers. Bernstein thinks capitalism has fully absorbed agriculture (including farmers not expelled from the land) into circuits of capital, turning agriculture into simply one of many sectors of accumulation and a major font of surplus labor. They have arrived by different paths to the same deeper question: Granted its illumination of the past, does the food regime approach remain useful for interpreting present contradictions, and if so, how? To invite a wider exploration of this very real and important question, I have tried to shift the debate towards a conversation about the complexity of the current transition. I start by widening the frame of the debate to include other writings by McMichael (his method of incorporated comparison) and Bernstein (his distinction between farming and agriculture). I conclude that food regimes and agrarian changes must be located in a wider set of analyses of agrarian and capitalist transitions, each of which misses something important. Older agrarian thought about urban society has much to offer but misses larger food regime dynamics; socio-technical transitions and new commons literatures offer critical analysis of technics, but lack appreciation of the centrality of food and farming; recent works recovering Marxist thought about human nature in a possible transition to a society of abundance and collaboration also ignore food and farming. Connecting with literatures outside the frame of food regimes and agrarian questions offers a way forward for those literatures and for ours.     

Vagina equals woman? On genitals and gendered identity

Gendered identity is often assumed to be predicated on the prior existence of dichotomously sexed bodies: penis equating to maleness and vagina (or the absence of a penis) equating to femaleness. But is it experienced in this way? We analyse talk about the vagina and female gendered identity in focus group (and interview) data collected from 55 women that explores this very issue. Women talked about genitals and identity in four ways: they affirmed a link between having a vagina and being a woman; they explored this link though associated functions (heterosex and reproduction); they questioned the inevitability of the link; and they attempted disruption of the link (although this frequently served only to reinstate the normativity of it). The implications of this analysis for theory and practice are discussed.     

Game of Thrones,Rape Culture and Feminist Fandom

Throughout its run, HBO's adaptation of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire book series, retitled Game of Thrones (GoT), has attracted controversy for its depiction of nudity and graphic sex and violence. But a particular recent scene, in which a brother rapes his sister, caused outrage in media and fan commentary. This article considers the scene in question, and feminist responses to it, in the context of wider cultural debates about rape culture and the media representation of sexual violence. Following Sarah Projansky's argument that rape is a ‘particularly versatile narrative element’ that ‘often addresses any number of social themes and issues’, I read GoT and its online fan responses alongside literary theories of the fantastic, to examine how dominant rape culture discourses are both reproduced and challenged in fan communities. In particular I argue that fan narratives both reproduce discourses of masculinity and futurity that contribute to rape culture, but also provide a potential space for change through speaking out about silenced experiences of trauma.     

Pyrographies: Photography and the good death

This essay theorizes the ethical potential of photography or what I call “pyrography” by enacting a version of care for death in attending closely to a sort of rehearsal for the deathbed in French photographer and writer Hervé Guibert's photo-novel Suzanne and Louise first published by Gallimard in 1980, the same year as Roland Barthes's famous essay on photography, Camera Lucida. The essay develops the transformative ethical possibilities of and queer political potentialities of pyrography by reading Guibert's project with his two elderly aunts in relation to the work of two of Guibert's intimates: Michel Foucault's “The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will” and Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida and Mourning Diary. In Mourning Diary, Barthes describes the plan for Camera Lucida as an ephemeral monument to his dead mother whose loss he calls, following the last work of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott: “the catastrophe that has already occurred.” Through its own writing with fire of the death we fear that has already occurred and that we cannot access directly, photography may enable the kind of “as if” work or projective imaginative enactment for which Winnicott calls. This essay put this concept of the photographic pyre or pyrographies to work to characterize a kind of photographic act. Pyrography is a facture of and with the flammable, not of and about the past, but for the present and future. It is a practice of making volatile structures for feeling with the taboo scenes of the conjunction of old age, desire, and death that create spaces not just for mourning the losses that have actually happened. Pyrographies shape spaces in which one might begin to imagine and transact with care the losses and the letting go yet to come. Pyrographies, I am suggesting, trade in the illusions of presence. They give us the catastrophe that has already occurred in palpable form, enabling us to negotiate shame and fear but also desire toward the seemingly impossible: the good death.     

Chico mendes ‐ the Defence of life

A rubber tapper (seringueiro) since his youth, Francisco Alves Mendes devoted practically all his life to the defence of the workers and people of the forest. He took part in setting up the Union of Rural Workers of Brasiléia and Xapuri (Sindicato de los Trabajadores Rurales de Brasiléia y Xapuri), the Workers’ Party (PT or Partido de los Trabajadores) in Acre, and the National Council of Rubber Tappers (Consejo Nacional de los Serin‐gueiros). In his organisational activity Chico Mendes united trade union struggles, the defence of the forest and party militancy. His work was recognised internationally, and in 1987 the United Nations conferred recognition on him as one of the most important defenders of the environment. In his struggle for the setting up of extractive reserves, Chico combined the defence of the forest with an agrarian reform reclaiming land for rubber tappers opposed to the large‐scale cattle ranching interests represented by the Rural Democratic Union. (Uniáo Democrática Ruralista or UDR ). On the 22 December 1988, Chico Mendes was murdered.     

Writing the Story of the Last Nawab of Bengal’s English Family

On 15 May 1870, the Nawab of Bengal married Sarah Vennell, a seventeen-year-old English chambermaid, in a Shia Muslim wedding ceremony, making her his fourth permanent or Nikah wife. They lived in England for ten years, and had six children. The Nawab’s liaison with what British officials called ‘a woman of mean extraction’ was a contributing factor when he was persuaded by the British government to abdicate in1880, give up many of his claims and allow the permanent abolition of his title. In that same year the Nawab formed a liaison with another maid and later returned to India with this maid and his and Sarah’s four surviving children, leaving Sarah in England. Their youngest son, my grandfather, changed his name and emigrated to Australia in 1925. This essay describes my gradual discovery in Australia of my Indian ancestors and the issues I confronted when trying to write their story. It includes an extract in which I describe my grandfather’s childhood in India.     

Freshman withdrawal from college: A positive step toward identity formation? A follow-up study

Withdrawal from college can be a positive step toward separation from parents and identity formation. Subjects for the present study were all persons who withdrew from a random sample of 432 members of a large freshman class (154 males and 278 females). Subjects were divided into withdrawers versus continuers, with the former group being subdivided into transfers versus nontransfers and withdrew passing versus withdrew failing. All subjects were compared in terms of their responses to a freshman orientation questionnaire and a follow-up interview. The results indicate that both male and female withdrawers as a total group were significantly more dissatisfied with their lives (p<0.05 andp<0.025, respectively) at the time of admission than were continuers Follow-up results also suggest that many of the withdrawers left college and were able to deal with their dissatisfaction in creative ways. Transfers versus nontransfers, as well as withdrew-passing versus withdrew-failing students were also significantly different from each other along several dimensions at the time of admission. The findings have implications for administrators and researchers.This article is based on the author's doctoral dissertation.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. Current interests are adolescent and adult personality and psychopathology.     

The Cross-Dresser,the Thief,His Daughter and Her Lover: Queer Desire and Romance in Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades

When romance fiction consolidated as a genre in the 1920s and 1930s, a series of generic conventions concerning the heterosexual imperatives came about. This article considers how these heterosexual imperatives function as a mask for queer desire in Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades (1926). Drawing on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the article identifies in the novel a detailed account of male–male desire through arguing that while the romantic narrative is concerned with the Duc of Avon and Léonie, his former cross-dressing page, the substantial sexual tension in the novel occurs in the meetings and exchanges between Avon and Léonie’s biological father, Henri Saint-Vire. While These Old Shades ends with the presentation of Léonie by Avon as his duchess, it is male–male desire which has (queerly) driven this romance plot to its ‘natural’ conclusion of marriage. The article thinks through what happens when the rivalry, explicitly about desiring a woman, is an implicit homosocial bond and how this functions within the heterosexual imperatives of the romance novel. The article questions how desire functions in the romance novel and, more crucially, how romance fiction can be read as resisting, at least in part, that which has been traditionally understood as their raison d’être—the heterosexual imperative.     

Feelings are “patterns in the weave of our life” 1 – not a basis for a feminist epistemology

Feelings (or “emotions”) have frequently been debated in feminist theory. A large part of this discussion can be considered to aim at a “rehabilitation of the emotions”. However, when feminist theorists make epistemological claims concerning “emotions”, i.e. what philosophy of mind calls “mental states”, we run a grave risk of ending up in subjectivism and thus of reiterating the “private access fallacy” of traditional epistemology. Starting from the feeling of shame (a paradigm for a socially constructed feeling), this article makes a Wittgensteinian reading of “emotions” which offers an alternative to the atomistic, mentalistic and episodical view of mainstream philosophy of mind. Wittgenstein's thrust against foundationalism, his conceptual remarks about “inner experiences”, his anti‐behaviourism and his emphasis on the primacy of action, are all concordant with the social constructionism of the slogan “The personal is political”.     

The Agrarian question: the scholarship of David Mitrany revisited

This paper reassesses aspects of the scholarship of David Mitrany, who first in the 1920s and then in the late 1940s approached the ‘agrarian question’ – whether and if so how socialism is possible in a state where there is only a small manufacturing sector and therefore no significant industrial proletariat – from the perspective of countries in Central and Eastern Europe where, between the two World Wars, political parties representing small-scale agricultural producers won large numbers of votes in democratic elections. His 1951 book Marx against the peasant was his response to the failure of those parties to hold on to power, and their crushing by the Communist governments that took control from 1948 on. Mitrany showed that the populist tradition, the ideology of independent small farmers, came from similar roots to Marxism, and that Marx himself late in his life came close to endorsing it. Whether increased agricultural productivity is feasible without large-scale farming was the subject of intense debate among socialists in Europe from the 1850s onwards. It is on the agenda today in many underdeveloped countries where there are strong disagreements about the role of agriculture and rural development in development strategy.     

Sex and class in John Osborne's look back in anger

The article takes to task the established critical view of Look Back in Anger as an essentially radical play about our class-ridden society. Instead, I attempt to argue and demonstrate by close reference to the text that it is not class but sex that is really the main focus of Osborne's abusive attention in the play. I show that the play is, in fact, a blatant and particularly vicious attack on women. It seems to me that Osborne uses the insubstantial class element in the play not to attack the 1950s world of privilege and snobbery but to disguise in pseudo-social terms his fear and loathing of women.     

Nicki-aesthetics: the camp performance of Nicki Minaj

In this essay, the author contends that Nicki Minaj practices what he terms nicki-aesthetics, a form of black performance art that employs an extravagant theatricality and a vivid, intensely hued style. Nicki-aesthetics shares qualities with the sensibility of camp, as outlined in Susan Sontag's 1964 article “Notes on ‘Camp,’” yet challenges camp's assumed association with white gay men as well as its reduction of women to objects (rather than subjects) within the camp universe. Nicki-aesthetics realigns blackness and camp as mutually constitutive (rather than oppositional) forms, while reconfiguring camp as a black female-centered practice. In addition, Nicki Minaj demonstrates her dexterity at performing nicki-aesthetics in an offbeat interview on Elle magazine's website while deploying avatars to play multiple roles. In doing so, nicki-aesthetics' quirky blend of artifice and alterity ultimately rebukes hip-hop's obsession with authenticity.     

Rebel masculinities of star/director/text: James Dean,Nicholas Ray,and Rebel Without a Cause

Director Nicholas Ray is arguably most familiar to cinema culture as the American test case for la politique des auteurs, the influential mode of film criticism formulated at the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma after World War II. Ray was elevated to the status of film ‘author’ for a consistency of vision and style associated with rebellion. Yet, he was known in the film industry as an ‘actor's director,’ both for his background in theater and for bringing Lee Strasberg's ‘The Method’ to Hollywood after it had gained considerable cachet at the Actors Studio in New York since the 1930s. Although Ray was relatively unknown among the movie-going public, his films were (and still remain) recognizable for their male stars, including James Dean, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart. In this essay, I look at his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955 Rebel Without a Cause, 1955. Film. Directed by Nicholas Ray. USA: Warner Bros. [Google Scholar]), to argue that Ray's reputation as a rebel auteur was as much the product of highbrow auteurist film criticism as the mass cultural persona of ‘rebel male hero’ that the film's star James Dean cultivated. As an actor, Dean was promoted at the vanguard of an innovative and experimental new performance style. Further, his star-performance text reveals a construction of masculinity that the film asks us to view as socially rebellious, which is retroactively linked to Ray. Both the film and the popular press form Dean's image constituted by his self-fashioned sense of authenticity, his non-normative sexuality, his highly publicized death, and the identification with an alternative family structure his role invites.     

Psychological correlates of teenage motherhood

The social and economic consequences of adolescent motherhood are known, yet the psychological associates are largely unstudied. Clinical studies point to distressing reactions to adolescent pregnancy, and do not reflect changes in social attitudes about teenage parenting. In this study, adolescent mothers (n=62), pregnant teenagers (n=63), and non-pregnant and nonparenting (n=60) adolescents enrolled in public high schools completed measures of socioeconomic status, depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-esteem, and social supports. Findings suggest that adolescent mothers and pregnant teenagers are less distressed by their situation than was once thought. Social supports and socioeconomic status predicted psychological well-being better than parenting status. Expanded school programs for teenage mothers and renewed efforts to enhance young mothers' social and socioeconomic resources are called recommended.Funding was provided by the William T. Grant Foundation of New York.Received his D.S.W. from the University of California, Berkeley. Major interests are adolescent parenthood, child welfare services, social and cognitive skills training, and social supports.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Current research interests are primary prevention, adolescent pregnancy and parenthood, and teenaged alcohol and drug abuse.Current interests are adolescent pregnancy and social supports.     

In defence of Marxology: A reply to Meghnad Desai's review of T. Shanin et al., Late Marx and the Russian road

This note defends T. Shanin et al., Late Marx and the Russian Road against the criticism levelled by Meghnad Desai in a previous issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies. It is argued that the ‘late Marx’ – as represented in Marx's four drafts of his letter to Vera Zasulich of March, 1881 – and Russian populism address issues that are crucial to contemporary socialist politics, both on the ‘periphery’ of capitalism and elsewhere.     

Being Jewish after Auschwitz: writing modernity's shame

Part I: Auschwitz and the Time of History My family dates time from the moment my father and uncle re-united in Melbourne. The last time they saw each other was in Auschwitz. It got into The Sun. People talked about it on trams. Conductors, drivers, passengers, ticket inspectors. All the trams were talking. All over Melbourne. Moreland Road. Sydney Road. St. Kilda Road. Everyone knew about us. I wave to surprised strangers at tram stops till my mother tells me to stop. My family burst out of a clamshell like Botticelli's Venus in one of the art books Leon kept in a suitcase under his bed. (Rosa Safransky, ‘History in the Kitchen’, p. 146)     

An extension of Marcia's Identity Status Interview into the interpersonal domain

This article describes an extension of Marcia's (1966) Identity Status Interview into three interpersonal domains: friendships, dating, and sex roles. The Identity Status Interview method is assessed favorably in terms of identity theory, justification for the three new sections is provided on the basis of theory and research on sex differences in adolescent identity, and methodological refinements in the interview are described. A study is reported in which the extended interview was administered to 41 male and 40 female high school juniors and seniors. Average percentage of exact agreement for ratings of exploration, commitment, and identity status was over 70% when two coders were used and over 94% when the ratings of two out of three coders were used. It is concluded that this extended interview is psychometrically sound and provides a method for assessing interpersonal issues salient to contemporary adolescents.This work was supported in part by a grant from the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.Received his Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota. Main Interest is the influence of the family on adolescent personality development, especially identity and vocational interests.Doctoral candidate in counseling psychology, with special interst in sex roles and adult development.Received Ph.D. in community psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Main interests include adult development, communities, and spiritual growth.