Sex,Biological Functions and Social Norms: A Simple Constructivist Theory of Sex

Feminist theory needs a constructivist account of biological sex for at least two reasons. The first is that as long as female and male are the only two sexes that are taken for granted, being cisgender, heterosexual, and preferably a parent will be the norm, and being intersexed, transgender, bi- or homosexual, infertile or voluntarily childless will be deemed failure. The second is the fact that, usually, sex and gender come together in the way that is expected, i.e. the fact that most females are women and most males are men needs to be explained. This paper provides a constructivist theory of sex, which is that the sex categories depend on norms of reproduction. I argue that, because the sex categories are defined according to the two functions or causal roles in reproduction, and biological function is a teleological concept involving purposes, goals, and values, female and male are normative categories. As there are no norms or values in nature, normative categories are social constructions; hence, female and male are not natural but social categories. Once we understand that biological normativity is social, biological norms of heterosexuality, fertility, and so on are no longer incontestable. In addition, as many gender norms also concern reproduction—socially mediated reproduction—this simple theory of sex explains the common confluence of sex and gender.     

Devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a state crime: social audience reactions

In the 5 years since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, scholars in many disciplines have speculated on the sources of the widespread devastation. While many of these studies have focused on objective evidence of the violation of human rights following Hurricane Katrina, this study reviews the human rights violations and goes a step further by examining social audience reactions (both victims and the general public) to the government’s response efforts. Relying on Green and Ward’s (Green 2009; Green and Ward Social Justice, 27, 101–115, 2000; 2004) human rights/organizational deviance definition, which sees state crime as human rights violations that result from state organizational deviance, we attempt to provide further evidence of this case as one of state crime. This article presents results from binary logistic regression analyses that assess the likelihood of respondents disapproving of the actions of officials from various levels of government after the hurricane using data from a survey of Hurricane Katrina evacuees completed by The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University (The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University 2005) in the weeks after the storm, and data from a special topics ABC News/Washington Post public opinion survey completed in September of 2005 (ABC News/The Washington Post 2006). Key findings in this study include a strong similarity of results across data sets for race, sex, and religion with regards to respondents disapproving responses to the storm devastation at the federal level. A clear majority of respondents in both data sets disapproved of the actions of some level of government, further implying negative audience reactions, and thus the need to recognize the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina as a state crime.     

Destined for deadlock? Russia,Ukraine, and the unfulfilled Minsk agreements

ABSTRACT

Bringing peace, security, and stability to the war-torn region of Donbas has proven to be a challenging – some would say near-impossible – task. The “Minsk II” agreement, signed in February 2015, was supposed to put an end to the armed hostilities, resolve the underlying political issues, and gradually restore Ukrainian government control of the country’s eastern border. None of this has happened. Despite continuous Western support and pressure, progress in the implementation of the peace plan signed in Minsk has been slow, also after the much-anticipated Paris summit of the “Normandy Four” (Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France) in December 2019. This article discusses the underlying causes of the current stalemate, emphasizing factors such as the inherently complex nature of the conflict, the process through which “Minsk II” came into being, the vague and ambiguous language of this and other agreements, practical challenges related to the timing and sequencing of agreed-upon measures, and Russia’s persistent non-acknowledgement of its role in the conflict.     

Data for Y-chromosome haplotypes defined by 17 STRs (AmpFLSTR Yfiler) in two Tunisian Berber communities

The 17 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) included in the AmpFLSTR Yfiler PCR Amplification Kit (AB Applied Biosystems) (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635 and GATA H4) were typed in two Berber communities, a small village (Takrouna) and a town (Sejenane), from North Tunisia. As expected, diversity was higher in the town, even when compared with a pool of three small Berber communities, probably due to the combination of different founder effects and genetic drifts operating in the small villages.     

Protective Orders and Domestic Violence: Risk Factors for Re-Abuse

One of the few legal tools for protecting victims of domestic violence is the civil Protection Order (PO). How effective they were in preventing re-abuse was analyzed by examining court and police records from 210 couples in which female victims (or applicants) filed POs against their violent partners. Police records for 2 years prior and two years following the issuance of a PO were reviewed. Results indicated a significant decline in the probability of abuse following a PO. Prior to filing a PO, 68% of the women reported physical violence. After filing, only 23% reported physical violence. Several risk factors were assessed and it was found that very low SES women were more likely to report re-abuse as were African-Americans.     

Opting Out of Political Discussions

Methodological limitations have hindered our ability to understand the conditions that make individuals seek or avoid political discussions. We introduce a methodological approach to assess communication preferences in contexts where these choices are difficult to measure. We conduct three experiments to examine how the characteristics of the people in a discussion, as well as its topic, influence an individual’s “price” to participate. Participants indicated how much they would need to be compensated to participate in a short discussion about a randomly assigned topic (political or nonpolitical) under different group compositions (co-partisans, out-partisans, or a mixed group). We find that individuals demanded significantly more compensation to engage in a discussion with out-partisans than with co-partisans, for both political and non-political topics.     

Reflective Interplay Between Self and Other: Textual/Sexual Space and the Cultural Meanings of AIDS in Hervé Guibert's To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life

The article considers how the temporal distance has affected the cultural meanings of AIDS from the 1980s to the first decade of the twenty‐first century. It investigates the literary forms of the AIDS novel/autobiography, focusing on Hervé Guibert's novel To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (orig. A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie). Hervé Guibert (1955–1991) was France's leading AIDS novelist and photographer; he wrote a series of autobiographical novels following his own diagnosis in the late 1980s. Through a reading of the novel, the article shows how the connection between time and space (reflected through the concept of queer space) undermines the conventional narrator‐author relationship and extends the limits of normative autobiographical/fictional writing. The analysis also focuses thematically on the mental and physical social spaces available for sexually non‐normative victims of the AIDS epidemic. The article explores the role played by representations of queer spaces in the process of resisting the norms of both sexuality and textuality. In so doing, I argue that new reparative meanings and interpretations of this once highly “stigmatized sexual past” can be found, in relation both to the discussion of queer theories and to public reconsiderations of the cultural memories of the AIDS era.     

Democratic Innovations: Reinforcing or Changing Perceptions of Trust?

Declining trust in representative institutions is considered one of the most significant political problems of our time. It is often suggested that democratic innovations—or mechanisms which aim to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process—can help reverse this trend. However, empirical research about actual effects of participation on trust is scarce, and weakened by causality problems. With survey data representing 1,470 participants in a landmark Swedish e-petition system, the article shows that both generalized attitudes and process evaluations matter in how trust is affected by democratic innovations.