A Male Poetics

All French literary fiction, Coquillat contends, from Madame de Lafayette to Philippe Sollers, can be shown to repeat a single representation of gender, a single, scarcely varied pattern: man is transcendence, woman contingency. Man defies death through his immortal m uvre , woman 'creates' only living beings that must die. The romantic hero, the male intellectual adventurer, continues even now to be the creator's alter ego and occupies the centre of French literature, from avant garde to mainstream. By definition, he is in aloof rebellion against a 'bourgeois society' that suppresses genius. His politics as such are more often than not an 'apolitical' conservatism, his misogyny averred, in and out of his writing. If he is intrinsically more valuable it is precisely because he can rise to the singular status of the creator-genius, while women remain biologically and sociologically rooted in the mass. Rousseau was the first to theorize this vision of male superiority in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker , celebrating creativity as a male-orgasmic return to essence of which women are by nature incapable. Rousseau's most hysterical attacks on women's literature are contained in the pages of this work.     

Expanding access to health care for Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries: early findings from the accelerated benefits demonstration

Most Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries must complete a 5-month waiting period before they become entitled to DI cash benefits and an additional 24-month waiting period before Medicare benefits begin. The Accelerated Benefits (AB) demonstration is a randomized experiment designed to test the effects of providing newly entitled DI beneficiaries who do not have health insurance with a generous health benefits package during the Medicare waiting period. This article presents early findings on the prevalence of health insurance coverage among newly entitled beneficiaries and the characteristics of those without health insurance. It also examines the effects of AB on health care utilization, the extent to which AB reduces unmet medical needs, and the costs of providing the AB health benefits package.     

Front‐line Regulators and their Approach to Environmental Regulation in Southwest Ohio

Regulatory approaches and strategies are frequently the subject of study in various literatures, but that examination focuses on practices rather than looking more deeply at the nature of regulatory interactions. Also missing is a more thorough look at what it is front‐line regulators—in this case, environmental inspectors and site coordinators—desire in their interactions and how they perceive their regulatory counterparts. Interviews with regulators in Southwest Ohio reveal that 82 percent of them think the regulated community intends to comply with regulations. Additionally, 71 percent of regulators say that their interactions are positive with the regulated community with three‐quarters indicating that trust plays a role in these interactions. Only 36 percent of interviewees prefer a clear cut and consistent approach while the rest favor a collaborative approach or some combination thereof. These findings should impact discussions concerning regulatory approaches in environmental policy, particularly conversations concerning next‐generation policies.     

Relationship Trajectories and Psychological Well-Being Among Sexual Minority Youth

Dating in adolescence plays an integral part in the development of sexual and social identities. This process is particularly salient for sexual minority youth who face additional obstacles to their identity formation due to their marginalized status. We investigated the influence of participating in a same-sex relationship (SSR) or an opposite-sex relationship (OSR) on sexual minority youths’ psychological well-being (i.e., symptoms of depression, anxiety and internalized homophobia, and self-esteem) in an ethnically-diverse sample of 350 youth (55% male) between the ages of 15–19 years, recruited from three GLBT drop-in centers in the New York City area. Using longitudinal data, we examined youths’ SSR and OSR over time. Multivariate regression analyses suggest that involvement in a SSR was positively associated with changes in self-esteem in males, and negatively correlated with changes in internalized homophobia in females. We discuss the implications for positive development in sexual minority adolescent populations.     

Perceptions of the Regulated Community in Environmental Policy: The View from Below

Discussions in environmental policy often focus on the highest levels of decision making and action while paying scant attention to those individuals on the front lines. Among those frequently overlooked are the individuals at regulated facilities who interact with government regulators on a frequent basis. Interviews with nearly two dozen facility personnel in Virginia yield findings that challenge common perceptions of the relationships between facility personnel and inspectors. In particular, 86 percent of facility personnel, representing a range of regulated facilities from prisons to landfills to dry cleaners, said their interactions with inspectors were positive. Approximately 70 percent of them said that they trust inspectors and provided evidence of trust in their stories. The ramifications of these findings for environmental policy could be potentially significant because facility personnel are presumed to be adversarial, if not outright hostile, and this assumption impacts the design and implementation of environmental regulations.     

Fetishised data: counterterrorism,drone warfare and pilot testimony

Drones now comprise a major part of our culture – primarily as a consequence of the so-called War on Terror and the rise in violent extremism. Yet the available data on what it means to operate a drone (where this can influence wider perceptions on the appropriateness and effectiveness of remote warfare as an act of counterterrorism) is highly contradictory. This article explores a new source of data capable of shedding light on this contested issue: online interviews with current and former pilots discussing their personal experiences. Access to this testimony has the potential to influence cultural understandings of remote warfare, specifically where these stories highlight the severe psychological difficulties pilots can be subject to. In analysing this new data, however, the article questions whether the media typically employed to express pilot testimony comprises an appropriate space in which to publicise and engage with this evidence. It argues that this presentation has caused these personal accounts to become fetishised – to the extent this undermines the cultural, political, and informative value of the data and even reinforces the narratives of remote warfare this testimony frequently seeks to reverse.