The Madonna and Margaret fuller

Alicia Suskin Ostriker. Feminist Revision and the Bible. Cambridge, Blackwell Publishers, 1993. 148 pp., ix; intro., Catherine Pastore Blair and Harold Schweizer.

Brenda Webster, Sins of the Mothers. Baskerville Publishers, Dallas, Texas, 1993. 364 pp.

Shoshana Felman, What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, 178 pp.     

‘I Want to Wear It’: Fashioning Black Feminism in Mahogany (1975)

ABSTRACT

In this article I focus on the portrayal of fashionable clothing in the 1975 film Mahogany and connect it to the history of African American women engaging with sartorial self-representation as a means to assert their visibility in American culture. My aim is to analyse Mahogany’s emphasis on brightly-coloured highly-ornamented clothing, which has a long history of signifying bad taste and became part of accusations of racial and sexual inferiority. I want to show how Mahogany’s representation of fashion undermines the historically entrenched bias against colourful, highly adorned clothing while also revealing how this bias has played a subtle but significant role in the racism and sexism black women have encountered, further (but not finally) impeding them from the forms of recognition the category of femininity offers. Mahogany represents those impediments and repeats the sexual and racial commodification underlying them, but also resists them (albeit quite subtly) through the film’s loving display of fashion and its attention to the work of designing and making clothes. Mahogany tells a story of bright sartorial resistance that can be understood as an articulation of black feminist desires for women of colour to be able to compose the images through which their bodies are perceived.     

Father- and Mother-Adolescent Decision-Making in Mexican-Origin Families

Understanding the prevalence and correlates of decisional autonomy within specific cultural contexts is necessary to fully comprehend how family processes are embedded within culture. The goals of this study were to describe mothers’ and fathers’ decision-making with adolescents (M = 12.51 years, SD = 0.58; 51% female), including parent-unilateral, joint, and youth-unilateral decision-making, and to examine the socio-cultural and family characteristics associated with these different types of decision-making in 246 Mexican-origin families. Mothers reported more joint and youth-unilateral decision-making and less parent-unilateral decision-making than did fathers. Fathers reported more youth-unilateral decision-making with sons than with daughters. Further, for mothers, more traditional gender role attitudes and higher levels of mother-adolescent conflict were associated with more parent-unilateral and less joint decision-making. In contrast, for fathers, lower levels of respect values were associated with more youth-unilateral decision-making with sons, and higher levels of parent-adolescent warmth were associated with more youth-unilateral decision-making with daughters. The importance of understanding the different correlates of mothers’ and fathers’ decision-making with sons versus daughters is discussed.     

Associations Between Fifth Graders’ Gender Atypical Problem Behavior and Peer Relationships: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study

An accruing body of evidence supports associations between self-perceived gender typicality and peer relationship difficulties; however, researchers have yet to evaluate peers' perceptions of problem behaviors to gain insight into the social correlates of gender typicality. A short-term longitudinal study was conducted to evaluate associations between gender atypical problem behavior and subsequent peer relational difficulties for 2,076 fifth graders (M age= 10.27; 53% female). Peer nomination methodology was used to assess participants' classroom peer relationships, problem behaviors, and social-emotional characteristics. Findings showed that youth characterized by gender atypical, compared to gender typical, problem behavior (withdrawn boys/aggressive girls vs. withdrawn girls/aggressive boys, respectively) evidenced higher levels of subsequent peer difficulties; moreover, participation in a mutual friendship was associated with decreased risk for peer relationship maladjustment, particularly among youth characterized by gender atypical problem behavior. Results further revealed that, compared to friendless youth, friended youth earned higher prosocial and peer liking scores and, for withdrawn youth, lower emotional sensitivity scores. The present research contributes to our understanding of the potential short-term consequences of youth's gender atypical problem behavior. Findings underscore the need for supplemental conceptualizations of gender typicality as well as multifaceted interventions designed to promote the acceptance of gender nonnormativity, support the development of adaptive peer relationships, and reduce the occurrence of problem behaviors.     

Epistemic Reasoning and Adolescent Egocentrism: Relations to Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Problem Youth

This investigation addressed the question of how two forms of social cognitive reasoning – epistemic reasoning and adolescent egocentrism – interface with externalizing and internalizing forms of psychopathology during adolescence. Adolescents’ epistemic reasoning (i.e., types of belief entitlement, or degree of doubt, held by an individual when confronted with contradictory sides of an issue), and imaginary audience and personal fable ideation, were assessed in a sample of 29 adolescent boys with behavioral problems and 30 of their peers without behavioral problems. To assess internalizing and externalizing symptomatology, teachers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL-TRF). Results revealed that, compared to those without behavior problems, boys with behavioral problems were lower in epistemic reasoning. Further analyses revealed consistent relations between dimensions of social cognitive reasoning to specific forms of psychopathology. These findings suggest that social cognitive reasoning, particularly epistemic doubt, is important in understanding problem behaviors among typical and atypical adolescents.

Systems Ideologies and Street-Level Bureaucrats: Policy Change and Perceptions of Quality in a Behavioral Health Care System

This article examines the stability of street-level bureaucrats' negative perceptions regarding a newly implemented managed care system on quality of care and service delivery in a publicly funded behavioral health care system. Overall findings indicate that the generally negative perception of managed care did not differ between staff in the two programs, indicating a weak effect on attitudes of frontline workers. More proximal variables to the caregiver, such as service type and job title, show more influence on attitudes. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings for practicing administrators and academic researchers.     

Risk factors for sexual victimization among male and female homeless and runaway youth

Risk factors associated with the likelihood of being sexually victimized by a stranger or friend/acquaintance since being on the street was examined among 372 homeless and runaway youth. Young people were interviewed on the streets and in shelters by outreach workers using a systematic sampling strategy. Youth who engaged in more high-risk behaviors were expected to be at greater risk for sexual victimization by both known and unknown assailants. Results indicated that for females, running from home for the first time at an earlier age was associated with sexual victimization by both a stranger and friend/acquaintance. However, engaging in deviant subsistence strategies, survival sex, and grooming predicted being sexually victimized by a friend/acquaintance. For males, survival sex and grooming predicted stranger sexual victimization, whereas sexual orientation was associated with sexual victimization by a friend/acquaintance. Overall, 35% of the sample had been sexually victimized.     

Private nurses and playboy bunnies: explaining permissible sex discrimination

Discrimination on the basis of sex in employment is illegal--usually. In cases in which employers contend that sex-based hiring is necessary to protect the privacy interests of their customer, however, and in cases in which employers contend that sex-based hiring is necessary to provide a particular type of sexual titillation for their customers, courts sometimes do allow employers to discriminate. Courts say that they allow sex discrimination in employment when it is necessary to preserve the "essence of the business." This Article shows, however, that there is no plausible conception of business "essence" that can explain and make sense of the existing case law. The Article therefore looks beyond the courts' rhetoric to explain and defend why courts distinguish in the ways they do between permissible and impermissible sex discrimination in employment.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Commentary</Emphasis>: A Critical Review of Published Competency-to-Confess Measures

The development of standardized assessments for competency-to-confess evaluations has remained largely neglected for the last several decades. Groundbreaking research was conducted on Miranda waivers during the late 1970s, but researchers have failed to sustain programmatic research. This critical review focuses on four published Miranda measures (Comprehension of Miranda Rights, Comprehension of Miranda Rights-Recognition, Comprehension of Miranda Vocabulary, and Function of Rights in Interrogation). When evaluated by contemporary standards, the validation of these measures is very limited. Major improvements are needed for interrater reliability, test–retest reliability, content validity, construct validity, and criterion-related validity.