Cultural Feminism Research Articles

Sex Strike in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, J.P Clark’s Wives’ Revolt and Julie Okoh’s Edewede

Issues of injustice, exploitation, and dehumanization in the domestic setting are usually downplayed. They become national points only and when women revolt against such indignities. The three plays chosen for this study centre on women’s protests incessant wars, unjust sharing formula and circumcision. The women in the plays are fearless against a patriarchal system that tries to stifle their social, economic, personal, medical, and psychological rights. Thus, the paper interrogates female dynamism and bonding and the nature of their protest in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, J. P. Clark’s Wives’ Revolt and Julie Okoh’s Edewede. Issues common to their protest are the critical identification of the root of the problem, democratically discussing it, taking of oaths to enforce compliance from weaker ones and most importantly, the refusal of sex to men. This denial is a sacrificial step needed to register their dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the status-quo. In the three plays, sex strike as a significant icon becomes the point of men’s capitulation. Its viability or otherwise will be interrogated. Using such concepts as Radical and Cultural Feminism as theoretical orientation, the paper critically examines how women can transform their lives and situation without lifting physical weapon but by asserting their dignity and uniqueness using what they have and employing their differences as instruments of social re-ordering.

Strategic auto-exoticism: Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir (1953) and Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)

ABSTRACT Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir (1953; The Dark Child) and Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994) explore coming-of-age stories and postcolonial identity through autobiographical, anthropological accounts of colonial childhoods. Both texts can be read as auto-exotic as they are written in the language of the colonizer (or for an international audience in Mernissi’s case), and portray exotic rites and commonplaces designed to appeal to a western readership. However, these auto-exotic and anthropological elements form part of a complex strategy that aims to undermine them and, instead, convey messages of cultural complexity, dignity, harmony, and intersectional Muslim feminism. The auto-exotic serves as a pretext for the re-appropriation and re-creation of the world colonialism has destroyed in Camara Laye, and for the empowerment of women against all forms of oppression – colonial, cultural, or religious – in Mernissi.

As resistências culturais enfrentadas pela mulher no âmbito das modalidades de lutas

O presente estudo qualitativo teve como objetivo compreender barreiras sociais enfrentadas pelas mulheres praticantes de lutas (artes marciais ou esportes de combate). Este estudo traz artigos acadêmicos, exemplos e fragmentos de textos de conhecimento público que mostram parte do processo histórico que uma mulher enfrenta quando pratica luta. Foi elaborada uma revisão de literatura acerca do tema para encontrar a existência das barreiras sociais e quais são elas. Como consequência, esse artigo é capaz de transmitir superações das mulheres tanto no âmbito das modalidades de lutas quanto no âmbito social. Como resultado, foi identificado alguns fatores e a existência de 5 barreiras sociais: a distinção de gênero, cultura da feminilidade, as mídias, exploração da erotização da mulher e a exclusão social da mesma. Tais barreiras são encontradas estruturadas na sociedade. E, mesmo diante disso, a mulher vem conquistando espaço na sociedade em geral e na área das lutas em particular.

POST-KOLONYAL KADIN YURTTAŞLIĞININ LİBERAL FEMİNİZME ELEŞTİRİSİ

Kadınların hak arayışlarına ilişkin mücadele örnekleri daha önceki yüzyıllarda görülse de feminist mücadele, teorisini 18. yüzyılda oluşturmaya başlamıştır. Kadın hareketi Avrupa’da görünür oluşunu Fransız Devrimi’ni de ortaya çıkaran siyasal ve toplumsal değişmelere borçludur. Fransız Devrimi’yle birlikte öne çıkan yurttaşlık tartışmalarında hak ve özgürlükler önemli yer tutar. Bu dönemde hak ve özgürlüklerinin genişletilmesini talep eden kadınlar da tartışmanın taraflarından olmayı başarmışlardır. Fransız Devrimi’yle başlayan süreçten günümüze feminist yaklaşım, kadınların yaşadığı ataerkil baskıları anlatmaya çalışıp bunun için politikalar üretme uğraşısında olsa da ele alınan sorunlar ve çözümler aşamasında kendi içerisinde farklılaşmalar yaşar. Bu çalışma post-kolonyal kadın yurttaşlık tartışmalarının izini sürerek kadın yurttaşlık tartışmalarının başlangıcı olan liberal feminizmle ilişkisini ortaya koymayı hedeflemektedir. Bu bağlamda öncelikle hak ve özgürlük mücadelesinin ilk örneklerini sergileyen liberal feministlerin talepleri değerlendirilecektir. Kültürel feministlerin söz konusu taleplerin yurttaşlık tartışmalarında “kadınlığı” ikincilleştirdiği eleştirisiyle gelişen ve kadını doğurganlığına indirgeyen “anne-yurttaş” kavramı da ele alınacaktır. Son olarak kadınların otantikliği koruma görevleri çerçevesinde ilerleyen post-kolonyal mücadelelerde kadınların yurttaşlığına ilişkin görüşlere değinilecektir.

Making feminist claims in the post-truth era: the authority of personal experience

The increased visibility of feminism in mainstream culture has recently been noted, with the presence of both online and offline campaigns embedding feminist claims in a variety of everyday spaces. By granting recognition to women’s experiences, these campaigns continue the feminist practice of generating critical knowledge on the basis of gendered experience. In the post-truth era, however, the norms governing claims-making are being significantly reconstructed, with significant consequences for critiques of gender inequality. It is argued here that these norms are linked directly to a wider context of anti-feminism in which dismissing women’s claims is consistent with the goal that opponents of gender equality have of seeking and consolidating epistemic power in the face of what is perceived as systemic male disadvantage and victimhood. Returning to earlier debates within feminism, it is argued that the kinds of post-truth rhetoric used to dismiss women’s experience provide a challenge that feminism must confront. This rhetoric is often grounded in the authenticity of individual experience; however, experience cannot provide unmediated access to truth and, therefore, cannot provide the foundation for feminist claims. On the other hand, experience cannot merely offer one of many contested versions of ‘reality’. The excesses of both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist epistemology are countered with the argument that cognition is a human practice mediated by theoretical propositions which illuminate the question of what can be known. This is the role played by feminist theory in defending the role of experience.

GENDER AND INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. A STUDY OF IHIOMA IN ORLU L.G.A, IMO STATE, NIGERIA

— This research focused on “men and women in community development in Ihioma community, in Orlu local government area State. The broad objective of this study is to investigate men and women effects in community development in Ihioma. Two hypothesis were formulated in the course of this study relevant literature were reviewed, two theories, were also reviewed, the theories are modernization theory of social change and the cultural feminist theory. The researcher adopted the cultural feminist theory in the explication in Ihioma, the researcher adopted the survey research design, the researcher also adopted a sample size of 229 respondents the purposive sampling method was also adopted by the researcher. The research gathered data for this research through the techniques. Data were analyzed using the chisquare statistical tool. The hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between gender disparity and men and women involvement in community development was also rejected as the table value of 7.815 was greater than the x2 value of 6.8. The study found out that gender disparity in Ihioma has not led to a decline in community development. The study also found out that the level of education among men and women in Ihioma has not affected the process of development in the area.

“New Historicism” and Rudolf Ankersmit’s Postmodernist Historical Concept

This paper reflects on the modern historiographical situation of perceiving comprehensive historical theories as an obstacle to highly specialized research. On the philosophical level, priority has been given to structuralism and language philosophy, thereby resulting in almost unlimited supremacy of the hermeneutic approach in culture, i.e., in the prevalence of textocentrism. The Dutch philosopher Rudolf Frank Ankersmit argues that postmodernism is both a theory of history and a “theory for history.” According to him, historicism is a theory of “historical forms”. Thus, the morphology of culture is directly related to historicism. The transformation of historical forms occurs in conditions when the distinction between the text and reality (represented in the text) is erased, and the reality becomes “superfluous” in the context of the overproduction of meanings and interpretations. Therefore, representation ousts the reality. The New Historicism movement emerged in the United States during the second half of the 1980s as a response of literary criticism to the “challenges” of cultural materialism, feminism, or social history. The historical context is considered by the representatives of the New Historiography project as a system of culture, i.e., social institutions and practices (including political ones) are interpreted as functions of this system, and not vice versa.

ФЕМІНІСТИЧНИЙ ДИСКУРС ЖІНОЧОЇ ПОЕЗІЇ «МОЛОДОЇ ПОЛЬЩІ»

In the XIX-XX centuries. the emancipation of women had a strong influence on the established order of society. It was most evident in the works of contemporary writers. The article explores a little-known topic of women’s poetry of the literary period of Young Poland. The article analyzes the thematic range, issues and corporeality of poetry of Bronislava Ostrovska, Maryla Volska, Marcelina Kulikovska, Maria Komornitska and others. The essay examines the work of these women writers in the projection of the active development of feminist discourse through the prism of socio-political, cultural and gender characteristics. In women’s poetry of Young Poland there are recurring thematic areas, especially marked by corporeality and sensuality, such as love and erotica, motherhood, old age, disease and pain, the experience of death, the body also directs and profiles issues of creativity, sacred, metaphysics and cultural change. Particular attention needs to be paid to women’s experiences, which consist in the expansion of biology or the feeling of sexuality (pregnancy, childbirth), which became the discovery and description of the first half of the last century, referred to as the process of feminization of culture. They not only imitated contemporary poets, but also made a significant contribution to the development of the symbolic coordinates of this period. Their poetry is also characterized by decadent, impressionistic and expressionist motives. Female poets turned to popular topics for the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as love, nature, the meaning of existence, escape from reality, feelings of powerlessness and more. But they were not limited to philosophical and landscape lyrics. Further research on the creative path of poets of the Young Poland period is very promising, because they were not only active participants in the literary pro- cess, but also influenced future generations of Polish poets, who, following their example, developed themes of women’s experience, sensuality and corporeality in their work. These literary figures are also interesting for Ukrainian literary criticism, because some of the mentioned poets lived for some time in Lviv, Kyiv and Kharkiv, and therefore, intertwined with the Ukrainian literary process.

The Multidimensional Structure of Taste

The notion of cultural legitimacy has had many incarnations and been subject to many criticisms over the years. However, few studies have set out to construct it empirically and quantify it at the national level and over several cultural practices. In spite of the intense theoretical debates, one question remains particularly neglected – given that the scale of cultural legitimacy is defined by the homology between the ordering of tastes and the ordering of social groups, which social space does it actually refer to? Here we propose an empirical approach to statistically account for the intersection of social power relations which many ethnographic studies have observed at the level of individuals and social groups. The goal is to analyse the relations between variables related to social status; education, age, and gender are the ones we look at here. We avoid the unfruitful trap of simply constructing hierarchies of effects, and instead consider the interactions between them. We therefore observe that, at the macro level where our analysis is situated, the scale of cultural legitimacy is simultaneously associated with the three social relations studied, opposing bourgeois (intellectual) culture to popular culture, feminine culture to masculine culture, and established culture to new emerging culture. Ultimately, the scale of cultural legitimacy is made up of three main echelons, associated with three configurations of social characteristics: intellectual, feminine, and established at the “top” of the legitimacy scale, intellectual, masculine, and emerging at the “middle” and, finally, popular, feminine, and established, at the “bottom”. A sociological interpretation allows us to distinguish two variations of legitimate culture that are more or less well established, feminine, and intellectual, and three variations of illegitimate culture depending on gender and age variables (a taste for “outdated” or “sentimental” working class genres, a preference for “mass public” products that are widely available on radio, television, or in magazines, and a taste for emerging “virile” genres [science-fiction, rap, hard rock, etc.], that are sometimes constituted as juvenile subcultures subject to processes of legitimation). Beyond this nascent typology, we seek above all to establish the existence of these interactions, to propose certain statistical tools that are useful for studying them and to demonstrate the benefit of analysing the distribution of cultural practices in intersectional terms.

Thinking Gender in the Age of the Beijing Consensus

Feminist Studies 47, no. 2. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 341 Petrus Liu Thinking Gender in the Age of the Beijing Consensus Originally formulated to dispute biologically deterministic explanations of women’s subordination, the analytical distinction between sex and gender has developed in unexpected ways in transitions from one language to another. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from John Money’s sexological writings to Simone de Beauvoir’s dictum, “One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one,” Anglophone feminists in the 1970s developed the distinction between sex (understood as anatomy) and gender (understood as social identity) to argue that a woman’s biological sex ought not dictate the kind of work she should do or the kind of life she should live.1 In her landmark 1975 essay, “The Traffic in Women,” Gayle Rubin coined the phrase “sex/gender system” to examine “the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.”2 In more recent years, however, the distinction 1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Paris: Gallimard, 1949; New York: Knopf, 1993), 281. Citations refer to the Knopf edition. For an account of feminist reformulations of John Money and Robert Stoller, see Jennifer Germon, Gender: A Genealogy of an Idea (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 2. Gayle S. Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 34. It is worth mentioning that sex in Rubin’s sex/gender system refers to sexual practice rather than the distinction between male and female. This understanding forms the basis of her theoretical disagreements with Judith Butler, who preserves the semantic ambiguity of sex (as 342 Petrus Liu between sex and gender has taken on an entirely different meaning as it comes to inform transgender movements and politics seeking to decouple a person’s sex assignment at birth from their future gender identity. At the same time, theories of intersectionality, women-of-color feminisms , and transnational feminisms have all developed their own theses of gender variability to contest the myth of the universal woman. The life of gender—in academic theory, politics, and social movements— has confounded the original intentions of its American theorists. It is clear that there is no singular or stable account of gender; rather, gender is always in a state of flux, incessantly rethought and reforged by the demands of an increasingly complex and asymmetric world.3 Gender is always a translation—from one discipline, context, or language to another—ineluctably intertwined with the geopolitical problems created by the violences of imperialism, colonialism, and transnational capitalism. The translation of gender into non-European languages, such as Chinese, raises questions about whether spaces previously resistant or exterior to world capitalism are now being assimilated and enfolded into the structure of neoliberal globalization defined by the Washington Consensus. Against this view, some critics maintain that China’s precipitous ascent presents an alternative model of development for the Global South called the Beijing Consensus. Considering how gender has entered different languages, including Chinese, to create new coinages that may at times appear as instruments of an imperial takeover , Judith Butler argues that the translation of gender actually offers a path of linguistic humility for English, a reminder that we cohabit a multilingual world in which no one ever owned the term.4 But how exactly do we describe that complex, multilingual world and how does gender both gender and sexuality) as the point of departure for a different kind of feminist inquiry. See Gayle Rubin with Judith Butler, “Interview: Sexual Traffic ,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6, nos. 2–3 (1994): 67. 3. See Heather Love, ed. “Rethinking Sex.” Special issue, GLQ 17, no. 2 (2011): 1–221. This collection of essays conveys a sense of how Rubin’s methodological distinction between sex and gender has given rise to new ways of thinking across different disciplines about sex radicalism, crip sexuality, Black feminism, and sex trafficking. 4. Judith Butler, “Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism,” philoSOPHIA 9, no. 1 (Winter 2019). Petrus Liu 343 transform it? How is the translation of gender inflected by the material conditions...

Scholar Spotlight

Scholar Spotlight Samantha N. Sheppard and Jennifer McClearen Feminist media scholar Jennifer McClearen examines the cultural production of difference in contemporary society with an emphasis on the mediation of gender, race, and sexuality in sports media. An assistant professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin, she is currently completing her first book, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC. McClearen's interest in the intersection of sports and media compelled her to help establish the newly formed Sports Media Scholarly Interest Group for SCMS. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jennifer McClearen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin (Marc Speir, 2020). Samantha N. Sheppard: What does it mean for you to study, write, and teach sports in this current cultural moment? Jennifer McClearen: It is a thrilling time to be a media scholar who examines the cultural politics of sports because of the ways sports media can spur national conversations about issues that impact our culture more broadly. Sports media is one gathering space where people of vastly different backgrounds, tastes, and interests come together. It is a space where live TV is still thriving, and time-shifting is far less [End Page 1] common than other forms of media. Sports media is a cultural space where democratic debate still circulates, so athlete activists have the capacity to become particularly meaningful agents of change. Sheppard: How has your research helped you address issues of visibility, representation, industrial practice, and social identity in women's sports? McClearen: My forthcoming book with the University of Illinois Press, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC, is a cautionary tale about our scholarly and activist fascination with making female athletes more visible. I examine a specific sporting context in depth: mixed martial arts (MMA), or more specifically, the world's largest MMA promotion, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Women have been and continue to be largely underrepresented or represented in trivialized ways within sports media. Fighting Visibility argues that the UFC has made women in combat sports more visible than ever before. Yet they do so by exploiting a vulnerable labor force of athletes and brokering unfulfilled promises of women's empowerment and the American Dream. The book urges those invested in women's sports to avoid a categorical assumption that visibility is good for all women in all contexts and instead asks us to consider who benefits and who is harmed when the image of the powerful female athlete becomes marketable in sports media brands. Sheppard: How did you come to your area of research? McClearen: If you had told me ten years ago that I would become an expert in sports media, I would have laughed. Yet hindsight is indeed twenty-twenty when considering my intellectual path here. I started graduate school planning to study the action genre with a specific focus on the representation of female action heroes, which is what my master's thesis focused on. I had been practicing martial arts for several years and always thought of mediated fighting in terms of cinema and television rather than as actual sports. Shortly after completing my master's degree, some Brazilian jujitsu training partners and friends convinced me to watch UFC fights. I skeptically began watching the sport that I had always considered violent, hypermasculine, and sexist. As I watched, I slowly began realizing that despite there being some truth to MMA's stereotype, the UFC was far more compelling than I had ever given it credit. When Ronda Rousey burst onto the scene as the first female UFC fighter, I thought, "This could be an interesting way to explore my interests in women, physical power, feminism, cultural politics, and the body." To my utter joy, I began reading literature in feminist and cultural studies of sports and realized those were the intellectual genealogies that allowed me to engage my most burning research questions. I read Cheryl L. Cole's "Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body" and sensed that my budding academic research agenda suddenly became legitimate...

Thinking Gender in the Age of the Beijing Consensus

Feminist Studies 47, no. 2. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 341 Petrus Liu Thinking Gender in the Age of the Beijing Consensus Originally formulated to dispute biologically deterministic explanations of women’s subordination, the analytical distinction between sex and gender has developed in unexpected ways in transitions from one language to another. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from John Money’s sexological writings to Simone de Beauvoir’s dictum, “One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one,” Anglophone feminists in the 1970s developed the distinction between sex (understood as anatomy) and gender (understood as social identity) to argue that a woman’s biological sex ought not dictate the kind of work she should do or the kind of life she should live.1 In her landmark 1975 essay, “The Traffic in Women,” Gayle Rubin coined the phrase “sex/gender system” to examine “the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.”2 In more recent years, however, the distinction 1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Paris: Gallimard, 1949; New York: Knopf, 1993), 281. Citations refer to the Knopf edition. For an account of feminist reformulations of John Money and Robert Stoller, see Jennifer Germon, Gender: A Genealogy of an Idea (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 2. Gayle S. Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 34. It is worth mentioning that sex in Rubin’s sex/gender system refers to sexual practice rather than the distinction between male and female. This understanding forms the basis of her theoretical disagreements with Judith Butler, who preserves the semantic ambiguity of sex (as 342 Petrus Liu between sex and gender has taken on an entirely different meaning as it comes to inform transgender movements and politics seeking to decouple a person’s sex assignment at birth from their future gender identity. At the same time, theories of intersectionality, women-of-color feminisms , and transnational feminisms have all developed their own theses of gender variability to contest the myth of the universal woman. The life of gender—in academic theory, politics, and social movements— has confounded the original intentions of its American theorists. It is clear that there is no singular or stable account of gender; rather, gender is always in a state of flux, incessantly rethought and reforged by the demands of an increasingly complex and asymmetric world.3 Gender is always a translation—from one discipline, context, or language to another—ineluctably intertwined with the geopolitical problems created by the violences of imperialism, colonialism, and transnational capitalism. The translation of gender into non-European languages, such as Chinese, raises questions about whether spaces previously resistant or exterior to world capitalism are now being assimilated and enfolded into the structure of neoliberal globalization defined by the Washington Consensus. Against this view, some critics maintain that China’s precipitous ascent presents an alternative model of development for the Global South called the Beijing Consensus. Considering how gender has entered different languages, including Chinese, to create new coinages that may at times appear as instruments of an imperial takeover , Judith Butler argues that the translation of gender actually offers a path of linguistic humility for English, a reminder that we cohabit a multilingual world in which no one ever owned the term.4 But how exactly do we describe that complex, multilingual world and how does gender both gender and sexuality) as the point of departure for a different kind of feminist inquiry. See Gayle Rubin with Judith Butler, “Interview: Sexual Traffic ,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6, nos. 2–3 (1994): 67. 3. See Heather Love, ed. “Rethinking Sex.” Special issue, GLQ 17, no. 2 (2011): 1–221. This collection of essays conveys a sense of how Rubin’s methodological distinction between sex and gender has given rise to new ways of thinking across different disciplines about sex radicalism, crip sexuality, Black feminism, and sex trafficking. 4. Judith Butler, “Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism,” philoSOPHIA 9, no. 1 (Winter 2019). Petrus Liu 343 transform it? How is the translation of gender inflected by the material conditions...

Letter from the Editors: Contemporary Popular Culture and Social Criticism

Letter from the Editors: Contemporary Popular Culture and Social Criticism

Influence of Female Teachers’ Reproductive Health Experiences on Their Work Performance in Schools

In this article, I discussed the influence of female teachers’ reproductive health experiences on their work performance in schools. By natural course, females undergo reproductive health changes such as menstruation periods, pregnancy, childcare and nursing which tend to weaken them physically, psychologically and mentally because of the challenges they encounter. This study was carried out to explore the influence of female teachers’ reproductive health experiences on their work performance and the coping mechanisms they use while executing their duties and responsibilities. In total, a sample of 45 respondents was selected using purposive sampling. These included Headteachers, Heads of Department, Male teachers and Female teachers. The study employed Qualitative techniques by adopting a phenomenological research design to collect and analyse data. Data collection tools used were the Interview guide, Focus group discussion guide and Documentary review checklist. A qualitative presentation and analysis of data were based on themes formulated based on study objectives. The cultural feminist theory was used to interpret and discuss data. The study findings indicate that female teachers are stigmatized, oppressed, stereotyped and discriminated against at the workplace. These findings are of great importance to the Ministry of Education, school administrators and future researchers as they will guide policy formulation to improve the welfare of female teachers at the workplace. The state through the Ministry of Education and Sports should formulate a public policy agenda on gender equity to promote the welfare and inclusion of female teachers in all departments at the workplace.

Reconceiving the Theology of Procreation in Response to Stigmatisation of Childlessness1

Abstract This article, based on the author’s doctoral research, offers a theological response to the traditional attitudes towards childlessness within the Bakossi community of South West Cameroon. Research reveals a prevalent negative attitude towards those—both men and women—who do not have children. This stigmatization is often reinforced within Christian communities by a reading of scripture that interprets the command to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as referring exclusively to biological reproduction. In contrast to this, an African cultural feminist hermeneutic can be used to argue for a more holistic interpretation of scripture, one that draws out God’s concern for family, community and creation.

Relevance of Biogas in Rural Area: Women Perspectives

Biogas is a form of clean cooking mechanism. As a proven and widely-used global source of energy, it is popular all over the world. To explore the women's views about the importance of biogas in rural settings of urban areas, this study is conducted as the title of relevance of biogas in rural areas: women perspectives. It is based on the theoretical assumption of cultural feminism. It employs exploratory research design and is based on both primary and secondary sources of data. The study revealed that there is high relevance of biogas in rural farm based society in Nepal. Through women perspectives, health and sanitation; easy and sustainable operation; time and resource saver; cheap and low maintenance are its major importance. Biogas plant helps to reduce the untiring busy schedule of women in household activities. It suggests that concerned authorities should make effective institutional frameworks to empower women in their homeland by optimum utilization of leisure time made possible by the use of biogas.

Prominence of Improved Cook Stove (ICS) in Rural Area: End-Users Perspective

Improved cook stove (ICS) indicates improved form of traditional cook stove. It is more effective, efficient and safer to use. ICS is popular in rural villages of Nepal as a new innovation of clean cooking mechanism. To explore the end users views about the prominence of ICS in rural settings of urban areas, this study is conducted as the title of prominence of improved cook stove in rural areas: end-users perspectives. It is based on the theoretical assumption of cultural feminism. It employs exploratory research design and is based on both primary and secondary sources of data. The study revealed that there is high prominence of ICS in rural farm based society in Nepal. Women are end-users of ICS. Through women perspectives, health and sanitation; easy operation; time and resource saver; low maintenance are its major prominence. ICS helps to reduce the untiring busy schedule of women in household activities. It suggests that concerned authorities should make effective institutional frameworks to empower women in their homeland by optimum utilization of leisure time made possible by the use of ICS.

Book Review: The Power of Vulnerability. Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-Racist Media Cultures edited by Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid Ryberg, Manchester University Press, 2018, 246 pages. ISBN: 978-1-5261-3309-0

Book Review: The Power of Vulnerability. Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-Racist Media Cultures edited by Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid Ryberg, Manchester University Press, 2018, 246 pages. ISBN: 978-1-5261-3309-0

Citra Perempuan Jawa Dalam Teks Suluk Tenun

Suluk Tenun reflects the image of Javanese women based on the background of Islamic religious traditions. Judging from the cultural feminism approach, this research uses descriptive qualitative methods and modern philology, which aims to describe the image of Javanese women listed in the text of Suluk Tenun. The data source used in this research is the text Suluk Tenun, a collection of Pura Pakualaman Library, located at pupuh VII Serat Piwulang Estri, and consists of 17 verses. The results showed that the text of Suluk Tenun was loaded with Javanese moral and cultural values. The symbols for the tools and the weaving process are used to describe the image of Javanese women in controlling their passions when they are married, such as telanjuk, kaki, kuping, kisi, and others. In the Suluk Tenun text, several images must have by a woman to be able to become a holy woman. The images are women who must be knowledgeable, able to control their passions, and able to rely on faith in God and the shari'a.

“The Goddess is Alive. Magic is Afoot.”

This article analyzes the influence of radical and cultural feminist ideas on the writings produced by Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay (b. 1940), a seminal Pagan activist who spearheaded the development of the Dianic Witchcraft tradition during the 1970s and 1980s. An examination of Budapest's writings reveals the ideological background of Dianic Wicca, found in the specific aspects in the works of radical and cultural feminist thinkers such Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich, Robin Morgan, Susan Griffin, and Susan Brownmiller, which suited Budapest's lesbian-separatists leanings. The article thus sheds light on the politics of Goddess Spirituality during its formative years that have made modern Paganism what it is today. This is particularly important in light of the challenges to Dianic Wicca (and Goddess Spirituality in general) in recent decades, as third-wave feminism and transgender rights highlight a generational gap between veteran and younger Dianic women.