Gender Crisis Research Articles

Being Human Within an Evolving Universe: A Study of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native

This paper argues that the surface narrative of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native appears to endorse late 19th-century degeneration theories and discourse, illustrating a gender crisis. However, by decoding and laying bare the textual ambiguities, a subtext is disclosed that inscribes an alternative reading in which tradition and convention are subverted. Therefore the novel opens up a more complex interpretation of what it means to be human in an evolving universe. The narrative of The Return of the Native clearly shows that Hardy is fully cognizant of the controversial fin de siècle degeneration discourse. Yet, viewed in the context of 19th-century ideas about creative evolution and Hardy’s response to these, we realize that he exposes such discourses as deeply suspect ideologies. Analysis of the structure of the novel brings to light the intersection of two opposite narrative trajectories, a degeneration and a regeneration plot. In each plot there appears to be a careful patterning of character types built along stereotypical gender and ethical binary divisions, with the final validation of regenerative values and the punishment of transgressiveness. Actually, a close reading shows that Hardy attacks the ‘degeneracy’ not of the human species but of the social institutions and conventions which his protagonists must struggle against. He flouts the limitations of gender divisions and gives life to characters who become signifiers of a new and powerfully disturbing view of masculinity and femininity within contexts wider than the repressive and depressive established sexual model. These observations are linked to Hardy’s dual vision, the cosmic and the human, and to Henri Bergson’s creative evolution. In conclusion, it is maintained, within Hardy’s post-Darwinian evolving universe, all living creatures are caught up in ‘neutral’ processes of dissolution and transformation, changes that are inevitable and necessary to generation.

Reconstructing ecofeminism: A study of Kamala Markandaya’s nectar in a sieve

The critical discourse on ecofeminism makes a novel attempt in understanding the relationship between literary texts and the problems with regard to gender and ecological crisis through various lit...

Shock Troupe: Medical Film and the Performance of ‘Shell Shock’ for the British Nation at War:

In 1917, physician Arthur F. Hurst began filming the peculiar tics and hysterical gaits of ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers under his care. Editions of Hurst’s films from 1918 and 1940 survive. Cultural products of their time, I argue, the films engaged with contemporary ideas of class, gender and nation. The 1918 version reinforced class-based notions of disease and degeneracy while validating personal and national trauma and bolstering conceptions of masculinity and the nation that were critical to wartime morale and recovery efforts. The 1940 re-edit of the film engaged with the memory of the First World War by constructing a restorative narrative and by erasing the troubled years of gender crisis, ‘shell shock’ culture and class struggle to reassert masculine virtue and martial strength, essential for the prosecution of the Second World War.

Beyond ‘Crisis’ in Understanding Gender Transformation

Since the late 1980s, historians have described certain eras as marked by ‘crisis’ in the production of gender norms. At the outset, the concept of ‘gender crisis’ proved useful for understanding changes in normative cultural systems. The rhetorical trope of crisis distinguished key turning points in the construction of gender and helped to shape a coherent narrative centred on moments of breakdown and reconstruction. Unfortunately, however, the concept of ‘gender crisis’ has now outlived its usefulness; it has lost its analytic purchase. This article reviews the notion in modern, American and European historiography, then critiques its usefulness as an analytic concept. ‘Gender crisis’ has been overworked to the point of semantic collapse. It has been so reified as to foreshorten analysis, and it conceptualises masculinity as a fixed set of essentialised norms. Finally, ‘gender crisis’ describes subjectivity and its relation to normative systems in overly binary and mechanistic terms. Using the case study of postwar French masculinity, the author proposes the alternative concept of ‘gender damage’ as a way to understand periods of transformation in gender. The term ‘gender damage’ moves beyond a mechanistic notion of interaction with normative systems in order to incorporate such emotions as frustration, humiliation and confusion in our thinking of human subjectivity. In addition, the term forces us to specify exactly which gender norms are being reconfigured in some way. ‘Damage’ is by nature specific and local because it does not totalise catastrophe in the same way as does ‘crisis’.

Critical Thoughts on Keywords in Gender and History: An Introduction

This introduction lays out the key themes addressed in the Forum and emphasises the importance of understanding historical description and theory as mutually constitutive. The contributions to the Forum interrogate key categories of analysis in feminist history including the gender binary, gender crisis, agency and intersectionality. The articles show how the study of historical events and processes in their particular detail reframes the categories used to construct feminist theories of stability and disruption. The productive encounters between feminist history and feminist theory in this Forum offer new and interesting ways to reframe research questions.

Gender and Narrative Crisis in Christoph Martin Wieland’s “Novella without a Title”

In “Novella without a Title,” Christoph Martin Wieland positions himself outside of the eighteenth-century debates on “the women question.” Written in 1805, when the two-sexed model of gender complementarity allegedly was firmly in place, Wieland’s cross-dressing and passing protagonist defies easy categorization. The novella presents a model of gender and sexual ambiguity that is echoed and reinforced by an analogous narrative crisis presented through the framing narrative. Thus it offers a more complicated vision of sexual and gender identity around 1800 than either historical gendered binaries, or contemporary theorists, such as Butler, Garber, and Halberstam can explain.

Gender Crisis in Poland, Catholic Ideology and the Media

The author discusses the “anti-gender” debate initiated by the Catholic Church in Poland, which has proclaimed a deepening crisis of family and society and has accused gender ideology of being responsible. At the end of 2013, a campaign emerged within the Church to undermine gender theories and to put blame on gender theorists for societal flaws. The discourse has been elaborated on in the media and has created an atmosphere of friction and unrest between academics involved in gender studies and church representatives. The nation has been divided in its understanding and acceptance of gender, with people heavily influenced by sermons in local churches and by the Catholic press. This paper contains a critical analysis of the Church’s stand point on gender issues in Poland and the results of a survey of public opinion carried out by the author. Denial and rejection of gender theories by the Polish Catholic Church should not be ignored. This denial may have a negative impact on women’s rights and their position in Polish society and undermine the work of multiple generations of researchers, suffragettes and feminists. Moreover it is highly offensive to diverse communities and therefore should be highlighted and addressed in the wider context. The article should be treated as a viewpoint based on media discourse analysis and a small scale empirical research, based on interpretative paradigm.

The Kenyan Consumer-Reader: Gender, Consumption, and Grace Ogot's Crisis of Authorship

Grace Ogot has been lauded for advancing equality for African women in her writing. However her contributions to crucial debates about African authorship and readership have not yet been acknowledged. In her English-language fiction, Ogot addressed her readers as consumers, which in turn helped her conceptualize her work's social role in post-independence Kenya. This article examines two of Ogot's short stories, “Karantina” (1968) and “The Middle Door” (1972), as reflections on the social aspects of Kenyan fiction. By analyzing Ogot's engagement with elite consumption in these stories, in particular how she responded to consumption as a political concern, this article draws attention to Ogot's ambivalence about her writing's social function and, in doing so, contributes to recent discussions about the commodity status of African literature by acknowledging African readers as consumers.

Matrimonial Relations in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: The Machiavellian Husband/Ruler

This paper argues with the feminist scholars that Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is essentially a romanticized version of male's dominance over woman, which reveals a historical context where gender crisis was salient. However, it proposes that the play presents the idea of marriage in such a way that the relation of the wife--the potentially disorderly woman--to her husband becomes an epitome for the relation of subordinates to their ruler. In the little world of the family, with its conspicuous tension between love and power, the larger matters of political and social order could find ready symbolization. In this world, the powerful Pertruchio acts in a Machiavellian manner to subjugate the powerless Katherine. His brutality is justified as a necessary evil in order to achieve social order as a higher moral goal. Love is contingent on the establishment of male's power in such a matrimonial relation; the husband is feared first, and then loved. Similarly, according to Machiavellian standards a successful ruler should build his state on fear rather than love for, while love is precarious, fear is held by a dread of punishment. Thus the marriage of Petruchio and Katherine is praised and rewarded at the end, because such a matrimonial relationship exorcised the fear of disorder that dominated early modern England.

Relation between primary headache and restriction of cervical range of motion: a pilot study

Introduction: Headache is the most common neurological symptom across the world. The presence of this alteration promotes different effects on the biomechanics of cervical muscles, which may limit cervical mobility and also bring damage to patients suffering with headache. Objective: Evaluate the relation between the presence of primary headache and cervical range of motion restriction. Methods: Pilot study conducted by using a sample of 33 subjects aged between 20 and 38 years (26 ± 5 years). To evaluate active cervical mobility, universal goniometer was used. The degree of cervical dysfunction was assessed by Neck Disability Index questionnaire. To sort the primary headache were used criteria established by the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD-III beta version, 2013). Results: There was no statistical difference between the groups in relation to gender and last headache crisis. The cervical mobility differs between groups with headache and healthy, but this was not statistically significant. There were also differences between the headache and the healthy group regarding to the Neck Disability Index (NDI). Conclusion: The study does not demonstrate a difference between the cervical mobility in patients with primary headache compared to healthy subjects.

Creating a Monster

The United States Democratic primary campaign of 2007–8 witnessed widespread misogynistic and anti-feminist portrayals of Senator Hillary Clinton across all types of media. In particular, Clinton was regularly depicted as monstrous and/or cyborgian, collapsing the boundaries between male and female, human and animal, and organism and machine. Such portrayals indicate a gender crisis in contemporary American culture which intensifies when women attempt to enter positions of power in the public arena. Research has shown that television, radio and print media coverage of American political candidates has consistently relied on gender stereotypes that undermine the campaigns of women politicians. However, portrayals of female candidates in online media remain largely unexplored. This paper discusses the implications of online media for women's political campaigns and for the democratic process itself. Through an analysis of digital imagery, I argue that simulations of Clinton circulating on the Internet during the primaries sought to produce a political reality in which Clinton's bid for the White House could be rendered improper and unnatural. In so doing, I suggest the continuing potential of online media to produce detrimental representations of female politicians.

Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again. By Kelly Y. Jeong. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2011. xix, 124 pp. $55.00 (cloth).

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After the earthquake: gender inequality and transformation in post-disaster Haiti

This paper explores gender inequalities and transformations following Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake. Post-disaster experiences of women are located in a wider context of a longer term gender crisis. The paper argues that patterns of gender exclusion occur on multiple levels from the transnational to the local, and identifies gender-specific obstacles in the recovery and reconstruction period. In Haiti, these include meeting family survival needs, violence and exploitation, and class and racially based stigmatisation. The paper concludes with an exploration of the post-disaster organisational and caretaking work of Haitian women. It contends that recognition and support of women's capacities is critical in shifting from short-term relief to longer-term gender transformation.

Holy misogyny: why the sex and gender conflicts in the early church still matter

Introduction: A Lady God? Chapter 1. Where did God the Mother Go? The Jewish Spirit The Angel Sophia A Hebrew Goddess The Recovery of God's Wife Chapter 2. Why was the Spirit Neutered? Introducing Jesus' True Mother Carried up Mount Tabor In the Name of the Mother Spirit Born from the Womb of Water Milking the Breasts of God The Mother's Erasure God's Gender Crisis Chapter 3. Did Jesus Think Sex is a Sin? A Double Message Sex Limits Sex According to Jesus A Women's Advocate Chapter 4. Did Paul Hate Women? The Burgeoning of Chastity To Veil or Not to Veil Vanishing Women Chapter 5. Is Marriage a Sin? Rereading Genesis The Devil Made Me Do tI In Defiance of the Creator It's the End of the World Chapter 6. Is Marriage Salvation? Sacred Sex The Law is a Joke Soul Collectors Chapter 7. Once a Woman, Always a Woman? The Church is a Household Brides of Christ The Devil's Gateway Chapter 8. How do we Solve a Problem Like Maria? Mary Caught in the Crossfire The Male Mary The Sexual Mary The Apostolic Mary Chapter 9. Because the Bible Tells Us So? Further Reading Notes

<i>Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again</i> (review)

<i>Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again</i> (review)

New Girls and Bandit Brides: Female Narcissism and Lesbian Desire in Margaret Fuller's <em>Summer on the Lakes</em>

New Girls and Bandit Brides: Female Narcissism and Lesbian Desire in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes David Greven In July 1843, Margaret Fuller published her essay “The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women” in the Dial, the major transcendentalist magazine, of which she was one of the editors; she later expanded it for publication in book form in 1845 with its title changed to Woman in the Nineteenth Century. During the period between publishing “The Great Lawsuit” and Woman, Fuller traveled to Niagara and the Great Lakes. The work that emerged from this trip, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, published in 1844, has been regarded as one of this author’s most significant. In this essay, I argue that what makes the book particularly interesting to studies of gender and sexuality in the period is the light it sheds on her awareness of same-sex desire and its relationship to antebellum gender politics. In Summer’s Mariana narrative, Fuller links her critique of constrictive gender roles and their dynamics to the experience and implications of same-sex desire within a female homosocial environment; the play between collective gender identity and singular queerness provides the central drama of this narrative. From the prevailing critical perspective shaped by the theories of the French social historian Michel Foucault in his influential History of Sexuality, there has been a long-standing view, only recently challenged, that modern sexual identities such as lesbian and homosexual are a late-nineteenth-century invention, the result of the creation of new taxonomies of sexual identity that date from the 1860s and the subsequent rise of sexological and related legal discourses (43, 15–51). Writing in the wake of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s early study of intensely passionate female friendships, “The Female World of Love and Ritual,” many scholars have disputed or at least deemphasized, as Smith-Rosenberg did, the erotic nature of these female friendships in early America, [End Page 37] arguing that what appears to contemporary readers as erotic passion was the conventional language of nineteenth-century friendship and other forms of platonic love. New waves of scholars, however, have been challenging such positions. Of specific relevance to this essay, several scholars have argued for the presence of eroticism between women and even for the legitimacy of using the term lesbian in texts prior to the late-nineteenth-century era.1 Within the growing field of Fuller scholarship, the question of same-sex desire has drawn increasing attention in the past two decades. Mary E. Wood writes persuasively about Fuller’s specifically lesbian themes: “By looking for lesbian positionality in the writings of Margaret Fuller in the light of the discourse on sexuality of a specific historical period and social context,” she argues, “we can begin to see that notions of lesbian ‘identity’ were already being constructed . . . well before sexologists named lesbianism as medically deviant in the 1880s” (4). Claudia Card discusses the lesbian significance of Fuller’s work as one that lies in its thematic and textual diversity (60–61), and Jeffrey Steele argues, as well, that Fuller explored homoerotic feelings in her work (66). In her essay “Essential, Portable, Mythical Margaret Fuller,” Mary Loeffelholz argues for the as yet unimagined possibilities that recognizing Fuller as a lesbian writer might mean for periodizing and anthologizing nineteenth-century women writers. Nicole Tonkovich also analyzes lesbian themes in the Mariana episode in Domesticity with a Difference (175–77, 185, 199–200). Given the important work from several critics on the subject of Fuller’s lesbian themes, then, it is surprising that Summer on the Lakes has not been reexamined in this light. As Meg McGavran Murray describes in her biography of the author, Fuller underwent a crisis of gender and sexual identity in 1839 and 1840, a period in which she was besieged by conflicting feelings toward other women (31). Summer is a crucial text for the question of same-sex desire in Fuller’s work, reflective of her personal struggles but also of her dynamic attempts to make sense of them. Because Summer is so resonant in these terms, it is also relevant to the contested issue of same-sex desire in...

Gender, Capitalism and Economic Crisis: Impact and Responses

The economic crisis is gendered in terms of its causes, impact and responses. A feminist critique of the recent economic crisis highlights the contributory role played by the dominant masculine norms entrenched in capitalism and a lack of women and (gender-) democracy within work organisations. This article reviews and takes forward the feminist critique of causes of the capitalist crisis and its subsequent gendered impact, particularly in terms of employment. It provides a gendered interdisciplinary analysis of the crisis by means of empirical examples from the United Kingdom and Germany. It assesses whether states' responses to the crisis have re-gendered the organisation of capitalism in Europe and shows that policy reforms and budgetary responses have failed to improve gender equality. At best they perpetuate existing gender equalities; at worst they have led to a reversal of gender equality gains.

Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again (review)

Reviewed by: Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again Sang Yee Cheon (bio) Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again, by Kelly Y. Jeong. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2011. 156 pages. $55 cloth. Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again is a study of South Korea’s unprecedented experience of modernization, with a focus on the literature (and also in the films in the [End Page 157] 1960s) that portrayed the historical traumas of colonialism in the 1930s, decolonization in the 1940s, the Korean War in the 1950s, and uneven economic development in the 1960s. The book includes the introduction of modernity’s paradox, trauma, and multiplicity into Korean life; gender issues and nationalism or modernity depicted in the literature of the period from the 1920s to the 1960s; and nation rebuilding, masculinity, and decolonization depicted in the postwar South Korean cinema of the 1960s in films like The Coachman and The Stray Bullet. The author starts with the umbrella topic of modernity, asking “What is modernity?” The author claims that the content and context of modernity in Korea changes depending on the different historical period in question. Also, modernity is like a double-edged sword in Korea, promising freedom, as well as gender or social equality, but creating destabilization and confusion of existing hierarchies and truths. Korea’s modernity started with colonization, arriving slowly and filtered through Japan even before Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910. By the 1930s, the Korean experience of modernity via colonialism was filled with novelties, the greatest of which resulted from higher educational levels. For example, colonial modernity provided Korean young women with a modernized or Western-style education, but Korea’s ancient patriarchal Confucian worldview conflicted with the ideals that newly educated young women pursued—a contradiction illustrated perfectly in the life of the “New Woman” Na Hye-sŏk. The New Women were an anachronism in the colonial Korean context, where chastity was still widely considered a woman’s foremost virtue, and Korea was thus not ready for the new ideals that New Women signified (for example, marriage based on romantic love). The primary role of intellectuals as leaders of the nation in the colonial era was to be exemplars of the “modern.” Many colonial intellectuals had to submit to the Japanese or showed an ambivalent attitude toward colonial power because they were not courageous enough to endure oppression; they later typically regretted their role as titular leaders of a colonized country. In the late 1940s, Korean modernity was characterized by decolonization and its aftermath, which resulted in confessional writings by intellectuals. By the 1950s, Korea’s modernity was synonymous with Americanization. Postwar Korean literature from 1955 to 1960 was influenced by the militaristic culture that pervaded the sociocultural atmosphere that followed the Korean War and the subsequent stationing of American forces in South Korea. This included ideals of masculinity and ideological conflict, and thus it manifested itself as a nihilistic, existentialist modernism. (For example, the word yanggongju, literally, “Yankee princess,” refers to [End Page 158] Korean women who engaged in prostitution around American military camps and was popularized via Korean literature of this period.) Postcolonial South Korea was chaotic, with a government still unstable due to inadequate infrastructure. South Korea’s most influential and best-organized institution was the military, and the state ideology was the military ideology: anticommunism. However, during the Rhee regime, the nation simultaneously militarized and Americanized, and this led to social conflict. In the 1960s, exposure to Western culture—specifically, American culture via the presence of American troops and the system of Americanization that the Rhee regime followed—resulted in divergence from traditional hierarchical and gender roles and even challenged the patriarchal social order. However, although the American quasi-colonial presence in this period undermined tradition, it failed to introduce the redeeming qualities and ideals of American life such as openness and democracy; this is illustrated in the film The Stray Bullet. The author asks which other forms of modernity have become established in South Korea since the 1960s and how new forms of modernity...

Women, Gender, and Economic Crisis Revisited

AbstractA gender perspective is brought to bear on the global financial crisis and economic recession that began in 2008, and on the social effects of the crisis. References also are made to earlier crises to highlight the role played by gender in economic relations. The article offers a critique of the economic model, forms of economic decision-making, and capitalist hyper-masculinities that generated the present crisis, and calls for new thinking and new policies predicated on welfare and caregiving.

Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism. Susan J. Wolfson . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xix+430.

<i>Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism</i>. Susan J. Wolfson . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xix+430.