Gender Politics Research Articles

‘Whose Place of Speech?’ Brazil’s Afro- and Queer-Centric YouTube Channels and the Decentralization of TV Globo’s Telenovela Discourse

For several decades, Brazil’s Grupo Globo, which controls radio, TV, and newspaper, served as the hegemonic voice controlling the audio, visual, and narrative dimensions of social phenomena that formed and informed social, political, and cultural attitudes among Brazilians. Of all their divisions, none has been more influential than the TV Globo network. Lately, with the popularization of free access to digital media, such as those offered by YouTube, TV Globo’s viewership has substantially declined. This paper discusses the concept of controlling images to analyze examples of TV Globo’s constructed visual image of the hypersexualized Afro-Brazilian female body in the network’s soap operas. It also analyzes cases of TV Globo’s constructed narrative over another subaltern Brazilian group: the LGBTQIA+ community. Recently, Afro-Brazilian and Queer-centric YouTube channels have attracted subscribers by emphasizing content centered on negritude, gender politics, and place of speech while deconstructing and de-normalizing Eurocentric and patriarchal controlling images. Against examples of TV Globo’s normative discourse of the past decades, the YouTube channels discussed in this paper represent alternative mediums for agency, visibility, and unbiased representations of gender and racial identities in Brazil.

Radical Feminism and Family Law: Addressing Gender Bias, Reforming, and Beyond

This research undertakes a comprehensive exploration of reproductive rights and abortion within the broader context of gender politics, with a keen emphasis on the influence of radical feminism. Reproductive rights, extending beyond mere health and medical concerns, intersect with societal, ethical, religious, and political dimensions. Through this lens, the study investigates global reproductive policies and the international legal stance on abortion. The ascendancy of radical feminism and its critiques against historically entrenched patriarchal structures form a core component of this discourse. The article further delves into the legal histories and controversies surrounding both reproductive and abortion rights, probing into their evolving legal frameworks, international regulations, and the multifaceted debates linked to their acceptability. Through the interplay of these elements, the research ultimately converges on the broader implications these topics have on global human rights, womens socio-economic standings, and the fluid realm of gender dynamics. The overarching goal is to shed light on these intricate relationships, contributing to a more equitable and inclusive understanding of evolving gender politics.

Intellectual Property Challenges in AI-Generated Art

This research undertakes a comprehensive exploration of reproductive rights and abortion within the broader context of gender politics, with a keen emphasis on the influence of radical feminism. Reproductive rights, extending beyond mere health and medical concerns, intersect with societal, ethical, religious, and political dimensions. Through this lens, the study investigates global reproductive policies and the international legal stance on abortion. The ascendancy of radical feminism and its critiques against historically entrenched patriarchal structures form a core component of this discourse. The article further delves into the legal histories and controversies surrounding both reproductive and abortion rights, probing into their evolving legal frameworks, international regulations, and the multifaceted debates linked to their acceptability. Through the interplay of these elements, the research ultimately converges on the broader implications these topics have on global human rights, womens socio-economic standings, and the fluid realm of gender dynamics. The overarching goal is to shed light on these intricate relationships, contributing to a more equitable and inclusive understanding of evolving gender politics.

Female Convict Scorpion: production context, gender politics, and cinematic excesses in a Japanese women-in-prison film series

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Female Convict Scorpion, a Japanese women-in-prison film series (1972–1973), which exemplifies studio-produced exploitation cinema. The series is influenced by the contemporaneous yakuza cycle and its anti-authoritarian social realist agenda. Produced during a time of rapid political-economic-social change in the country, the Female Convict Scorpion series combines exploitative content – the display of nudity, violence, and sensational subjects – with an underlying feminist sensibility, a mixture that embraces the ambiguities of commercial genre cinema. Through close textual analysis, this research explains the contradictions in this women-in-prison series by 1) providing evidence of the female gaze and the subversive narrative tropes, which reveals the feminist subtext in these films, and 2) examining the stylistic and narrative effects of cinematic excesses. This article, thus, re-evaluates these popular genre films as in a time capsule, documenting the significance of their expression of gender politics in 1970s Japan through the distinctive production context and presentation of cinematic excesses.

Religion and Intimacy

Michel Foucault has famously argued that, since the counter-Reformation, the modern West has been preoccupied with extracting truth from sex, above all, the truth about power and the human subject. Africa has long been waging its own battles over the politics of gender, sexuality, personhood, and power, a conflict in which religion has played a pivotal role, abetting and sometimes challenging established modes of governance. In recent times, this relationship has become ever more agonistic. In many parts of the continent, religious authorities have mounted puritanical crusades against nonconforming gender and sexual practices. But faith has also been mobilized to offer refuge to the persecuted. How might these issues of identity, exile, and redemption speak to more general transformations in the nature of religious life in the current moment, in Africa and beyond?

NEWSWATCH: Gendered Politics at Work and Play

NEWSWATCH: Gendered Politics at Work and Play

:Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942–1953

:<i>Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942–1953</i>

Gender Politics in the Roe vs. Wade Era: Female Leaders and the Prevalence of Abortions

Gender Politics in the Roe vs. Wade Era: Female Leaders and the Prevalence of Abortions

‘Where wealth and power and blood (still) reign as worshipped gods!’ A farewell to Lungisile Ntsebeza

This article is a subjective account of the patterns of polarisation in KwaZulu-Natal. It explores such polarisations in gender politics, livelihoods procurement in the cities and countryside, and in cultural and normative tensions. The article traces how the new ‘kingdom of money’ mobilises the aspirations of an African middle class in its belief in upward mobility. These polarisations had led to violence even before the July 2021 riots in Greater Durban.

Nahua Responses to the Matlazahuatl or “Mystery” Plague of 1805

Abstract In 1805, the pueblo of Tultitlan fell victim to an ostensibly mysterious new plague. After a year of curative treatment, it spread across what is now Mexico State, prompting urban officials to authorize the use of smallpox vaccination—an intervention that elicited fierce debate steeped in tensions around Indigeneity, religion, and parental rights. Drawing on newspapers and other colonial records, the article examines how different Nahua families responded, centering their concerns and expectations—of immunization and religious and public health officials—to reframe critical questions about the gender and racial politics of vaccine history and its contested relationship to colonial rule.

Kurdish gender politics: Funeral ceremonies of female fighters

AbstractThe funeral ceremonies of female fighters are a relatively recent phenomenon that gained popularity in Kurdish politics in Turkey in the early 2000s and after the 2011 uprisings in Syria. As a sociocultural rite, these funerals have become a spectacular site, a political means, and a symbolic investment serving an intersectional agenda pursuing Kurdish national and gender‐egalitarian aspirations simultaneously. The funerals provide a ground for mobilizing women to claim symbolic authority in public and inscribe women as nation builders to the notion of nation. Women undertaking this intersectional task through national discourse garnered significant academic interest in the national dimension of the ceremonies. However, the emphasis on the national aspect overshadowed the gendered strategy the ceremonies signify. This article investigates the gender aspect of funerals to draw attention to the use of national discourse to subvert patriarchal dynamics within society, highlighting the role of national struggle in women's pursuit of liberation from social oppression. Therefore, it speaks to the scholarship focused on gender in nationalist endeavors and revisits the discussions on gender‐nation relations by focusing on national discourse instrumentalization serving the gender agenda. The analysis reveals the intricate dynamics between gender and nation and how they intersect in pursuing women's liberation.

Contesting Subjectivity: A Posthuman Perspective in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of The Flood

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the anthropocentric position in which human being assumed itself as the forerunner of the civilization and to rest, whether it is nature or any form of life, he believed, as a subject of domination. Feminist school of criticism according to Black feminist Kimberlé W. Crenshaw identifies patriarchy as one of these structures which dehumanizes females on the basis of Intersectionality. The intersectional positions, according to her, divide human beings from one another based on their identity of colour, gender, religion and so on. In this context, the paper studies Margaret Atwood’s representation of intersectional positions in the novel, The Year of the Flood(2009) where she categorically prompts on the issue of gender politics on one part and on the other she hints upon decoding the politics of subjective identity through the genetically modified Crakers who appears to be giving the reflection of what Donna Haraway calls as ‘cyborg’. The Crakers, in the novel, are genetically modified humanoids that indicate human beings as a reflection of engineered machines which gets swiped away by pandemic called “waterless Flood”. The paper demystifies idea of identity politics through the concept of ‘cyborg myth’. Cyborg myth according to Donna Haraway, terms human as evolutionary form in which, “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs” (“A Cyborg Manifesto” 150). In order to highlight the uncanny politics of identity she takes charge to redefine the social functioning of human beings through the scientific progress in which the construction and reconstruction of human identity is played out.

Radikaal versus beskeie: Die vroegste vrouestemme teen patriargie in die Suid-Afrikaanse literatuursisteem

This article explores similar social experiences of South Africa in the English and Afrikaans literary systems respectively. It investigates the reflection of patriarchy as an ideological presupposition of South African society in the earliest writings of two South African writers, Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) and Maria Elizabeth Rothmann (1875-1975) (known as M. E. R.). In doing this, it offers a discussion of how these women's involvement in South African politics sought to address the situation that political rule during the late 1800s and early 1900s created for South African women in the broader context of the South African War. The practice of gender politics as a response to these social experiences is discussed, while the contribution of Schreiner's radical voice to the stereotyping of the Afrikaner woman is compared to the modest voice with which M. E. R. fought for the rights of these stereotyped women. The article concludes that the nature of, and similarities and differences between their feminist voices determined Schreiner's and M. E. R.'s contribution to their respective literary systems, as well as their contribution to English and Afrikaans prose.

MISOGYNY, SURVIVORSHIP, AND BELIEVABILITY ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS: EMERGING TECHNIQUES OF ABUSE, RADICALIZATION, AND RESISTANCE

On 18th May 2022, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg declared “the death of #MeToo” (Goldberg, 2022). The papers in this panel examine this claim and wrestle with its potential implications. Drawing on case studies and data from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, we evaluate the current state of play in the online push-and-pull between feminist speech about gender-based violence and its attendant misogynistic backlashes. Using a range of different qualitative methods, these papers unpack the orientations towards visibility and transparency that urge survivors into ever-increasing degrees of exposure online; the way that digital media are reconfiguring the gender and racial politics of doubt and believability; the algorithmic pathways through which boys and men are ushered towards increasingly more radical “manosphere” content and communities; and how the problem of “believability” as it relates to testimonies of assault is being complicated and compounded online by networked misogynoir. The result is an ambivalent portrait of the afterlife of #MeToo on the internet, and some important questions for networked feminist activism going forward.

Political Gender Violence Against Women in Brazil

Political gender violence against women is a specific form of violence that occurs in the political context, characterized by the use of gender stereotypes and prejudices to limit women’s access to spaces of political power. This form of violence has serious consequences for democracy, security, and economic and social development. To tackle political gender-based violence against women, it is necessary to adopt effective measures to prevent and punish it, as well as to promote gender equality and the full participation of women in politics and public life. Promoting education and awareness about gender equality and creating support networks for women involved in politics are some of the actions that can be adopted to combat this form of violence and build a more just and egalitarian society. This article aims to discuss political gender violence against women in Brazil. The type of research to be carried out in this work was a Literature Review, in which books, dissertations and scientific articles were consulted.

Respon Perempuan Milenial dalam Wacana Legalisasi Poligami di Aceh

The discourse on the legalization of polygamy in Aceh, which is contained in the Family Qanun, has become one of the issues that has generated pros and cons among the community. For the proponents and those who agree, legalizing polygamy is considered capable of minimizing the practice of nikah sirri and illegal polygamy. However, those who oppose it feel that this discourse is not an effective solution and instead creates new problems. This research focuses on the responses of Acehnese millennial women and their involvement in the discourse of legalizing polygamy in Aceh. Through a qualitative approach and literature study analyzed through gender politics theory and all conceptions, the research results were obtained: 1) 75% of informants strongly rejected the discourse on legalizing polygamy in Aceh because they considered that this plan would not be able to solve the problem of siri marriage or guarantee the rights of women and children as promised. Legalization of polygamy is considered to normalize polygamy and this further distorts the position of women in the family, 2) The involvement of women in bureaucracy and decision-making, especially millennials, is still very minimal, so in terms of their involvement in the discourse of legalizing polygamy in Aceh, it is still very lacking.

“Imagining Differently”: Tales of Tarot and the Fantastic in Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman

The essay discusses the role of the Tarot and the fantastic in Shirley Jackson’s novel Hangsaman (1951). As a female writer in mid-century America, Jackson uses elements of mysticism and fantasy genre as a means of interrogating the social order and gender politics of her times, but also to undermine the official patriarchal discourse and open new spaces of female experience. By blurring the boundaries between external and internal worlds, and by employing elements of the occult, the author shows reality and reason as arbitrary constructs and draws attention to other ways of meaning making. In contrast to the formal discourse and traditional science, Tarot images and its complex symbolism foreground “women’s ways of knowing” and offer an alternative feminine language beyond official systems of communication.

Taking Part in Transnational Martyrdom: Construction of Interdenominational and Interreligious Relations in Lithuanian Christian Persecution Discourse

The paper presents an analysis of the discursive construction of Christianity and interdenominational and interreligious relations in the Christian persecution discourse of Lithuanian Catholic anti-genderist groups. The analysis is based on a case study of the discourse developed by Tomas Viluckas in his news portal, Laikmetis (laikmetis.lt), which was operationalised by the Christian Professional Union. The analysis shows that not only does religion have an influence on gender politics, but current debates on gender politics in broader society also shape religion and interreligious relations. Public debates on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention in Lithuania fuelled the perceived relevance of the idea of Christian persecution. This discourse highlighted the multidenominational nature of Christianity and challenged the dominant vision of the national Catholic Church as the sole defender of what is imagined as the traditional Lithuanian family, even if the hierarchy of religious communities in Lithuania features the Roman Catholic Church at the top.

Religious Voices Against “Gender Ideology” in the Discourse on the Ratification of the Istanbul Convention in Latvian and Lithuanian Media

Religion plays a public role in gender politics in a variety of ways. In public discussions, religious actors often oppose gender as a concept based on social construction and imposed by what they call “gender ideology.” Concerns that this “ideology” could hijack the legal discourse is a common basis of their argumentation in the discussions on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. This paper presents the main results of the analysis of Lithuanian and Latvian secular and religious media coverage of the Istanbul Convention between 2011 and 2021. Both countries have signed but not ratified the Convention. The analysis shows that actors linked to religious organisations entered the mass media discourse by presenting arguments against the ratification of the Convention, which overlap with and support the opinions expressed by conservative political actors. These arguments are based on the idea that the Istanbul Convention is a threat to the future legal support of the natural rights of men and women, their natural roles and traditional and Christian values. The media discourse and the arguments used are similar in both countries, but the discursive strategies of religious and political actors differ. In Lithuania, where the Catholic Church is supported by tradition, religious actors are more often and more directly involved in the public debate than in Latvia. Nevertheless, in both countries, the religious voices analysed contributed to the rise of antigenderist discourse in the post-secular public sphere and to the politicisation of religion.

The Nehanda mythology: Dialectics of gender, history and religion in Zimbabwean literature

Recently, the government of Zimbabwe unveiled a newly constructed statue of the esteemed spirit medium and liberation icon who intrepidly fought against the British imperialism. The distinguished heroine is passionately known as Mbuya Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana. The lexical item, ‘Mbuya’ in Shona language literally means grandmother. This study examines the ways in which the spectres of religion, historiography, gender and national politics find expression in often contested state narratives of Mbuya Nehanda and in selected Zimbabwean fictional writings. Foucault’s theorisation of socio-political practices and subjectification as sites of power, together with the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and bell hooks’ feminist thought of ‘talking back’, provide provocative insights about regimes of power that could be more edifying in the interlocking discursive terrain of the African cosmology, frequently disputed archeology of historical memory, socio-political relations, which are noticeable in discourses and gender politics. The study interrogates whether the Nehanda grand narrative is told by politicians as the revolutionary story of all citizens or not. If not, what alternative versions are proffered in selected Yvonne Vera and NoViolet Bulawayo’s literary texts? Arguably, the mythology of Nehanda in the chosen literary texts locates women as agents of revolution thereby generating semantic dissonance in the Zimbabwean context, which is largely considered as land of the Fathers.Contribution: The study situates the Nehanda narrative within contested terrains of national history, gender and religion in Zimbabwe’s transitional politics and literature. It concludes that in Vera and Bulawayo’s writings, the Nehanda narrative is deployed to interject significations of woman (hood) and nation (hood) which seek to marginalise some sections of the society. The dissonances embedded in the Nehanda narrative produce a dialoguing space that’ talks back’ and rebuts single storytelling.