Male Opponents Research Articles

‘Beware, I am large and dangerous’ – human listeners can be deceived by dynamic manipulation of the indexical content of agonistic dog growls

Dishonest vocal signals about body size are rarely encountered, however, dogs are capable of modifying indexical information in their growls. This apparent acoustic body-size manipulation could be affected by the level of threat experienced by the dog. We tested whether this natural size manipulation actually affects how listeners assess the size of the dog, thus whether it could be considered as a successful indexical information manipulation. We requested human participants to assess dog growls, originally recorded when dogs encountered various ‘threatening strangers’ (of different sex, stature). The participants heard several sets of growl pairs, where they had to guess, which growl belonged to the ‘larger dog’. In the Control condition, dog growls originated from two different dogs in a pair; in the Test condition, growls of the same dog were presented pair by pair, always recorded in the presence of different threatening humans. Human listeners reliably picked the larger dog from two differently sized animals based on their growls alone. In the Test condition, participants thought that the dog was ‘larger’ when it was threatened by a female experimenter, and when the dog was growling at a larger sized human. We found that while growl length modulation was the main factor behind size-choice decisions in the case of female strangers, formant dispersion difference contributed the most when listeners chose which dog was the larger in the case of male opponents. Our results provide firsthand evidence of dogs’ functionally deceptive vocalizations towards humans, a phenomenon which has not been shown before in any interspecific scenario.

‘It's the party that counts’? The Rise of Labour and the Image of the Woman Politician at English Elections, c.1929–1950

AbstractThis article uses election addresses to consider how the early women parliamentary candidates sought to make their case to English voters. It then explores the insights that Mass Observation's election surveys offer into public attitudes to women politicians, and gender and political leadership more broadly, from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. While the pioneer female candidates argued that they should have more representatives at Westminster to better uphold the ‘woman's point of view’ this approach was gradually undermined from the 1920s onwards with the growth of programmatic politics led by Labour. Mass Observation found that voters claimed to focus more on which party had the best programme rather than the personalities of candidates. However, their findings also indicate that women candidates continued to face many additional prejudices which their male opponents did not.

Outside of the Old Boys Club? Gender Differences in Outside Groups’ Advertising Support for U.S. Senate Candidates

Since 2010, televised campaign ads have proliferated, raising questions about gender differences in the number of ads outside groups air. Assuming incumbent Democratic women and Democratic women with prior office-holding experience run with support from their party and interest groups, we expect Democratic-leaning groups air more favorable ads supporting Democrats in races that include experienced or incumbent Democratic women than they do in races that include experienced or incumbent Democratic men. Conversely, we assume Republican women receive less support from their party and interest groups. We expect outside groups air more favorable ads supporting Republicans in races featuring experienced or incumbent Republican men than races including experienced or incumbent Republican women. Given the potential for backlash to attack ads, we expect Democratic- and Republican-leaning groups air more ads in races including experienced or incumbent male opponents than in races that include experienced or incumbent female opponents. We test these hypotheses by focusing on 2010–2018 U.S. Senate races and combining original data with data from the Wesleyan Media Project, the U.S. Census, and the Cook Political Report. Democratic- and Republican-leaning groups both sponsor significantly fewer ads in races featuring experienced female Democratic candidates compared to races including experienced male Democratic candidates.

A hypothalamic pathway that suppresses aggression toward superior opponents.

Aggression is costly and requires tight regulation. Here we identify the projection from estrogen receptor alpha-expressing cells in the caudal part of the medial preoptic area (cMPOAEsr1) to the ventrolateral part of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) as an essential pathway for modulating aggression in male mice. cMPOAEsr1 cells increase activity mainly during male-male interaction, which differs from the female-biased response pattern of rostral MPOAEsr1 (rMPOAEsr1) cells. Notably, cMPOAEsr1 cell responses to male opponents correlated with the opponents' fighting capability, which mice could estimate based on physical traits or learn through physical combats. Inactivating the cMPOAEsr1-VMHvl pathway increased aggression, whereas activating the pathway suppressed natural intermale aggression. Thus, cMPOAEsr1 is a key population for encoding opponents' fighting capability-information that could be used to prevent animals from engaging in disadvantageous conflicts with superior opponents by suppressing the activity of VMHvl cells essential for attack behaviors.

Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters by Junko Thérèse Takeda

Reviewed by: Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters by Junko Thérèse Takeda Susan Mokhberi Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters. By junko thérèse takeda. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. Recently scholars have turned their attention to the impact Asia, and especially Persia and the Ottoman Empire, made in France prior to Montesquieu's Persian Letters.1 Junko Takeda's timely book takes off from this point in the early eighteenth century arguing that Persia continued to make a strong impact in France, shaping economics, military technology, and politics from the pre-Revolutionary era to Napoleon. Takeda unearths a truly global Enlightenment era in which Frenchmen watched events in Persia and responded, revealing the commercial and intellectual intertwining of Asian and European Empires. Takeda's method advances the field of global history by taking a microhistorical approach. She relates accounts of unexpected characters including merchant-diplomats, former gambling-house Madams, Armenian envoys, and Enlightenment figures. The book uncovers how Persian and French relations advanced through the contributions of these various marginalized people from across the Mediterranean world, far from the halls of Versailles and revolutionary chambers. The diverse cast of figures negotiated treaties, dealt in arms and commercial exchange, and spread Enlightenment and Revolutionary ideas from Asia to France. Chapter one draws on Takeda's extensive knowledge of the commercial politics of Marseille, the subject of her first book. Here, she explores the rise of the Fabre family, a powerful merchant family in Marseille who had ties to Versailles. She explains how the French monarchy selected one of the Fabre family members, despite inadequate experience and more qualified candidates, to become the official envoy to the Safavid Shah in 1705. The French court "rewarded [End Page 149] loyalty over ingenuity, talent or even wealth," thereby leading to chaotic results. Chapter two traces the 1705 embassy of Jean-Baptiste Fabre to Persia and the woman who accompanied him, Marie Petit, a former Madam and woman of questionable repute. Her role in French-Persian relations was most famously laid out in the 1950s by historian Laurence Lockhart.2 The French sources, written by Petit's male opponents discredited her as a hindrance to politics and marked her as a symbol of disorder. Takeda teases out Marie Petit's voice and salvages her side of the story thereby raising Petit from a marginal, tarnished figure to a role of importance in international politics. Chapter three traces continued attempts to forge a treaty between France and Persia in the early eighteenth century. Individuals, including a rich Armenian merchant, spearheaded efforts to supply Persia with arms against the opponents that encircled the Safavid empire. Takeda highlights the personal tragedy and struggles such individuals underwent to shape international relations. For instance, the Armenian merchant was one of the wealthiest merchants in Yerevan when he embarked on his commercial and diplomatic quest to Europe. He became Persia's first consul to France but after surviving the plague in Marseille and thirteen years of difficulties, he died in Marseille in ruins. Chapter four connects Enlightenment ideas of Revolution to events in Asia. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and others wrote about the turbulent transformations in government across Asia. Takeda carefully unpacks this vast Enlightenment literature on the political convulsions that shook Persia. In tune with the recent translation of Jürgen Osterhammel's essay on the impact of Nadir Shah, the Persian eighteenth-century conqueror who took over the weakened Safavid dynasty and established a vast but short-lived Asian empire, Takeda shows how discussions of Nadir Shah's rise and fall shaped the French conversation about revolution and notions of violence and human rights.3 Taking into account the vast literature on Persian revolutions, [End Page 150] Takeda convincingly shows that the causes of the French Revolution included discussions stretching from Persia and beyond, and therefore more global than previously imagined. Chapter five spotlights the oft-forgotten personality, dubbed the "other" Rousseau, Jean-François Rousseau, the cousin of Jean Baptiste. Raised in Persia, Jean-François was an advocate of the French Revolution and one of...

CONFLICT, TRAGEDY, AND INTERRACIALITY: BOB THOMPSON PAINTS VERGIL'S CAMILLA

In The Death of Camilla (1964), Black American painter Bob Thompson fascinates, disturbs, and provokes enduring questions about race in the United States. In this painting (Figure 1), multicolored nudes clash in battle around two figures frozen in a moment of anguish: a light-skinned female warrioress dying in the arms of a dark-hued male opponent. The power of this painting lies not only in its raw emotion, symbolism, and color, but also in Thompson's daring signification upon the story of Camilla from Vergil's Aeneid and on a seventeenth-century drawing by Nicolas Poussin. While a relatively ‘underknown’ artist, during his life Robert Louis Thompson (1937–1966) received extensive recognition for his compelling reconfigurations of the European old masters and their Classical (Greco-Roman) subjects. Thompson, according to his early biographer, Judith Wilson, may also be ‘the first American artist to put the nation's interracial sex life/sex fantasies on public view.’ In many of his works of reception, Thompson combines these two artistic preoccupations into compelling pieces that foreground tragic contradictions around interraciality in the United States. In his The Death of Camilla painting, I argue, Thompson expands upon the symbolic trajectory of Vergil's story and ‘colors’ Poussin in such a way as to re-present Camilla as collateral damage of the sort of nation building that necessitates interracial conflict.

Unwelcome Legacies: The Effects of Wardship on Widows in the English Midlands, 1616–1625

ABSTRACT When a tenant of Crown lands died leaving a minor heir, his widow became embroiled in litigation through the Court of Wards and Liveries to retain the custody of her child. This article investigates how women within the midland counties responded to the challenges presented to them by their husbands’ deaths between 1616 and 1625. It uncovers how widows fared at the hands of the court, how they fought to obtain the custody of their children, and how they responded to the pressures of debt. It explores the resistance they faced from male opponents, how they fashioned their arguments, and how their overtures were received in court. By investigating an almost untouched repository of material in The National Archives, London, it offers new insights into female litigation under James I whilst adding to ongoing scholarship about the role of women in the Westminster law courts in the early modern period.

Turkey’s First Female Auto Racing Champion: Samiye Cahit Morkaya

The aim of this study was to analyze the experience of Turkey’s first female auto racing champion Samiye Cahit Morkaya during the early Republican period in the context of efforts to construct Turkey’s modern women’s identity. Newspapers and magazines published between 1932 and 1935 when Samiye Cahit participated in auto racing, were analyzed. Morkaya came at the top by breaking her own records in all races in which she participated. Starting with the first race she entered in 1932, she was called the first lady driver, and her success was portrayed as elating in the media of the period. Her championship in 1933 following her wins against male opponents resulted in a court case. The records she broke in 1934 were presented in the newspapers of the period as a hallmark of the ambition, courage, talent, and bravery of Turkish women. The accident she experienced in the 1935 races led to the end of her racing career and permanent loss of function in one of her arms. Consequently, while Morkaya represented the Western – modern – image of a woman on the one hand, on the other hand she challenged the traditional image of a Turkish woman with her successes in breaking down gender stereotypes.

Gender and Candidate Communication: An Analysis of Televised Ads in the 2020 US Senate Races

Recent studies of the content of television ads of female versus male political candidates have shown that women and men are increasingly similar in their communication styles and strategies, with some notable exceptions. However, few studies examining gender and political ad content have focused exclusively on US Senate races, considered the influence of the candidates’ political party, or compared the messages of women running against female versus male opponents. This study examines 236 political ads—160 from mixed-gender and 76 from female–female—U.S. Senate races in 2020 for their verbal and visual content. Results show gendered and partisan differences in the issues emphasized and the tone used. Candidates were similar in the images emphasized. Female candidates were more balanced between formal and casual attire compared to previous election cycles. And candidates in mixed-gender races used different strategies than those in female–female contests as to the issues and political actors mentioned.

Individual Differences and Transfer of Visual Anticipation in Expert Female Field Hockey Goalkeepers.

Visual anticipation is vital for performance in several domains such as driving, military, and high-speed interceptive sports, as it enables performers to handle severe time constraints. There has been little investigation into individual differences of anticipation skill transfer within a domain, which can guide training of anticipation to improve performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate individual differences in the transfer of anticipation within a domain, specifically anticipation of the field hockey penalty corner drag-flick across different opponents. Eight female Australian international and national field hockey goalkeepers participated. Goalkeepers completed female and male opponent penalty corner drag-flick temporal occlusion tests that presented contextual defensive runner positioning relative to the penalty spot, drag-flicker kinematics, and ball flight. Drag-flick movement time and ball velocity were significantly different across female and male opponents confirming that a transfer continuum existed. Five goalkeepers could transfer integration of runner contextual and drag-flicker kinematic information to anticipate loose runs above chance from female to male opponent tests. None of the goalkeepers could transfer integration of contextual and kinematic information for the tight runs across female to male opponents. An individual differences approach with truly expert performers provided unique insights into the mechanism of anticipation transfer within a domain. The findings of this study contribute to theoretical and applied knowledge, which can guide the training of anticipation skill to prepare individuals for superior performance.

Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

Voters evaluate politicians not just by what they say, but also how they say it, via facial displays of emotions and vocal pitch. Candidate characteristics can shape how leaders use—and how voters react to—nonverbal cues. Drawing on role congruity expectations, we study how the use of and reactions to facial, vocal, and textual communication in political debates varies by candidate gender. Relying on full-length videos of four German federal election debates (2005–2017) and a minor party debate, we use video, audio, and text data to measure candidate facial displays of emotion, vocal pitch, and speech sentiment. Consistent with our expectations, Angela Merkel expresses less anger than her male opponents, but she is just as emotive in other respects. Combining these measures of emotional expression with continuous responses recorded by live audiences, we find that voters punish Merkel for anger displays and reward her happiness and general emotional displays.

Male Dominant Sport: The Challenges of Esports Female Athletes

This article discusses the challenges experienced by female athletes in esports. Esports is categorized as a male-dominated sport. Since most of the players are male, female athletes struggle to sustain their careers. A qualitative approach was used where ten women who were actively involved in esports were interviewed. The respondents selected through the purposive sampling method were active in esports, representing esports team/club, and involved in massively multiple online role-playing games (MMORPG). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis and presented descriptively and narratively. The findings indicated gender stereotyping women as not competitive at MMORPG, sexually explicit comments from male opponents, communication issues, especially with male players, and the perception that women are not suitable to play the extreme, aggressive and masculine type of online games. The game features are more significant to men compared to women, who are often associated with femininity. Indirectly, such impressions hamper the opportunity for women to be more active and progressive in esports.

Fossilized Gender Bias

No woman has everbeen elected President of the United States. Despite historic breakthroughs by female politicians, shattering the ultimate glass ceiling is still an elusive feat. The purpose of this study is to analyze the extent to which gender bias influences the U.S. presidential election process. Its aim is also to measure the sociolinguistic impact of negative stereotypes of women in the country’s political culture. In gathering the research, the study examined the 2016 U.S. presidential race which featured Hillary Clinton. The veteran public servant ran against a male opponent who had no political experience. Donald Trump’s stunning victory shocked the world. It also re-kindled a public dispute about systemic gender discrimination in U.S. politics. This research investigation is a descriptive analysis of gender-specific political debates and discourses featured in TV documentaries, news media coverage, as well as in YouTube videos. The inquiry also examines the impact of Hollywood movies that depict a fictional narrative on political gender bias, generating the question: “Is art imitating or reshaping life?” Evidence from the study points to fossilized cultural prejudice against female politicians who aspire to the nation’s highest levels of government. A fair and measured conclusion can also be drawn, which is that such embedded gender bias continues to reinforce outmoded norms, notions, and assumptions about the role of female politicians. But things could radically shift sooner than later. U.S. citizens get a chance to vote for or against a woman who is on the 2020 democratic ticket as presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate. If the democrats prevail, this female candidate, Kamala Harris, would be a heartbeat away from the most powerful political position in the world.

Steeled for the challenges: a critical discourse analysis of gendered news frames of Hillary Clinton in battleground coverage of the 2016 Democratic National Convention

ABSTRACTThis project employs framing theory to analyze the gender ideologies present in local coverage of the Democratic Party’s official nomination of Hillary Clinton in battleground counties. By applying framing theory, this study aims to uncover how journalists covered her bid to “win the day” over her male opponents, Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders and Republican nominee (and now president) Donald Trump. The study revealed that the ideological residue related to her “deviant” gender identity shaped journalistic reactions to her nomination as the first female major-party presidential candidate. It argues that it was not Clinton’s identity as the “feminist presidential candidate” but rather her expertise in gender code-switching that encouraged journalists to write flatteringly about her.

Fighting Gendered Battles: On Being a Woman in a Contemporary Gaming Community

This scholarly personal narrative (Nash 2004) draws on the author’s experiences as a woman in a male-dominated gaming community. In such a space, being a woman who plays the game problematizes notions of gender for both the author and for her most-often male opponents. When playing the game, she operates in a liminal space between expert and outsider because of her gender identity. At the same time, her gender troubles her men opponents. She discusses her struggles for acceptance in this community and how her notions and enactment of gender have changed as a result of her experiences. In the article, the author explains the social norms of the game and the demographic breakdown of the game’s players; to accomplish this, the author shares stories from her time as a player.

Gordāfarid, Penthesilea and Athena: the identification of a Greek motif in Ferdowsī’s Šāh-nāma and its possible association with Hellenistic art in the East

The description of the duel between Gordāfarid and Sohrāb in Ferdowsī’s Šāh-nāma carries structural resemblances to the depiction of Penthesilea’s fight with Achilles. In the course of combat, the armour of both female warriors is damaged and their true identities are revealed after being defeated by their male opponents. In case of the Amazon from the Greek tale, the sudden revelation of her womanly appeal takes place after her death, whereas Gordāfarid survives the duel, and even manages to go free. A key factor in Ferdowsī’s description is the woman’s “Greek” helmet, a factor that suggests Ferdowsī borrowed from the Greek story, and also made a reference to Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic depictions of armoured goddesses of the type of Athena, who was widely known across the Ghaznavid territory, where Ferdowsī’s work was written and presented.

Образи пекельної машини та чавунного Командора у романі Гордія Брасюка «Донна Анна».

«Donna Anna» (1929) by Hordiy Brasiuk (the representative of Executed Renaissance) is virtually unexamined novel. Therefore, in the article, the novel is analyzed in the aspect of the semantics of the infernal machine and through the conflict between two outlooks of male opponents – the apologist of the industry, the engineer-inventor and the servant of Muses, the composer and the musician. It has been defined that besides the problems of sex, love, desire, marital morality and betrayal presented in the novel, one more clearly stands out – the collision of two types of creativity, two approaches to it. These types are embodied by male heroes – man of action, Homo faber, engineer Nick Bachinsky (Cast Iron Commander) on the one hand and man of art and theatrical bohemian, Homo ludens, composer Volodymyr Shalvia (embodiment of musical element and freedom of passion, Don Juan) from another. The first type represents the avant-garde hero – the newest iron god, the conqueror of energy and the earth's interior (the sociocultural type of proletkult and futurism). The second is a type of modernist hero-artist, relativist, and immoralist. And the image of the infernal machine – the invention that destroys its inventor – plays a leading part in solving such an ideological confrontation. Thus, numerous sound, color and pyrotechnical details in the description of the infernal machine in action, as well as the expressive reaction of the viewers and the imaginary death of the engineer are preceded by a plot and are semantically related to the episode of default – the death of the inventor during the experiment. This scene of machine in action seems to suggest the fate of the newest Commander in the epoch of iron cast. In the end, life defeat is experienced by each of the representatives of the outlined love triangle. The Cast Iron Commander perished by his own invention (even if it happened with direct participation of Don Juan), his invention is seized to others, and his cast-iron figure arises like mute reproach only to his former wife, and he is unable to punish the main abuser. Freedomloving Don Juan becomes a mere vegetable as if paying for the combination of genius and crime in his own person. And soon he completely loses his creative inspiration after that, as Anna destroyed his opera, and Talya made an abortion. Donna Anna is crestfallen, reconciling to the role of the cook.

The Napoleon Complex: When Shorter Men Take More

Inspired by an evolutionary psychological perspective on the Napoleon complex, we hypothesized that shorter males are more likely to show indirect aggression in resource competitions with taller males. Three studies provide support for our interpretation of the Napoleon complex. Our pilot study shows that men (but not women) keep more resources for themselves when they feel small. When paired with a taller male opponent (Study 1), shorter men keep more resources to themselves in a game in which they have all the power (dictator game) versus a game in which the opponent also has some power (ultimatum game). Furthermore, shorter men are not more likely to show direct, physical aggression toward a taller opponent (Study 2). As predicted by the Napoleon complex, we conclude that (relatively) shorter men show greater behavioral flexibility in securing resources when presented with cues that they are physically less competitive. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

“I’m not male, not white, want to start there?”: Olivia Chow and Identity Work in Toronto’s 2014 Mayoral Election

ABSTRACTThis article uses sociological theories of identity work to extend the research on political leadership. Focusing on Toronto mayoral candidate Olivia Chow—a high-profile progressive politician, an instant frontrunner, and a stark contrast to Mayor Rob Ford’s populist conservative agenda—this article argues that Chow was required to negotiate and mobilize identity in ways that were different from her white male opponents. Based on an intersectional analysis of participant observation in twenty mayoral debates, this article offers three concepts that illuminate forms of identity work on the campaign trail: dispositional requirements, ideological alignment, and political compensatory labour. This article illustrates that the racist and sexist terrain of politics requires a complex set of decisions and actions on the part of marginalized candidates.

The role of ultraviolet coloration in intrasexual interactions in a colonial fish

Ultraviolet (UV) coloration varies drastically across species and likely plays fundamentally different roles in facilitating social communication depending on the ecological or social context. While it is well known that UV coloration serves important social functions in species that school and flock, far less is known about the role of UV coloration in group-territorial and colonial species, where individuals have long-lasting and potentially cooperative relationships with many neighbours. We measured spectral reflectance in Neolamprologus pulcher, a group-living, colonial Tanganyikan cichlid fish, and found prominent UV coloration on both sexes. We manipulated the visibility of this UV coloration using a clear UV-blocking filter or a UV-transparent filter during behavioural contests across a barrier. We found that trials between similarly sized same-sex opponents involved significantly lower frequencies of aggression when opponents' UV coloration was obscured compared to when opponents' UV coloration was visible. As aggression is typically high between similarly sized same-sex individuals in N. pulcher, this reduction in aggression suggests that UV coloration aids in motivating individuals to engage in conspecific intrasexual interactions. We found no difference in aggression in trials between familiar and unfamiliar opponents in female–female and male–female trials, regardless of the presence of UV coloration. In male–male trials, we found significantly higher frequencies of aggression in contests between familiar male opponents than in contests between unfamiliar male opponents, but only when UV coloration was visible. Collectively, these results suggest that UV coloration is important for intrasexual interactions and prompts further investigation as to the benefits of having visual signals of communication extend into the ultraviolet spectrum.