Misogynistic Discourses Research Articles

AIDS e identidade em "O tribunal da quinta-feira"

Este artigo apresenta uma análise da obra O tribunal da quinta-feira, de Michel Laub, publicada em 2016, com o intuito de perceber como o narrador (e protagonista) conta a sua própria história, como ela está imbricada com a própria história da AIDS no Brasil e o que as suas relações pessoais nos dizem sobre a sua identidade como homem cisheterossexual. O relato do narrador José Victor evoca uma espécie de “genealogia da AIDS” como forma de dar sentido às suas experiências de vida, em especial as sexuais. Apesar de crítico em relação à estigmatização das pessoas infectadas com o HIV e à homofobia, José não poupa as mulheres em seu entorno de discursos misóginos, disfarçados de senso de humor. Além disso, estão em foco questões como a heteronormatividade, a sociedade disciplinar e a pornografia. Para pensar as questões trazidas por essa narrativa foram utilizados principalmente os seguintes autores: Perlongher (1987), Bourdieu (1996), Foucault (1999), Sontag (2007) e Rich (2010).

A Love That Reforms: Improving Gender Relations by Contesting Typologies of Women in La Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan and L’Heptaméron 10 and 42

This article examines how two texts by Marguerite de Navarre contest the tendency in courtly and ecclesiastical literature to reduce women to typologies based on sexuality, spirituality, and notions of virtue. In place of simplified typologies, Marguerite’s writings can be read as depicting women’s multidimensional personhood as they strive to live out a sincere Christian faith in a society that fixates on their sexuality. Ultimately, this study argues that when read together, La Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan and L’Heptaméron 10 and 42 suggest the need for women to develop a practical brand of Christian wisdom that will help them to reform both gender relations and patriarchal institutions, thereby replacing misogynistic discourses and behavioural patterns with respect for women’s humanity.

Reception and revision of women-related translation paratexts: South Korean cases

ABSTRACT In the most recent feminist movement in South Korea, women challenged misogynist discourses in various ways. They made vicious comments about those who created and disseminated misogynistic discourses. They also strongly demanded a revision of misogynistic texts and boycotted cultural products in which women were described inappropriately. Against this backdrop, the present study examines misogynistic paratexts of translations published in South Korea to show how gender ideology could affect the reception and revision of paratexts and how closely translations and paratexts could be interrelated in a feminist context. The paratexts examined in this article are (1) a translator’s postface, (2) a subtitled trailer, (3) transcreated movie posters, and (4) promotional web-texts for a localised mobile game. These paratexts were strongly criticised and revised in a way that reflected particular gender perspectives. The article concludes with brief discussion about paratext-readers, paratext-creators, and relations between paratexts and translations.

Translators, translations, and paratexts in South Korea’s gender conflicts

ABSTRACT In recent years, South Korea has witnessed an unprecedented wave of feminism. Many women have staged demonstrations against deep-seated patriarchal practices and attacked men’s sexuality online in a provocative way. In addition, they have avidly read a wide range of feminist books and shared their gendered experiences in various internet forums. Against this backdrop, this study aims to show how translations and paratexts have been shaped, received, and used in South Korea’s transition to a gender-conscious society. For this purpose, the study reviews three recent gender-related events/phenomena. First, it examines three types of paratexts in translations of feminist books (book titles, cover images, and translators’ prefaces) to reveal what ideologies are most prominent in the translation paratexts. Second, it explores the parodic appropriations of misogynistic terms and discourses, with an emphasis on ‘mirroring’. Third, it introduces political controversies over Korean translations of the terms gender equality and misogyny to show an ideological fault line between two gender groups. This article concludes with brief comments about the constructive effects of translations and paratexts on South Korea’s gender awareness.

Crítica y ¿defensa? de las mujeres en un «Sermón» satírico novohispano prohibido por la Inquisición (1795)

El artículo analiza el discurso misógino y los recursos satíricos del Sermón con­tra las mujeres que circuló manuscrito hacia finales del siglo xviii, el cual fue denunciado ante la Inquisición de México en 1795, así como los argumentos con los que los teólogos designados por los inquisidores como calificadores decidieron sugerir su prohibición. El objetivo consiste en determinar si el discurso de la Iglesia, representado en este caso por la opinión de los calificadores e inquisidores, propone argumentos en defensa de las mujeres y, en su caso, cuáles y de qué tipo son.

Territories of Contested Womanhood: Pussyhats, the Pachamama, and Embodying Resistance in the Era of Hashtag Feminism

In response to a recent surge of openly misogynistic political discourses at the highest levels of government, a vibrant wave of hashtag feminism across the Americas evidences women’s widespread concerns over their bodily and territorial rights. Engaging Twitter and Facebook as digital archives-of-the-present, in conjunction with ethnographic interviews and surveys conducted in Peru and in the United States, we analyze protest symbols in two high-profile women’s rights movements: the United States #WomensMarch and the Peruvian #NiUnaMenos March. For Native women in both movements, the land grabs perpetrated by state and corporate actors factored as heavily into their resistance motivations as did their concerns over bodily rights and reproductive justice, which were the central concerns of non-Native women respondents. In the United States, the majority of protesters used the pussyhat as an organizing principle to react against politicians’ allusions to the physical abuse of women and their policy-driven threats to reproductive choice; meanwhile, some Native women donned the warbonnet scarf to recognize their intersectional oppressions under Donald Trump. In the Peruvian context, women across the nation took to city streets with blood red paint dripping down their thighs to provoke social memory of a recent era of forced sterilizations under Alberto Fujimori. In the Andean highlands, Aymara and Quechua women invoked the Pachamama, or Earth Mother, as a vibrant ally to aid in their battle against threats to their bodily sovereignty and the ongoing destruction of indigenous landscapes. Within these two hashtag movements, we find a pattern of mainstream communications that emphasize body as territory, while indigenous protest symbols focus not only on who is being grabbed—but where.

Shakespeare’s Othello and The Romance of Antar: The Politics of Racism and Self-Fashioning

ABSTRACTThis article makes use of two approaches to examine the misogynist and racist discourses in Shakespeare’s Othello (1604). I will read the play alongside a Palestinian intertext, the Romance of Antar (525–608), in order to illuminate the ways in which traditional Palestinian culture can be more liberal than that of early modern England. The racial discourse that the Romance of Antar embodies enables me to scrutinize this discourse in Othello. While Antar reiterates his otherness without self-contempt, I assert that Othello’s internalisation of the racial discourse leads to his self-degradation which he projects onto Desdemona. In addition, I will present a psychoanalytic reading of Othello which, perhaps more than any other critical approach, can expose uncomfortable truths about the ways in which hidden same-sex desires and loyalties challenge the heterosexual marriage of Desdemona and Othello. I argue that Othello’s projection of the racist and misogynist discourse that Iago breathes into his ears onto Desdemona and his eventual murder of her are signs of Othello’s defeat and loss of self-respect. Likewise, many Palestinians project their verbal and physical humiliation by the Israeli occupation onto Palestinian women, playing the role of the colonial power in the domestic sphere.

Diskurs o nasilju prema ženama u srpskim onlajn medijima - dominantne komunikacijske strategije

This research aims to identify dominant communication strategies which are being used by the media to shape the topic of violence against women in Serbia. The media discourse on violence against women is the subject of this investigation, and it is located within: (1) media articles published in online editions of daily newspapers, (2) supplementary media text such as readers' comments on online news-portals and (3) post and comments on the Twitter social network (tweets). The first part of the research systematizes the main characteristics of media reporting on violence against women in Serbia that was present within last five years, which is accompanied by a review of relevant literature. The second part of the article presents the empirical findings on the conducted research which is based on an adequate sample which covers the first two months of the year 2019. The research hypothesis - which states that there is a difference between the discourse concepts utilized by traditional and social media when it comes to the subject of violence against women, as social media content is created outside of the classical editorial bounds - was tested using the discourse analysis and content analysis methods. The research specifically concentrates on verbal violence, and in that sense the research exemplifies how the recent phenomenon of open social network communication, which promotes the freedom of speech, produces the kind of communication that correlates with the misogynistic discourse that is embedded within a particular society. The following communication strategies were identified: the promotion and legitimization of misogyny as a form of public discourse; astroturfing; condemnation of misogyny as a form of public discourse; Ad hominem, and the political instrumentalization of the topic of violence against women.

Assessing online misogyny: Perspectives from sociology and feminist media studies

AbstractScholarly and lay publications have highlighted increasing online misogyny. We review the dominant, cross‐disciplinary analyses and conceptualizations of cisnormative, heterosexist, misogynistic discourses. From feminist media scholarship, we highlight four terms intended to describe acts of online misogyny: online sexual harassment, gendertrolling, e‐bile, and disciplinary rhetoric. We then review the nascent sociological concept of virtual manhood acts (VMA) and situate it within the broader context of critical gender theory. VMA use the tools of technologically facilitated misogyny; they occur in online social spaces and, using textual and visual cues to signal a masculine self, enforce hegemonic gender norms, oppress women, and keep men “in the box.” VMA align with the interactionist view of gender as action and emphasize that a physical body is not needed to signal manhood. The concept of virtual manhood acts acknowledges that women are the primary victims of online oppression without obscuring the problematic practices of men that are central to this subjugation.

AS FEIURAS FÍSICA E MORAL FEMININAS EM CANTIGAS DE ESCÁRNIO E MALDIZER DE AFONSO X

Estuda a descrição feminina em três cantigas de escárnio e maldizer do rei e trovador medieval Afonso X, fundamentado em estudos interdisciplinares: crítico-literários, filológicos e histórico-culturais. Partindo de uma investigação histórica sobre a misoginia medieval, analisa nas cantigas as descrições que escarnecem as mulheres por sua feiura física ou moral. Identifica que a literatura satírica afonsina, embora lúdica, se configura como um discurso misógino, o qual, ao zombar a aparência ou a conduta das mulheres satirizadas, atuava como um instrumento de denúncia e de regulação da conduta feminina na sociedade medieval peninsular. Tais descrições oportunizam uma reflexão acerca da condição feminina e das imposições estéticas e comportamentais a que as mulheres ainda hoje estão sujeitas.

Systemic misogyny exposed: Translating Rapeglish from the Manosphere with a Random Rape Threat Generator

Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically distinctive it resembles a new dialect or language. Much of this ‘Rapeglish’ is produced by members of an informal alliance of men’s groups online dubbed the ‘Manosphere’. As both a cyberhate researcher and cyberhate target, I have studied as well as contributed to feminist responses to Rapeglish. In 2016, for instance, I helped build a Random Rape Threat Generator (RRTG) – a computer program that splices, shuffles around, and re-stitches in novel combinations fragments of real-life Rapeglish to illustrate the formulaic, machine-like, and impersonal nature of misogynist discourse online. This article uses Yuri Lotman’s ideas about intra- and inter-cultural conflict involving something akin to the translation of a foreign language to frame the RRTG as one example of the way women are ‘talking back’ both to and with Rapeglish (the latter involving appropriations and subversions of the original discourse).

Screen Image Of Muslim Women In The Popular Post-9/11 Films On War On Terror

The purpose of this study is to deconstruct the screen image of Muslim women in the post- 9/11films on American war on terror. The data was drawn from four popular films (i.e., American Sniper-2014, Jarhead 2: Field of Fire-2014, Zero Dark Thirty- 2012 and Body of Lies-2008) depicting the post 9/11American war on terror in the Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Oman, and Syria (henceforth ‘the Muslim society’). The study built its theoretical foundation by drawing from discourse analysis, critical theory and deconstruction. It is observed that social reality projected in the selected films hinges on different discursive practices manifested through linguistic styles, actions, objects, settings, graphic illustrations and sound tracks. In addition to the identification of the Muslim women in the oppressive discourses, the study unlocks some hidden meanings by acknowledging their professional contributions in the social institutions. The Western Caucasian women, usually empowered to exercise their rights, present a huge contrast to the Muslim women who are dangerously marginalized mostly if not always by the abrogation of rights. The study suggests that the representation of educated and professional women along with those who are oppressed can be a powerful strategy to resist misogynist discourse prevailing in the Muslim society.

Global Gay and Soviet Queen: Polish Transformation and Discourses of Homosexual Gender Variance

The paper discusses the ways in which gender variance of gay, male-bodied persons was positioned within the East/West divide after 1989. The critical media reading is based on gay press columns from the 1990s. While in Polish culture, as in the West, homosexuality was traditionally linked to gender variance, in the 1990s the new gay identity was established as gender-normative — a task much facilitated by the fact that in Poland the development of gay identity was preceded by a medicalized and heteronormative concept of transsexuality. The study shows that gay imagery was highly influenced by the ‘global gay’ capitalist ideal and the ‘chasing the West’ narrative of progress and liberation. After 1989, homosexual gender variance became a taboo that was only discussed in the gay erotic press in satirical columns in which the term ciota was used (queen, auntie). In the columns, cioty were ridiculed and degraded, but also positioned as more authentic and noble. Their femininity was framed in the misogynist discourse of flawed, uncontrollable physiology and emotional instability, which corresponds with the second meaning of the word ‘ciota’ in Polish — menstruation. Ultimately, the change from the Soviet queen to the respectable Western gay was legitimized by the use of nostalgic rhetoric and the fact that ciota was equated with the fallen communist regime and ‘gay’ with blooming capitalism.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y la nueva ortodoxia del saber: acerca de la educación femenina en el debate sobre la <em>Carta atenagórica</em>

El concepto de nueva ortodoxia busca explicar cómo, mediante el comentario e imitación de las autoridades de la Patrología y del uso de particulares estrategias retóricas, Sor Juana consigue subvertir el discurso misógino de la Iglesia sin establecer propiamente una aproximación heterodoxa. Afirmada en el manejo de las fuentes patrísticas, la Carta atenagórica representa un magistral intento por construir un discurso oficial alternativo que, al mismo tiempo que confronta el ingenio novohispano con el europeo, otorga preeminencia intelectual a la mujer dentro de la hermenéutica religiosa. Al respecto, la figura y los escritos de San Pablo y de San Jerónimo, patrono fundador de la orden, serán aprovechados para sustentar las prácticas de su hija americana.

No “Innocent Victim”?: Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust as Trope in <em>Zeugin aus der Hölle</em>

This essay addresses how in the film Zeugin aus der Holle (1965, Witness out of hell), fictionalized sexual violence against a female Jewish Holocaust survivor functions as a trope that exposes and rejects patriarchal and misogynist discourses of victimhood, perpetration, survivor shame, and guilt, which reviewers and scholars rightly have critiqued for such discourses' re-victimizing and re-traumatizing effects upon victims. I argue that as a filmic trope sexual violence served specific functions for its contemporaneous audience—Germans in the postwar 1960s. By means of the trope of sexual violence, Zeugin aus der Holle confronted contemporaneous West German audiences with gender-specific experiences of women during the Holocaust, the continuing trauma and re-victimization of Jewish Holocaust survivors in postwar Germany, and Nazi guilt.

Marguerite de Navarre and the Querelle des femmes

The articles in this special issue honor Regine Reynolds-Cornell, professor emerita of French at Agnes Scott College, whose research focused on women writers in the Renaissance, especially Marguerite de Navarre. This introduction outlines Reynolds-Cornell’s and these authors’ contributions to scholarship on Marguerite’s role in the Querelle des femmes , an early modern debate on the status of women. Although Marguerite does not mount a clear-cut defense of women in her works, she nonetheless subtly questions prevailing social perceptions through her strong female characters, offers fresh perspectives on long-enduring misogynistic discourses, and depicts the challenges for real women in sixteenth-century France.

Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen

Reviewed by: Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen Andres Lazaro Lopez (bio) Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen. Brooklyn, NY: South End Press, 2007, 198 pp., $18.79 paper. In Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, Robert Jensen analyzes contemporary mainstream (most commonly rented or purchased) heterosexual pornography as one key method of domination in the US patriarchal system of oppression, along with its effects on both men and women. Jensen argues that pornography has normalized and mainstreamed a particular conception of sex as both violent and degrading. He details how mechanisms of power are eroticized and unchallenged, where men dominate, and women’s sexuality is objectified and commodified. Jensen labels and rejects systems of oppression as anti-human and inconsistent with general principles of justice. He demonstrates how pornography reinforces patriarchy through misogyny and racism, and he challenges men to interrogate their relationship with pornography, their positions of dominance and control in their relationships, and to stop participating in sexual exploitation industries. On all accounts, Jensen is successful. He eloquently blends personal narratives, textual analysis, interviews, and cultural/social theory to explore the effects of pornography’s misogynist themes that limit men’s selves, poisons masculinity, and bolsters patriarchy. Working from a radical critique of the sex industry and sexual violence, Jensen offers a rich study loaded with meaningful questions about the conventions, narratives, strategies, and ideologies of mainstream pornography escalating in US culture. He makes a compelling case for how pornography has become normalized, and that the values that drive pornography are normative mainstream patriarchal values. Jensen suggests we examine the multi-billion dollar porn industry as any product of mass media, through its content, production, and consumption—the main chapters of analysis in the book. Jensen argues that three major themes exist in all mass-marketed heterosexual pornography: (1) all women, at all times, want sex from all men, (2) women enjoy all the sexual acts that men perform or demand, and (3) women who do not at first realize this can be easily persuaded with a little force. These themes contain elements of objectification, control, hierarchy, submission, and violence that aligns with idealized notions of manhood. For Jensen, the pairing of these masculine elements with the main themes in pornography extends an invitation for men to absorb patriarchal ideologies. Jensen asks powerful questions about pornography’s role in the proliferation of sexual discourses that are grounded in dominating notions of masculinity and regulated by institutions, identities, and misogynistic discourse. For example, he poses the question, in a society where men learn that sex and manhood are about conquest, control, and domination, can pornography with those same values help reinforce such behaviors? Does pornography offer young boys and [End Page 266] men a male-dominate, often one-sided view of sexuality? Why do men not question why getting off to degrading and pain-inflicting pornography “excites” them? How does this make the uncoupling of sexual fantasy and reality challenging for men? When taken to the extreme, can it not serve as a way for men to learn how to recruit sexual victims and/or offer strategies to break down women’s resistance to sex? Jensen argues that pornography may only be “one part of a sexist system, but its messages of sexuality are reinforced everywhere,” almost never questioned, and often defended (102). It is not uncommon in the United States to hear critical perspectives of violent video games and what it teaches young boys about the use of weapons and the normalization of violent manhood, yet pornography goes unquestioned. Jensen exposes various discourses that are meant to depoliticize pornography. For example, one will often hear that “women want to make porn,” “there are clear differences between violence and pleasure and pain,” and “plenty of ‘good guys’ who consume porn who do not do violence.” While these arguments might have some truth, they often mask and dismiss the harmful and violent nature of mainstream heterosexual pornography. Jensen explains that this pornography is for the pleasure of all men, not merely some, and its roots are in women hating, and even the well-intentioned “good men” who...

Can You Hear Me Now?: Monologue, Dialogue, and the Other Voices in Lolita’s Sexual History

This essay revises and expands my earlier view of Lolita ( Nabokov Studies , Vol. 8 2004) as a feminist work that utilizes the 1950s scientific discourse of sexology to challenge Humbert’s exploitative use of mythic discourse. Building upon critical responses to my original article, I here use Bakhtin’s aesthetic and sociological conception of the dialogism of the novel to consider how Humbert attempts, but fails, at reducing the rich dialogism of the novel to a self-justifying monologue. The critical consequences of this irreducible dialogism extend beyond the confines of my original view of the novel as a feminist critique of misogynistic mythic discourse; ongoing attempts to place Lolita into an aesthetic, realistic, or ethical framework stifle the dialogism of the novel in a similar way as Humbert suppresses dialogue and dialogism about Lolita’s controversial sexuality. Nabokov’s novel synthesizes the moral, social, and aesthetic dimensions of dialogue and Bakhtinian dialogism, both for characters and critics alike, in its representation of Humbert’s failed monologue and of the critical voices speaking in as well as beyond the novel.

Demon and Woman: The Mark of Satan and the Fight Against It

This article aims at drawing an overview of devil-woman symbolism and feminine character of the demonic, inherited from the misogynist discourse from a comparative perspective, showing that they are rooted in the Judeo-Christian moral, which developed in the Middle Ages, and continued during the Golden Age. It explores the different opposita of the female as subject active evil, able to tempt the male as a succubus demon and women who become a passive object and a target of seduction. As a text case, some comments are made about an inquisitorial 17th-century text, the Process of faith of the nuns of Santa Clara of Trujillo (Peru), accused for being obsessed, and tried at the Inquisitorial Court of Lima of The Viceroyalty of Peru. This case shows similarities in some respects with the mystical experience of Teresa of Avila, as well as of other visionary religious.

Histories of Hating

This roundtable discussion presents a dialogue between digital culture scholars on the seemingly increased presence of hating and hate speech online. Revolving primarily around the recent #GamerGate campaign of intensely misogynistic discourse aimed at women in video games, the discussion suggests that the current moment for hate online needs to be situated historically. From the perspective of intersecting cultural histories of hate speech, discrimination, and networked communication, we interrogate the ontological specificity of online hating before going on to explore potential responses to the harmful consequences of hateful speech. Finally, a research agenda for furthering the historical understandings of contemporary online hating is suggested in order to address the urgent need for scholarly interventions into the exclusionary cultures of networked media.