Patriarchal Discourse Research Articles

The Marriage Debate, Mona Caird and Her Feminist Radicalism

New Woman scholarship presents Mona Caird as a radical marriage reformer and emphasises how she challenged the patriarchal structure of Victorian marriage norms. However, this paper demonstrates Caird’s radicalness was not a challenge to marriage norms, but an attack on legal, cultural, and religious restrictions on womanhood. Caird developed her radical arguments through her interaction with her mentor John Stuart Mill, the New Woman novelist Sarah Grand, and the influential Victorian anti-feminist writer Elizabeth Lynn Linton. This paper explores her relationship with these three writers regarding their thoughts on marriage, based on the study of her novels The Daughters of Danaus (1894) and The Wing of Azrael (1889), and the collection of her journalistic articles The Morality of Marriage (1897). Caird differed from these three writers by arguing for a more liberal and equal gender relationship, resisting eugenic theory, and challenging anti-feminist arguments. Caird was an undisciplined New Woman writer not only in the sense of her feminist stance but also her critical engagement with the patriarchal discourses of gender and class relationship.

Mystery and Foil A Study on Lises Other Image in The Brothers Karamazov

In The Brothers Karamazov, Lise is a female supporting character whose narrative presence is relatively limited. However, as Alyoshas lover, Dostoevsky invests a great deal of emotion in this young woman, intentionally creating a character who is lovable. Yet, Lises character reflects a disciplinary influence of patriarchal discourse. Although her image presents an outward sense of rebellion and independence, she is further trapped in the mold of traditional discipline, embodying characteristics of the Other. Her attempts to break through the traditional female image and patriarchal order are not significant.

Patriarchal backlash: Representations of sexual violence on Uruguayan TV

The article investigates the tensions between feminist conceptualizations of sexual violence and the persistence of patriarchal discourses that challenge it resulting in a justification of violence and misogynistic representations in a Uruguayan TV program. We argue that the return of conservative discourses that question sexual harassment accusations, reinstate gender differences, and gender inequality by installing a new normativity and naturalization of violence against women. Through the analysis of representations, evaluations, and discourse strategies deployed in two episodes of a high rating debate TV show centered on sexual violence, we show the victims are not recognized as such. There is a recontextualization of the sexual violence situation by which participants in the TV show challenge the policies and practices that have been recently established to prevent and sanction sexual violence. The findings evidence certain cultural transformations in the threshold of moral sensibility that define what is acceptable or not and make visible a patriarchal backlash.

‘Unlearning this Desire to Vanish': Rape, Illness, and the Politics of Testimony in Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s I Choose Elena and Amy Berkowitz’s Tender Points

In recent years, life writing by survivors of sexual violence has attempted to contest the stigma of shame traditionally attached to women’s testimony. Among these authors, disabled and chronically ill survivors find themselves doubly marginalized by the patriarchal discourses prevalent in culture and medical spaces. For this reason, in their writing, they vindicate political and ethical approaches to their condition, based on emphasizing their bodily experience against the silencing of culture and institutions. This essay looks at Lucia Osborne Crowley’s I Choose Elena (2019) and Amy Berkowitz’s Tender Points (2015) as two examples of memoirs exploring the intersections between sexual trauma and chronic illnesses like endometriosis and fibromyalgia, as well as the possibilities for writing to contest stigma and move towards an ethical audience, inside and outside medical spaces. In their memoirs, these authors expose the physical, socioeconomic, and institutional boundaries that they encounter while vindicating political and engaged ways to live in their bodies.

Challenging Discourses of Sexual Violence on X: The Linguistic Representation of Victims and Perpetrators in Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Process

In September 2018, American Justice Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during his nomination to the US Supreme Court. The sexual allegations provoked a crisis in American society concerning the rights of female American citizens and created a heated debate among X (formerly Twitter) users, who commented on the event and expressed their (dis)affiliation. Research has shown that X is one of the most sexist and abusive social media services due to the constant spread and negotiation of different discourses relating to rape culture on the platform (Mendes et al. 2018). Consequently, the objectives of this research are to examine the linguistic patterns and discourses employed by X users to denounce patriarchal oppression and negotiate the identities of the different social actors involved in Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. To do so, two datasets of posts (previously known as ‘tweets’) containing the opposing hashtags #KavanaughConfirmation and #NoKavanaughConfirmation were analyzed and contrasted drawing on Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis tools (i.e., keywords and concordances) (Partington et al. 2013) and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar 2005). The results revealed a high presence of keywords concerning gender and violence to construct identities of victims and perpetrators. However, not only were such identities related to sexual violence but also political and institutional violence. In addition, the analysis revealed the creation of discursive protests on X to resist patriarchal discourses and practices in American society.

Rough Excision: a poetic response to Great Expectations (1861) and Jack Maggs (1997)

ABSTRACT Read together or as stand-alone pieces, the thirteen poems offered below are conceived as a creative-critical response to two novels, a Victorian one, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861), and its neo-Victorian counterpart, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997). Rather than simply inspired by these novels, the poems are the result of a critical reading of both Carey’s reimagining of Dickens’s great English novel and the source text itself. As such they implicitly engage with Carey’s critics, who have almost unanimously analysed Jack Maggs from a postcolonial perspective, thereby largely ignoring the rewriting of the women characters. Scholars have systematically pointed out how Dickens’s orphan Pip is rewritten by Carey as Henry Phipps, the Australian convict Abel Magwitch as Jack Maggs and Dickens himself as the great Victorian author Tobias Oates. Together with the annotations in part II, the poems offer a creative contribution to the critical engagement with Carey’s novel, by arguing that Carey’s Mercy, servant and mistress of would-be gentleman Percy Buckle in Jack Maggs, can be fruitfully read as a re-imagining of Dickens’s Molly, biological mother of Estella and housekeeper of unscrupulous lawyer Jaggers in Great Expectations. The poems raise questions concerning neo-Victorianism, patriarchal discourse and trauma theory from a feminist perspective.

Where is the patriarchy?: A review and research agenda for the concept of patriarchy in management and organization studies

AbstractIn this paper I analyze 30 years of research on patriarchy in top management and organization studies (MOS) journals, and I map out an agenda for (re)igniting patriarchy as both a topic of study and lens for viewing key MOS issues in a new light. I organize my review (175 articles) around three themes: intersections, subjects, and contexts. By intersections I refer to the nuanced ways that scholars define patriarchy, adopting interdisciplinary and intersectional perspectives to understand the diversity of women's experiences under patriarchal domination. By subjects I refer to the primary focus on women's experiences, and on the ways that women's subjectivities are socially constituted and negotiated within patriarchal discourses of work and organizational life. By contexts I refer to the sites where MOS research has investigated patriarchy, as well as the ways this research has framed patriarchy itself as a context. Based on this thematic review, I outline a future research agenda to further refine the concept in MOS in three key ways. I call for increased research approaches that center the structural/political forces of patriarchy and gender, increased focus on the experiences of men as agents and subjects of patriarchal domination, and increased attention on patriarchy in Western contexts to redress the overrepresentation of research on patriarchy in the Global South. I conclude that patriarchy is an important line of inquiry for MOS, and that further attention to the concept would enable MOS research to contribute more fully to contemporary debates on gender.

Media representations of the ‘little fresh meat’ phenomenon in China: a feminist critical discourse analysis of the masculine nonconformity discourse

ABSTRACT ‘Little fresh meat’ (LFM or xiǎo xiān ròu), which describes a masculine aesthetic rooted in ‘soft masculinity’, is a phenomenon across Asia that challenges prevailing concepts of masculinity and patriarchal discourse. This study furthers previous research by using feminist critical discourse analysis to evaluate the construction of LFM masculine nonconformity, via data collected from 42 news articles from China’s English-language news media, including: China Daily, Global Times, People’s Daily Online, Shanghai Daily, and Xinhua News Agency. The analysis generated three key themes: (1) market driving a female consumer fan base, (2) challenging hegemonic masculinities when men wear makeup to imitate their ‘idols’, and (3) criticisms of gender stereotypes. These themes show how a masculine nonconformity discourse is developed by using a variety of discursive strategies in China. This study highlights the need for increased awareness and education regarding gender diversity and the harmful impacts of gender stereotypes on Chinese society.

The poetic excess of Susana Thénon’s Ova completa

In her last collection of poetry, Ova completa (1987), Susana Thénon (Buenos Aires, 1935–91) proclaims a female subjectivity from within a system designed to regulate it, and writes into being a gendered subjecthood of excess, a subjecthood that pushes against and beyond the containing frameworks of colonial, religious, and patriarchal discourse. Drawing on the work of decolonial theorists such as Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, this essay analyses the ways in which Thénon uses language and sardonic humour in Ova completa to interrupt and crack “the modern/colonial/capitalist/heteropatriarchal matrices of power.” Calling into question the legitimacy of often invisible structures in the late-twentieth-century colonized Americas, Ova completa elaborates a new feminist poetics of counternarrative, one which draws on a multitude of voices to launch a witty, sharply pointed critique of colonialism, religion, heteronormative patriarchy, and language itself.

Psychological Make-Up and Gender Construct in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”

The paper aims at exploring Victorian poet Christina Rossetti’s poem (1830-1894) “Goblin Market” (1862) through psychoanalytical and feminist perspectives. The poem which is an ostensible tale meant to be narrated to children, is actually on a deeper level, a thematically voluminous piece of literature from which a plethora of meanings emerge. What this poem demonstrates, holds true in the contemporary times. The objectives of this paper are to analyze 1) the poem with reference to studying gender as a construct, established by the patriarchal discourses, and also 2) the complexes that an individual might undergo owing to repression. The paper makes use of Luce Irigaray (b. 1930) and Helene Cixous’ (b. 1937) notions of feminism and Freud (1856-1939) and Lacan’s (1901-1981) theories of psychoanalysis. After explaining the relevant theory, the researchers aim to apply it to “Goblin Market” in order to compare and contrast the poem from the two said perspectives. Feminism helps in deconstructing the patriarchal overtones and power relationships whereas psychoanalysis enables the readers to understand the complexes and experiences that individuals undergo owing to their psychological make-up.

Masculinity crisis or gender reconciliation: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of the effeminate Chinese masculinity debate on social media

Sexism and gender controversies often occur on the internet in contemporary China. The prevalence of male effeminacy is a part of the growing diversity of gender representations. This article investigates the dominant discourses surrounding the debate on male feminization, and netizens’ stance in Chinese social media discourse. By employing corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, the study identifies four dominant discourses: resistance discourse, anti-discrimination discourse, patriarchal discourse, and nationalistic discourse. These discourses are constructed using various strategies, such as abstraction, authorization, categorization, and morality strategies, and are inextricably intertwined with China’s sociocultural background and broader social contexts. This study offers insights into the clash between conventional and liberal views on ‘soft masculinity’ and exemplifies how Chinese netizens actively leverage social media platforms to express views on gender issues.

A study on identification of youth identity through a gender lens in network buzzwords: A critical discourse analysis

As an emerging form of discourse in the Internet era, network buzzwords serve as an indicator of the mentality of the youth, reflecting their identity. However, research on the implementation of network buzzwords in the context of gender formations has been limited. This study fills this research gap by using critical discourse analysis to analyse the use of 11 gender-specific buzzwords listed in the annual list of top-ten network buzzwords published by the magazine Yaowen Jiaozi from 2012 to 2021 on the social media platform, Weibo. It discusses how the gender network buzzwords shape the identity of young groups, what kind of identities were formed, and how young people use gender buzzwords to construct both gender-conforming and patriarchal discourse, as well as gender-nonconforming discourse, from the perspectives of conformity and nonconformity. Additionally, it discusses the cultural significance of network buzzwords and their potential impact on contemporary society.

Resilience in Resisting Spaces: Cross-Cultural Gender Identity in “Before We Visit the Goddess”

“Before We Visit the Goddess” by Chitra Divakaruni is a culmination of multidimensional aspects of identity, including social, cultural, gendered, and psychological. The novel examines the cultural and sociological aspects of Indian estrangement and exile. The novel depicts the involvement of the migratory and the host in a cultural encounter that distinguishes them from one another. The paper attempts to capture how different cultures and ideologies clash to assert power, with each front trying to maintain its hegemonic stance. It further attempts to study how the literary piece stands in the oeuvre of a post-colonial discourse by analyzing narrative- a recurrent tool employed by writers to incarnate the situation of clashing powers between migrant people and their counterparts in their host country. In addition to exploring the dynamics of displaced identity, the research would further investigate the nuances of gender identity. The novel emerges as a tool to dissect the orthodox mental image of Indian women, who have frequently been correlated with obedience and submission. The current research paper applies the notion of feminine and othering as an analytical framework to highlight female characters’ struggles against subjection to patriarchal discourses. The research findings indicate that the central female characters, Tara, Bela, and Sabitri, confront masculine discourses by empowering themselves uniquely. Sabitri, for example, launches a business, Bela divorces, and Tara has an abortion. The protagonists exhibit the willpower of both a mother and a woman and a strong sense of affection, which is essential in their resilience to patriarchy and the reshaping of post-colonial feminine identity relations.

“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.

From Cinderella to i-woman: Web novels, fandom, and feminist politics in China

i-Woman is a new genre of female-oriented web novel that emerged in China after 2020. By intentionally reversing the Cinderella story pattern of the classic romance, the i-woman genre and its feminist fans challenge patriarchal discourse and explore a new feminist way of writing. More than just a fandom of a popular literature form, i-woman is also a feminist mobilization strategy in contemporary Chinese online feminist activism. A textual analysis of i-woman novels and a digital ethnography of its communities suggests that by incorporating separatist feminist ideologies into novels and trying to build solidarity in fandom communities, digital feminists are conducting feminist activism in the form of fantagonism. Building an ideal feminist solidarity is performed as an exclusion of certain types of novel genres and their readers. Operating feminism through fandom opens new online spaces for feminist activists while affecting and restricting its operation. This developing fandom form shows potential for fandom culture to turn into political participation and offers insights into how to operate digital feminism in contemporary China.

A Research of Impact of TikTok on Gender Stereotypes in China

Now, with the development of the Internet, advanced communication technology continuously extends and expands peoples senses. Notwithstanding such a mind-boggling data society, individuals are handily caught in the pseudo climate developed by mass correspondence. The orientation jobs characterized by society are additionally communicated in various ways in the media. The media often portrays men as strong, brave, and capable of decision-making, while women are portrayed as weak, dependent, and gentle. This media promotion not only affects peoples way of thinking but also affects societys perception and evaluation of gender roles. When orientation generalizations are shaped, they are hard to break and can altogether affect individuals mental cycles. Through small-scale interviews, this study aims to investigate TikToks gender stereotypes. The examination subjects were a 17-year-old male and a 17-year-old female secondary school understudy, a 40-year-elderly person and a 40-year-elderly person. The results show that Tiktok has a positive impact on male and female stereotypes of high school students. The two high school students agreed that watching Tiktok helped them eliminate some inherent stereotypes. The two middle-aged people unanimously said that watching Tiktok eliminated some of their inherent stereotypes. The significance of the research is that the images of men and women presented by the media become more realistic and reasonable in terms of social roles, allowing women to truly break free from the stereotypes brought about by this deeply rooted patriarchal discourse.

학습자의 비판적 문해력 향상을 위한 고전의 현대적 수용 연구: 셰익스피어의 <오셀로>와 현대의 <데스데모나>

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze the modern adaptations of classics, Shakespeare, in order to
 use as liberal art education content to improve reader/learners' critical literacy.
 Methods Together with Shakespeare’s Othello, Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel and Desdemona
 by Toni Morrison, two modern adaptations of Othello, are analyzed, focusing on gender and racial issue
 with which Shakespeare’s Othello dismissed to deal in the patriarchal discourse.
 Results Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief represents social conflicts on genders, and Desdemona shows
 cultural and racial conflicts not only between black/slave and white/master but also between black/husband and
 white/wife through reconstructing original plot through female character’s point of view. This study confirms that
 the understanding modern perspective revealed in rewriting classics has various educational significance.
 Conclusions This study is an educational content that can improve the critical literacy of readers/learners who are
 familiar with video media, and can provide a foundation for logically approaching and critically understanding the
 connection between the classics and modern times.

Sanctioned by Law: Post-Patriarchal Narratives of Gender-Based Violence

Abstract Italian women writers such as Anna Banti, Elsa Morante, and Elena Ferrante have challenged the patriarchal discourse on female subjectivity through their narrative articulations of gender-based violence. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's analysis of violence in relation to natural and positive law, this article argues that these authors’ representations of violence against women not only provide a powerful critique of patriarchal models but also reveal the contradictory nature of law and justice within a patriarchal power structure. By positioning gender-based violence at the intersection of sanctioned (i.e., legal) and unsanctioned (i.e., illegal) violence, the patriarchal structure of power ensures its continuity. The article concludes that by weaving the pervasiveness of violence experienced by women into their narrative textures, these writers modify their relationship to language from one of displacement to one of cautious proximity, thus opening the possibility for the emergence of a post-patriarchal notion of the human.

Angela Rayner (Member of Parliament) and the “Basic Instinct Ploy”: Intersectional misrecognition of women leaders' legitimacy, productive resistance and flexing (patriarchal) discourse

AbstractThis paper interrogates a shift in patriarchal media discourse related to women leaders' recognition and legitimation in the UK. We conduct a multimodal discourse analysis of an online newspaper article about the UK politician and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, and analyzed public responses. Understanding the media as a means to distribute power and enable the challenging of norms, we contribute a theory of intersectional misrecognition in media's representation of women political leaders. This reveals an enduring and dynamic subordinate status of women leaders, shown specifically through the intersection of gender and class. We theorize that while women leaders continue to be misrecognized in the media, destabilizing their legitimacy, there is a demonstrable flexing of patriarchal discourse combined with stronger and accelerated resistance to ongoing sexism. We identify this resistance as productive in its call for consequences and a redistribution of cultural values, reflecting a discursive shift toward a productive resistance of resilient gender norms, evident in the intersection of gender with class. Intersectional misrecognition has value in making inequalities explicit for women leaders and where there may be productive tensions with potential to mobilize for change.

Subversion of Patriarchal Discourse in Meridian

Walker in her novel Meridian, criticizes patriarchal society’s expectations of woman's roles and advocates about women's individuality and independence. The novel examines its title character Meridian’s emergence as a liberated strong woman. It observes Meridian's attempts to break the patriarchal tradition and how she brings an end to the racism and segregation. It also studies the lives and revolutionary activities of black women who played crucial roles to bring subversion in patriarchal discourse. Initially suspended black woman of patriarchal society, Meridian, the protagonist of the novel, becomes a liberated woman as she knows what she should borrow from the past for the present to create a new future. She breaks most of the generally accepted patriarchal norms and values that govern her society. Though she grows up in the racist, sexist and patriarchal society, she rebels against oppressive systems to attain her self-identity and selfhood. She considers marriage a false institution and deserts it as a challenge to the patriarchal ideology. She challenges the patriarchal image of womanhood and motherhood and presents herself as a liberated woman rather than a submissive wife and loving mother. She disobeys the patriarchal rules made for women and rejects any of the life-narratives of her patriarchal society. She starts her journey in search of meaningful personal and political life. She subverts all sorts of patriarchal discourses dominant in racist and sexist society. She finally paves a path of liberty with self identity and selfhood for herself and for the whole women. The paper tracks Meridian’s experiences from her college life to her self-determining liberated woman of present. She is free to love men without the burdens of marriage, sexual restriction and motherhood. It also explores black women's hidden strength, their beauty and feelings of sisterhood and wifehood. The study reveals how Meridian, revolts against the patriarchal ideologies to regain her lost identity and wholeness.