Gender Politics Research Articles

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.

Fulfillment of women's political rights through mainstreaming gender quotas in Election Supervisory Board

This study examines women's political representation as election supervisors, the rules regarding women's representation in accordance with the regulations of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections have not been able to run well. This study uses qualitative research by making observations in the recruitment process of the Election Supervisory Board of the Republic of Indonesia and the affirmation quota of women as election supervisors in Election Supervisory Board, Yogyakarta Special Region Province. This study aims to see the application of regulations on the general election law on women's representation and its application in the recruitment process of election supervisors that accommodate women's representation. This finding shows that there is still a gap in women's representation in election supervisory institutions where the rules regarding 30 percent female representation have been very clearly regulated. Evaluation of these findings requires a policy of changing regulations that regulate sanctions for non-fulfillment of women's representation as one of the solutions to fulfill women's gender kouta as female supervisors. The conclusion of this study is that there are several factors that hinder the fulfillment of women's political rights such as, a wrong understanding of political gender, the risk of becoming a very large election supervisor, socialization of selection that is not right on target and the competence of prospective candidates who lack knowledge about elections.

“Our blood is becoming white”: Race, religion, and Siddi becoming in Hyderabad, India

Abstract“Our blood is becoming white.” This was a constant lament I heard from siddis in contemporary Hyderabad, India—third‐ and fourth‐generation descendants of East African slaves and soldiers recruited by the local ruler or Nizam in the 1860s to form the African Cavalry Guard in his army. The article explores this siddi lament and the multivalent symbols—of color, blood, affect, belonging—latent in it. It draws on fieldwork conducted over the course of the last decade among siddis in Hyderabad, ambivalently situated as Indian citizens who are racialized as “Black” in an Indian and global order that denigrates Blackness and marked by their religious identification as Muslim in a virulently Hindu nation. The article unpacks these contexts, exploring the forces of empire and region and constructions of race, gender, and religion that have prodded and inflected siddi processes of becoming. In so doing, it unearths the ways in which Blackness, Muslimness, and masculinity are constituted as (intersecting) social and political categories, caught in the dialectics of alienation and intimacy, belonging and otherness, with enduring effects on the lives and cosmologies of siddis in Hyderabad and on the contemporary politics of race, gender, and religion in India.

Cultural Genocide, Mass Immigration, and the Kalergi Plan: Conceptualizations of Race in White Identity Politics Online

This study aims to clarify ambiguities surrounding the understanding of race in white identity politics and how these ambiguities are reflected in online discourse. Grounded in the framework of critical race studies, we constructed a comprehensive race typology that we used to unpack the multifaceted conceptions of race in digital discourse on Twitter. Using a combination of Tableau, NVivo, and manual coding, we examined the prevalence of four conceptualizations of race (Biological, Cultural, Nationalist, and Pan-Nationalist) in data collected from three Twitter hashtags (#whitegenocide, #kalergiplan, and #antiwhite). We conclude that race does not stand out as one coherent system in the analyzed data but as an amalgam of divergent racial interpretations. Notably, the Cultural conceptualization of race is the most predominant, followed closely by the Pan-Nationalist perspective of white identity. Our investigation also explores the palpable anxiety surrounding the perceived erosion of the white race within white identity politics. This apprehension is prominently articulated as "white grievances" and through a gendered understanding wherein white women assume a pivotal role in both propagating the white race and in acting as a vulnerable "access point" within the white racial framework.

Gender and machine politics in Chicago, USA

This article investigates gender and political machines, specifically exploring women's activism and roles within Chicago's unique political tapestry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whereas extant literature investigates the racial, ethnic, and class dimensions of machine politics, a gap subsists regarding a direct exploration of gender dynamics – especially during and following the Richard J. Daley administration. The research unveils how women have navigated, contested, and shaped Chicago society and politics amid the tides of reform-minded ideals and an emergent, formidable machine. Despite achieving remarkable strides during the Progressive Era, the Cook County machine paradoxically shaped women's participation and activism while eroding progress. The insights garnered from this analysis do not remain an anachronism of history but resound with relevance for contemporary politics, revealing challenges and providing the groundwork for further explorations aimed at deconstructing gendered power within political structures.

Journalists as Mindful Users of Language (Change): Gender-Inclusive Spanish in Argentinian News

ABSTRACT In Argentina, arguably a front-runner country in efforts to challenge linguistic sexism, a wide variety of gender-inclusive styles are visible across and within the news media. This suggests that Argentinian journalists’ language does not simply accommodate to structural pressures, as the literature would indicate. To attend to journalists’ agency in processes of sociolinguistic change, this study combines the analysis of news articles with in-depth interviews with their authors, fifteen Argentinian news practitioners working for nine media organizations. The results challenge, first, ideas of journalists as necessarily conservative language users: Interviewees use diverse linguistic varieties when mentioning human referents (ranging from the generic male to indefinite collective nouns and duplication to the non-binary endings -x and -e). Second, mediacentric perspectives—assuming that institutional socialization, professional values, and audiences’ expectations shape journalists’ language—prove limited. Interviewees’ linguistic choices also respond to personal gender and linguistic politics. Argentinian journalists’ meaningful reasons and strategies for deviating from sociolinguistic norms expand our understanding of journalism’s potential to challenge traditional dominant cultural institutions and machismo more generally.

“The denigration of Korean men’s genitals”

Abstract This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of metapragmatic commentary in online news surrounding the emergence of a new offensive gesture in South Korea. This new offensive hand shape is a “precision grip” gesture whereby the thumb and index finger are pursed together to represent small size. In May 2021, male-dominated online communities started to take offence at the prevalence of this gesture in advertising campaigns, viewing it as a misandrist emblem mocking them for the size of their genitals. Conservative media sources ratified their stance of “taking offence”, which they treated as part of an ongoing “gender conflict”. Although this view drew opposition from progressive sources, I argue that male communities backed by the conservative media were able to utilise the stance of taking offence to redirect gender politics and further their misogynistic agendas. The results advance our understanding of “taking offence” as a social action in populist, multimodal and post-digital discourses.

NEWSWATCH: Gendered Politics at Work and Play

NEWSWATCH: Gendered Politics at Work and Play

Reparations, Time, and Decolonizing Postcolonial Violence towards Global Gender Justice

Abstract: Reparations are emerging as a world-making project, as a political goal that moves us beyond models of responsibility that come primarily in the form of bombs and sexual violence as we have seen in the United Nation's Responsibility to Protect (R2P). In this paper, we argue that reparations are a world-making project which challenges simultaneously colonization and enslavement in their newer incarnations of capital and gendered violence in war. We first engage with the debates on violence and postcoloniality. Second, we engage with the politics of reparations and gender. To do so we focus on feminist transformative reparations and repair debates. Some of the mainstream literature of liberal and progressive orientations remain within the realm of integrating survivors of violence within racial-national compacts, thereby evading the inter-related forms of violence and extractions that underwrite such integration and social compacts. Third, we turn to reparations, gender, and time. Fourth, we work towards a definition of radical repair. Fifth, we consider reparative practices as decolonization movement in its multiple registers—as acts of undoing structures of violence and its incarnation/s in war, and as acts of justice—moving beyond the dominant juridical or financial definitions of reparations (as established by the colonial state, or by capitalist legal systems) to think reparation as an active process oriented towards futures that does not lose sight of the ongoing 'liveness' of the colonial. Finally, in the concluding section, we discuss reparations as abolition. We argue that transformative reparations are not mere restitutions but attempts to challenge presuppositions about the world and its making as well as abolish this "simple" and death world, while envisioning reparations as solidarity and love, in the heterogeneity of bodies, words, affects, sounds, movements, and intensities.

Tidalectic Un/mapping and the Performance of African Diasporic Imagination in the Repertory of Katherine Dunham

This article foregrounds imagination to consider how African diasporic conditions converge with choreographic expression. The analysis “un/maps” dominant understandings of the choreographic process of mid-twentieth-century African American choreographer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham by expanding Kamau E. Brathwaite's (1993) concept of Tidalectics beyond the Caribbean to the wider African diaspora and a distinctly Caribbean comprehension of diasporic imagination. Utilizing datasets and visualizations created by the project, Dunham's Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry, this article traces how the concept of Brazil is imagined and reimagined within Dunham's archive from 1937 to 1962. In doing so, it considers the complex positionality of Dunham as both a pioneering minoritized woman navigating the politics of race, gender, and financial precarity, and someone who yielded their imperial privilege as a US citizen through their career to bring nuance to Dunham's narrative as a canonical dance figure.