Sexual Oppression Research Articles

Assessing the impact of women's movements

Assessing impact of social movements in general is difficult, raising questions about impact on ‘what’ (laws, policy outcomes, culture, people's lives?) and causality (is the social movement the decisive factor in change?). To assess impact, the FEMCIT project on bodily citizenship chose to focus on new public discourses constructed by the new feminist movements over the past decades. Discourses have material effects on institutions, rules, the allocation of goods and values and the formation of new identities. Focusing on two ‘body’ issues, abortion and prostitution, the project analysed how these movements contested the state and the dominant discourses on these issues in four countries: the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Feminist groups generally framed abortion in terms of self-determination and autonomy and made a crucial difference to abortion discourse and law. On prostitution feminist groups developed competing discourses about sex work or sexual oppression and were able to affect policy discourses and law in three of the four countries.

Autonomous, but Not Alone: The Reappropriation of Female Community in The Women of Brewster Place and Housekeeping

‘Autonomous, but not Alone: The Reappropriation of Female Community in The Women of Brewster Place and Housekeeping’ outlines a shift in the literature of black and white women, as well as a shift in the genre of narrative of community. Gloria Naylor and Marilynne Robinson reveal the impact of the political and social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s in their novels, The Women of Brewster Place (1982) and Housekeeping (1980). Naylor examines the impact of racial and sexual oppression on one African-American community through an exploration of constructions of power in intra-racial relationships. She considers the extent to which African-American women challenge traditional gender roles, as well as how they are forced to adapt those roles as a result of oppression. Robinson also challenges traditional female gender roles through the experiences of her character Sylvie. Sylvie returns to her hometown and family home after having abandoned conventional society and roles altogether. In her return, she attempts to balance the binary of individualism and community. In the end, female community in both novels destroys “home” and thus directly challenges the alterity of women's position within the domestic sphere – moving on to reappropriate community by grounding it in individual identity. In resisting the binary between individualism and community, twentieth-century American women writers challenge community as a subordinate, alterior position for women and community itself is redefined.

Dancing on the Edge of the Abyss

Dancing on the Edge of the Abyss

Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America

Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America

Normalization and the Welfare State

Normalization and the Welfare State Ladelle McWhorter In Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America, I argued that as race was absorbed into biology in the nineteenth century, it was recast from a morphological typology to a function of physiological and evolutionary development (McWhorter 2009b). Racial difference became a sign of developmental difference. Racial groups represented stages of human evolution, and raced individuals were to be disciplined and managed in accordance with developmental norms. Twentieth-century race was therefore a category and tool of normalization; to be raced was to be located at a particular point along a developmental curve. Some races were thought to be more or less arrested in their development, while others were merely retarded, and theorists disagreed at times about which were which. But they all agreed that the most highly developed race was the Nordic or the Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxons were the norm for modern human beings— anatomically, physiologically, intellectually, and morally. There were other white races whose status was debated (Mediterraneans and Ashkenazi Jews, for example), and there were disputes over the evolutionary status of Chinese, Hindus, and Mexicans. But most theorists agreed that at the very bottom of the developmental scale we should place Celts, Negroes, and American Indians. These peoples were savages, primitives. They should be trained to the extent possible to contribute to the society that had already superseded them, but their proper destiny was to pass away into extinction as humanity advanced. These evolutionary stragglers, along with the evolutionary throwbacks that appeared sometimes among whites, were considered dangerous for two main reasons. First, a great many of them were expensive. They were shiftless, often incompetent, and frequently lawless. Because of them, it was necessary to [End Page 39] maintain police forces, prisons, poorhouses, and asylums. They were a drain on the economic advance of society, which affected its educational and technological advance and ultimately its evolutionary advance as well. Second, because they had primitive sexual urges unrestrained by reason as well as heritable defects and diseases, they threatened the bloodlines of more advanced human beings. In short, they posed a risk for the ongoing evolutionary advancement of the entire Human Race. To protect the Race, it was necessary to contain these primitives, savages, and throwbacks and to reduce their numbers through careful management of their sexuality. This, I argued in the book, was racism’s cutting edge in the early twentieth century. Since publishing the book, I have done some work on the changes in practices of racism in the wake of the Biological Synthesis—that is, the unification of biology and genetics that occurred in the 1930s through the efforts of renowned scientists such as Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr (McWhorter 2010a, 2010b, 2010c). As I discussed in that work, by 1950, evolutionary biology was less a study of species development than it was a study of the effects of evolutionary forces acting on and within populations. Correlatively, racial practices shifted toward management of statistically delineated populations or ethnic groups. Theorists and policymakers recognized that not all members of a given population have the same genes, meaning that old-style racism (which assumed, for example, that all Negroes were stupid) was false; some Negroes might be quite brilliant, in fact. It was not The Negro who was stupid but the population of Negroes in the aggregate that was measurably stupider than the population of Anglo-Saxons. Accordingly, normalization now occurred at the level of the population. Disciplinary practices designed for cultivating the capacities of groups of individuals were altered or replaced to focus on groups as groups, as aggregates. The point was to shift the statistical norm of the population rather than to alter the bodies or behavior of each and every individual. I have argued elsewhere (McWhorter 2009a, 5) that this merger of disciplinary normalization and population management constitutes the full flowering of what Foucault calls biopower (Foucault 1978, 140). When Lisa Guenther invited me to speak at the plenary on “Re-thinking Whiteness” that took place at the fifth annual meeting of philoSOPHIA at Vanderbilt University, she explained that although many presenters offer polished papers, it has been a...

Facing With Courage Racial and Linguistic Discrimination: The Narrative of an ELL Caribbean Immigrant Living in the U.S. Diaspora

People immigrate to other countries for various reasons. Whereas some voluntarily move to a foreign land, others are forced to do so as a result of socioeconomic, racial, political, sexual, and religious oppressions. In light of these various factors causing the voluntary or forcible exodus of people, this article traces back the author's journey as a Black Caribbean immigrant from Haiti to the United States. Drawing on personal narrative, the article describes the underlying factors that led to the author's relocation in the U.S. diapora while at the same time examining the ways in which the author has been racially and linguistically positioned. The author further explains the negotiation of this position. The author's immigrant story is situated in the larger U.S. sociopolitical, linguistic, and racial context where immigrants, particularly immigrants of color, have faced many challenges.

Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon by Glenn Anthony May

 OHQ vol. 113, no. 4 reviews Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon by Glenn Anthony May Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2011. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. 314 pages. $24.00 paper. In a historical biography that resembles a climactic thriller,GlennAnthony May gives voice to the struggles and experiences of Mexican Americans in Oregon, filling a gap in socialmovement history. To readers, the revised images of Chicano resistance and empowerment correct the historical invisibility and recover the historical memory of the Chicano struggle for social justice. Above all, the book powerfullycapturesthehumanity,courage,and conviction of Sonny Montes, a tireless political and community activist for farmworkers and working-class Mexican Americans. It will increase our understanding of Chicanos in Oregon and influence the field of Chicano/a Studies regionally and more broadly. A historian trained at Yale University with a specialization in Chicano history, May tells three related stories: Montes’s activism, the Mexican American community in Oregon, and the development of a Chicano movement. Taking a linear focus, May deftly documents these stories with over thirty-three individual interviews conducted over an eight-year period, along with archival research in private collections and trial records. Using social movement theory, May privileges the experiences of Celedonio Montes, Jr., or “Sonny,” whose gradual ascent into political activism was shaped by his own racialized experiences. By age five, he was working as a migrant farmworker, moving from Weslaco to Fort Worth, Texas, and then to Oregon, with an interim stop in California. He experienced Jim Crow–era segregation in South Texas and institutional racism in schools,where his teachers and counselor told him he was“not college material.”May’s account makes room for feelingswithinsocial -movementtheory,discussing experiences of humiliation, dehumanization, and racial violence. In the chapter“Contexts,”May examines the history of colonization in Oregon, contrasting the land assets of white settlers with the mostly landless economic status of migrant farm laborers, including braceros, who comprised an internal colony a century later. Hypersegregation , intense political repression, and their status as members of internal colonies contributed to the deplorable working conditions of Mexican Americans. The story of the Valley Migrant League (VML), created to assist migrants who wanted to leave the migrant stream and settle in Oregon ,begins during Pres.Lyndon Johnson’sWar on Poverty during the 1960s.Farmworkers used the “Tio Tomás” (“Uncle Tom”) racial epithet to level accusations atVML’s political machination of token representation and control. May alludes to the internal and external colonization that Chicanos struggled with; however, Chicanos’ bicultural identity belies the simple monolithic binary that ignores heterogeneity and the tension of identity politics. Gradually, the VML’s paternalistic and individualistic ideology shifted to community development that examined power relations. Federal regulations and rifts between growers and workers hampered the work and autonomy of theVML. “The Revolution” chapter chronicles John Little’s tenure as director of the VML, relying heavily on organizational minutes and reports. At a study session with farmworker clubs, six resolutions to increase farmworker representation were adopted. The Office of Economic Opportunity’s (OEO) Migrant Division undercut their efforts,however,which prompted the first outreach to politicians. In a  Reviews sequential move,theVML motioned to require “farmworker background” in all key positions and eliminated “educational requirements for VML employment,” thus challenging racial exclusion. Meetings with Little ignited in Montes the fire for racial justice and raised his ethnic consciousness and activist zeal. The “ethnic dimension” was a visible effect of an emerging Chicano movement in Oregon. The VML was portrayed as a collective action group that coalesced with such allies as Los Amigos — what May calls a Mexican American network. That concept, however, ignores the sexist oppression of Chicanas within the male-dominated movement that marginalized them. In the “Activist” chapter, May examines Montes’s personal challenges, in particular his marriage and intrafamily class tensions. May’s analysis conceals Montes’s first wife Librada’s emerging subjectivity and liberation by redefining her own family networks. In the next few chapters, May examines the historical context of Chicano/a Studies in colleges and universities. As the Ethnic Affairs Director for Mount Angel College, Montes recommitted the college to fulfill its mission to the...

Old and New Paths of Trauma: An Analysis of Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban

This essay analyzes trauma in Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban. The<br />characters Celia and Felicia go through different sorts of trauma that do not<br />fit in the PTSD concept. These traumas are related to patriarchal codes of<br />behavior, family history, the socio-political context, and sexual oppression.

‘A New Language that Speaks of Change Just As It Steps Toward It’: Transnationalism, Erotic Justice and Queer Human Rights Praxis

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movements have too often been dominated by US liberal individualist framings of lesbian and gay rights, resulting in the hegemony of US-focused issues and institutional actions, despite the irony that the US government has been relatively unsupportive of LGBT rights on the international stage. We argue that transnational, grassroots queer movements embody more profound aspirations that do not limit the meaning of queer liberation to singular identity politics or rights-restraining institutions. Specifically, we point to transnational and Third World-based queer movements that offer more complex structural analyses of sexual oppression as well as more visionary praxes of sexual rights. Drawing on lessons from two cases of queer human rights praxis from the Philippines and México, we assert that a queer grassroots enactment of human rights allows for multiple subaltern constituencies to find – and to make – a place in human rights discourses; queer identity and actions create social formations that expand human rights agendas to further embody the intersectionality, interdependence and transnationality of daily life. Key to these enactments of queer human rights praxis are prefigurative politics and rooted cosmopolitanism, which catalyze new expansions of human rights to include intersectional framings and practices of erotic justice.

IMMANENCE AND ABJECTION IN SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

abstractIn this paper, I focus on the term ‘immanence’ in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and show how it relates to her historical account of sexual oppression. I argue that Beauvoir's use of Hegel's master−slave dialectic and of Claude Lévi‐Strauss's reflection on the prohibition of incest lead her to claim that in all societies “woman” is constructed as “absolutely other.” I show that there is an ambiguous logic of abjection at work in Beauvoir's account that explains why men are the only examples of transcendence in history, whereas women lack it. Finally, I discuss the way in which the relation between immanence and abjection helps to explain the intellectual relation between Georges Bataille and Beauvoir.

<em>Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past</em>, edited by Rosario Arias and Patricia Pulham<br/><em>Victorian Vogue: British Novels on Screen</em>, by Diane F. Sadoff

Reviewed by: Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past, and: Victorian Vogue: British Novels on Screen Susan Zieger (bio) Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past, edited by Rosario Arias and Patricia Pulham; pp. xxvi + 197. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, £50.00, $80.00. Victorian Vogue: British Novels on Screen, by Diane F. Sadoff; pp. xxii + 329. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, $75.00, $25.00 paper, £56.00, £18.50 paper. The recently recognized neo-Victorian genre—fiction written since about 1970 and set in the Victorian period—tends to generate the critical comment that the desire for the nineteenth-century past is an ambivalent one. This observation is made often by essays included in Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past, some of which dissent from the seeming confidence of the subtitle by noting that the past eludes complete possession. They detect this historical sensitivity in producers and consumers of neo-Victorian fiction, too: although readers wish to lose themselves in an absorptive experience of the Victorian past, writers help attune them to its discursive construction in the present. Mark Llewellyn makes an elegant version of this claim in his essay on novels by John Harwood, Charles Palliser, Jem Poster, and Sarah Waters. He remarks that neo-Victorian writers have begun to realize "that their publications are the equivalent now of the séances and communications with the dead then" (42). Llewellyn's analogy construes the neo-Victorian novel and Victorian séance as indeterminate mixtures of faith and knowledge, lending dignity to Victorian spiritualists and contemporary readers alike. As with a specter, the past can only be glimpsed from the present. That is the common theme running through the essays; its critical simplicity—the sign of a new field defining its boundaries—is often refreshing. The more interesting parts of Llewelyn's essay, and of the volume as a whole, nonetheless, deliver critical insights beyond restatements of the field's founding problematic. Although the collection is subdivided into four sections of two essays each, "Histories and Hauntings," "Spectral Women," "Sensing the Past," and "Ghosts in the City," the essays speak to each other across these categories. I particularly admire Silvana Collela's essay on "Olfactory Ghosts" in Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), which links the history of smell to Faber's postrealist critique of "the deodorizing project of nineteenth-century civilization" (89). Rosario Arias takes up a similar theme in her readings of representations of river stink in Matthew Kneale's Sweet Thames (1992) and Clare Clark's The Great Stink (2005). With similar critical sophistication, Esther Saxey's contribution explains how Mary Reilly (1990) and Alias Grace (1996) both engage and frustrate readers' desire to liberate Victorian women [End Page 378] from sexual oppression through their acts of reading. And in a complexly layered reading of Iain Sinclair's White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) and Peter Ackroyd's Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), Patricia Pulham uses the myth of the Golem to analyze the novels' engagements with the Ripper and Ratcliffe Highway murders, as well as their connection to the Jewish history of the East End. All of the essays give fine close readings of novels, so the collection would admirably service an undergraduate course on neo-Victorian fiction. And yet the concept-metaphor of "haunting and spectrality" also tends to limit the book's critical scope, hampering some specific analyses of readers' demands for neo-Victorian fiction and precluding a generalized explanation of its recent enlarged appeal. By occasionally leading essayists to emphasize the elusiveness of the past, and to assume a compulsion to apprehend it, the haunting metaphor rhetorically conjures present-day writers, readers, and critics as an undifferentiated "we" whose Victorian desire is largely the same. If neo-Victorian fiction insidiously deploys the trope of haunting to achieve this illusion of cultural homogeneity, critics should focus on explaining why rather than rein-scribing that ideological effect. Otherwise, in the absence of more specific critical discussion, the haunted seem to have no particular racial, postcolonial, neoliberal, or other identifications and investments that...

Liberation Psychological Implications for Pastoral Care of Korean Military Wives

Native Korean women frequently suffer poverty, sexual violence, and Confucian gender discrimination. Once in America Korean military wives also experience racial and sexual oppression, intercultural familial conflicts and violence, and identity crisis and lead to feelings of isolation and non-belonging, a sense of anomie. Korean American pastors tend to understate and oversimplify the complexity of psychological and spiritual suffering of Korean military wives and overemphasize individual faith development as a solution. Liberation psychology evolved from an awareness of similar dehumanizing realities. The context-based perspective of liberation psychology offers a model to interpret and assist in the psychological and spiritual healing of Korean military wives. The healing power of conscientization offered in Liberation psychology for oppressed individuals encourages self-awakening suggesting it as an ideal interventional model to help Korean military wives and would be a useful approach for Korean American pastors.

The Melodrama of Virginity and Sex Drive: The Gendered Discourse of “the Sexual Oppression of Disabled People” and Its “Solutions”

This essay investigates South Korean cultural representations of and public discourses about disabled people’s sexuality since the late 1990s. The gendered construction of their sexuality as a “problem” is analyzed to shed light on policy considerations. Close readings of a feature-length documentary film, Pink Palace (Seo 2005a); a short film, Papa (Lee 2004); and Kawai Kaori’s book Sex Volunteerism (2005) reveal the complex political and emotional dynamics of “sexual solutions.” Representations of the virginity of physically disabled men and the provision of sexual services whether by a legalized commercial sex trade or by volunteers, invoke melodrama. This affective excess also appears in Papa’s depiction of incestuous rape of a disabled woman as a way to satisfy her “sex drive.” In this restricted framework, “the sexuality of disabled people” is cast within the dichotomy of moral repression and sexual “crusade” supported by a naturalized biological understanding of sexuality. In discussing sexual opportunities for disabled people, careful attention must be paid to cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of diverse disabilities, genders, and the multiplicity of sexualities of disabled people, instead of simply gearing toward institutionalizing sexual “solutions.”

A EUROPEAN EDUCATION: MARGARET SANGER AND THE TRANS-ATLANTIC DEVELOPMENT OF BIRTH CONTROL IDEOLOGY

During the early twentieth century, a myriad of progressive movements would form in the United States to better the social status of women. These movements had rich roots in their European counterparts and often fed off the intellectual fire that permeated progressive causes across the Atlantic. Margaret Sanger was a relentless activist who set out to emancipate women by advocating birth control. She initially promoted the feminist message that called for greater sexual autonomy Sanger’s feminist viewpoint would gain strength among the company of European intellectuals who shaped her ideas on both birth control and the importance of personal sexual satisfaction. A close examination of the sexual freedom argument is crucial to discerning Sanger’s own feminism within the context of other feminist principles. Sanger was influenced by a variety of European activists who had a long tradition of arguing against a sexual double standard. Unlike American suffrage associations, British suffragists embraced the critique of sexual oppression. Sanger’s own frustration with the American suffrage movement and its lack of interest in reproductive rights possibly stemmed from her knowledge of the British model and British feminist’s active campaign for sexual autonomy. In addition, Sanger was also attracted to the writings of a new group forming in the cafes of London, Paris, and Milan known as the “New Moralists.” These New Moralists of the early twentieth century had a profound influence on Margaret Sanger and her argument for sexual autonomy. This paper will demonstrate the importance of these European influences on Sanger’s feminist advocacy of birth control as a means to achieve both sexual equality and satisfaction.

A masculinist northern wilderness and the emancipatory potential of literary irony

There has been an increasing body of critical research in modern literary geography claiming that forms of social oppression and injustice can become established through the institution of literature. It has also been stated that literature can equally well act as an emancipatory ‘tool’ through which subjugated histories are rewritten. This article is concerned with the colonialist history of Finnish northern literature, Lapland romanticism, the exoticism of nature and the interrelations of these with masculinism and sexist oppression. It discusses how northern nature is romanticized through literary stereotypes based on masculinist values and a multidimensional social process of sexism, and how the regional marginalization of northern Finland has been justified at the same time. The primary focus is on the emancipatory potential of untraditional northern literature, on a northern female author, Rosa Liksom, who through her unconventional literary irony has functioned as an emancipatory ‘project’ against the masculinist stereotypes of the northern wilderness. Liksom's literary irony serves as a metafictive ‘method’ working in pursuit of revealing its own discursive structure, as a strategy through which literary conventions and their wider social context become deconstructed.

Sexual/Environmental Justice and Ecocriticism of the New Century

Key words: environmental justice, sexuality, reproductivity, food industry, queer ecology Environmental justice in the 21st century should advance in the exploration, both theoretical and practical, of aspects of identity such as sexuality and reproductivity, which up to the present have been less analyzed than aspects of race, class and gender. The novels of Ruth Ozeki illustrate brilliantly the intersection between justice related to the food industry and sexual justice. Moreover, queer environmental justice has largely benefited from the theoretical framework established by Cate Sandilands for queer ecology. Palabras clave: justicia medioambiental, sexualidad, reproducción, industria alimentaria, ecología queer La justicia medioambiental del siglo XXI debe avanzar hacia la exploración, tanto teórica como práctica, de aspectos de la identidad del individuo tales como la sexualidad y la reproductividad, menos analizadas hasta la fecha desde este punto de vista, que las variables de raza, clase o género. Las novelas de Ruth Ozeki ilustran de manera excelente la intersección entre la justicia relacionada con la industria alimentaria y la justicia sexual. Al mismo tiempo, la justicia medioambiental de carácter queer se ha beneficiado en gran medida de los marcos teóricos establecidos por Cate Sandilands para atender cuestiones de ecología queer.

Peer Sexual Harassment And Coping Mechanisms Of Female Students In A Nigerian University

This study was designed to investigate the prevalence and nature of peer sexual harassment among female Nigerian university students. It also examined the perception of students about peer sexual harassment and ascertained the coping mechanisms adopted by victims of peer sexual harassment. Participants consisted of 387 female undergraduate students selected by convenience sampling from three Faculties at the Obafemi Awolowo University. A self-constructed instrument with a test-retest reliability coefficient of 0.79 was administered on students to collect data on their experience and perception of peer sexual harassment as well as adopted coping strategies. The results of the study indicated that verbal harassment was the most frequent type of peer sexual harassment experienced by female students. Findings from the study also showed that most victims of peer sexual harassment did not report their harassment to authorities but adopted strategies that did not involve direct confrontation with their harassers. The study concluded that there was the need for a virile counselling programme in all Nigerian universities to stem down the incidence of peer sexual harassment and that such a programme should be targeted not only at victims but also at perpetrators of sexual harassment. Key Words: sexuality, sexual victimisation, sexual harassment, sexual oppression.

Handbook on Service Learning in Women’s Studies and the Disciplines (review)

Reviewed by: Handbook on Service Learning in Women’s Studies and the Disciplines Alice E. Ginsberg (bio) Dugger, Karen, ed. Handbook on Service Learning in Women’s Studies and the Disciplines. Towson, Md.: Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, 2008. 178 pp. The Handbook on Service Learning in Women’s Studies and the Disciplines makes a very important contribution to a field of literature that is growing within both women’s studies and higher education more generally. The idea that women’s studies students should be closely connected to the feminist community is not a new one. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when women’s studies courses began popping up on college campuses, they were very closely related to the feminist movement and other political movements, such as the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. In fact, women’s studies was often referred to as the “academic arm” or “wing” of the women’s movement. That this tradition of joining theory and actual practice continues today is heartening, for this book reinforces the idea that there is no substitute for working hand-in-hand with communities in need, not as “knights in shining armor,” but as true partners working together for a common cause. Editor Karen Dugger has collected a diverse and rich array of essays on the value and definition of service-learning, reflections on how it is done, and course syllabi that highlight ways that service-learning can be incorporated into the whole of a women’s studies course and other related courses as well. As Dugger rightly notes in the introduction: “Service is not an end in itself. Rather, the service activity is organized to meet learning objectives and to enhance students’ understanding of the course material. . . . Simply adding a service requirement to an otherwise unchanged course is not service-learning . . . ” (2). She stresses that service-learning is different from simply “volunteering,” in that it places a high premium on “reflection.” Indeed she notes that: “The mechanism through which learning is harvested—the hyphen connecting service with learning—is reflection.” This point is illustrated in an essay by Natalie Jolly, who teaches women’s studies courses at Penn State University, in which she quotes a student in her class: “I have benefited from this project in ways [End Page 174] that I can’t even explain. If someone had told me at the beginning of the semester that my views would change so much towards the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] community I would never have believed them . . . . Looking back, I find it very hard to believe that I ever possessed such views” (10). This revelation is similarly underscored in another essay, in which Ann Green, the director of the Gender Studies Program at St. Joseph’s University, writes: “It is one thing to read about compulsive heterosexuality and sexist oppression, but it is another thing to engage in weekly conversations with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth about the daily homophobia in their lives”(22). Dugger also stresses the importance of students seeing service-learning as a form of advocacy and activism rather than simply charity. She notes that service-learning should lead to the transformation of the community as well as the individual. Similarly, it is underscored that service-learning is very different from “internships,” which tend to “signal professionalization and self-advancement . . . . over social justice and personal transformation . . . ” (37). Ideally, service-learning should be an experience of teaching and learning for both the student and community partners. In at least one case, the authors strongly recommend that community partners be invited into the classroom to discuss the projects with the students. The contributing authors to the volume, however, do warn readers that assigning or choosing a project for service-learning can be tricky and should not be taken lightly. As Betsy Eudey, the director of gender studies at California State University- Stanislaus, reflects, for example, with a topic like domestic violence, instructors should be aware of the fact that “some students have personal experiences with violence, and their ability to participate in various aspects of the project may be shaped by these experience” (27). Moreover, it is noted that...

Toy story. En vetenskaplig kritik av forskning om apors leksakspreferenser

Biological sex differences have long been used as arguments justifying male dominance and sexist oppression. Animal studies of sex differences are used to claim that human sex roles have a long evolutionary history. In a study of toy preferences in vervet monkeys, the authors conclude that sex-differentiated object preferences arose early in human evolution. In this paper I scrutinize the study and reveal that both the hypotheses, the performed preference tests and the conclusions drawn are flawed. In the study, the authors hypothesise that male vervets should prefer a ball and a car based on the human hunter-gatherer hypothesis. Men are suggested to be selected for navigating abilities useful for hunting and women for nurturing babies. This hypothesis is then transferred to vervets which is a tree-living species, subsisting of a mainly vegetarian diet, where skills such as navigating in space ought to be necessary for survival - in both males and females. Furthermore, the presentation of toys is conducted in groups, individual interactions with a toy is taken as a preference for the sex of that individual. Therefore it is impossible to derive individual preferences from these tests. Vervets are matrilinear with females sometimes being dominant to males. From an animal behaviour framework, I would interpret the preferences as an interaction between individuals. Perhaps low-ranked individuals approach new objects first, as they may be dangerous. The results are interpreted and presented with graphs and pictures in order to tell the convincing story about sex differences in toy preference that the authors wanted to find, but there is weak support for these conclusions. Hence, from the evidence presented in this study, we cannot conclude that human sex-differentiated toy preferences date more than 23 million years back in time.

III. Sex and Censorship: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

In this article, I will discuss the impact that television fiction may have upon our understanding of women’s sexuality and sexual oppression. Using the cult television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) (Whedon, 1997–2003) as a case study, I argue that some censorship deprives viewers of the opportunity to reflect upon and debate sexual mores. Public concern over the effects of television on young people has led to much empirical investigation, principally regarding television violence and, to a lesser extent, sexual content. There is no evidence to suggest that sexual material directly influences young people’s sexual attitudes or behaviour (Donnerstein and Smith, 2001; Malamuth and Impett, 2001); furthermore, research has been criticized for using ‘simple exposure’ to sexual scenes (Bauserman,1998) as measures; the relationship between television viewing and behaviour is likely to be complex, mediated through historical, cultural and social contexts. Young viewers ‘read’ sexual scenes through the lens of their own prior experiences and developing sexual identities and are capable of interpreting moral messages underlying scenes of a sexual nature; their views are often influenced by broader moral values such as trust and mutual respect (Brown, 2000; Levine, 2002; Bragg and Buckingham, 2003). Indeed, it has been argued that the overarching moral messages contained in television fiction are more important than specific content. Selnow (1990) analysed a range of prime-time television programmes and concluded that although they contained scenes of sex and violence, they also conveyed many positive values; people view the whole programme, not just the controversial scenes. Arguably all but the youngest of viewers understand the values being conveyed.