Critical Femininities

Critical Femininities
Author: Rhea Ashley Hoskin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100078598X

What would change about our existing world if we re-imagined and re-valued femininity? Critical Femininities presents a multidimensional framework for re-thinking femininity. Moving beyond seeing femininity as a patriarchal tool, this book considers the social, historical, and ideological forces that shape present-day norms surrounding femininity, particularly those that contribute to femmephobia: the systematic devaluation and regulation of all that is deemed feminine. Each chapter offers a unique application of the Critical Femininities framework to disparate areas of inquiry, ranging from breastfeeding stigma to Incel ideology, and attempts to answer pressing questions concerning the place of femininity within gender and social theory. How can we conceptualise feminine power? In what ways can vulnerability act as a powerful mode of resistance? How can we understand femininity as powerful without succumbing to masculinist frameworks? What ideological underpinnings maintain Critical Femininities as an emergent field, despite traceable origins pre-dating second-wave feminism? As the provocative entries within this volume will certainly generate additional questions for anyone invested in society’s treatment of femininity, this book offers a launching pad for the continued growth of a field that cultivates insight from a feminine frame of reference as a means of rendering visible the taken-for-granted presence of masculinity that remains pervasive within gender theory. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Psychology & Sexuality.

Feminizing Theory

Feminizing Theory
Author: Rhea Ashley Hoskin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000436853

The term "femme" originates from 1940s Western working-class lesbian bar culture, wherein femme referred to a feminine lesbian who was typically in a relationship with a butch lesbian. Expanding from this original meaning, femme has since emerged as a form of femininity reclaimed by queer and culturally marginalized folks. Importantly, femme has also evolved into a theoretical framework. Femme theory argues that "femme" constitutes a missing piece in queer and feminist discourses of femininity. Attending to this gap, femme theory centres queer femininities as a means of pushing against the deeply embedded masculinist orientation of queer and gender theory. Thus, femme theory offers tools to shift the way researchers and readers understand femininity as well as systems of gender and power more broadly. This book is an introduction to femme theory, showcasing how femme can be used as a theoretical framework across a variety of contexts and disciplines, such as Film & Media Studies, Psychology, Sociology, or Critical Disability Studies; from countries, including Canada, China, Guyana and the USA. Femme theory asks readers to reconsider how femininity is conceptualized, revealing some of the many taken for granted assumptions that are embedded within cultural discourses of gender, sexuality, and power. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

Emancipation's Daughters

Emancipation's Daughters
Author: Riché Richardson
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2020-11-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478012501

In Emancipation's Daughters, Riché Richardson examines iconic black women leaders who have contested racial stereotypes and constructed new national narratives of black womanhood in the United States. Drawing on literary texts and cultural representations, Richardson shows how five emblematic black women—Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama, and Beyoncé—have challenged white-centered definitions of American identity. By using the rhetoric of motherhood and focusing on families and children, these leaders have defied racist images of black women, such as the mammy or the welfare queen, and rewritten scripts of femininity designed to exclude black women from civic participation. Richardson shows that these women's status as national icons was central to reconstructing black womanhood in ways that moved beyond dominant stereotypes. However, these formulations are often premised on heteronormativity and exclude black queer and trans women. Throughout Emancipation's Daughters, Richardson reveals new possibilities for inclusive models of blackness, national femininity, and democracy.

The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique
Author: Betty Friedan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2001-09-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0393322572

The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

Rhetoric of Femininity

Rhetoric of Femininity
Author: Donnalyn Pompper
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2016-12-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1498519369

Rhetoric of Femininity: Female Body Image, Media, and Gender Role Stress/Conflict offers critical and social identity intersectionalities approach to interpretations of femininity among three generations of women for a rhetorical examination of how femininity is made to mean by media and popular culture. Amplified are voices of women across multiple age, ethnic, and sexual orientation groups who shared in focus groups and interviews their perceptions of femininity and feminine ideals. Femininity is explored using theories from communication and mass media, psychology, sociology, and feminist and gender studies. Donnalyn Pompper explores femininities as shaped by cultural rituals and industries, at home and at work in organizations, on sporting fields and arenas, and in politics.

Women and Puppetry

Women and Puppetry
Author: Alissa Mello
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1351848798

Women and Puppetry is the first publication dedicated to the study of women in the field of puppetry arts. It includes critical articles and personal accounts that interrogate specific historical moments, cultural contexts, and notions of "woman" on and off stage. Part I, "Critical Perspective," includes historical and contemporary analyses of women’s roles in society, gender anxiety revealed through the unmarked puppet body, and sexual expression within oppressive social contexts. Part II, "Local Contexts: Challenges and Transformations," investigates work of female practitioners within specific cultural contexts to illuminate how women are intervening in traditionally male spaces. Each chapter in Part II offers brief accounts of specific social histories, barriers, and gender biases that women have faced, and the opportunities afforded female creative leaders to appropriate, revive, and transform performance traditions. And in Part III, "Women Practitioners Speak," contemporary artists reflect on their experiences as female practitioners within the art of puppet theatre. Representing female writers and practitioners from across the globe, Women and Puppetry offers students and scholars a comprehensive interrogation of the challenges and opportunities that women face in this unique art form.

Queering Desire

Queering Desire
Author: Róisín Ryan-Flood
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2024-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100385804X

Queering Desire explores, with unprecedented interdisciplinary scope, contemporary configurations of lesbian, bi, queer women’s, and non-binary people’s experiences of identity and desire. Taking an intersectional feminist and trans-inclusive approach, and incorporating new and established identities such as non-binary, masculine of centre (MOC), butch, and femme, this collection examines how the changing landscape for gender and sexual identities impacts on queer culture in productive and transformative ways. Within queer studies, explorations of desire, longing, and eroticism have often neglected AFAB, transfeminine, and non-binary people’s experiences. Through 25 newly commissioned chapters, a diverse range of authors, from early career researchers to established scholars, stage conversations at the cutting edge of sexuality studies. Queering Desire advances our understanding of contemporary lesbian and queer desire from an inclusive perspective that is supportive of trans and non-binary identities. This innovative interdisciplinary collection is an excellent resource for scholars, undergraduate, and postgraduate students interested in gender, sexuality, and identity across a range of fields, such as queer studies, feminist theory, anthropology, media studies, sociology, psychology, history, and social theory. In foregrounding female and non-binary experiences, this book constitutes a timely intervention.

Handbook on Gender in World Politics

Handbook on Gender in World Politics
Author: Jill Steans
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783470623

The Handbook on Gender in World Politics is an up-to-date, comprehensive, multi-disciplinary compendium of scholarship in gender studies. The text provides an indispensable reference guide for scholars and students interrogating gender issues in international and global contexts. Substantive areas covered include: statecraft, citizenship and the politics of belonging, international law and human rights, media and communications technologies, political economy, development, global governance and transnational visions of politics and solidarities.

Global Women's Entrepreneurship Research

Global Women's Entrepreneurship Research
Author: Karen D. Hughes
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1849804753

Global Women's Entrepreneurship Research responds to recent calls from academic researchers and policy analysts alike to pay greater attention to the diversity and heterogeneity among women entrepreneurs. Drawing together studies by 26 researchers affiliated with the DIANA International Research Network, this collection contributes to a richer and more robust understanding of the field. Part I: 'Diverse Settings' introduces research set in a range of contexts, from those rarely examined to those representing more familiar terrains. Part II: 'Diverse Questions' explores new questions and reframes old questions in fresh, innovative ways. Part III: 'Diverse Approaches' features studies with distinct methodological approaches that reflect and extend the rigour and creativity of research in this field. Together, the research assembled in this volume significantly advances knowledge about women's entrepreneurship around the world. While the book's primary audience is academic researchers and graduate students working in the areas of women's entrepreneurship, as well as entrepreneurship and family business more generally, it will also be of interest to scholars working in related research areas in the sociology of gender, work and organizations. Policy-makers in government and non-government agencies as well as profit and not-for-profit organizations that provide services to, or conduct research on, women entrepreneurs will also benefit greatly from the insights provided in this unique volume.

Navigating Trans and Complex Gender Identities

Navigating Trans and Complex Gender Identities
Author: Jamison Green
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2019-11-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1350061069

We all encounter others whose gender identities differ from our own, whether it is in the classroom, in public, in the media or online. For many, there is anxiety about which words to use in conversation and sometimes people keep quiet so as to not offend someone whose gender identity may not be readily discernible, when in actuality, what they desire is to understand, learn, and interact. This book offers practical research-based strategies for expanding personal, social and political awareness about gender-identity privileges - helping the reader to work through fears and unpack ingrained communication patterns and language. In order to better understand the ever-evolving landscape of gender identity the authors provide historical and political background for the transgender movement and consider how issues of age, culture, race, social class, media, celebrity and religion affect transgender identities. The book includes a glossary of key terms, a foreword from leading transgender rights activist, Jamison Green, and an afterword by Meredith Talusan, Contributing Editor at them. Written for educators and individuals committed to learning about changes and shifts in gender identities, this book gives grounded, real-time, practical and solution-oriented ideas and language about how to be a better communicator, listener and responder to trans and non-binary gender identities.