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The Gender Bend: Culture, Sex, And Sexuality – A Latcritical Human Rights Map Of Latina/O Border Crossings, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the course of studying and theorizing about Latinas/os and their location in law and culture, critical theory has been simultaneously liberating and restraining, confining, and coercive. Critical theorists have made substantial inroads in recognizing the intersectionality, multidimensionality, multiplicity, and interconnectivities of the intersections of race and sex. These paradigms are central to an analysis of the Latina/o condition within the Estados Unidos (United States). However, much work remains to be done in other areas - such as culture, language, sexuality, and class - that are key to Latinas'/os' self-determination and full citizenship.

Cognizant of, and notwithstanding such limitations, this …

Gender And Justice: Parity And The United States Supreme Court, Paula A. Monopoli

Paula A Monopoli

There is a deep concern among many American women that only one woman remains on the United States Supreme Court. When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in on September 25, 1981, most people never imagined that twenty-five years later there would still be only one woman on the Court. It appears that it will be many more years before there is a critical mass of women sitting on the high court. Given its central role, the Court should better represent the gender balance in American society. In a number of other countries, voluntary or involuntary parity provisions have been …

The Harry Potter Lexicon And The World Of Fandom: Fan Fiction, Outsider Works, And Copyright, Aaron Schwabach

Aaron Schwabach

Fan fiction, long a nearly invisible form of outsider art, has grown exponentially in volume and legal importance in the past decade. Because of its nature, authorship, and underground status, fan fiction stands at an intersection of issues of property, sexuality, and gender. This article examines three disputes over fan writings, concluding with the recent dispute between J.K. Rowling and Steven Vander Ark over the Harry Potter Lexicon, which Rowling once praised and more recently succeeded in suppressing. The article builds on and adds to the emerging body of scholarship on fan fiction, concluding that much fan fiction is fair …

Passions We Like...And Those We Don't: Anti-Gay Hate Crime Laws And The Discursive Construction Of Sex, Gender, And The Body, Yvonne Zylan

Yvonne Zylan

This article examines an oft noted, but largely unexplored, aspect of law’s functioning: its ability to constitute social reality. Specifically, I investigate the ways in which law helps define and delimit sexuality as a set of practices, experiences, and identifications. I do so by analyzing the discursive dimensions of anti-gay hate crime laws, demonstrating that such laws produce discrete discursive objects (doctrine and argument) within a specific set of institutional practices (the juridical field), and that these objects and practices in turn legitimate certain limiting narratives, instantiating them as social knowledge and as the ground of sexed and gendered performances. …

The George-Anne, Georgia Southern University

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Left Hand, Third Finger: The Wearing Of Wedding (Or Other) Rings As A Form Of Assertive Conduct Under The Hearsay Rule, Peter Nicolas

Peter Nicolas

In this manuscript, I examine the social phenomena of making use of what I call “ring evidence” to determine an individual’s marital status or sexual orientation. More specifically, I note the common practice of identifying people as married based on the presence of a ring on the ring finger of the left hand, as gay and in a committed relationship based on the presence of a ring on the ring finger of the right hand, and as single based on the absence of a ring.

Next, I identify two problems with making use of ring evidence to draw conclusions about …

Crowding In Context: An Examination Of The Differential Responses Of Men And Women To High-Density Living Environments, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This study examines the question of gender-equivalent outcomes of mental health and social behavior in the context of crowding stress. It tests the hypothesis that gender will influence the exhibition of stress outcomes resulting from exposure to high-density living environments, with women displaying internalized responses and men responding with externalized styles. Expanding on the types of gender-appropriate disorders examined in this area of research, I selected depression, aggression, and withdrawal as gender-specific disorders based on theory and prior research. Multilevel analyses of data from a survey of Toronto residents indicate that, while the effects of household density are conditioned by …

Redefining Harm, Reimagining Remedies And Reclaiming Domestic Violence Law, Margaret Johnson

Margaret E Johnson

Women subjected to domestic violence are disserved by the civil domestic violence laws that should effectively address and redress their harms. The Civil Protective Order [CPO] laws should remedy all domestic abuse and not solely physical violence or criminal acts. All forms of abuse, including psychological, emotional, economic and physical abuse, cause severe emotional distress, physical harm, isolation, sustained fear, intimidation, poverty, degradation, humiliation, and coerced loss of autonomy. Moreover, all abuse is interrelated, because, as researchers have demonstrated, most domestic violence is the fundamental operation of systemic oppression through the exertion of power and control. Given the effectiveness of …

Gender And The Chinese Legal Profession In Historical Perspective: From Heaven And Earth To Rule Of Woman?, Mary Szto

Mary Szto

This article first discusses the current phenomenon of women judges and male lawyers in China. Many women have joined the ranks of the Chinese judiciary because this is considered a stable job conducive to caring for one’s family, as opposed to being a lawyer, which requires business travel and heavy client entertaining. I then trace this phenomenon to ancient views of Heaven, earth, gender and law in China. In this yin/yang framework, men had primary responsibility for providing sustenance for both this life and the life to come and women were relegated to the “inner chambers”. Also, law was secondary …

Of Authorship And Audacity: An Empirical Study Of Gender Disparity And Privilege In The “Top Ten” Law Reviews, Minna J. Kotkin

Minna J. Kotkin

In today’s law schools, article placement is a significant consideration in hiring, promotion, tenure, and lateral mobility. This article analyzes authorship by gender and home school “privilege” in 15 law reviews (the “top ten”) over a three year period. It compares these data with the gender composition of the professoriate and of the 15 schools’ faculties, using Association of American Law Schools and American Bar Association statistics. The mean percentage of articles authored by one or more women (and no men) is 20.3. Nationally, women comprise 31% of the tenured/tenure-track professoriate and 28.3% at the 15 schools. At the associate …

Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy And Gender In Social Class Reproduction, Spencer L. James

Theses and Dissertations

The observation that middle class parents tend to have middle class children is rather obvious. Why this is so has been the subject of less research than the fact that it is so. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), I employ theories about social class reproduction to examine and evaluate a model that scrutinizes the influence of self-efficacy and self-esteem on college completion or current enrollment and investigate gender differences. I find that self-esteem and self-efficacy play a vital role in social class outcomes. However, I find no evidence of gender differences in the social class reproduction …

Maternity Leave Policy In U.S. Police Departments And School Districts: The Impact Of Descriptive And Social Group Representation In A Context Of Gendered Institutions, Corina S. Schulze

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

United States federal law regulating leaves of absence for maternity-related purposes pales in comparison to other nations' policies, an observation only recently receiving attention from political scientists. Providing an understanding of how maternity leave is handled by individual organizations in the United States only, a quantitative study is conducted that examines local variation in policy formulation. Employee leave due to maternity is primarily a women's issue and its treatment will vary depending on the socio-political context that the policy dictating the leave is found in. Three main determinants of a policy's level of comprehensiveness are identified as being the political …

Disordered Eating In Undergraduates: Does Gender Role Orientation Influence Men And Women The Same Way?, Mary Pritchard

Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Previous studies have examined the influence of femininity on disordered eating behavior in female undergraduates, but few studies have examined the relation between gender roles and disordered eating in male undergraduates. The present study examined whether gender roles relate to disordered eating behaviors the same way in male and female undergraduates. 512 undergraduates (58% female) at a large university in the Pacific West region of the United States responded to a survey asking about eating behaviors and gender role orientation. Women displayed higher levels of disordered eating than did men. Undifferentiated and masculine women had higher levels of disordered eating …

Nietzsche/Pentheus: The Last Disciple Of Dionysus And Queer Fear Of The Feminine, C. Heike Schotten

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

This article examines the scholarly preoccupation with the hypothesis that Nietzsche was gay by offering a reading of Nietzsche's texts as autobiographical that puts them in conversation with Euripides's drama The Bacchae. Drawing a number of parallels between Nietzsche, self-avowed disciple of Dionysus, and Pentheus, the main character of The Bacchae and demonstrated antidisciple of Dionysus, I argue that both men experience their sexual attraction to women as somehow intolerable, and they negotiate this discomfort—which is simultaneously an unjustified paranoia and fear of the feminine—through the appropriation of feminine capacities and qualities for themselves. This appropriation ultimately expresses these men's …

Attributionally More Complex People Show Less Punitiveness And Racism, Kim-Pong Tam, Al Au, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Based on past findings that attributionally more complex people make less fundamental attribution error, it was hypothesized that they would show less punitiveness and racism. In a study of 102 undergraduates, this hypothesis received robust support. The effect of attributional complexity was significant in two different punitiveness measures, a rehabilitation support measure, and two different racism measures. Also, this effect still held when demographic variables, crime victimization history, and need for cognition were statistically controlled. Moreover, attributional complexity mediated the effect of need for cognition and gender on punitiveness and racism. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Nietzsche/Pentheus: The Last Disciple Of Dionysus And Queer Fear Of The Feminine, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

No abstract provided.

Factors Associated With Traffic Crashes In Pasto, Colombia: 2005-2006, Adam L. O'Bryant

Public Health Theses

Road traffic injuries (RTI) currently rank as the 11th leading cause of death world wide and the leading cause of injury related deaths worldwide. Globally, road traffic crashes kill over 1.2 million people per year with over 90% of the deaths occurring in low and middle income countries. Pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, collectively called vulnerable road users, are often times the victims. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the factors that are associated with traffic fatalities as well as the factors that are associated with being a vulnerable road user in traffic injuries and traffic fatalities in …

Operation Help: Counteracting Sex Trafficking Of Women From Russia And Ukraine, Nadezda Shapkina

Sociology Dissertations

Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal activities in today’s world and a violation of human rights. Sex trafficking of women from Russia and Ukraine was enabled by the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the incorporation of the new countries into the global economy. At the same time, this social problem generated a series of anti-trafficking campaigns in Russia, Ukraine, and internationally. This research analyzes social responses to the risks of sex trafficking of women from Russia and Ukraine. The analysis is based on sixteen-month multi-sited field research in Russia and Ukraine. I collected data through …

July 9, 2008: Gender And Religion, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Gender and Religion“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Relationship Of Fear Of Intimacy, Body Image Avoidance And Body Mass Index, Elliot Montgomery Sklar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Issues of body image and ability to achieve intimacy are connected to body weight, yet remain largely unexplored and have not been evaluated by gender. The underlying purpose of this research was to determine if avoidant attitudes and perceptions of one’s body may hold implications toward its use in intimate interactions, and if an above average body weight would tend to increase this avoidance. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 1999-2002) finds that 64.5% of US adults are overweight, with 61.9% of women and 67.2% of men. The increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in men and women …

Women In Municipal Politics: Barriers To Participation, Carol Down

MPA Major Research Papers

This paper examines the barriers to participation that women face when attempting to enter municipal politics based on a review of the programs and recommendations made by three initiatives that have been developed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Equal Voice, and the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities to increase the number of women in municipal government. The findings reveal that the barriers to participation can only be removed through major political and cultural changes and the deterrents to equal participation, such as systemic discrimination, sexism, power gender imbalances, and the marginalization of women and minorities, must be addressed …

Relations Among Gender, Violence Exposure, And Mental Health: The National Survey Of Adolescents, Rochelle F. Hanson, Cameo Borntrager, Shannon Self-Brown, Dean G. Kilpatrick, Benjamin E. Saunders, Heidi S. Resnick, Ananda Amstadter

Psychology Faculty Publications

Using a nationally representative sample of 4,008 adolescents, this study examines gender differences in violence exposure, major depressive episode (MDE) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and characteristics of violence incidents. It was hypothesized that there would be gender differences in the types of violence exposure reported as well as the prevalence of MDE and PTSD; and that gender would moderate the relationship between violence exposure and mental health outcomes. Results indicated significant gender differences in rates of violence exposure, PTSD and MDE. Additionally, gender was a moderating variable in the relation between sexual assault and PTSD, but not in the …

Psychopathy And Adolescent Females: Does Gender Alter The Relation Between Childhood Trauma And Pcl:Yv Scores?, Trevor Barese

Psychology Theses

A growing rate of violence among adolescent females has led to an increased interest in gender differences associated with the assessment and development of psychopathy. This study utilized a sample of 100 youthful offenders, to examine the role of gender in the relation between various forms of childhood trauma and scores on the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV). Correlations were found between certain forms of childhood abuse and elevated PCL:YV scores. Furthermore, gender appeared to alter the predictive power of proposed developmental risk factors commonly associated with psychopathy. The findings indicate possible discrepancies in developmental risk factors between genders. Implications …

Correlates And Predictors Of Cognitive Complexity Among Counseling And Social Work Students In Graduate Training Programs, Christopher Simmons

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For this study, a web-based survey method was used as a means of collecting data to test a predictive model of education, supervised clinical experience (SCE), age, human services experience (HSE) and cognitive complexity. The theoretical framework for the study was Perry's (1970; 1999) scheme of intellectual development. The sample consisted of 332 counseling and social work students in graduate training programs in four different regions of the United States. The instruments used in the study were a researcher-developed demographic questionnaire and the Learning Environment Preferences (LEP) instrument (Moore, 1987). The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that education …

Net/Work: Composing The Posthuman Self, Julia L. Mason

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overall question this dissertation asks is: what does it mean to teach posthumans? To answer this question, this dissertation turns toward scholarship on the body in order to understand the virtual and material presence that students develop, it looks to online video gaming communities as alternative classrooms providing effective models of learning, and it investigates the circulation of service learning pedagogies within academic institutions as a marker of the persistence of humanistic values within the framework of a posthuman work environment.

The American university in general, and the humanities specifically, is struggling to make sense of its place in …

Family Business Daughters: The Ties That Bind And Divide, Angela M. Day

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the relational contradictions experienced by family business daughters, and to investigate how they responded to these tensions. For this project, I interviewed twelve second and third generation family business daughters from eleven different family businesses. I utilized research procedures similar to grounded theory to analyze my interview transcripts. I examined relational tensions at both a personal level and an organizational level involving the larger work-family system. At a personal level, the connection/separation contradiction is significant to family business daughters and to their relationships with work and family. Many family business daughters helped …

Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Elizabeth Key, an African-Anglo woman living in seventeenth century colonial Virginia sued for her freedom after being classified as a negro by the overseers of her late master’s estate. Her lawsuit is one of the earliest freedom suits in the English colonies filed by a person with some African ancestry. Elizabeth’s case also highlights those factors that distinguished indenture from life servitude—slavery in the mid-seventeenth century. She succeeds in securing her freedom by crafting three interlinking legal arguments to demonstrate that she was a member of the colonial society in which she lived. Her evidence was her asserted ancestry—English; her …

Tax Equity, Anthony C. Infanti

Anthony C. Infanti

Simply put, this article stands the traditional concept of tax equity on its head. Challenging the notion that tax equity is an unequivocal good, this article deconstructs the concept of tax equity to reveal the subtle, yet pernicious ways in which it shapes tax policy debates and impinges upon contributions to those debates. The article describes how tax equity, with its narrow focus on “income” as the sole relevant metric for judging tax fairness, presupposes a population that is homogeneous along all other lines. Through this insidious homogenization, tax equity performs both a sanitizing and a screening function in the …

Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer

Faculty Scholarship

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal …

What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?, Mike Donaldson

Mike Donaldson

Hegemonic masculinity is a powerful idea that has been usefully employed for about twenty five years (by 2007) in a wide variety of contexts and has now been subject to much critical review. Its successful application to a wide range of different cultures suggests that there may well be no known human societies in which some form of masculinity has not emerged as dominant, more socially central, more associated with power, in which a pattern of practices embodying the "currently most honoured way" of being male legitimates the superordination of men over women. Hegemonic masculinity is normative in a social …