Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Miss Americana: Taylor Swift As A Battleground For Feminist Discourse, Juliet Eklund

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

The United States finds itself at a historical moment in which feminism is perhaps more polarizing than ever before. On the one hand, it is no longer taboo to identify as feminist; in fact, men and women alike are embracing feminist perspectives. A recent Pew Research survey found that 61% of American women identified as feminists, with this proportion even higher among Democrats and those who had received higher education (Barroso, 2020). At the same time, women are faced with more opportunities and fewer barriers to achieving success than ever before. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the 2020 election …

The Profits Of (The Critique Of) Patriarchy: On Toxic Masculinity, Feminism, & Corporate Capitalism In The Barbie Movie, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article explicates the political, social, economic, and cultural contribution of Barbie (2023). Through a critical and normative analysis of four different prominent reviews of the film, this essay explores the quality of discourse surrounding Barbie, with particular emphasis on its feminist critique of toxic masculinity and lack of a coherent criticism of capitalism.

Undoing The Absence Of Asexuality In The Classroom, Canton Winer

Feminist Pedagogy

Asexuality exists at the margins of sexuality, often invisible to and misunderstood outside—and even within—the LGBTQIA+ community. As an identity that generally refers to those who experience low/no sexual attraction, asexuality challenges the broadly held notion that everyone experiences sexual attraction. Given the centrality of sexuality to a great deal of feminist scholarship, the absence of asexuality in many feminist classrooms is striking. Moreover, decades of feminist and queer research and pedagogy have demonstrated the vast, liberatory potential of centering the margins as we seek to understand the social world. With that lineage in mind, asexuality presents a rich, relatively …

Swerf Necropolitics: Three Sites Of Feminist Mistranslation And The Politics Of Feminist Exclusion, Aaron Hammes

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The acronym SWERF, or Sex Work(er) Exclusive Radical Feminism, and its attendant ideologies brings up a number of questions and potential schisms for the enterprise of feminist thought more broadly. This inquiry examines what it means for feminism to exclude, what the excluders believe is gained by protecting certain boundaries around which identities and practices are included, and the ideological foundations and consequences of this thinking. SWERF logics are understood as mistranslations of the radical potentialities of feminism, clustered around three sites: exclusion (against bodily autonomy) , equivocation (between sex work and labor trafficking), and misrepresentation (of the sex worker …

The Current Status Of Women In Morocco And How It Can Be Improved, Amanda Maia

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My paper will explore the conditions of gender minorities in Morocco through representation, NGOs, social structures, and resources therein to support the progress of acquiring more rights for these demographics. With an emphasis on the status of women in Morocco. My main questions as it stands are: What are the living conditions for women in Morocco and how can they be improved? What progress has been and still can be made to improve the quality of life and foster joy for these demographics in Morocco? Since the 1990s, there has been significant progress in Morocco to improve Family Law and …

Fragments Of An Anarcha-Transfeminist Sociology Of Sex Work, Veronica Andrek

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The purpose of this study is to explore ways in which feminist and sociological theory can be expanded by looking at the experiences of transgender women who are engaged in sex work specifically with an eye for transfeminist and anarchist political theory. Based on qualitative interviews with five transfeminine sex workers, I found that transfeminine sex workers, while facing substantial obstacles such as criminalization, transmisogyny, and poverty, are capable of building communities and forging new meanings in their lives. Within sex work are opportunities by which to reimagine labor and its role in our lives, with the possibility of abolishing …

Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article is about an assignment I do in one of my Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies social movement classes. I revised the assignment the first time teaching the class after Trump lost the 2020 election. For the assignment, students work in groups to research local feminist and gender justice organizations and deposit all of their original materials – recordings, photos, flyers, etc. – into a digital, open access archive I co-created several years ago with librarians and staff on my campus. In 2021 I had my students do the “post-Trump” edition where they researched local organizations about how their …

Introduction To Oxford Handbook Of Feminism And Law In The U.S., Deborah L. Brake, Martha Chamallas, Verna L. Williams

Book Chapters

Combining analyses of feminist legal theory, legal doctrine and feminist social movements, this Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of U.S. legal feminism. Contributions by leading feminist thinkers trace the impacts of legal feminism on legal claims and defenses and demonstrate how feminism has altered and transformed understandings of basic legal concepts, from sexual harassment and gender equity in sports to new conceptions of consent and motherhood. It connects legal feminism to adjacent intellectual discourses, such as masculinities theory and queer theory, and scrutinizes criticisms and backlash to feminism from all sides of the political spectrum. Its examination of the prominent …

The Poetics Of Pakistani Patriarchy: A Critical Analysis Of The Protest-Signs In Women’S March Pakistan 2019, Amer Akhtar, Selina Aziz, Neelum Almas

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The Pakistani variant of Women’s March Aurat March celebrated its second year in March 2019. The current study focuses on the issues raised by the participants during Aurat March 2019 to define patriarchy from a Pakistani-out-on-the-street feminist struggle. It analyses the protest signs, slogans, messages, and concerns raised through banners in the march. The paper attempts to offer a unique perspective on Pakistani patriarchy by analyzing the voice of the women instead of any theorization or enactment of the voice. It employs visual and textual methods to understand the view of the participants and finds that the participants of the …

Theorizing #Girlboss Culture: Mediated Neoliberal Feminisms From Influencers To Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, Frankie Mastrangelo

Theses and Dissertations

I define girlboss feminism as emergent, mediated formations of neoliberal feminism that equate feminist empowerment with financial success, market competition, individualized work-life balance, and curated digital and physical presences driven by self-monetization. I look toward how the mediation of girlboss feminism utilizes branded and affective engagements with representational politics, discourses of authenticity and rebellion, as well as meritocratic aspiration to promote cultural interest in conceptualizing feminism in ways that are divorced from collective, intersectional struggle. I question the stakes involved in reducing feminist interrogations and commitments to discourses of representation, visibility, and meritocracy. I argue that while girlboss feminism may …

“The Personal Is Political”: The Power Of Female Voices In 1970s Pop Music And Beyond, Jennifer Morrow

Backstage Pass

This essay examines how, in the male-dominated structures of the popular music industry, narratives about women have been marginalized, ignored, and undervalued. The female singer-songwriter, my research suggests, is, by definition, a contradiction and subversion of traditional gender roles, and this position has been claimed by female musicians as a form of rebellion and resistance. In the scope of my research, I focus on how female pop artists have embraced songwriting as a medium for authentic self-expression, and how these narratives have been embraced as autoethnographies that represent the collective experiences and frustrations of women in a patriarchal social landscape. …

A Student Primer On Intersectionality: Not Just A Buzzword, Elodie Silberstein, Marisa Tramontano, Meghana V. Nayak

Open Educational Resources

This book:

● lays out the objectives of WS 166, Gender, Race, and Class, taught in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, Pace University, New York City campus;

● provides a structure for any course addressing intersectionality, feminism, and oppression;

● describes the framework of intersectionality, which examines societal issues by analyzing the interlocking systems of oppression that shape people’s lives;

● argues for a transnational application of intersectionality that also centers U.S. Black feminists’ contributions to understanding oppression;

● includes journal articles, TED Talks, and class exercises that are generally accessible for most students or interested readers without previous …

Subjectivities Of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions Of Violence And Refusal On The “Cuerpo Territorio” Of Peru’S Defensoras, Natalia Guzmán Solano

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Subjectivities of Struggle: Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the ‘Cuerpo Territorio’ of Peru’s Defensoras” calls into question the colonial assumptions underpinning contemporary understandings of extractivism. The sixteen months of ethnographic research I conducted with the defensoras (women ecoterritorial defenders) of Cajamarca is situated at the fraught extractive frontier where social conflict paralyzed the expansion of a large-scale mining project and generated a coalitional struggle against extractive-led economic development. This dissertation conceptualizes extractivism as a modern/colonial product of power and knowledge that has feminized the land and inhabitants from the time of the European invasion of the Americas. While recent …

From The Ulama To The Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’S Family Code, Rachel Olick-Gibson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays …

Overstimulated - An Immersive, Multimedia Art Installation, Quinn Devlin

Honors Theses

This thesis provides the explanation, inspiration, research and progression of an immersive, multimedia art installation that emulates the idea of a “sexual dystopia.” It explores how our dichotomy of inadequate sex education and hypersexual, gender-based media is resulting in a dystopian sexual reality for women in particular. The work portrays a future world in which sexual and fertility technology is so advanced and accessible that real men and women no longer interact. As a result, women and objects become one in the same.

Female literary icons are over-sexualized to suggest that porn-culture is a by-product of a historical framework that …

Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon

English (MA) Theses

Looking primarily at two critically acclaimed texts that concern themselves with American citizenship—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Stephanie Powell Watts’ No One is Coming to Save Us—I analyze the claims made about citizenship identities, rights, and consequential access to said rights. I ask, how do these narratives about citizenship sustain, create, or re-envision American myth? Similarly, how do the narratives interact with the dominant culture at large? Do any of these texts achieve oppositional value, and/or modify the complex hegemonic structure? I use Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital” to investigate the ways in which economic, cultural, …

Violence In The Hands Of Women: An Analysis Of Gendered Violence In Life Is Strange And Before The Storm, Mitchi Anne Maja

Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the video games Life is Strange and Before the Storm and how they serve to reflect social expectations and norms placed upon both women and men even today. Cultural studies recently accepted video games as a form of media to study, especially with the prevalence and accessibility of video games in various platforms. Violence in video games is culturally associated with men and the male audience; my analysis focuses on violence in the hands of women. By analyzing the choices I made as a player and how these games present their narratives and characters, …

Cultivating Chingona Power: A Study On The Chingona Identity, Celia Orosco Haro

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Mujeres across the country are claiming the Chingona identity and using it to cultivate their Chingona strength, feel empowered, and live for their own approval. A Chingona in this newly reclaimed use means a woman who embodies confidence, acceptance of self, reclamation of sexuality, siguiendo le adelante por su propio camino sin importarle lo que digan los demás, rejects social and cultural norms/expectations of women, and uses her strengths to empower and uplift others. Through the reclamation of this identity, these mujeres are moving beyond being hijas de la chingada to being Chingonas. This research highlights the Chingona identity …

A Qualitative Study Of Changes In The Traditional Roles Of Housewives In Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria, Rowland Edet, Julianah Babajide, Oluwayimika Ekundina

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although hinged on the principles of patriarchy, the Nigerian society has witnessed appreciable changes in the roles of women. This change is noticed in marriage particularly among married women or housewives. Thus, the phenomenon of full housewife is gradually fading away due to the joint influence of westernization, globalization, and modernization. Thus, this study delved into interrogating the various changes that have taken place in the traditional roles of housewives in selected locations in Ibadan. This study utilized a purely qualitative method of research because the subject matter focuses on making sense of meanings people attach to gender, gender roles, …

The Rise And Fall Of Gilmore Girls' Feminist Legacy, Mckenna Ahlgren

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the feminist legacy that the television series Gilmore Girls (2000-2007, 2016) built during its original airtime and how its later revival diminished that legacy. Gilmore Girls’ main characters are three generations of women within the Gilmore family, providing a unique opportunity to analyze their feminist identities and characterizations relative to different iterations of feminism. This paper examines how the youngest Gilmore, Rory, is influenced by her mother’s and grandmother’s embodiments of feminism. Their expressions of femininity and sexuality, their approaches to motherhood, and their behaviors in their romantic relationships throughout the series correlate with the predominate feminism …

Abuse Or Be Abused: Traumatic Memory, Sex Inequality, And Millennium As A Socio-Literary Device, Kate Rose

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article applies the research of French psychiatrist Muriel Salmona to literary analysis of Stieg Larsson’s protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, in the Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2008; The Girl Who Played with Fire, 2009; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, 2010). It suggests that Larsson’s novels may be useful in raising awareness of childhood sexual abuse, through reading neglected signs linked to the neurology of traumatic memory. In the tradition of Nordic noir novels, hyperboles in Salander’s sensationalized identity serve to magnify and bring to light a misunderstood social problem. The article …

Feminism In Music & Film, Alexandra Callaway, Keila San Pedro, Jili "Gigi" Chen

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

No Means No, Payton Miller, Sydney Mcafee, Kait Kenyon

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

Women Proudly Roaring Their Feminist Ideas, Juliana Tarallo, Lia Weed, Jessica Gibbons

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

Women & Healthcare, Phybie Le, Paige Goedderz, Jerry Hu, Vafa Fanaii

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality, Mya Gamble, Lola Williams, Autumn Sumruld

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

Social Media Burn Book, Rachael Lindblom, Hebe Moore, Janine Ortiz

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

G Spot, Audrey Kenefick, Sule Murray, Ivanna Rea, Sydney Weinger

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

The Beauty Myth, Summer Runion, Annika Briski, Jacqueline Botz

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.

The Beauty Myth, Sierra Dean, Amanda Doolittle, Taylor Orozco

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

No abstract provided.