Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Maine Queer-Y: An Analysis Of A "Gender Queer" Book Challenge In Maine, Antyna Gould

Honors College

Beneath the idyllic scenery of Midcoast Maine lives a monster. This monster does not have a preference for where it lives, in fact its siblings reside all over the country. It is not a physical being, but a rising trend gaining national attention, book bans. Across the nation groups and individuals are attempting to censor information contained within books due to their allegedly inappropriate nature for a designated age range. For the last year one book in particular has received much scorn. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe is a graphic novel memoir with a focus on the author’s journey as …

Critical Discourse Analysis: Sexual Violence In Maine Department Of Public Safety (Dps) "Crime In Maine" Reports, Emma V. Grous

Honors College

Sexual violence is incredibly prevalent in the state of Maine. These crimes, which disproportionately affect at-risk communities – women, children, people of color, and impoverished persons – are not accurately represented in legal discourses within Maine. Changes to how victims and survivors of sexual violence are represented and discussed in law enforcement reports and other materials are necessary in order to promote social change and justice for the survivors in our communities.

Critical Discourse Analysis has been used broadly since its conception and has even previously been used in understanding political and social implications of discourse in the United States. …

Otherworldly Ethics: Trouthe And The Fairy Mistress In The Lays Of Lanval, Graelent, Guingamor And Sir Launfal, Abigail Roberts

Honors College

While the nature of fictional fairies in medieval romance has been widely discussed and it has been acknowledged by many scholars that fairies typically offer some critique of the human courts in which they intervene, they have yet to be examined in relation to their ethical impact and conceptions of justice. In order to address this, this thesis performs a close reading of four Breton lays, Lanval, Graelent, Guingamor and Sir Launfal using a framework of medieval folklaw. The four fairies of these lays introduce to their respective poems a unique feminine ethic that critiques the enactment of trouthe practiced …

The Wpath Standards Of Care: Their History And Importance In Advocating For Transgender Health, Alexander Cross

Honors College

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care publication one most-often cited in the defense of increasing attacks on transgender rights to gender-affirming healthcare, as it is the reigning body of clinical guidelines and recommendations for the medical treatment of transgender and gender-diverse populations developed for application in a global context. This paper recounts the history of the WPATH organization––formerly called the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association––and the evolution of its Standards publication. In light of historical and recent attacks on gender-affirming care, an overview of the material implications of the Standards’ changes as they pertain …

Exploring Interfaith Sex Education, Bailey Lewis

Honors College

Sacred Sexuality explores the intersections of religion and sexuality. I worked with Dr. Birthisel, Director of the Wilson Center, and Kate Dawson, co-facilitator of the sex education class, to survey the sex education class participants on how the experience has been for them. I surveyed the sex education class participants after the class to analyze their opinions of the sex education class, interfaith dialogue, and how their spirituality or religious perspectives inform their beliefs around sexuality. Overall, the sex education class was highly recommended and gave an interesting look into how faith and sexuality interact. While the sex education class …

Imagining Gender Euphorias, Willow Wind

Honors College

Our society needs to talk about gender, but we aren’t very good at it. Avoiding these discussions has harmful impacts on body image and various health disparities (The Trevor Project, 2020). What if we have better and regular conversations about ways we can positively experience gender? This study’s model of negotiating gender can be used by families and educators seeking affirming exploratory learning opportunities. Insights into meanings of gender euphoria help validate diverse sets of experiences, informing a broader cultural discourse that increasingly questions gender binarism (Griffin, 2020).

This study explores conceptualizations and enactment of gender euphoria across demographics and …

Sisterhood And Survival: An Exploration Of Women's Relationships In Feminist Speculative Fiction, Madeleine Gernhard

Honors College

Writers have used the genre of feminist speculative fiction as a lens through which to view modern issues which effect women. Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Margaret Atwood’ Handmaid’s Tale, and Naomi Alderman’s The Power each explore dystopian or transitory dystopian societies in which women are pitted against one another for the sake of their survival. In reviewing the relationships which the women in these novels have to each other we stand to gain insights into the ways in which sisterhood influences change in these societies. Each of these works, while centering around different understandings of dystopian society, also prominently feature the …

For The Women Who Wear Pi Day Shirts, Jacqui Weaver

Honors College

This project, entitled To The Women Who Wear Pi Day Shirts, is a poetry manuscript that explores a journey of a women in STEM. While taking college English courses, I read about characters such as the creature in Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, who had intelligence, yet was physically hideous, an outsider from the human population. The creature was an outsider to the normal human, much like how I feel as a woman in STEM, which gave me the idea to write about my own journey. The poetry in this manuscript is a reflection from being in elementary school learning mathematics …

Identifying The Advocate In Me: An Undergraduate Autoethnography Exploring The Personal Identity Of Activist Versus Advocate, Aiden Ciaffaglione

Honors College

“Identifying the Advocate in ME: An Undergraduate Autoethnography Exploring the Personal Identity of Activist Versus Advocate” explores and redefines the social definition of “activists” and “advocates” through an autoethnographic lens of personal growth and identity formation. Stemming from my previous research into the University of Maine 1974 Gay Symposium,I reflect on my undergraduate academic ecology composed of leadership roles, course work, and extracurricular involvement in order to understand my identity development as a queer advocate. I incorporate previous scholarship around social movements, emotion work, and the role of activists in social change to develop a “Social Movement Identification” typology that …

How Alumnae Of A Feminist Organization During Middle-High School Perceive Their Involvement As Related To Their Academic Self-Concept, Miranda R. Snyder

Honors College

Research has found that youth involvement in activism can benefit sense of self and belief in one’s abilities to make positive change for those involved through unique communication with people who are passionate about the same issue, a sense of personal empowerment, and a deepened sociopolitical consciousness to understand the complexities of social-justice issues.

This qualitative study provided greater understanding of how youth perceive their involvement in a feminist organization related to their academic self-concept in middle- high school. Six alumnae of the Girls Advisory Board (G.A.B.) of Hardy Girls Healthy Women, a Maine-based nonprofit that focuses on the empowerment …

The Use Of Smartphone Apps As A Supplement To Transgender Voice And Communication Therapy, Maura Philippone

Honors College

This university IRB-approved thesis follows a case study research design and investigates the effectiveness of the app “Voice Analyst” as a supplement to transgender voice and communication therapy. It is hypothesized that the use of “Voice Analyst” outside the clinic will enable participants to make greater progress and to increase their ability to retain their progress. The participants are four transgender women who want to raise the pitch of their speaking voices. The participants are asked to record themselves reading “The Rainbow Passage,” and their data are tracked in a spreadsheet. “The Rainbow Passage” is the standardized passage used for …

Exploring The Marginalized Voice: Queering Form In Contemporary Short Fiction, Madalyn M. Jackson

Honors College

Feminist and queer narrative theory calls into question the systemic way of thinking about categorizations such as genre conventions, form, and length. The short story subverts all of these, flipping common love plots or hero arcs, denying readers whole pictures, and privileging plot over character development. Through the application of feminist and queer narrative theory, this study evaluates Lambda Literary Awardwinning texts from authors Chinelo Okparanta, Krystal Smith, and Carmen Maria Machado on how the function, form, and common conventions of the short story are subversive in nature and lend themselves to the functions, forms, and conventions of the queer …

An Examination Of Pervasive Language Around Sexual Harassment Through The Lens Of Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, And #Metoo, Elizabeth Theriault

Honors College

This thesis explores the hypothesis that the #MeToo Movement and Twitter have contributed to the changes in language used by individuals to describe sexual harassment and the survivors that come forward with their stories. To do so, this thesis identified common themes derived from language used in New York Times articles published during the Hill and Thomas hearings of 1991, as well as Tweets published between the dates surrounded the Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh hearings, September 25, 2018 and September 29, 2018, to create a comparable platform for language used in similar settings 27 years apart. It contains a literature …

Female Political Campaigns: Just The Right Amount Of Femininity, Harley Rogers

Honors College

This paper seeks to understand how female politicians develop their public identities to meet and reject the gender stereotypes society holds of women. The case study looks at Margaret Chase Smith’s political career, with a special focus on her 1964 presidential campaign. The research analyzed Smith’s career through the newspaper coverage of her in order to understand Smith’s choices surrounding her public identity and the media’s response. The analysis identified four distinct points of interest that contributed to Smith’s public persona: physical appearance, examples of housewifery, dialogue on women’s issues, and legislative accomplishments. These factors demonstrate how Smith presented her …

Madonna, Monster And Other Stories: Surrealist Short Fiction, Katherine Skvorak

Honors College

Surrealist literature has a long history of excluding female writers from the conversation, and as a result, women surrealists often wrote to critique the male/female binary and examine the oppressive forces denying their work. Madonna, Monster and Other Stories acts as a continuation of the female surrealist legacy and a further exploration and critique of invisible authorities that govern societal standards, create belief systems, and control logic and reason. Using methods created by the surrealist movement, such as the Exquisite Corpse exercise, image collaging, and automatic writing, these stories embrace the unconscious, the dreamlike, and the uncanny to break down …

“Putting Out Fires”: An Original Situational Comedy Pilot Episode Examining Modern Motherhood, Keely Gonyea

Honors College

Even in an age of easily accessible and ever-changing digital content, television remains one of the most influential modes of media. Shows, on television and on streaming services, play key roles in informing their audiences of societal conventions. Situational comedies are an easily identifiable genre on television and their popularity has not wavered as seen by their steadfast presence during primetime viewing slots. This thesis explores and analyzes how situational comedies have created spaces for potentially harmful stereotypes for their female characters, specifically mothers. The creative work of this thesis offers an original situational comedy pilot episode that looks to …

An Intersectional Feminist Approach To Lyme Disease Epidemiology, Meghan Frisard

Honors College

Nationally, Maine is the state with the second highest incidence of Lyme disease. While the spread of Lyme disease is generally attributable to ecological factors that affect the life cycle of Lyme-spreading ticks, socioeconomic factors may have substantial impacts on diagnosis and reporting of human cases. Socioeconomic factors could influence one’s ability to see a healthcare provider and ultimately be diagnosed with and treated for Lyme. Additionally, access to and treatment within the healthcare system is often gendered. I hypothesize that certain socioeconomic factors will have a negative correlation with Lyme disease incidence among the general population and among women, …

Behind Closed Doors: Unpacking College Students’ Complex Relationships With Pornography Consumption, Samantha K. Saucier

Honors College

This thesis is a quantitative and qualitative study of University of Maine students attitudes and consumption habits of pornography. It contains a literature review of anti-pornography feminism from the Second Wave, as well as an overview of sex-positive and sex-critical theories of pornography from more recent years. The goal of the thesis is to understand how sex-negative and/or sex-positive ideas have or have not permeated college student’s understanding of pornography. Over 800 students were surveyed about pornography consumption through the Psychology Department’s Fall prescreen. 4 students from the survey, who all happened to be women, were interviewed about their relationships …

The Hyde Amendment: An Obstacle To Seeking Abortion Care In Maine?, Olivia Pennington

Honors College

This thesis is an examination of the effects of the Hyde Amendment on lower-income people in the State of Maine seeking abortion care. The Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, prohibits any federally funded insurance from covering abortion services unless the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, or if the pregnancy places the pregnant person’s life in danger. This thesis aims to examine how not having an abortion covered by insurance exaggerates other financial obstacles to receiving abortion care. Through a literature review and survey data collected from a local sexual and reproductive health care center this paper explores how …

Tangled Up: Women’S Experiences In Mathematics, Lori Loftin

Honors College

This thesis is a bridge between two disciplines: Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Mathematics. The first portion of the work synthesizes both theory and previously done studies to describe the state of women in mathematics as a whole, as well as historicizing the role of women in mathematics. Obstacles to the full and equal participation of women in mathematics are examined through a feminist lens. The second part of the thesis is a feminist biography crafted from an interview with a professor of mathematics, Dr. Erica Flapan. This provides information about her personal experiences as a woman in mathematics …

Polarizing Issues In The American Political Parties: Women In Party Platforms, Hannah Vail

Honors College

This thesis is designed to investigate the relationship between the rise of cultural issues in political discussion and growing levels of polarization in the American political system. Current research within the field proposes many causes, forces, and tactics behind this growth of polarization. The corresponding increase in the prevalence of cultural issues in American politics is one such proposed cause or symptom. This thesis will provide an expansion on existing research through an exploration of the relationship between increased polarization and increasing prevalence of cultural issues in the United States.

The focus of this thesis is on the relationship between …

Interviews With Transgender Students: Academic And Environmental Factors, Thomas Stevenson

Honors College

Although research on gay and lesbian students has taken off in recent years, there is a serious lack of research devoted solely to the transgender population, and even less specifically focused on transgender students. The research that has been conducted on transgender individuals is often focused on discrimination that they experience, and the effects of that discrimination. College is a period of personal growth and discovery for all students, but perhaps especially for transgender students. This study, therefore, aims to better understand how being transgender affects the college experience.

This qualitative study interviewed self-identified transgender students within the University of …