Best of
Gender-Studies

2014

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It


Kate Harding - 2014
    Congressman Todd Akin’s “legitimate” gaffe. The alleged rape crew of Steubenville, Ohio. Sexual violence has been so prominent in recent years that the feminist term “rape culture” has finally entered the mainstream. But what, exactly, is it? And how do we change it? In Asking for It, Kate Harding answers those questions in the same blunt, bullshit-free voice that’s made her a powerhouse feminist blogger. Combining in-depth research with practical knowledge, Asking for It makes the case that twenty-first century America—where it’s estimated that out of every 100 rapes only 5 result in felony convictions—supports rapists more effectively than victims. Harding offers ideas and suggestions for addressing how we as a culture can take rape much more seriously without compromising the rights of the accused.

Gender Failure


Ivan E. Coyote - 2014
    Coyote and Rae Spoon are accomplished, award-winning writers, musicians, and performers; they are also both admitted "gender failures." In their first collaborative book, Ivan and Rae explore and expose their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary, and how ultimately our expectations and assumptions around traditional gender roles fail us all.Based on their acclaimed 2012 live show that toured across the United States and in Europe, Gender Failure is a poignant collection of autobiographical essays, lyrics, and images documenting Ivan and Rae's personal journeys from gender failure to gender enlightenment. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, it's a book that will touch LGBTQ readers and others, revealing, with candor and insight, that gender comes in more than two sizes.Ivan E. Coyote is the author of six story collections and the award-winning novel Bow Grip, and is co-editor of Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Ivan frequently performs at high schools, universities, and festivals across North America.Rae Spoon is a transgender indie musician whose most recent CD is My Prairie Home, which is also the title of a new National Film Board of Canada documentary about them. Rae's first book, First Spring Grass Fire, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2013.

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights


Katha Pollitt - 2014
    Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility by many, despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to an abortion often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," making the medical procedure so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is normal and necessary into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile, with each passing day, the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright.In this urgent, controversial book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In Pro, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. It is time, Pollitt argues, that we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers.

Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender


Mia McKenzie - 2014
    Her nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience. McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other. "One of the most provocative and insightful writers of our generation." -Aura Bogado, Colorlines "A fierce voice among a generation of queer and trans folk of color." -Janet Mock, New York Times Bestselling Author of "Redefining Realness" "Tough-love activism at its best-straightforward, challenging, whip-smart, and uncompromising." -Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community


Laura Erickson-Schroth - 2014
    Transgender and gender non-conforming people have many different ways of understanding their gender identities. Only recently have sex and gender been thought of as separate concepts, and we have learned that sex (traditionally thought of as physical or biological) is as variable as gender (traditionally thought of as social). While trans people share many common experiences, there is immense diversity within trans communities. There are an estimated 700,000 transgendered individuals in the US and 15 million worldwide. Even still, there's been a notable lack of organized information for this sizable group. Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a revolutionary resource-a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for transgender people, with each chapter written by transgender or genderqueer authors. Inspired by Our Bodies, Ourselves, the classic and powerful compendium written for and by women, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is widely accessible to the transgender population, providing authoritative information in an inclusive and respectful way and representing the collective knowledge base of dozens of influential experts. Each chapter takes the reader through an important transgender issue, such as race, religion, employment, medical and surgical transition, mental health topics, relationships, sexuality, parenthood, arts and culture, and many more. Anonymous quotes and testimonials from transgender people who have been surveyed about their experiences are woven throughout, adding compelling, personal voices to every page. In this unique way, hundreds of viewpoints from throughout the community have united to create this strong and pioneering book. It is a welcoming place for transgender and gender-questioning people, their partners and families, students, professors, guidance counselors, and others to look for up-to-date information on transgender life.

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man


Thomas Page McBee - 2014
    Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these fallen icons of manhood as he cobbles together his own identity.Man Alive engages an extraordinary personal story to tell a universal one – how we all struggle to create ourselves, and how this struggle often requires risks. Far from a titillating, transgender tell-all, Man Alive grapples with questions of legacy and forgiveness, love and violence, agency and invisibility. Written with the grace of a poet and the intensity of a thriller, McBee’s story will haunt and inspire.

Decolonizing Trans/Gender 101


b. binaohan - 2014
    written for the indigenous and/or person of colour trying to understand how their gender is/has been impacted by whiteness and colonialism.

Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education


Jennifer De Leon - 2014
    In her essay “Only Daughter,” author Sandra Cisneros remarks, “After four years in college and two more in graduate school, and still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education.” Wise Latinas is a collection of personal essays addressing the varied landscape of the Latina experience in higher education. For some Latinas, college, where they are vastly underrepresented, is the first time they are immersed in American culture outside their homes—and where the values of two cultures often clash. Wise Latinas is in part a response to this widening gap.Featuring acclaimed writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Norma Cantú, and Julia Alvarez, to name a few, Wise Latinas shows that there is no one Latina college experience. With thoughtful and engaging pieces, Wise Latinas provides a platform for Latina writers to share their experiences in higher education and gives a voice to the many Latina women who have taken risks; embraced the new, confronted change; and maintained (and in some cases found) their roots.

Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions


Lisa Wade - 2014
    Probing questions, the same ones that students often bring to the course, frame readable chapters that are packed with the most up-to-date scholarship available—in language students will understand. The authors use memorable examples mined from pop culture, history, psychology, biology, and everyday life to truly engage students in the study of gender and spark interest in sociological perspectives.

The Ring of Fire Anthology


E.T. Russian - 2014
    Ring of Fire is honest, engaging, and ahead of its time.Through black and white ink drawings, comics, linoleum block print portraits, essays, interviews and erotica, this collection explores the intersections of art, bodies, healthcare, ability, gender, race, community, class, healing and the politics of work.Alternately emotional and erotic, funny and political, Ring of Fire tells the author's personal story, and captures the work and words of various artists and leaders from disability culture and history. A young activist steeped in the cultures of queer and punk, Russian embraced a cultural identity of disability while writing Ring of Fire. Years later, Russian examines what it means to work in healthcare in the United States.

A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography


Mireille Miller-Young - 2014
    It is based on Mireille Miller-Young's extensive archival research and her interviews with dozens of women who have worked in the adult entertainment industry since the 1980s. The women share their thoughts about desire and eroticism, black women's sexuality and representation, and ambition and the need to make ends meet. Miller-Young documents their interventions into the complicated history of black women's sexuality, looking at individual choices, however small—a costume, a gesture, an improvised line—as small acts of resistance, of what she calls "illicit eroticism." Building on the work of other black feminist theorists, and contributing to the field of sex work studies, she seeks to expand discussion of black women's sexuality to include their eroticism and desires, as well as their participation and representation in the adult entertainment industry. Miller-Young wants the voices of black women sex workers heard, and the decisions they make, albeit often within material and industrial constraints, recognized as their own.

Manning Up: Transexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves


Zander KeigEmmett Troxel - 2014
    Not since Max Wolf Valerio’s The Testosterone Files and Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man has nonfiction seen such thorough and sensitive explorations of manhood, masculinity, and male embodiment—and never in a collection with such a diversity of voices. Contributors offer an incredible range of cultural, class, ethnic, spiritual, and generational backgrounds. Their work addresses topics including birthing and raising children, gay male sexuality, facing racism, and finding solace in deeply held religious beliefs. Contributors include established writers such as Valerio, Aaron Devor (author of FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society), and Ryan Sallans (author of Second Son), as well as exciting new authors.

Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco


Clare Sears - 2014
    Over forty U.S. cities passed similar laws during this time, yet little is known about their emergence, operations, or effects. Grounded in a wealth of archival material, Arresting Dress traces the career of anti-cross-dressing laws from municipal courtrooms and codebooks to newspaper scandals, vaudevillian theater, freak-show performances, and commercial “slumming tours.” It shows that the law did not simply police normative gender but actively produced it by creating new definitions of gender normality and abnormality. It also tells the story of the tenacity of those who defied the law, spoke out when sentenced, and articulated different gender possibilities.

Womankind


Antonia Case - 2014
    Each issue has articles around a specific theme usually by country or region. Advertisement-free. Published worldwide from Hobart, Tasmania (Australia). This entry covers issues 1--12.#1 Papillon (Francophone) | #2 Fish (Sense of Self) | #3 Cat (Japan) | #4 Bee (Mexico) | #5 Uccello (Italy) | #6 Gothic | #7 Turtle (Caribbean) | #8 Jackel (Egypt) | #9 Argentina | #10 Tiger (Vietnam) | #11 Deer (Russia) | #12 Octopus (Greece) |

Confessions of a Teenage Rape Survivor


Holly Dae - 2014
    Get through high school, go to college to appease her dad, somehow stay fit, lithe, and athletic through all the stress and become a professional cheerleader. Normal teenage stuff. Simple. At least it was simple before she was raped. Now Allison's whole life is out of her control. She can't trust in her own choices, can't rationalize anything anymore, so she just goes through the motions, hoping that eventually she'll go back to normal, can stop pretending. That doesn't happen, especially when she's forced to reveal what happened to her family and closest friends. On the MTV commercials and reality shows that emphasize that she has nothing to be ashamed of and guide viewers to some website like don't-be-a-victim.comand a support hotline, no one warns her that the aftermath is more difficult than the rape itself, that her family's efforts to be supportive make her feel more alone and confused. And being raped has more devastating consequences than Allison ever imagined, forcing her to make one of the most difficult decisions she's ever had to make. It should be a no-brainer, everyone says, but being raped makes Allison question everything and everyone she thought she could trust. Either way, Allison won't let anyone force her to do anything again, not like her rapists did, even if it makes her already difficult enough circumstance more difficult. Uncensored and unflinchingly honest, these are the confessions of a teenage rape survivor.

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution


Laurie Penny - 2014
    Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.

Teach a Woman to Fish: Overcoming Poverty Around the Globe


Ritu Sharma - 2014
    Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." But teach a woman to fish, and everyone eats for a lifetime. In this firsthand account, Ritu Sharma shares how women can, and are, overcoming the forces that keep them in poverty. She chronicles her travels through four countries—Sri Lanka, Burkina Faso, Honduras, and Nicaragua—and the intimate interactions she had with the women living there. Sharma's story not only details her experiences, but also looks at the broader systems that prevent women from leaving poverty behind. From lack of property rights and government corruption to the scarcity of basic infrastructure like roads, these women are restricted by the external limitations placed upon them. Sharma draws from her experiences to frame a larger exploration of how Americans can be instrumental in helping women break free of restrictive systems and begin to facilitate women's upward mobility. Written in her engaging personal voice, Teach a Woman to Fish provides an insider's look at women in poverty, how Washington works, and how change really happens—from the United States to the rest of the world.

The Butch/Femme Photo Project


Wendi Kali - 2014
    Among these are butch and femme. Both of these identities date back to the beginning of the 20th century and are a part of the lesbian and bisexual subculture. Both have taken on many definitions. In this collection of photographs, people from across the United States and Canada who claim these identities today share their own definitions and describe how they express themselves uniquely.

The Homoerotics of Orientalism


Joseph Allen Boone - 2014
    And this story stands to shatter our preconceptions of Orientalism.To illuminate why and how the Islamicate world became the locus for such fantasies and desires, Boone deploys a supple mode of analysis that reveals how the cultural exchanges between Middle East and West have always been reciprocal and often mutual, amatory as well as bellicose. Whether examining European accounts of Istanbul and Egypt as hotbeds of forbidden desire, juxtaposing Ottoman homoerotic genres and their European imitators, or unlocking the homoerotic encoding in Persian miniatures and Orientalist paintings, this remarkable study models an ethics of crosscultural reading that exposes, with nuance and economy, the crucial role played by the homoerotics of Orientalism in shaping the world as we know it today.A contribution to studies in visual culture as well as literary and social history, The Homoerotics of Orientalism draws on primary sources ranging from untranslated Middle Eastern manuscripts and European belles-lettres to miniature paintings and photographic erotica that are presented here for the first time.

A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender


Ellen Koskoff - 2014
      In this intellectual memoir, Koskoff describes her journey through the maze of social history and scholarship related to her work examining the intersection of music and gender. Koskoff collects new, revised, and hard-to-find published material from mid-1970s through 2010 to trace the evolution of ethnomusicological thinking about women, gender, and music, offering a perspective of how questions emerged and changed in those years, as well as Koskoff's reassessment of the early years and development of the field. Her goal: a personal map of the different paths to understanding she took over the decades, and how each inspired, informed, and clarified her scholarship. For example, Koskoff shows how a preference for face-to-face interactions with living people served her best in her research, and how her now-classic work within Brooklyn's Hasidic community inflamed her feminist consciousness while leading her into ethnomusicological studies.   An uncommon merging of retrospective and rumination, A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender offers a witty and disarmingly frank tour through the formative decades of the field and will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, scholars of the history and development of feminist thought, and those engaged in fieldwork.   Includes a foreword by Suzanne Cusick framing Koskoff's career and an extensive bibliography provided by the author.

Under the Almond Trees


Linda Ulleseit - 2014
    Under the Almond Trees is the novelized account of three ordinary women who lived extraordinary lives in early California. One learns independence when she is widowed and must lead men. Another desires a career in a man’s field. The third wants only a traditional family—until her husband refuses to pay for their daughter’s college education. Their legacy resounds beyond the family. I am proud to be their relative and honored to share their story.

Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism


Amber Jamilla Musser - 2014
    Yet at its core, masochism is a site where power, bodies, and society come together. Sensational Flesh uses masochism as a lens to examine how power structures race, gender, and embodiment in different contexts.Drawing on rich and varied sources—from 19th century sexology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory to literary texts and performance art—Amber Jamilla Musser employs masochism as a powerful diagnostic tool for probing relationships between power and subjectivity. Engaging with a range of debates about lesbian S&M, racialization, femininity, and disability, as well as key texts such as Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs, Pauline Réage’s The Story of O, and Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, Musser renders legible the complex ways that masochism has been taken up by queer, feminist, and critical race theories. Furthering queer theory’s investment in affect and materiality, she proposes “sensation” as an analytical tool for illustrating what it feels like to be embedded in structures of domination such as patriarchy, colonialism, and racism and what it means to embody femininity, blackness, and pain. Sensational Flesh is ultimately about the ways in which difference is made material through race, gender, and sexuality and how that materiality is experienced.

Reading Joss Whedon


Rhonda V. Wilcox - 2014
    From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Much Ado About Nothing, from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog to The Avengers, the word of Whedon have been the focus of increasing academic attention. This collection represents new work by some of the best scholars covering a wide array of topics that clarify WHedon's importance, including considerations of narrative and visual techniques, myth construction, symbolism, gender, heroism, and the business side of television. The editors argue that Whedon's work is of both social and aesthetic significance; that he creates "canonical television." He is a master of his artistic medium and has managed this success on broadcast networks rather than on cable. From the focus on a single episode to the exploration of an entire season, from the discussion of a particular narrative technique to a recounting of the history of Whedon studies, this collection will both entertain and educate those exploring Whedon scholarship for the first time and those landing to teach a course on his works.

Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood


Sam Mckegney - 2014
    In offices, kitchens, and coffee shops, and once in a car driving down the 401, McKegney and his participants tackled crucial questions about masculine self-worth and how to foster balanced and empowered gender relations.Masculindians captures twenty of these conversations in a volume that is intensely personal, yet speaks across generations, geography, and gender boundaries. As varied as their speakers, the discussions range from culture, history, and world view to gender theory, artistic representations, and activist interventions. They speak of possibility and strength, of beauty and vulnerability. They speak of sensuality, eroticism, and warriorhood, and of the corrosive influence of shame, racism, and violence. Firmly grounding Indigenous continuance in sacred landscapes, interpersonal reciprocity, and relations with other-than-human kin, these conversations honour and embolden the generative potential of healthy Indigenous masculinities.

Abuse OF Men BY Women: It Happens, It Hurts, And It's Time to Get Real About It


Ann Silvers - 2014
     This ground breaking book shatters the silence surrounding partner abuse where the target of the abuse is a man and the source of the abuse is a woman. It challenges the common perception that domestic violence and other types of partner abuse only happen to women. Counselor and relationship coach, Ann Silvers, M.A., questions the cultural trend to ignore, condone, laugh at, or even applaud women treating men in ways that would be rightfully condemned if the genders were reversed. Her unique perspective as a woman who herself was the target of partner abuse by a man, and who also recognizes that there are abusive women and abused men, has resulted in a book that is a cultural game changer. This book stands alone with its gripping personal stories and detailed yet concise descriptions of emotionally abused men as well as every other form of partner abuse of men by their female partners: verbal, psychological/emotional, financial, spiritual, legal, physical, and sexual abuse. "It Happens, It Hurts" describes what abuse OF men BY women looks like, why women do it, how we are supporting and encouraging women to abuse men, how men get pulled into these dysfunctional relationships, why they stay, the impact abusive or manipulative women have on men, and what can be done about it. This book arms men with the information they need to avoid getting hooked into relationships with abusive or manipulative women. It provides refreshing recognition, understanding, and direction for abused men who are struggling to deal with, or recover from, difficult relationships with an abusive wife or girlfriend. And it helps women examine how they treat their husbands and boyfriends. "It Happens, It Hurts" is a road map for men and women looking to help their brothers, fathers, sons, and friends who are being abused by women or teach them how to avoid getting pulled in by them. It is a call to action for helping professionals (teachers, counselors, ministers, police officers . . .) and all people who are willing to see what is really going on.

Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women


Barbara Gurr - 2014
    Gurr paints an insightful portrait of the Indian Health Service (IHS)—the federal agency tasked with providing culturally appropriate, adequate healthcare to Native Americans—shedding much-needed light on Native American women’s efforts to obtain prenatal care, access to contraception, abortion services, and access to care after sexual assault. Reproductive Justice goes beyond this local story to look more broadly at how race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, and nation inform the ways in which the government understands reproductive healthcare and organizes the delivery of this care. It reveals why the basic experience of reproductive healthcare for most Americans is so different—and better—than for Native American women in general, and women in reservation communities particularly. Finally, Gurr outlines the strengths that these communities can bring to the creation of their own reproductive justice, and considers the role of IHS in fostering these strengths as it moves forward in partnership with Native nations. Reproductive Justice offers a respectful and informed analysis of the stories Native American women have to tell about their bodies, their lives, and their communities.

Modern Misogyny: Anti-Feminism in a Post-Feminist Era


Kristin J. Anderson - 2014
    Some commentators describe the state of feminism as post-feminist, alongside equally questionable claims of Barack Obama's election as signaling a post-racial America. Modern Misogynyexamines contemporary anti-feminism in a post-feminist era. It considers the widespread notion that the feminist movement has ended, in large part because the work of feminism has been completed. In fact, the argument goes, women have been so successful in achieving equality, it is now men whocurrently are at risk of becoming irrelevant and unnecessary. These sentiments make up modern anti-feminism. Modern Misogyny argues that equality has not been fully achieved and that anti-feminism is now packaged in a more palatable, but stealthy form. This book addresses the nature, function, andimplications of modern anti-feminism in the United States.Modern Misogyny explores the landscape of popular culture and politics, emphasizing relatively recent moves away from feminist activism to individualism and consumerism where self-empowerment represents women's progress. It also explores the retreat to traditional gender roles after September 11, 2001. It interrogates the assumption that feminism is unnecessary, that women have achieved equality, and therefore those women who do insist on being feminists want to get ahead of men. Finally, it takes a fresh look at the positive role that feminism plays in today's post-feminist era, and howfeminism does and might function in women's lives.Post-feminist discourse encourages young women to believe that they were born into a free society, so if they experience discrimination, it is an individual, isolated problem that may even be their own fault. Modern Misogyny examines that rendering of feminism as irrelevant and as the silencing andmarginalizing of feminists. Anderson calls for a revived feminism that is vigilant in combatting modern forms of sexism.

Bird Girl and Fox Girl (Sparkplug Minis Series, #3)


Yumi Sakugawa - 2014
    Ignatz nominated creator.Bird Girl and Fox Girl is the third book in the Sparkplug Minis Series, a series of short-run (500 copies) mini comics by new and/or underappreciated artists.

A Beautiful Body Project: The Bodies of Mothers


Jade Beall - 2014
    A Beautiful Body Project is an upcoming series of book volumes and an online media platform dedicated to women and body image, celebrated through the sharing stories about motherhood, aging, cancer, stillbirths, miscarriages, weigh-gain, weight-loss, dysmorphia, and beyond. Founder Jade Beall has been a photographer, a massage therapist, and an inspiring dance teacher for women for over a decade. Her work is touching thousands of lives around the world. This book, along with all subsequent volumes, will feature my signature non-digitally-augmented & no-air-brushing images of women, just as they are. This is the heart of the project, to reshape images of women in mass media, to celebrate us as us, nothing more, nothing less. The Beautiful Body Pledge - which in turn sums up the purpose of the book series - is as follows: I want to join the movement and agree to love my body more and more each day, to use kind words towards myself and towards other women, to be a role-model for future generations of mothers, and to choose to be empowered knowing that I am not alone, and that by coming together, we can reshape body image in mass-media, build self-esteem, and explore vulnerability as a collective. Jade Beall is a world-renowned Photographer specializing in truthful images of women to inspire feeling irreplaceably beautiful as a counter-balance to the airbrushed photo-shopped imagery that dominates mainstream media. Her recent work A Beautiful Body Project has touched 100,000's of women's lives and garnered global attention from media outlets including the BBC, The Huffington Post & beyond. Jade's book series and media platform feature untouched photos of women alongside their stories of their journeys to build self-esteem in a world that thrives off women feeling insecure. Jade's dream is to inspire future generations of women to be free from the unnecessary self-suffering and embrace their beauty just as they are."

Women and Politics in Contemporary Japan


Emma Dalton - 2014
    It examines the approach taken by the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to issues of gender equality in Japan, and the repercussions of that approach on women's political experiences and representation. This book covers a range of themes including the role of the LDP and other major political parties in constructing the modern Japanese political system, the under-representation of women in Japanese politics, women's experiences in party politics and the gendering of government policies. Using in-depth interviews with women members of the national Diet, the book sheds light on how political women negotiate the male-dominated world of Japanese politics.

Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality


Lal Zimman - 2014
    The chapters in Queer Excursions offer a series of distinct perspectives on these binaries, as well as on a number of other, less immediately apparent dichotomies that nevertheless permeate the gendered and sexual lives of speakers. Several chapters focus on the limiting or misleading qualities of binaristic analyses, while others suggest that binaries are a crucial component of social meaning within particular communities of study. Rather than simply accepting binary structures as inevitable, or discarding them from our analyses entirely based on their oppressive or reductionary qualities, this volume advocates for a re-theorization of the binary that affords more complex and contextually-grounded engagement with speakers' own orientations to dichotomous systems. It is from this perspective that contributors identify a number of diverging conceptualizations of binaries, including those that are non-mutually exclusive, those that liberate in the same moment that they constrain, those that are imposed implicitly by researchers, and those that re-contextualize familiar divisions with innovative meanings. Each chapter offers a unique perspective on locally salient linguistic practices that help constitute gender and sexuality in marginalized communities. As a collection, Queer Excursions argues that researchers must be careful to avoid the assumption that our own preconceptions about binary social structures will be shared by the communities we study.

Gender in Judaism and Islam: Common Lives, Uncommon Heritage


Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet - 2014
    Both traditions emerged fromancient cultures born in the Middle East and both are rooted in texts andtraditions that have often excluded women. At the same time, both groups haverecently seen a resurgence in religious orthodoxy among women, as well asgrowing feminist movements that challenge traditional religious structures. In theUnited States, Jews and Muslims operate as minority cultures, carving out aplace for religious and ethnic distinctiveness. The time is ripe for a volumethat explores the relationship between these two religions through the prism ofgender.Gender in Judaism and Islam brings togetherscholars working in the fields of Judaism and Islam to address a diverse rangeof topics, including gendered readings of texts, legal issues in marriage anddivorce, ritual practices, and women's literary expressionsand historical experiences, along with feminist influences within the Muslimand Jewish communities and issues affecting Jewish and Muslim women incontemporary society. Carefully crafted, including section introductions by theeditors to highlight big picture insights offered by the contributors, thevolume focuses attention on the theoretical innovations that gender scholarshiphas brought to the study of Muslim and Jewish experiences.At a timewhen Judaism and Islam are often discussed as though they were inherently atodds, this book offers a much-needed reconsideration of the connections andcommonalties between these two traditions. It offers new insights into each ofthese cultures and invites comparative perspectives that deepen ourunderstanding of both Islam and Judaism.

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers


Anne Balay - 2014
    In "Steel Closets," Anne Balay draws on oral history interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers, mostly living in northwestern Indiana, to give voice to this previously silent and invisible population. She presents powerful stories of the intersections of work, class, gender, and sexual identity in the dangerous industrial setting of the steel mill. The voices and stories captured by Balay--by turns alarming, heroic, funny, and devastating--challenge contemporary understandings of what it means to be queer and shed light on the incredible homophobia and violence faced by many: nearly all of Balay's narrators remain closeted at work, and many have experienced harassment, violence, or rape. Through the powerful voices of queer steelworkers themselves, "Steel Closets" provides rich insight into an understudied part of the LGBT population, contributing to a growing body of scholarship that aims to reveal and analyze a broader range of gay life in America.

Southern Ladies and Suffragists: Julia Ward Howe and Women's Rights at the 1884 New Orleans World's Fair


Miki Pfeffer - 2014
    Their conversations and interactions played out as a drama of personalities and sectionalism at a transitional moment in the history of the nation. These women planted seeds at the Exposition that would have otherwise taken decades to drift southward.This book chronicles the successes and setbacks of a lively cast of postbellum women in the first Woman's Department at a world's fair in the Deep South. From a wide range of primary documents, Miki Pfeffer recreates the sounds and sights of 1884 New Orleans after Civil War and Reconstruction. She focuses on how difficult unity was to achieve, even when diverse women professed a common goal. Such celebrities as Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony brought national debates on women's issues to the South for the first time, and journalists and ordinary women reacted. At the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, the Woman's Department became a petri dish where cultures clashed but where women from across the country exchanged views on propriety, jobs, education, and suffrage. Pfeffer memorializes women's exhibits of handwork, literary and scientific endeavors, inventions, and professions, but she proposes that the real impact of the six-month long event was a shift in women's self-conceptions of their public and political lives. For those New Orleans ladies who were ready to seize the opportunity of this uncommon forum, the Woman's Department offered a future that they had barely imagined."Southern Ladies and Suffragists is a splendid addition to the field of women's history and cultural studies. It is a model of scholarly research and critical interpretation. Pfeffer has made brilliant use of the rich archival material in New Orleans, particularly the files of the local newspapers and the letters of many New Orleans women involved with the Cotton Centennial. The unwelcome appointment of Julia Ward Howe to direct the New Orleans Woman's Department in 1884 highlighted deep controversies about 'sectionalism,' and it provided an opportunity for women journalists to campaign openly against her and for local ladies to snipe at her in private. Pfeffer shows better than anyone else precisely how the visit of Howe and her daughter Maud accelerated feminist thinking and organizing in the South and encouraged women's literature as well as social activism and women's higher education."--Elaine Showalter, professor emerita of English, Princeton University

Letters For My Sisters


Deanne Thornton - 2014
    This groundbreaking collection of letters tells raw, heartfelt stories of childhood, transitioning, and becoming women in a world where acceptance is sometimes elusive and costly. Brave, boldly vulnerable and revealing, this collection adds to a growing body of literature where trans people tell their own stories as they lived them. Each writer addresses one simple question: If you could write just one letter to someone beginning transition, or to your younger pre-transition self, what would you say? Would you reassure or warn them, or lay your life out in vivid detail for them to draw their own conclusions? Would you have a secret to tell, a hard-won truth or an unexpected triumph to share?

Written as I Remember It: Teachings (??ms t???w) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder


Elsie Paul - 2014
    In this remarkable book, Sliammon elder Elsie Paul collaborates with a scholar, Paige Raibmon, and her granddaughter, Harmony Johnson, to tell her life story and the history of her people, in her own words and storytelling style. Raised by her grandparents who took her on their seasonal travels, Paul spent most of her childhood learning Sliammon ways, teachings, and stories and is one of the last surviving mother-tongue speakers of the Sliammon language. She shares this traditional knowledge with future generations in Written as I Remember It.

The Queerness of Native American Literature


Lisa Tatonetti - 2014
    Looking across a broad range of literature, Tatonetti offers the first overview and guide to queer Native literature from its rise in the 1970s to the present day.In The Queerness of Native American Literature, Tatonetti recovers ties between two simultaneous renaissances of the late twentieth century: queer literature and Native American literature. She foregrounds how Indigeneity intervenes within and against dominant interpretations of queer genders and sexualities, recovering unfamiliar texts from the 1970s while presenting fresh, cogent readings of well-known works. In juxtaposing the work of Native authors—including the longtime writer–activist Paula Gunn Allen, the first contemporary queer Native writer Maurice Kenny, the poet Janice Gould, the novelist Louise Erdrich, and the filmmakers Sherman Alexie, Thomas Bezucha, and Jorge Manuel Manzano—with the work of queer studies scholars, Tatonetti proposes resourceful interventions in foundational concepts in queer studies while also charting new directions for queer Native studies.Throughout, she argues that queerness has been central to Native American literature for decades, showing how queer Native literature and Two-Spirit critiques challenge understandings of both Indigeneity and sexuality.

Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design


T’ai Smith - 2014
    Far less recognized are texts by women in the school’s weaving workshop. In Bauhaus Weaving Theory, T’ai Smith uncovers new significance in the work the Bauhaus weavers did as writers.From colorful, expressionist tapestries to the invention of soundproofing and light-reflective fabric, the workshop’s innovative creations influenced a modernist theory of weaving. In the first careful examination of the writings of Bauhaus weavers, including Anni Albers, Gunta Stözl, and Otti Berger, Smith details how these women challenged assumptions about the feminine nature of their craft. As they harnessed the vocabulary of other disciplines like painting, architecture, and photography, Smith argues, the weavers resisted modernist thinking about distinct media. In parsing texts about tapestries and functional textiles, the vital role these women played in debates about medium in the twentieth century and a nuanced history of the Bauhaus comes to light.Bauhaus Weaving Theory deftly reframes the Bauhaus weaving workshop as central to theoretical inquiry at the school. Putting questions of how value and legitimacy are established in the art world into dialogue with the limits of modernism, Smith confronts the belief that the crafts are manual and technical but never intellectual arts.

Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination


Rosamond S. King - 2014
    and Sybil Lewis Prize “Outstanding. One of the best examinations of the dissonance between official sexual ideologies and actual social and cultural practices I have had the pleasure of reading.”—David William Foster, author of São Paulo: Perspectives on the City and Cultural Production“A thoughtful exploration of how Caribbean women and sexual minorities are at the center of a sexual revolution that refuses containment within Euro-American concepts of identity and sexuality. This is an unprecedented sexual revolution, led by sexual minorities, transforming the region and giving new meanings to what inclusion and liberation look like.”—Amalia L. Cabezas, author of Economies of Desire: Sex Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican RepublicIn Island Bodies, Rosamond King examines sexualities, violence, and repression in the Caribbean experience. Analyzing the sexual norms and expectations portrayed in Caribbean and diaspora literature, music, film, and popular culture, King skillfully demonstrates how many individuals contest traditional roles by maneuvering within and/or trying to change their society’s binary gender systems. These transgressions have come to better represent Caribbean culture than the “official” representations perpetuated by governmental elites and often codified into laws that reinforce patriarchal, heterosexual stereotypes.            Unique in its breadth as well as its multilingual and multidisciplinary approach, Island Bodies addresses homosexuality, interracial relations, transgender people, and women’s sexual agency in Dutch, Francophone, Anglophone, and Hispanophone works of Caribbean literature. Additionally, King explores the paradoxical nature of sexuality across the region: discussing sexuality in public is often considered taboo, yet the tourism economy trades on portraying Caribbean residents as hypersexualized. Ultimately King reveals that despite the varied national specificity, differing colonial legacies, and linguistic diversity across the islands, there are striking similarities in the ways Caribglobal cultures attempt to restrict sexuality and in the ways individuals explore and transgress those boundaries.

Your Startup Is Broken: Inside The Toxic Heart of Tech Culture


Shanley - 2014
    Over 25 essays including: What Your Culture Really Says 10x Engineer Downfalls of Distributed Startups Analyzing Dysfunction in Engineering Culture The Startup and the Enterprise Values Towards Ethical and Radical Management Microaggression and Management Management Reform in the Valley The Gendering of Technology Work Misogyny and the Marketing Chick What Can Men Do Different Internets: How Online Sexism and Misogyny Impact Women in Tech

Feminism and Men


Nikki van der Gaag - 2014
    Many young women exist in a world very different from that of their grandmothers. In many countries they can vote and stand for Parliament, earn money, have the choice of who they want to marry, or whether to marry or not. In others, there has been a backlash against these rights, but even here, most women recognise that these rights exist even if they cannot claim them. But what about men? Though they still hold the power in the boardroom, in parliament and often in the family too, their attitudes towards women - and towards themselves - have often changed very little over the decades. Has feminism itself left some men confused and others angry with concerns that 'men are losing out'?

Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Diversity, Representations and Health: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations


Linda Rae Bennett - 2014
    This innovative volume explores these issues in a variety of ways. It highlights historical and newer forms of sexual diversity, as well as the social responses they provoke. It critiques differing representations of sexuality, pointing to the multiplicity of discourses within which sexuality and OCythe sexualOCO are understood in modern-day Indonesia.Placing sexuality centre-stage and locating it within the specific historical context of the "Reformasi "era, this landmark volume explores understandings and practices across a wide variety of sites, focusing in on a diverse group of Indonesian actors, and the contested meanings that sexuality carries. Beginning with a substantive introduction and concluding with a scholarly reflection on key issues, the volume is framed around the four themes of sexual politics, health, diversity and representations. It seeks both to present new empirical findings as well as to add to existing theoretical analysis.This work fills an important gap in our understanding of the evolution and contemporary dynamics of Indonesian sexualities. It will be of interest to scholars and academics from disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, global health, sexual and reproductive health, anthropology, sociology and Asian studies."

Shamans, Queens, and Figurines: The Development of Gender Archaeology


Sarah Milledge Nelson - 2014
    The book covers her theoretical contributions, her extensive studies of gender in the archaeology of East Asia, and her literary work on the subject. Included with the selections of her writing-- taken from diverse articles and books published in a variety of places-- is an illuminating commentary about the development of her professional and personal understanding of how gender plays out in ancient societies and modern universities and her current thinking on both topics.

Making Sense of Intersex: Changing Ethical Perspectives in Biomedicine


Ellen K. Feder - 2014
    Feder seeks to clarify how we should understand "the problem" of intersex. Adults often report that medical interventions they underwent as children to "correct" atypical sex anatomies caused them physical and psychological harm. Proposing a philosophical framework for the treatment of children with intersex conditions--one that acknowledges the intertwined identities of parents, children, and their doctors--Feder presents a persuasive moral argument for collective responsibility to these children and their families.

Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations


Tami Williams - 2014
    Through her filmmaking, writing, and cine-club activism, Dulac’s passionate defense of the cinema as a lyrical art and social practice had a major influence on twentieth century film history and theory.In Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations, Tami Williams makes unprecedented use of the filmmaker's personal papers, production files, and archival film prints to produce the first full-length historical study and critical biography of Dulac. Williams's analysis explores the artistic and sociopolitical currents that shaped Dulac's approach to cinema while interrogating the ground breaking techniques and strategies she used to critique conservative notions of gender and sexuality. Moving beyond the director’s work of the 1920s, Williams examines Dulac's largely ignored 1930s documentaries and newsreels establishing clear links with the more experimental impressionist and abstract works of her early period.This vivid portrait will be of interest to general readers, as well as to scholars of cinema and visual culture, performance, French history, women’s studies, queer cinema, in addition to studies of narrative avant-garde, experimental, and documentary film history and theory.

The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism


Delphine Benezet - 2014
    Many of these are considered by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences alike, as audacious, seminal, and unforgettable. This volume considers her production as a whole, revisiting overlooked films like "Mur, Murs/Documenteur" (1980--81), and connecting her cinema to recent installation work. This study demonstrates how Varda has resisted norms of representation and diktats of production. It also shows how she has elaborated a personal repertoire of images, characters, and settings, which all provide insight on their cultural and political contexts. The book thus offers new readings of this director's multifaceted rêveries, arguing that her work should be seen as an aesthetically influential and ethically-driven production where cinema is both a political and collaborative practice, and a synesthetic art form.

Policing Sexuality


Jessica R Pliley - 2014
    But, as Jessica Pliley illustrates, its enforcement resulted more often in the policing of women's sexual behavior, reflecting conservative attitudes toward women's roles at home and their movements in public. By citing its mandate to halt illicit sexuality, the fledgling Bureau of Investigation gained entry not only into brothels but also into private bedrooms and justified its own expansion. Policing Sexuality links the crusade against sex trafficking to the rapid growth of the Bureau from a few dozen agents at the time of the Mann Act into a formidable law enforcement organization that cooperated with state and municipal authorities across the nation. In pursuit of offenders, the Bureau often intervened in domestic squabbles on behalf of men intent on monitoring their wives and daughters. Working prostitutes were imprisoned at dramatically increased rates, while their male clients were seldom prosecuted.In upholding the Mann Act, the FBI reinforced sexually conservative views of the chaste woman and the respectable husband and father. It built its national power and prestige by expanding its legal authority to police Americans' sexuality and by marginalizing the very women it was charged to protect.

Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes


Joyce F Benenson - 2014
    It should. After a baby is born, a parent's first concern is for its physical health. The next concern is its sex. Only in the mostmodern societies does sex not virtually guarantee the type of future life a new human being will have. Even in modern societies, one's sex usually plays a large role in the path a life follows.Scientists have published thousands of papers on the subject, with the general conclusion being that men and women are mostly the same, whatever differences exist have been socialized, and what differences exist have to do with women bearing children and men being physically stronger. In Warriorsand Worriers, psychologist Joyce Benenson presents a new theory of sex differences, based on thirty years of research with young children and primates around the world. Her innovative theory focuses on how men and women stay alive. Benenson draws on a fascinating array of studies and stories thatexplore the ways boys and men deter their enemies, while girls and women find assistants to aid them in coping with vulnerable children and elders. This produces two social worlds for each sex which sets humans apart from most other primate species. Human males form cooperative groups that competeagainst out-groups, while human females exclude other females in their quest to find mates, female family members to invest in their children, and keep their own hearts ticking. In the process, Benenson turns upside down the familiar wisdom that women are more sociable than men and that men are morecompetitive than women.

Blurred Lines


Kathleen Tudor - 2014
    The need to be 'all boy' or 'all girl' all the time—or to feel like one or the other at all—is a restriction on free gender expression. What does it look like when someone blazes their own path through gender roles? Wearing, saying, and doing what they want, even when it causes confusion or discomfort to others? It takes a strong personality to defy societal norms, and this collection brings together several of them.In Werebears and Water, Rayce and his boyfriend, Vince, take a break from their busy college lives to visit a WereCon, where they hope to meet others like themselves. Most of the attendees are players and posers, but when a sexy spitfire of a girl named Maia comes to share their room after a hotel mix-up, they will find that she's everything they were looking for... and everything they didn't even know they were looking for.Tony tends bar, and whether he's in a suit and tie or a mini-skirt and glitter, he can handle anything from sarcastic comments to the drunk and disorderly—except for the gorgeous George, whose comfort level with Tony's gender fluidity is a little fluid itself. Experience has taught Tony to expect the worst, and he's not about to risk his heart on someone who can't love him, tits and all. Only by Defying Expectations can George win the fair bartender's heart.Then, in Red Blood, White Blood, Chee, once known as Chen, has sought the guidance of her tribe's spirit creatures, and has received and unorthodox message: she will not receive the totem's blessing to become a hunter, because that is a man's duty and, despite her body, she is no man. Her horrified family sends her away to another tribe, where a wise woman may have a cure for her strange malady... but the wise woman's cure is acceptance. As Chee teaches Taki, a boy with a similar dilemma (and a woman's body), the ways of men, she learns her own place as a woman of her new tribe, both publicly and in the privacy of a darkened hut.Finally, Of All the Days to wear the tits, Vesh chose the day ze tried to finger guardsman Jeric's pouch. And later, ze was caught again fingering the big man's private property. And again, when Vesh is finally caught stealing from the wrong person, ze and Jeric are given a joint task: bump and grind their way through the deadly catacombs beneath the city and bring back their prize alive, and they will walk away with enough gold to hump their way to any other city they wish.

A Guide for Women in Religion, Revised Edition: Making Your Way from A-Z


Mary E. Hunt - 2014
    From undergraduates to retired professors, this distilled wisdom of several generations of colleagues is an important book to have handy. Whether seeking a job, preparing for tenure, working at a non-profit organization, entering the publishing world, figuring finances, mentoring or being mentored, the reader will find just what she (or he—men find it useful too) needs to know. This volume reflects the diversity of women's experiences, the range of opportunities, the pitfalls and promises of religious studies that span ministry, academia, and activism. It is a good investment for one's future career and a welcome gift for students. This second edition is updated to reflect the rapidly changing field, especially technological innovations.

Once I Too Had Wings: The Journals of Emma Bell Miles, 1908-1918


Emma Bell Miles - 2014
    She and her husband Frank lived on Walden’s Ridge in southeast Tennessee, where they struggled to raise a family in the difficult mountain environment. Between 1908 and 1918, Miles kept a series of journals in which she recorded in beautiful and haunting prose the natural wonders and local customs of Walden’s Ridge. Jobs were scarce, however, and as the family’s financial situation deteriorated, Miles began to sell literary works and paintings to make ends meet. Her short stories appeared in national magazines such as Harper’s Monthly and Lippincott’s, and in 1905 she published Spirit of the Mountains, a nonfiction book about southern Appalachia. After the death of her three-year-old son from scarlet fever in 1913, the journals took a more somber turn as Miles documented the difficulties of mountain life, the plight of women in rural communities, the effect of disparities of class and wealth, and her own struggle with tuberculosis.Previously examined only by a handful of scholars, the journals contain both poignant and incisive accounts of nature and a woman’s perspective on love and marriage, death customs, child raising, medical care, and subsistence on the land in southern Appalachia in the early twentieth century. With a foreword by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, this edited selection of Emma Bell Miles’s journals is illustrated with examples of her painting.

Imperial Blues: Geographies of Race and Sex in Jazz Age New York


Fiona I.B. Ngô - 2014
    B. Ngô examines how geographies of U.S. empire were perceived and enacted during the 1920s and 1930s. Focusing on New York during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Ngô traces the city's multiple circuits of jazz music and culture. In considering this cosmopolitan milieu, where immigrants from the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, and China crossed paths with blacks and white "slummers" in dancehalls and speakeasies, she investigates imperialism's profound impact on racial, gendered, and sexual formations. As nightclubs overflowed with the sights and sounds of distant continents, tropical islands, and exotic bodies, tropes of empire provided both artistic possibilities and policing rationales. These renderings naturalized empire and justified expansion, while establishing transnational modes of social control within and outside the imperial city. Ultimately, Ngô argues that domestic structures of race and sex during the 1920s and 1930s cannot be understood apart from the imperial ambitions of the United States.

Writings from the Sand, Volume 2: Collected Works of Isabelle Eberhardt


Isabelle Eberhardt - 2014
    Already multilingual, she studied the Arabic language and Islamic culture and eventually converted to Islam. Eberhardt traveled throughout North Africa, wrote about her experiences, and married an Algerian. Her legendary, short, and stormy life included subversive political anarchism, the mysticism of Islam, numerous love affairs, and, most importantly, writing unmatched by her contemporaries.  The merit of Eberhardt’s writings, similar to that of many artists, was neither known nor valued until after her death. The companion to volume 1, Writings from the Sand, Volume 2, showcases the prose of one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating female wanderers and includes previously unpublished stories and an unfinished novel. This new volume exemplifies Eberhardt’s creation of identity in fiction as her writing explores the world of prostitutes, Bedouins, and French colonists in exotic tales of love and conquest.