The Persistence Of Patriarchal Discourses

This innovative book critically examines patriarchal hegemonies from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. It challenges the Anglo-American bias of much gender and language research to date by including rich new data and insights from scholars working in countries such as Colombia, Liberia, Kenya, Vietnam, Japan, Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sweden, Denmark and Poland. Within these different geographical contexts, a broadly defined notion of culture incorporates organizational cultures, subcultures of society, cultures of clans or tribes as well as national cultures, depending on the meanings ascribed to the notion by people in public and private spaces. The central question of the volume, which is addressed through a variety of data, different discourse analytical approaches and research methodologies, is: How is gender constructed in social life and in patriarchal systems through discourse in different parts of the world?

For over a century and in scores of countries, patriarchal presumptions and practices have been challenged by women and their male allies. “Sexual harassment” has entered common parlance; police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; and a woman candidate won the plurality of the popular votes in the 2016 United States presidential election. But have we really reached equality and overthrown a patriarchal point of view? The Big Push exposes how patriarchal ideas and relationships continue to be modernized to this day. Through contemporary cases and reports, renowned political scientist Cynthia Enloe exposes the workings of everyday patriarchy—in how Syrian women civil society activists have been excluded from international peace negotiations; how sexual harassment became institutionally accepted within major news organizations; or in how the UN Secretary General’s post has remained a masculine domain. Enloe then lays out strategies and skills for challenging patriarchal attitudes and operations. Encouraging self-reflection, she guides us in the discomforting curiosity of reviewing our own personal complicity in sustaining patriarchy in order to withdraw our own support for it. Timely and globally conscious, The Big Push is a call for feminist self-reflection and strategic action with a belief that exposure complements resistance.

This thesis investigates young peoples’ meaning-making around celebrity victims of image-based sexual abuse, utilising semi-structured focus group interviews with 13 women (aged 18-25) and 4 men (aged 20-27). Image-based sexual abuse covers a range of behaviours in which nude, sexual or intimate images are non-consensually shared, regardless of the nature and context of their creation. The term is used as a replacement for the mainstream misnomer ‘revenge pornography’. This study found meaning-making of image-based sexual abuse indicated some variation in accepted definitions of violence, with women generally constructing image-based sexual abuse as a form of sexual violence and men constructing a narrow understanding of violence and harm, in terms of physicality, that precludes an understanding of imagebased sexual abuse as violence or abuse. Further, focus group data suggested female victims’ sexual status (based on sexual history, reputation and sexualised appearance) had more of an effect, than celebrity status, on participants’ constructions of undeserving and deserving victims. These hegemonic patriarchal constructions of femininity support rape myths that deny victimisation of some women. Female participants constructed a continuum of risky behaviour, through the discussion of celebrity and non-celebrity victims. This suggests a convergence of responsibilisation and heteronormative femininity, ultimately demonstrating the prevalence of victim-blaming rhetoric. The male participants did not discuss risk, however their constructions of male (hetero)sexuality supported the young women’s perception of the ever-present possibility of abuse and the need for women to manage risk. Conversely, in discussions surrounding why men engage in both non-consensually sharing and the viewing of such images, female and male participants relied on a naturalisation of the differences between male and female (hetero)sexualities, essentially excusing illegal, immoral and unethical male behaviour. Overall, this thesis provides insight into how young people negotiate and adopt available patriarchal discourses that support victim-blaming attitudes and rape myths.

This book examines whether we are witnessing the resilience, persistence and adaptation of masculinist discourses and practices at both domestic and international levels in the contemporary global context. Beginning with an innovative conceptualisation of masculinism, the book draws on interdisciplinary work to analyse its contours and practices across four case studies. From the anti-feminist backlash that can be found in various men’s rights movements, and responses to gender-based and sexual violence, to the masculinist underpinnings of human rights discourse, and modes of intervention to protect, including drone warfare. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies, security and international relations, and sociology.

This book examines the operational dynamics of patriarchy that is deeply woven into the Indian cultural fabric and its persistence in spite of women advancing in Human Development Indices. In studying the situation of women of the Catholic Syrian Christian community of Kerala, South India, as a case of analysis, Kochurani Abraham identifies caste consciousness and religious prescriptions of this community as the main factors that intersect with gendered identity construction and succeed in keeping women within its patriarchal confines. While women do engage in negotiating patriarchy through what can be termed simulative, tactical, and ‘agensic’ bargains, this remains a ‘politics of survival’ as it does not challenge the established gender order. In this context, making a shift from ‘politics of survival’ to a ‘politics of subversion’ is imperative for challenging persisting patriarchies.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Patriarchalism is omnipresent in Western culture and it pervades the texts that have shaped this culture. From the creation story in the Bible to the ancient authors, from the Church fathers to the treatises of Enlightenment philosophers, right up to modern fiction, male authority over women, children and other dependents has shaped the nature of human relationships and the discourses about these relationships. This collection of short essays offers fresh and novel readings of key texts in the history of patriarchalism as a concept of power. The texts selected are from political, religious and literary works and together the readings add new insights to a tradition that has never gone uncontested, yet is unlikely to disappear soon.

Explores how structures of authority and relations of power were mediated at a grassroots level in early modern society. To this end, Hardwick examines the households of the families of men who worked as notaries in Nantes between 1560 and 1660. Focusing on daily interactions, she explores the early modern practice of patriarchy, which she contends received new impetus in that period. Topics include making marriages, managing households, and public life in the city. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Mark Miller's innovative study argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales represent an extended mediation on agency, autonomy and practical reason. This philosophical aspect of Chaucer's interests can help us understand what is both sophisticated and disturbing about his explorations of love, sex and gender. Partly through fresh readings of the Consolation of Philosophy and the Romance of the Rose, Miller charts Chaucer's position in relation to the association in the Christian West between problems of autonomy and problems of sexuality and reconstructs how medieval philosophers and literary writers approached psychological phenomena often thought of as distinctively modern. The literary experiments of the Canterbury Tales represent a distinctive philosophical achievement that remains vital to our own attempts to understand agency, desire and their histories.

This book provides an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to current debates on gender, exploring the major theorists whose work has produced and inspired feminist analysis in women's/gender studies, cultural studies and sociology. By clarifying and explaining the concepts of gender analysis and by demonstrating ways of working with these concepts, the authors involve the readers directly in the reading process and leave them feeling empowered. Accessible introductions to the work of major theorists help to give difficult concepts a context and the theory is related back to practice and to related fields such as class and race analysis throughout.

Through an analysis of the poems Chaucers wordes Unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn, Troilus and Criseyde, the Legend of Good Women, the Man of Law's Tale, the Wife of Bath's Tale and its Prologue, the Clerk's Tale, and the Pardoner's Tale, Carolyn Dinshaw offers a provocative argument on medieval sexual constructs and Chaucer's role in shaping them. Operating under the assumption that people read and write certain ways based upon society's demands, Dinshaw examines gender identity and the effects of a patriarchal society. The focal point of Dinshaw's argument is the idea that the literary text can be seen as the female body while any literary activities upon the text are decidedly male. Through a series of six provocative essays, Dinshaw argues that Chaucer was not only aware that gender is a social construction, but that he self-consciously worked to oppose the dominance of masculinity that a patriarchal society places on texts by creating works in which gender identity and hierarchy were more fluid.