Gender Studies MA

Emily Martin's piece - culture and biology effect each other through the mechanisms of: Culture to Biology: Stereotypes of gender effect scientific explanations Biology to Culture: Sperm is labelled as productive whereas eggs are described as passive Sperm as lively, egg as degenerating Sperm as active, agent, youthful whereas the egg is passive, waiting Sperm penetrates, egg receives Sperm as constructive, purposeful where the egg is wasteful

Right to Life rather than Right to Death - we grant that life is more important than death. Right to Death is still part of a living decision Right to Life - When can a foetus be considered a person? Wrongful abortion - when an abortion is unintentionally carried out through negligent conduct Costs of a wrongful abortion to mother - Monetary (cost of abortion, financial support from child), relational (maternal pain during surgery, grief over loss of child) Cost of wrongful abortion to foetus - Monetary (Acquired assets, tax, profit of employment), relational (Joy of life, love, companionship) Right to life = Article 2 of European Convention on Human Rights: "Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law." A foetus is considered a person at week 16-18: quickness - the mother feels the...

Feminist in the Kitchen and lifestyle programs  'Lifestyle' - a style of life that makes you aspire to be the same, to have the control and balance that the individuals have. Activities in and around the home are presented as activities of leisure/free time and aesthetic beauty. Ideology of making housework into an attractive activity of beautification is why it is called lifestyle. The word itself makes it more marketably feminist through de-gendering, where work/labour is collapsed into fun. The woman you see is not the successful business woman, but rather an accessible woman's woman. The concept of personhood and meaning of the self becomes a matter of lifestyle in the context of consumerism. Initially because you are constantly invited to relate to who you are through the logic of marketisation. By being a fan of the show, you learn tips from the program, it inevitable relates who you are to the commodity interest of the program and you purchase products in order t...

Fassan - sexual democracy in France and across Europe. How do notions and phrases such as "women are free" or "we should be tolerant of homosexuality" foster a clash of sexual ideality? People within the nation seem to be certain kinds of people - notions of nation/culture/race, shape ideas about sexual freedoms and questions of belonging (to the nation/groups of us/them). Different sexual democracies Fassan mentions (US/Europe, France/Germany, France/Netherlands) What is the cement of the nation (sexuality/gender) through notions of certain peoples freedoms (who is free, and to do what)? Ambiguity of discourses - national projects/nation states instrumentalise gender/sexuality for certain purposes (Sarkozy with his sexual freedom/Catholic tendencies) Is nationalism/West hypocritical or ambiguous in a way that is something other than hypocritical? Fassan - who has the right/ability to the following: - Family, kinship - Burkha - Love How to understand the...

Brunsdon, Charlotte: “The feminist in the kitchen: Martha, Martha and Nigella” in Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley (eds.) Feminism in Popular Culture . Berg, 2006. Martha Stewart embodied the woman who could "have it all" through her cooking, cleaning, sewing, making, entertaining personality. This was the ultimate domestic woman. "What relation is there between being told what to do in your house and kitchen by these women and feminism?" p.41 Young feminists saying to old feminists "we're not like that" p.43 is a way of disidentifying with feminist history, "there is a disidentity at the heart of feminism" p.43 "As second-wave feminism interrogated itself, the next generation of feminists felt compelled to declare their lack of identity with second-wave feminists." p.43 Notion of genre and periodisation as a way of differentiating second-wave feminism from contemporary discourse - where genre allows u...

Fassin, Eric. 2010. “National Ident ities and Transnational Intimacies: Sexual Democracy and the Politics of Immigration in Europe.“ Public Culture 22/3: 507 -29.  A Somali woman faced brutal backlash from her country of asylum (Netherlands) because of a film she made criticising Islam. She went to the US but was not afforded the security she needed. Then she went to France to ask for citizenship. " Bernard-Henri Lévy. The reason France must “adopt” her, he argued, is quite simply that “Ayaan Hirsi Ali is already French (yes, she is!) in her heart, her values and her mind.” According to him, the refugee from Islam defends not only Western-style secularism but, more precisely, its French version" p.508 " Today, Hirsi Ali is a global icon of the so-called clash of civilizations. Her own trajectory, fleeing Africa to find refuge in Europe, before finding a true home in America, can be read in such terms." p.509 " in a 2003 Foreign Policy article, Ronald ...

Post/coloniality and Madness Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) - Psychatrist, writer, revolutionary born in Martinique - Important in anti-colonial struggles, impact of colonialism and repression, anti-colonial struffle, and vision for decolonisation - Black Skin White Mask (1952), The Wretched of the Earth (1959) Builidng off of his analysis on anti-Black racism in  Black Skin, White Masks , Fanon develops a wider theory of the effects of colonialism of the psyche, cultural formation and political organisation, and revolutionary resistance to colonialism as a system in  Wretched of the Earth . Chapter 5: Colonial War and Mental Disorders - French and international psychiatrists "the difficulty of 'curing' a colonised subject correctly, in other words making him thoroughly fit into a social environment of the colonial type." p.181-2 - Attributes to the systemised negation of the humanity of the colonised; when "the colonisation remains unchallenged by armed res...

Frantz Fanon, “Chapter 5. Colonial War and Mental Disorders,”  The Wretched of the Earth  (Groove Press, 2004, originally published 1961). " Since 1954 we have drawn the attention of French and international psychiatrists in scientific works to the difficulty of"curing" a colonized subject correctly, in other words making him thoroughly fit into a social environment of the co­lonial type." p.181-182 Fanon writes that it is the war that is often the triggering case of psychotic break in the patients admitted in Algeria. Both those who torture and those who are tortured suffer post-traumatic-stress in varying forms.  "Here we have collected cases or groups of cases where the trig­gering factor is first and foremost the atmosphere of outright war that reigns in Algeria." p.199  Fanon goes on to describe all the different mental illnesses, but it is clear that the reason they are the way they are is because of the war.  Fanon notes the respon...

Kate Reed.   2009. ‘It’s them faulty genes again’: women, men and the gendered nature of genetic responsibility in prenatal blood screening.” Sociology of Health and Illness , 31, 3, 343-359. "this paper aims to explore the gendered nature of genetic responsibility in prenatal blood screening." " As Kerry’s quotation suggests, men do ‘their bit’ at conception. It is up to women to nurture and develop the growing fetus, and to take responsibility if things go wrong." p.343-344 "More recently, feminists have highlighted the double-edged nature of this desire for reproductive autonomy. While offering women reproductive choice, it also individualises reproductive decision making, placing the gravity of responsibility firmly in women’s hands (Rapp 2000). " p.344 " Genetic responsibility refers here to responsibility taken for the genetic health of the fetus during prenatal screening – that is responsibility taken for screening decisions...