This book examines the linguistic and discursive mechanisms that realize the mythological American Alpha Male. Providing an in-depth dissection of corpora from an online socio-commercial community, a pop-psychology guru, and fictional gay erotica, it unravels the ways language, gender, and hegemony play out in this ideological figure of neopositive, essentialist masculinity. Through a detailed, multi-level analysis, Russell shows how the Alpha figure combines elements of dominance, normativity, and androcentrism and how these forces intersect with neoliberal and pseudoscientific discourses to establish a uniquely hybridized male hegemony, one that is familiar to most, but whose internal mechanisms remain largely unquestioned and unexamined. This book will be of interest to academic scholars in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and gender and sexualities studies.

This book addresses the merits and limitations of femvertising, explores the operations of advertising and commodity feminism in a global context, and presents case studies from Anglo-American, South American and East Asian national contexts. The range of topics include the femvertising of beauty products, contraception, lingerie, breast cancer awareness, financial services and corporate branding. Focusing on the ways in which neoliberalism and postfeminism interact with foundational issues of feminist politics, the chapters in this book situate global femvertising as a complex and exciting advertising strategy which holds the potential for social change amidst an uneasy cohabitation with capitalism and commercial culture.

Mentored to Perfection: The Masculine Terms of Success in Academia examines how mentoring programs between women tend to replicate the hierarchical relations of patriarchy that they are meant to dismantle. Simone Dennis and Alison Behie argue that, while paradigmatic mentoring programs look like networking support services for neophytes, these mentorships nevertheless replicate the very institutional structures they seek to uproot. The generosity that senior women show to junior women as they share their tips and offer their support ironically obscures participants' involvement in debt relations and the biases of replicating a particular type of success. This book considers the possibilities for disrupting our tendency to reproduce ourselves in the masculine terms of success.

Plasticity in Motion: Sport, Gender, and Biopolitics argues that sport has a transformative power that, when engaged with habitually, can create bodies with the athletic ability to succeed at the incredible performances that captivate modern sports audiences. Robert M. Foschia draws heavily from the influential and extensive work of Catherine Malabou on plasticity - the ability to shape and form - and similarly argues that transformation is not always positive or infinite, with the potential for accidents, injuries, and excommunications. However, sport as a discursive space often precludes any mention of these negative transformations, asserting itself as pure potential and becoming, often to the exclusion of the feminine. What occurs if the feminine enters into this space? Foschia intentionally integrates the feminine back into hypermasculine discussions of sport, opening a new realm of possible transformations to the ways we play, watch, and think about sports. Scholars of communication, media studies, gender studies, rhetoric, and sports will find this book particularly useful.

This open access book addresses the current debate on extended working life policy by considering the influence of gender and health on the experiences of older workers. Bringing together an international team of scholars, it tackles issues as gender, health status and job/ occupational characteristics that structure the capacity and outcomes associated with working longer. The volume starts with an overview of the empirical and policy literature; continues with a discussion of the relevant theoretical perspectives; includes a section on available data and indicators; followed by 25 very concise and unique country reports that highlight the main extended working life (EWL) research findings and policy trajectories at the national level. It identifies future directions for research and addresses issues associated with effective policy-making. This volume fills an important gap in the knowledge of the consequences of EWL and it will be an invaluable source for both researchers and policy makers.

Through an examination of the experience of transsexuals, this book enhances understanding of how gender can and does function in powerful, complex and subtle ways. The author, who has herself been surgically reassigned, has conducted extensive interviews with transsexuals from many walks of life. Her personal experiences, which inform this book, have given her an access to her subjects that others would likely be denied. While highlighting how the gender identity of transsexuals relates to hormonal and surgical changes in the body as well as to changes in dress, the book investigates the pressures and motivations to conform to expected gender roles, and the ways in which these are affected by social, educational, and professional status. Differences in the experiences of those who change from male to female and those who change from female to male are also examined.
Sex reassignment has been the focus of considerable media attention recently, as increasing numbers of people feel able to talk frankly about their personal experiences with gender dysphoria. Strides with medical technology have given transsexuals new opportunities in their lives. This book provides unique insights into how these changes are seen by those people most affected them.

This edited volume rethinks Masculinity Studies by breaking away from the notion of the perpetual crisis of masculinity. It argues that not enough has been done to distinguish patriarchy from masculinity and proposes to detox masculinity by offering a collection of positive representations of men in fictional and non-fictional texts. The editors show how ideas of hegemonic and toxic masculinity have been too fixed on the exploration of dominance and subservience, and too little on the men (and the male characters in fiction) who behave following other ethical, personal and socially accepted patterns. Bringing together research from different periods and genres, this collection provides broad, multidisciplinary insights into alternative representations of masculinity.

Two LGBTQ affirmative US Supreme Court Rulings occurred in the second decade of the twenty-first century: the 2015 Obergefell ruling in support of same sex marriage, and the 2020 Bostock decision ruling that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited by Title VII. In The Politicalization of Trans Identity: An Analysis of Backlash, Scapegoating, and Dogwhistling from Obergefell to Bostock, Loren Cannon critiques the opinions of the court in both cases. Cannon carefully presents the evidence that transgender identity itself has become politicized post Obergefell and provides a thorough consideration of the ramifications of this politicization across the nation, especially in the form of proposed legislation and violence. Cannon argues that the politicization of trans identity can rightfully be understood as a backlash response to the Obergefell decision and increased LGBTQ equality. According to Cannon, aspects of the politicization can be characterized as scapegoating and as dog whistling. This book offers unique contributions to the understanding of these ideas, including a creative application of Rene Girard's theory of scapegoating. Lastly, Cannon argues that conceptually, virtue signaling needs to be paired with dog whistling to have the political result that the whistler intends.

Following on from Making Sense of Motherhood (2005) and Making Sense of Fatherhood (2010), Tina Miller's book focuses on transitions to first-time parenthood and the unfolding experiences of managing caring and paid work in modern family lives. Returning to her original participants, it collects later episodes of their experience of 'doing' family life, and meticulously examines mothers' and fathers' accounts of negotiating intensified parenting responsibilities and work-place demands. It explores questions of why gender equality and equity are harder to manage within the home sphere when organising caring and associated responsibilities, re-addressing the concept of 'maternal gatekeeping' and offering insights into a new concept of 'paternal gatekeeping'. The findings presented will inform both scholarly work and policy on family lives, gender equality and work.

Written not so long after "Tolkien mania" first gripped the United States in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) has long been recognized as a classic of the fantasy genre, and the series of Earthsea books that followed on it over the next several decades earned its author both considerable sales and critical accolades. This new introduction to the text will closely contextualize the original novel in relation to its heady decade of composition and publication - a momentous time for genre publishing - and also survey the half century and more of scholarship on Earthsea, which has shifted in direction and emphasis many times over the decades, just as surely as Le Guin frequently adjusted her own sails when composing later works set in the fantasy world. Above all, this book positions A Wizard of Earthsea as perhaps an "old text" that nevertheless belongs in a "new canon," a key novel in the author's career and the genre in which it participates, and one that at once looks back to Tolkien and his own antecedents in masculinist early fantasy; looks forward to Le Guin's own continuing feminist and progressive education; and anticipates and indeed helped to shape young adult literature in its contemporary form.

Offering valuable insights into social science methodology and practice, "Cape Verde Women""and Globalization" employs critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis to explore what Cape Verdeans have to say about women's lives in the era of twenty-first century globalization. The authors investigate the economic and personal difficulties they face such as poverty, managing single mother-headed households, and violence. They also examine the ways women resist the challenges globalization has brought to them especially through cultural expressions of "batuku" dancing and "Creole" language. Using the framework of Patricia Hill Collins' intersectionality theory, "Cape Verde Women""and Globalization" concludes that scholars need to make central the links among the concepts of oppression, resistance, culture, and gender in order to "see" the lives of women and especially in order to identify the bridges to political change. Each chapter also includes a "reflections on methods" section to reveal the journey the authors took in undertaking this project from its earliest conceptualization to their conclusions.

This book focuses on how the abject spectacle of the 'monstrous feminine' has been reimagined by recent and contemporary screen horrors focused on the desires and subjectivities of female monsters who, as anti-heroic protagonists of revisionist and reflexive texts, exemplify gendered possibility in altered cultures of 21st century screen production and reception. As Barbara Creed notes in a recent interview, the patriarchal stereotype of horror that she named 'the monstrous-feminine' has, decades later, 'embarked on a life of her own'. Focused on this altered and renewed form of female monstrosity, this study engages with an international array of recent and contemporary screen entertainments, from arthouse and indie horror films by emergent female auteurs, to the franchised products of multimedia conglomerates, to 'quality' television horror, to the social media-based creations of horror fans working as 'pro-sumers'. In this way, the monograph in its organisation and scope maps the converged and rapidly changing environment of 21st century screen cultures in order to situate the monstrous female anti-hero as one of its distinctive products.

The New Port Moresby: Gender, Space, and Belonging in Urban Papua New Guinea explores the ways in which educated, professional women experience living in Port Moresby, the burgeoning capital of Papua New Guinea. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist scholarship, the book adds to an emerging literature on cities in the "Global South" as sites of oppression, but also resistance, aspiration, and activism. Taking an intersectional feminist approach, the book draws on a decade of research conducted among the educated professional women of Port Moresby, offering unique insight into class transitions and the perspectives of this small but significant cohort. The New Port Moresby expands the scope of research and writing about gendered experiences in Port Moresby, moving beyond the idea that the city is an exclusively hostile place for women. Without discounting the problems of uneven development, the author argues that the city's new places offer women a degree of freedom and autonomy in a city predominantly characterized by fear and restriction. In doing so, it offers an ethnographically rich perspective on the interaction between the "global" and the "local" and what this might mean for feminism and the advancement of equity in the Pacific and beyond. The New Port Moresby will find an audience among anthropologists, particularly those interested in the urban Pacific, feminist geographers committed to expanding research to include cities in the Global South and development theorists interested in understanding the roles played by educated elites in less economically developed contexts. There have been few ethnographic monographs about Port Moresby and those that do exist have tended to marginalize or ignore gender. Yet as feminist geographers make clear, women and men are positioned differently in the world and their relationship to the places in which they live is also different. The book has no predecessors and stands alone in the Pacific as an account of this kind. As such, The New Port Moresby should be read by scholars and students of diverse disciplines interested in urbanization, gender, and the Pacific.

This volume presents a collection of essays that explore the relationship between sporting clothing and gender. Drawing on uniform and sports apparel as a means of exploring the socio-sexual politics of contemporary US society, the contributions analyse the historical, political-economic, socio-cultural and sport-specific dimensions of gendered clothing in sport. Part of a two-volume series (the other discussing this phenomenon in a global context), contributors cover topics such as WNBA uniform politics, military promotion, female sportscaster clothing, magazine depictions, plus-size exercise apparel, FloJo, the Skirt Chaser 5k race, and the socio-politics of the LPGA, CrossFit, roller derby, rock climbing, and more. As the first single compendium to discuss American sportswomen's apparel, this collection will be of interest to practitioners and scholars of sports history, the sociology of sport, and gender/media studies.

Karsten provides comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of gender-related issues and their impact on management. This book combines theoretical information about women's workplace roles, tokenism and power, typically found in Women's Studies literature, with information on topics such as career planning, mentoring, and networking, more commonly discussed in business-oriented books dealing with the progress of executive women. Experiences unique to women of color are incorporated, as are sex-role stereotypes and socialization processes that have affected both females and males.

A style of management consistent with an organic structure is presented first along with a discussion of the changing nature of managerial work. A historical overview of women's contributions to management theory is a unique feature of the book. Equal employment opportunity laws and regulations are covered thoroughly and sexual harassment is addressed, from the viewpoints of both the organization and those affected by this serious workplace problem. Management of workforce diversity, seen as essential for organizations that wish to fully develop all human talent to remain competitive globally, is discussed next. Among other topics explored are assertiveness, balancing career and family or personal life, and women's roles in international management. Case studies, adapted from actual events, also are included. This book is an important resource for business executives and students who wish to gain a better understanding of current gender-related challenges facing organizations.

How does an industrial community cope when they are told that closure is inevitable? What if this is only the last in a 200 year long line of threats, insecurities and closure? How did people weather the storms and how do they face the future now? While attempts to regenerate communities are everywhere, we do not often hear from the people themselves just how they managed to create safe collective spaces or how the fall of the whole house of cards brought with it effects which can be felt by young people who never knew the town when it was an industrial heartland. We hear the story of how men and women tried to cope and still want to retain their community in the face of its destruction. What can they and will they have to pass to the next generation and where will that leave the young people themselves, who have nothing to stay for but are unable to leave? This book examines these crucial questions facing post-industrial societies.

Sexuality and gender have come to serve as measures for cultural belonging in discussions of the position of Muslim immigrants in multicultural Western societies. While the acceptance of assumed local norms such as sexual liberty and gender equality are seen as successful integration, rejecting them is regarded as a sign of failed citizenship. Focusing on premarital sex, homosexuality, and cohabitation outside marriage, this book provides an ethnographic account of sexuality among the Iranian Dutch. It argues that by embracing, rejecting, and questioning modernity in stories about sexuality, the Iranian Dutch actively engage in processes of self-fashioning.

Why people love This Child of Ours... 'Excellent... An important and moving story' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'This book broke my heart and gently pieced it back together' CATHY BRAMLEY 'Thought-provoking, moving and incredibly insightful' AMANDA BROOKE 'Will have you in cheers as well as tears' THE SUN If you've been watching and enjoying Butterfly on ITV then this book is perfect for you. --------------------- You know what's best for your child. Don't you? Riley Pieterson is an adventurous girl with lots of questions. There's plenty she doesn't know yet; what a human brain looks like. All the constellations in the night sky. Why others can't see her the way she sees herself. When Riley confides in her parents - Sally and Theo - that she feels uncomfortable in her own skin, a chain of events begins that changes their lives forever. Sally wants to support her daughter by helping her be who she dreams of being. Theo resists; he thinks Riley is a seven-year-old child pushing boundaries. Both believe theirs is the only way to protect Riley and keep her safe. With the wellbeing of their child at stake, Sally and Theo's relationship is pushed to breaking point. To save their family, each of them must look deeply at who they really are. A story of a marriage in crisis and a child caught in the middle, this is a beautiful novel of parents and their children, and how far we're prepared to go in the name of love. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Laurie Frankel, Kate Hewitt and Jill Childs. WHAT AUTHORS AND READERS ARE SAYING: 'I absolutely loved this book' 5* NETGALLEY 'A truly sensitive and involving novel about gender, identity and family' KEITH STUART 'A fantastic read with a sensitive subject at its heart' 5* NETGALLEY 'Absolutely beautiful' RACHEL BURTON 'Thought-provoking, nerve-wracking and poignantly relevant' 5* NETGALLEY

Has sex with your partner become routine or unfulfilling? Can you say just what you want in bed or let your partner really see you during an orgasm? Spicing up your love life involves more than mood music and clever techniques. Every sexual exchange, from kissing to daring erotic behaviors, is a picture of your entire relationship--a reflection of how you and your partner feel about yourselves, and each other, outside the bedroom. As renowned sex and marital therapist David Schnarch reveals in this revolutionary book, keeping passion and intimacy alive requires facing the anxiety of defining yourself while getting closer to your partner. Sexual encounters provide perfect opportunities to do this and to develop the strength to love deeply. Mixing humor and compassion, Schnarch describes couples' explicit sexual encounters and dramatic therapy sessions to demonstrate how they found personal, marital, and sexual fulfillment far greater than they ever dreamed possible. He goes beyond simply curing sexual dysfunctions to help people achieve their sexual potential. In this invigorating look at adult sex, he seeks to bring out the best in each of us.

In the early 1970s, accompanying the current wave of globalization, conservative nationalist religious movements began using religion to oppose non-democratic and often Western oriented regimes. Reasserting patriarchal gender relations presumably authorized by religion has been central to these movements. At the Fourth United Nations Congress on Women in Beijing in 1995, Muslim and Catholic delegations from diverse countries united to oppose provisions on sexuality, reproductive rights, women’s health, and women’s rights as human rights. Scholars from eight different Muslim and Catholic communities analyze the political strategies that women are employing in these contexts ranging from acceptance of traditional doctrines to various forms of resistance, religious reinterpretation, innovation, and political action toward change and equal rights.

Over the last forty years, running has grown from a niche sport for a handful of committed club athletes into one of the Western world's most popular pastimes. In Running, Identity and Meaning, Neil Baxter asks: What kinds of people have been drawn to running in such numbers? What do they seek from the sport? And what does running's popularity tell us about ourselves and the society we live in today? Delving into the great paradox of running: that despite its low cost of entry and inclusive ethos, the sport remains riven by inequalities, Baxter showcases how gender, class, age and ethnicity influence whether and how different groups participate in the sport, and explores its role in the reproduction of social structure and the search for distinction. By considering running simultaneously as a technique of self-cultivation, a social field in which forms of capital and status are at stake, and an important source of meaning and identity for millions of people across the world, this book equips readers to understand the many diverse links between the sport, society, and individual identities.

Two years ago, at the United Nations in New York, activists and diplomats banned nuclear weapons. This book covers the story of their collective activism-a story of courage and hope, as well as lessons learned, that will hopefully inform and inspire others working for social justice. The story of banning the bomb belongs to these diplomats, along with activists who brought a legacy of protest and vision for an alternative future to the international table. This is, ultimately, a story of resistance and of movement building. It is a story of people saying, "!Ya basta!," enough, to the nuclear-armed governments. But this movement did not just reject what the nuclear-armed were offering. It consciously, creatively, and collectively sought to build something new-to generate and promote ideas, arguments, and frameworks that would disrupt mainstream myths and narratives about nuclear weapons, institute new international norms and laws, and ultimately set in place key mechanisms for the abolition of the atomic bomb. I was directly involved in this work as an activist with one of the partner organizations of ICAN. I represented my organization, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), on ICAN's International Steering Group. The steering group is the policy-making body of ICAN, a group of ten activist organizations from around the world that works with ICAN's staff team to lead the campaign. As a genderqueer feminist peace activist, I tried to promote a feminist vision of both process and product in my work with ICAN-to bring theories and experiences of feminist and queer activists to the task of banning nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapon policy and discourse space is one that commonly reeks of toxic masculinity.

"A Companion to Gender Studies" presents a unified and comprehensive vision of its field, and its new directions. It is designed to demonstrate in action the rich interplay between gender and other markers of social position and (dis)privilege, such as race, class, ethnicity, and nationality.
Presents a unified and comprehensive vision of gender studies, and its new directions, injecting a much-needed infusion of new ideas into the field;
Organized thematically and written in a lucid and lively fashion, each chapter gives insightful consideration to the differing views on its topic, and also clarifies each contributor's own position;
Features original contributions from an international panel of leading experts in the field, and is co-edited by the well-known and internationally respected David Theo Goldberg.

Gender and Education in Kenya explores the intersections of curriculum, pedagogy, policy, and gender. The contributors study depictions of gender in textbooks, the presence and roles of girls and women within classrooms in Kenya, and female leadership in education, arguing that, despite recent policies put in place by the Kenyan government to ensure gender parity in education, there is still a need to make curriculum more gender responsive. Gender and Education in Kenya examines the disparity between male and female representation in education and advocate for more training for teachers about gender-related educational policies and implementing gender-responsive objectives in classrooms. The collection concludes with a study of the intersection of gender and disability with a chapter that explores the additional challenges for a blind girl in school and the lack of policies in place to help disabled students.