While people used to conceal the fact that they were gay or lesbian to protect themselves from stigma and discrimination, it is now commonplace for people to "come out" and encourage others to do so as well. Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are systematically examines how coming out has moved beyond gay and lesbian rights groups and how different groups wrestle with the politics of coming out in their efforts to resist stigma and enact social change. It shows how different experiences and disparate risks of disclosure shape these groups' collective strategies. Through scores of interviews with LGBTQ+ people, undocumented immigrant youth, fat acceptance activists, Mormon fundamentalist polygamists, and sexual harassment lawyers and activists in the era of the #MeToo movement, Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are explains why so many different groups gravitate toward the term coming out. By focusing on the personal and political resonance of coming out, it provides a novel way to understand how identity politics work in America today.

This book compares understandings and experiences of love and intimacy of one distinct cultural group - Gujarati Indians - born and brought up in two different countries. Using in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with middle-class Gujaratis aged between 20 and 30 years of age, it explores their relationship ideals and early experiences of marriage formation. It shows how discourses on what it means to be modern have interacted with pervasive ongoing status ideologies in both the UK and India.

Opening in the period of revolutions between 1789 and 1850, this book explores the contention over social science from above and below. It breaks away from othodox interpretations of the development of social science to explore the subject as a contest for class and gender power.

A rich set of feminist perspectives on the varied and often contradictory nature of state practices, structures, and ideologies Growing socio-economic inequality and exclusion are defining features of the twenty-first century. While debates on globalization, free trade, and economic development have been linked to the paradigm of "neo-liberalism," it does not explain all the forms of social change that have been unfolding in comparative contexts. Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State provides a timely intervention into discussions about the boundaries, practices, and nature of the post-liberalization state, suggesting that an understanding of economic policies, the corresponding rise of socio-economic inequality, and the possibilities for change requires an in-depth reconceptualization. Drawing on original field research both globally and within the United States, this volume brings together a rich set of perspectives on the varied and often contradictory nature of state practices, structures and ideologies in the post-liberalization era. The essays develop an interdisciplinary approach that treats an understanding of historically-specific forms of inequality-such as gender, race, caste, sexuality and class-as integral to, rather than as after-effects of, the policies and ideologies associated with the "neoliberal project." The volume also tackles central questions on the restructuring of the state, the state's power operations, the relationship between capital and the state, and its interactions with the institutions and organizational forms of civil society in the post-liberalization era. As such, Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State examines both what is distinctive about this post-liberalization state and what must be contextualized as long-standing features of modern state power. A truly international and interdisciplinary volume, Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State deepens our understanding of how policies of economic liberalization shape and produce various forms of inequality.

From television shows to the manosphere, and from alt-right communities to fatherhood forums, debates about masculinity have come to dominate the media landscape. What does it mean to be a man in contemporary society? How is masculinity constituted in different media spaces? This growing cultural tension around masculinities has been discussed and analyzed both for general audiences and in burgeoning academic scholarship. What has been typically overlooked, however, is the role that language plays in these mediated performances of masculinity. In Language and Mediated Masculinities, Robert Lawson draws on data from newspapers, social media sites, television programs, and online forums to explore language and masculinities across a range of media contexts. The book offers a critical evaluation of the intersection between language, masculinities, and identities in contemporary society and addresses three key questions: How are masculinities constructed, in both public and private spheres, through linguistic and discursive strategies? How does language about masculinity and men affect (and recreate) gender ideologies in different social, political, and historical contexts? What might the language of men tell us about the state of contemporary gender relations in the twenty-first century? Lawson furthers our understanding of how language is implicated in (re)creating gender ideologies and how it shapes contemporary gender relations. Against a cultural backdrop of rising neoliberalism, ethnic nationalism, online radicalization, networked misogyny, and fractious gender relations, this book is an important contribution to charting how language is used to monitor, evaluate, and police masculinities in online and offline spaces.

An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity.

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, about romance and consent, and the pressures of society? This accessible examination of asexuality shows that the issues that aces face—confusion around sexual activity, the intersection of sexuality and identity, navigating different needs in relationships—are the same conflicts that nearly all of us will experience. Through a blend of reporting, cultural criticism, and memoir, Ace addresses the misconceptions around the “A” of LGBTQIA and invites everyone to rethink pleasure and intimacy.

Journalist Angela Chen creates her path to understanding her own asexuality with the perspectives of a diverse group of asexual people. Vulnerable and honest, these stories include a woman who had blood tests done because she was convinced that “not wanting sex” was a sign of serious illness, and a man who grew up in a religious household and did everything “right,” only to realize after marriage that his experience of sexuality had never been the same as that of others. Disabled aces, aces of color, gender-nonconforming aces, and aces who both do and don’t want romantic relationships all share their experiences navigating a society in which a lack of sexual attraction is considered abnormal. Chen’s careful cultural analysis explores how societal norms limit understanding of sex and relationships and celebrates the breadth of sexuality and queerness.

This book presents an investigation of the influence of gender, social class, age and illness type in the language of people talking about their experiences of illness. It shows evidence of both conformity with and resistance to gender stereotypes.
  

The contributors to this volume, the third in the series, refine ideas that have been part of the conceptual toolkit of gender scholarship from its inception, identifying new challenges to and new applications for the concepts of the public/private dichotomy and of patriarchy.

Although Japanese economic development is often discussed, less attention is given to social development, and much less to gender related issues. By examining Japanese experiences related to gender, the authors seek insights relevant to the current developing countries. Simultaneously, the book points out the importance for Japanese society to draw lessons from the creativity and activism of women in developing countries.

How many "bodies" does a queen have? What is the significance of multiple "bodies"? How has the gendered body been constructed and perceived within the context of the European courts during the course of the past five centuries? These are some of the questions addressed in this anthology, a contribution to the ongoing debate provoked by Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his seminal work from 1957, The King's Two Bodies. On the basis of both textual self-presentations and visual representations a gradual transformation of the queen appears: A sacred/providential figure in medieval and early modern period, an ideal bourgeois wife during the late-18th and 19th Centuries, and a star-like (re-) presentation of royalty during the past century. Twentieth-century mass media has produced the celebrity and film star queens personified by the contested and enigmatic Nefertiti of ancient Egypt, the mysterious Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria, Grace Kelly as Queen of both Hollywood and Monaco and Romy Schneider as the invented Empress.

Women often appear invisible in what is widely perceived as the male-oriented society of Islam. Women in the Medieval Islamic World seeks to redress the balance with a series of original essays on women in the pre-modern phase of Islamic history. The reader will encounter here a colorful portrait gallery of rulers, politicians, poets and patrons, as well as some larger than life fictitious females from the pages of Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature. No less authentic are the accounts of quiet or troubled lives of ordinary women preserved in the court records of Mamluk Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, reminders that historical research can resuscitate the lives of subaltern as well as elite women from the past. For people who believe that Muslim women, especially medieval Muslim women, have no history, this book demonstrates the ways in which research by twenty international scholars--sometimes working in their own distinct fields and sometimes in overlapping areas--can bring into focus the role and contribution of women in the development of Islamic history. There will no longer be an excuse for their exclusion.

This book offers the most up to the minute snapshot of scholarship on queer/gay historiographies in a number of geographical regions in western Europe, Asia and the US. It features the work of the most established scholars in the field of the history of same-sex desire and promises to take the study of same-sex relations in the early modern period in radical new directions.

Anthropologists and historians have shown us that 'male' and 'female' are variously defined historically and cross-culturally. The contributions to this volume focus on the voluntary and involuntary, temporary or permanent transformation of gender identity. Overall, this volume provides powerful and compelling illustrations of how, across a wide range of cultures, processes of gender transformation are shaped within, and ultimately constrained by, social and political context. From medical responses to biological ambiguity, legal responses to cases brought by transsexuals, the historical role of the eunuch in Byzantium, the social transformation of gender in Northern Albania and in the Southern Philippines, to North American 'drag' shows, English pantomime and Japanese kabuki theatre, this volume offers revealing insights into the ambiguities and limitations of gender transformation.

This publication addresses the gender dimensions of people's lived experience and emphasizes how gender relationships differentially impact on women's and girls' as well as men's and boys' subjective well-being across the lifespan.It therefore fills a significant gap in the literature on quality of life and subjective well-being. The book brings together research which comparesfemale's and male's subjective experiences of well-being at various life stages from a variety of countries and regions, particularly focusing on women's subjective well-being. Sex-disaggregation of data on objective conditions of quality of life is now routinely undertaken in many countries of the world. However, despite the burgeoning of objective data on sex differences in life conditions across the world, very little gender analysis is carried out to explain fully such difference and there is still a serious dearth of data on gender differences in subjective experiences of quality of life and well-being. This publication will assist researchers, teachers, service providers and policy makers in filling some of the gaps in currently available literature on the nexus between age and gender in producing differential experiences of subjective wellbeing.

This study looks at French women writers and representations of the Occupation in post-'68 France. Two groups of women writers are selected for discussion: The Women Resisters, those who were adult resisters during the war years, and The Daughters of the Occupation, those who were born during or after the war. By examining a number of texts, many of which have received little critical attention to date, this study analyzes how a nascent awareness of gender, representation and political activism informs the texts of an older generation of women writers. Such a perspective is reworked into overtly feminist representations of the Occupation by younger women writers who deal with their familial connection to three wartime memories: resistance, collaboration and Jewish persecution. This gender-conscious approach to women's writing and the Occupation marks this book as a new departure in the study of French literature and the Second World War.

First published in 1992, Sexual Sameness examines the differing textual strategies male and female writers have developed to celebrate homosexuality. Examining such writers as E.M. Forster, James Baldwin, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Audre Lourde, this wide-ranging book demonstrates how literature has been one of the few cultural spaces in which sexual outsiders have been able to explore forbidden desires. From the humiliating trials of Oscar Wilde to the appalling stigmatisation of people living with AIDS, Sexual Sameness reveals the persistent homophobia that has until recently almost completely inhibited our understanding of lesbian and gay writing. In opening up homosexual literature to informed and objective methods of reading, Sexual Sameness will be of interest to a large lesbian and gay readership, as well as to students of gender studies, literary studies and the social sciences.

First published in 1987, this book presents contributions from international authorities reviewing major themes in variant sexuality. Genetic and evolutionary arguments are presented for the preponderance of paraphilia in males, whilst Freudian and psychoanalytic theories are shown to have limited scientific basis. These and other topics are reviewed in an interesting book, which will be of particular value to students of the psychology of sexuality, evolutionary biology and psychiatry, as well as those with a more general interest in the social, behavioural and biological aspects of sexuality.

This is an exploration of the cultural representations of transvestism and transsexuality in modern screen media against a historical background. Focussing on a dozen mainstream films and on shemale Internet pornography, this fascinating study demonstrates the interdependency of our perceptions of transgender and its culturally constructed images.

Human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are at last reaching the heart of global debates. Yet 78 states worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex sexual behaviour, and due to the legal legacies of the British Empire, 42 of these - more than half - are in The Commonwealth of Nations. In recent years many states have seen the emergence of new sexual nationalisms, leading to increased enforcement of colonial sodomy laws against men, new criminalisations of sex between women and discrimination against transgender people. Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change challenges these developments as the first book to focus on experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) and all non-heterosexual people in the Commonwealth. The volume offers the most internationally extensive analysis to date of the global struggle for decriminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour and relationships.

Nowadays mental disorder is often seen as a typically female malady. This book rejects this claim, focusing on the complex patterning of mental disorder identified in men and women. The first part of the book - on fundamentals - examines the gendered landscape of mental disorder, key concepts and approaches, and the way in which gender is embedded in constructs of mental disorder. The second part, on the origins of mental disorder, considers theories of the causes of mental disorder and the extent to which the different causes can account for the gendered landscape of disorder. It concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the analysis.

Borders of desire takes a novel approach to the study of borders: rather than seeing them only as obstacles to the fulfillment of human desires, this collection focuses on how borders can also be productive of desire. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with sites along the eastern borders of Europe, particularly in the Baltics and the Balkans, the studies in this volume illuminate how gendered and sexualized desires are generated by the existence of borders and how they are imagined. As the chapters show, borders can create new desires expressed as aspirations, resentments, and actions including physical movements across borders for pleasure or work, or collective enactments of political ideals or resistance. The collection also shows how the persistent east/west symbolic border continues to act as a source of these desires in European political and social life. -- .

The image of The Girl in contemporary fiction by women today stands in stark contrast to configurations of girlhood in earlier fiction. No longer banished to the realms of the Victorian "marriage or death" plots, girls in contemporary fiction embrace new challenges and freedoms while still struggling with plots centered on their bodies, societal limitations, and the price for freedom and escape. This unique collection tackles the contemporary forces at work on both the girls in fiction created by women and the writers themselves. The Girl investigates the legacies of expectation, competing cultural ideologies, and multiplicities of growing up female at the end of the 20th century as portrayed in contemporary fiction by women. The essayists show how new fictions of The Girl provide access to a constellation of themes and narrative patterns--including race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, female subjectivity, and nationalism--in new ways, while also continuing to envision girlhood in relation to such themes as love, separation from the mother, and maternal loss or overprotection. The first collection of critical essays to examine the portrayal of girls in contemporary women’s fiction within the context of recent sociological and psychological analyses of girls, The Girl proposes that contemporary stories of girlhood constitute a new lens for literary and cultural study. Examining the work of authors such as Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, Jamaica Kincaid, and Joyce Carol Oates for their revelations and representations in regard to girlhood, these essays speak to, complement, and contest one another in a compelling interrogation of what it means to grow up female at the end of the millennium.

"There is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." The conversation about the relationship between women and men and their roles in the Christian life and the church has evolved, but the topic continues to inspire debate and disagreement. The third edition of this groundbreaking work brings together scholars firmly committed to the authority of Scripture to explore historical, biblical, theological, cultural, and practical aspects of this discussion. This fresh, positive defense of gender equality is at once scholarly and practical, irenic yet spirited, up-to-date, and cognizant of opposing positions. In this edition, readers will find both revised essays and new essays on biblical equality in relation to several issues, including the image of God, the analogy of slavery, same-sex marriage, abortion, domestic abuse, race, and human flourishing. Discover for yourself God's vision for gender equality.

The term socialization, in sociology and social psychology, almost always denotes the process whereby individuals learn to behave willingly in accordance with the prevailing standards of their culture. Although occasionally used synonymously with learning, it is usually reserved for the type of learning that bears on future role performance, which particularly involves group approval. In this work, the black men interviewed talk of their early life experiences, and set the stage for a critical examination of the conventional interpretations of black male socialization. Only through the recollections and perceptions of early life experiences can black American males accurately be defined. This book responds to those experiences.