“Sober encounters”: the neoliberal logics of human rights documentary and Indian feminist documentary filmmakers

“Sober encounters” examines the market-defined encounters between Indian feminist documentary filmmakers and global humanitarian and media commissioning and funding agencies. Drawing from interviews conducted with Indian filmmakers, the essay looks closely at the seemingly sober aesthetic and ethical imperatives of these agencies and their impact on the production and distribution of rights-based feminist documentary film in India. Further, I present the figure of the “transient subject” and posit that it is one apprehended by market-friendly representational regimes to legitimate a neoliberal rights discourse. I argue for a deeper examination of these representational regimes and their attempts to de-radicalize the visual cultures of women’s rights.     

Coming Out à l'oriental: Maghrebi-French performances of gender, sexuality, and religion

In this article, I examine issues of gender, sexuality, and religion for North African (Maghrebi)-French men in contemporary France. I introduce performance artist-photographer "2Fik," one of the Maghrebi-French research subjects from my 2010 fieldwork, and examine excerpts of his particular coming out story to his parents and situate it in relation to recent work on homosexuality in the housing projects of France's banlieues [suburban neighborhoods] (Chaumont, 2009; Na?t-Balk, 2009). The interviewee's narrative interweaves a variety of discourses and imagery that help distinguish his experience from those found in those publications as well as in recent scholarship on sexuality, citizenship, and transnationalism (Cruz-Malavé & Manalansan, 2000; Hayes, 2000; Leap & Boellstorff, 2004; Patton & Sánchez-Eppler, 2000; Provencher, 2007a). I argue that 2Fik's story and photography provide him a unique voice that draws on feminist and queer perspectives--informed by both reformed Islam and contemporary Western values--to "decline" (Rosello, 1998) and rewrite longstanding stereotypes of Islam in France. In fact, by acting as a "citizen-photographer" (M?ller, 2010), 2Fik successfully declines stereotypes including the absent Muslim father, the veiled woman, and the symbolic violence associated with heteronormativity and traditional masculinity in Maghrebi-French families.     

“Invisible During My Own Crisis”: Responses of LGBT People of Color to the Orlando Shooting

On June 12, 2016, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida was the target of one of the country’s deadliest mass shootings. Pulse, a gay nightclub, was hosting a Latin Pride Night the evening of the tragedy, which resulted in the death of 49 victims and 53 casualties, over 90% of whom were lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Latinx people, specifically. The present research investigates the narrative responses from LGBT people of color (LGBT-POC) following the tragedy. Results included an analysis of 94 participant narrative responses. Results were collected online from a sample of LGBT-POC with varying sexual, gender, and racial identities. Thematic analysis revealed four major themes: (1) Violence is Not New for LGBT-POC; (2) Personal Identification with Victims; (3) Lack of Intersectionality in Others’ Responses to Orlando; and (4) Acknowledgment of Intersectionality across LGBT-POC. Discussion focuses on describing the ways in which LGBT-POC responded to the shooting regarding their multiple minority identities. Implications of this research reinforce the need for continued intersectional research with LGBT-POC.     

Getting Out in the “Real World”: Young Men,Queer and Theories of Gay Community

ABSTRACT

A recent opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald expresses a widely held perception that, among young same-sex attracted men in Australia, “queer” has well and truly supplanted “gay” as the language and lens through which self and practice is generated. In this article, I discuss findings from a qualitative research project that studied notions of community among young gay men, and argue that this assumption should not be taken for granted. The article explores participants' understandings of the concept of “gay community,” arguing that the young men studied share a common definition of community: one based on a conventional liberal model which prioritizes sameness and the cooperation of individuals to achieve common goals. This is of particular importance in that problems around “fitting in” with these understandings are also raised. In examining the potential place for queer alternatives to these formulations, however, the article finds that queer attracts little support among participants, raising questions about the bind young men may find themselves in if they prioritize sameness as fundamental to community, yet feel themselves to be excluded from community by their own or others' perceived difference.     

“The devil destroyed us”: Satanism and gender violence in South Africa

In October 2011, a young South African woman named Kirsty Theologo was set on fire and left for dead by a group of her high school contemporaries in Linmeyer, Johannesburg. The killing was defined as a “Satanist murder,” leading to media, judicial, and religious interventions aimed at countering the apparent Satanic threat. This article examines press material surrounding Kirsty Theologo’s death and the subsequent arrest and trial of her killers. It argues that the ongoing moral panic around Satanism in contemporary South Africa has obscured the often gendered nature of so-called satanic violence, showing the way in which the murder was instead placed within a familiar framework of Satanic panic in an act of collective displacement that elided the structural and historical contexts of acts of extreme violence perpetrated by young South African men on the bodies of young South African women.     

“Coming Out” Stories of Gay and Lesbian Young Adults

Gay and lesbian young adults (N = 53) were interviewed about coming out to their parents. Analyses of memory content were conducted. Hypotheses related to disclosure were largely supported. Participants typically first disclosed their sexual orientation to a friend. More participants came out to their mother than their father. When disclosure was made to both parents, mothers were told prior to fathers. Mothers were often told using direct methods, whereas fathers were typically informed using indirect methods. Mothers tended to inquire about their sons' sexuality; mothers inquired less with daughters. Findings are discussed in relation to autobiographical memory, sexuality, and clinical literatures.     

“Coming Out” of Prison: An Exploratory Study of LGBT Elders in the Criminal Justice System

ABSTRACT

This two-phase qualitative study explores the experiences of 10 formerly incarcerated LGBT elders’ experiences prior to, during, and after release from prison. A core theme of self and the social mirror emerged from the data that represented LGBT elders ongoing coming-out process of unearthing their “true selves” despite managing multiple stigmatized identities or social locations, such as being LGBT, elderly, HIV positive, formerly incarcerated, and a racial/ethnic minority. These findings further our awareness of an overlooked population of LGBT who are older and involved in the criminal justice system. Recommendations that incorporate suggestions from formerly incarcerated LGBT elders for services and policy reform are presented.     

Mobile phones in children’s after-school centres: stretching of place and control

This article discusses the influence of virtual mobility on place. It examines the use of mobile phones in an after-school centre in Helsinki, Finland and the role of mobile phones in negotiations on space, control and boundaries. It investigates the function of the mobile phone in the coordination of children’s mobility in and out of the centre. It shows how the children make use of the capacity of mobile phones to connect to people and places physically separate for mobilising parental support by phone and use it as a resource in resolving conflicts in the centre. It shows how the different uses of the mobile phone grow into negotiations on the boundaries and space of the centre and cause tensions regarding the identities of the place.     

“Loser” aesthetics: Korean internet freaks and gender politics

In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, a new Internet freak culture emerged in South Korea in response to the rapid development of the Internet as well as the country’s neoliberal reforms. At this time, images of losers, freaks, and other surplus populations circulated online. This article examines the gender politics of Internet freaks through an analysis of one online fan forum, the Lee Joon Gi gallery of DCinside.com. Lee’s fan forum acquired a reputation through sexually charged posts from its female-user base in the late 2000s and is still active today. By appropriating attributes of online male culture and forms of communication, such as absurd statements, rudeness, and aggressive sexual expression, the users of this fan community created a carnivalesque space for themselves and subverted rigid Korean gender ideologies. Such parodies have transformed the fear of misogyny and sexism in the offline world into laughter online and become fertile ground for changes in gender politics in online spaces.     

Barbie princesses and Star Wars clones: gender stereotypes in the representation of children’s favourite heroes—a participant study in urban and rural contexts,among Hungarians from Romania

Cartoon heroes play an important role in constructing gender narratives in children’s lives. According to previous studies, these narratives are often based on stereotypes, but they reflect new gender tendencies as well. This research analyses hero representations in Romanian children’s everyday lives. In East European countries, media consumption habits show remarkable differences between urban and rural environments; thus, in the present study, these gender narratives are discussed in a social context. Based on 80 interviews and group activities in 4 group sessions, this article presents the commercial and social aspects of the most popular cartoon heroes represented in various media. The findings of the study suggest that gendered heroes have a greater impact than genderless characters; however, several factors influence the process of children’s identifying with their favourite characters, such as social background, parents’ education, and the effect of the larger community.     

The reversal of the gender gap in education and relative divorce risks: A matter of alternatives in partner choice?

Recent evidence from the United States suggests that the reversal of the gender gap in education was associated with changes in relative divorce risks: hypogamous marriages, where the wife was more educated than the husband, used to have a higher divorce risk than hypergamous marriages, where the husband was more educated, but this difference has disappeared. One interpretation holds that this may result from cultural change, involving increasing social acceptance of hypogamy. We propose an alternative mechanism that need not presuppose cultural change: the gender-gap reversal in education has changed the availability of alternatives from which highly educated women and men can choose new partners. This may have lowered the likelihood of women leaving husbands with less education and encouraged men to leave less educated spouses. We applied an agent-based model to twelve European national marriage markets to illustrate that this could be sufficient to create a convergence in divorce risks.     

“It’s (not) handled”: race,gender, and refraction in Scandal

Much scholarship on mediated representations of race and gender claims that contemporary texts are examples of post-race and post-feminism, effectively communicating that our society is past the eras of inequality of races and sexes. Yet, many scholars have also argued that such representations are not so straightforward. Extending the work of this latter group of scholars, we call this tension refraction, a term we define as representational practices that draw attention to, or magnify, innate oppositions and inconsistencies in mediated representations surrounding identity markers. Through a case study of the first three seasons of the television series Scandal, we find multiple examples of refraction, as the protagonist Olivia Pope simultaneously embodies and critiques specific race/gender tropes. This ultimately depoliticizes issues of race and gender by simultaneously calling attention to, and drawing attention away from, those issues.     

“Still Looking for My Jonathan”: Gay Black Men's Management of Religious and Sexual Identity Conflicts

This article looks at homosexual Black men who are heavily involved in fundamentalist African-American churches. These men describe themselves as “out as same-sex loving individuals” even though the messages preached by their church leaders and the doctrines of their churches are, at the very least, heterosexist, but more likely to be stridently anti-homosexuality. Not only do these men attend the churches they are parts of, but they are viewed as leaders in these churches in positions ranging from associate pastor to director of facilities management. The study uses structured interviews to understand how these men manage the conflict between a committed gay identity and a strong religious identity that says the two cannot coexist.     

Informal search,bad search?: the effects of job search method on wages among rural migrants in urban China

The use of informal job search method is prevalent in many countries. There is, however, no consensus in the literature on whether it actually matters for wages, and if it does, what are the underlying mechanisms. We empirically examine these issues specifically for rural migrants in urban China, a country where one of the largest domestic migration in human history has occurred over the past decades. We find that there exists a significant wage penalty for those migrant workers who have conducted their search through informal channels, despite their popularity. Our further analysis suggests two potential reasons for the wage penalty: (1) the informal job search sends a negative signal (of workers’ inability to successfully find a job in a competitive market) to potential employers, resulting in lower wages, and (2) there exists a trade-off between wages and search efficiency for quicker entry into local labor market. We also find some evidence that the informal job search may lead to low-skilled jobs with lower wages. We do not find strong evidence supporting alternative explanations.     

On Being Gay in Barbados: “Bullers” and “Battyboys” and their HIV Risk in a Societal Context of Stigma

Limited research exists about gay men in the Caribbean region. A qualitative study was conducted to characterize gay men in Barbados, their HIV risk, and the impact of stigma on their lives. The 2 main groups of gay men (“bougies” and “ghetto”) reflect social class and level of “outness” in broader society. Homophobia, stigma, and buggery (sodomy) laws increase their HIV vulnerability. The need for anti-discrimination legislation and tools for self-development were identified for gay men to realize their strengths, develop their self-worth, and protect themselves from HIV.     

Husbands’ versus wives’ fertility goals and use of contraception: The influence of gender context in five Asian countries

Using data from Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, we explore how gender context influences (1) husband-wife concordance in the demand for children and (2) the impact of each spouse's fertility preferences on contraceptive use. We also explore whether the husband's pronatalism can explain the wife's unmet need for contraception. The results suggest that gender context has little net effect on couples' concordance, but influences the relative weight of husbands' and wives' preferences in determining contraceptive use. Analysis of women's unmet need for contraception suggests that the husbands' pronatalism contributes to wives' unmet need, but only to a relatively small degree, especially in settings where unmet need is high. This is the case because the proportion of couples with differing fertility goals is small in most communities.     

An Evolutionary Psychological Investigation of Parental Distress and Reproductive Coercion During the “Coming Out” of Gay Sons

The lack of success of the “coming out” studies over the last three decades to explain and predict parental responses has motivated an evolutionary psychological reconceptualization. According to this reconceptualization, it was predicted that (a) biological mothers would experience more distress and apply more pressure on gay sons to change than would biological fathers and; (b) obligate investment for fathers on dependent sons would cause fathers to experience more distress and apply more pressure on gay sons to change than it would fathers without this obligate investment. In contrast, a cultural-norm hypothesis predicted that fathers would experience more distress and apply more pressure on gay sons to change than mothers. The majority of predictions were tested using 787 participants from two-biological parent families, who were drawn from a total sample of 891 participants from various family backgrounds. As predicted by the evolutionary hypothesis, biological mothers were reported to have been more distressed and coercive than biological fathers, in spite of a strong, societal expectation to the contrary. Furthermore, the results supported the obligate investment argument for paternal reactions. The model not only correctly explained and predicted parental behavior during coming out, but also was shown to unify within its theoretical framework discrepant results from the literature previously considered inconsistent.     

The undying ideologies of race and gender: the zombie apocalypse in Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One

Telltale Games’ narrative-based The Walking Dead: Season One portrays Lee Everett, an African American male, fighting through the zombie apocalypse. In addition to providing an intriguing character, the game pushes back against racial stereotypes frequently seen and further establishes a zone of oppositional politics. In addition to race, TWD: Season One’s gender ideologies also open up spaces of counterhegemonic politics, specifically through its presentation of abortion. Overall, the seemingly “undying” ideologies of race and gender are reconfigured and questioned in the space of the zombie apocalypse, providing alternative visions of identity politics.     

“Service” Municipal Administration as Part of the Development of Youth Entrepreneurship in Russia

The study offers a development of the social technologies of “service” municipal administration. The consumers’ opinions should be taken into consideration when determining the nomenclature and standards of their provision, which include the quality parameters that the consumers consider important. In addition, “service” relations imply the assessment of consumer satisfaction with the services and the correction of services based on the results of the assessment. Since this interaction implies communication between the municipal administration body and service users, it is necessary to focus on communicative technologies that are capable of providing a full cycle of service development and improvement for young entrepreneurs. Communications should help determine the expectations associated with a service, raise awareness thereof, and involve young people in the decisions related to the provision of services.