Working for Men-at the Intersection of Power, Gender, and Sexuality

This article examines the dynamics of Bazooms. a "restaurant" in which power, gender, and sexuality come together to color relations between the three major "players" involved: waitresses, managers, and customers. Job-based power relations and inequities, gender roles, implicit and explicit sexual roles, and sexual harassment are all "at work" in such a workplace. But definitions of power, gender roles, sexual identities. and harassment are in constant flux with each interaction among the players inside the Bazooms world. The women who work at Bazooms–the "Bazooms girls"—are disadvantaged in these interactions, but they are not helpless. Dynamics within the restaurant are constantly being negotiated and altered (within constraints) as these women exercise agency in the workplace.     

Young Adult Relationship Values at the Intersection of Gender and Sexuality

Recent decades have brought significant social changes in the industrialized West that may influence young adults' attitudes about intimate relationships, including changes in gender expectations and behaviors and changes in sexual attitudes and practices. We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 14,121) to compare men to women and sexual minorities to heterosexuals on ratings of the importance of love, faithfulness, commitment, financial security, and racial homogamy for successful relationships. We found that nearly all young adults adhere to dominant relationship values inherent in the romantic love ideology; we found, however, modest but significant differences by gender and sexual identity in relationship values. Significant interactions demonstrated that gender and sexual identity intersect to uniquely influence relationship views.     

Questioning Gender and Sexuality Binaries

Abstract

Social work has largely adopted the oppression model in our research, practice, education, policy and advocacy work. These essentialist constructions rely on the binary categorizations of male/female and heterosexuality/homosexuality. Largely missing from the mainstream social work literature are the perspectives of postmodern/queer theorists, the latest sex research, and the experience of transgendered individuals. These perspectives offer critiques of gender and sexuality binaries as well as libratory goals for social justice. Tensions between the postmodern perspective and the social work liberal model are discussed, and suggestions for incorporating the ideas emanating from queer theorists, new sex research, and the lived experiences of the transgendered into all areas of social work are offered.     

Unfinished Business: Disentangling Sex,Gender, and Sexuality in Sociological Research on Gender Stratification

Focusing on two major strands of research on gender stratification, labor market inequality and health disparities, we argue that cisnormativity and heteronormativity obscure the rich variation in how people experience their own sense of gender and sexuality, as well as how others perceive them. Although researchers’ reliance on static notions of gender and sexuality is starting to shift, there is room for improvement, especially in the area of gender inequality. To highlight the advancements in researchers’ thinking, we spotlight exemplary work that incorporates gender expansive realities using empirically and/or theoretically grounded approaches. We conclude by outlining best practices to measure gender identity, sexual identity, gender expression, gender conformity, and other facets of gender and sexuality.     

Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex,Sexuality, and Gender*

Most sociological research designs assume that each person has one sex. one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in families and workplaces.     

Rehearsing Gender and Sexuality in Modern Thailand

Abstract

In this paper I draw on a series of interviews with gay-identified Thai men, and with male bar workers and their clients in order to chart the traditions, discourses, and institutional contexts contributing to the construction of gender and sexual identity in Thailand. I argue against the uncritical application of Western paradigms to the study of Thai sexuality and present a view of gender and sexuality that is “fluid and pragmatic.” I consider difficulties associated with sexual choice and levels of acceptance and toleration, and look at examples of how sex work has been socially constructed. Finally, I discuss the attachment of Thai male bar workers to the “gay” community.     

照护中的性/别身体:边界的协商与挑战

照护作为一项亲密劳动,包含大量情感劳动以及身体工作.本文基于养老院的民族志研究,考察了围绕性/别身体的照护实践、情感经验和日常互动.一方面,身体的亲密接触往往造成强烈的羞耻和肮脏感,而护理员们通过多重划界策略在一定程度上实现了"性/别身体"与"工作身体"的分离,自发建立起照护的专业脚本和工作伦理.另一方面,专业性的界线也可能在长期的互动中遭遇挑战和瓦解,这一过程伴随着厌恶、惊奇、愉快等复杂流变的情感.性/别与衰老、失能身体之间的复杂交织也形塑了护理员和老年住民之间的另类亲密性,有助于我们在当前主流的性与性别规范性论述之外拓展新的理解.     

Addiction,Power and Gender

This paper examines addictive behaviour in relation to power and gender and introduces the notion of ‘addiction as a disordered power arrangement embedded in gender’ (Bepko, 1989). The notion of power in terms of relationship positions and their impact on addictions is discussed. The popular concepts of powerlessness and co-dependency are examined in terms of their clinical usefulness and compatibility within this framework.     

Foreclosing Fluidity at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Normativities

Binary gender and sexuality are socially constructed, but they structure thought at such a deep level that even those critical of sexism and homophobia can unwittingly reproduce them, with consequences felt most profoundly by those whose gender/sexual identity defy binary logic. This article outlines a generic pattern in the reproduction of inequality we call foreclosing fluidity, the symbolic or material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization. Based on 115 responses from people who are both sexually and gender fluid and a reading of existing sociologies of gender and sexualities from a fluid standpoint, we demonstrate how lesbian/gay/straight, cisgender, and transgender women and men—regardless of intentions—may foreclose fluidity by mobilizing cisnormative, transnormative, heteronormative, and/or homonormative beliefs and practices. Examining patterns of foreclosing fluidity may provide insight into (1) the further incorporation of fluid people and standpoints into symbolic interactionism, and (2) the reproduction and persistence of sexual and gender inequalities.     

Reading and Writing,Talking and Listening Introducing Studies in Gender and Sexuality

This essay offers a brief history of how the stereotype “the female homosexual” was created through three installments of psychoanalytic theorizing, starting with Freud's (1920) case study. A second, brief history presents the various strands of critical theorizing that have identified “the female homosexual” as a stereotype. The essay then makes a contribution to current discussion of female homosexuality by suggesting an instinct theory that features ego instincts and sexual instincts interacting (as Freud' theory did before 1920). Reference is made to Takeo Doi's concept of amae (expectation of affection) and to amae as an ego instinct. This theory then is the framework for a clinical v ignette focused on a female homosexual's ego-instinctual needs.     

Queer Intersections: Sexuality and Gender in Migration Studies

This essay examines the historical and theoretical development of sexuality in migration research. Noting gaps and omissions in the literature, the essay proposes a dual notion of sexuality including one that is produced by the intersection of other social identities such as class and race, and a queer studies‐derived idea of the sexual that goes against the normalizing of heterosexual institutions and practices. Utilizing a case study of Filipina migrant workers, the essay demonstrates the pivotal role of sexuality in the future of gender and migration research through a critique of the implicit normative assumptions around family, heterosexual reproduction, and marriage that abound in this body of literature, and how a critical notion of sexuality enables a more inclusive and accurate portrait of global gendered migration.     

Toward a Dialectical Model of Family Gender Discourse: Body,Identity, and Sexuality

The goal of this article is to propose a dialectical model representing gender discourse in families. A brief review of literature in sociology, psychology, and gender studies focuses on three dialectical issues: nature versus culture, similarity versus difference, and stability versus fluidity. Deconstructing gender theories from a postmodern feminist perspective, the authors discuss agency and context in families' gender discourse. Narrative excerpts from interviews with an adolescent daughter and her mother illustrate three emergent themes in the social construction of gender: body, identity, and sexuality. The article concludes with recommendations for family researchers.     

Medusa: Sexuality,Power, Mastery,and Some Psychoanalytic Observations

The imaginative narratives that myths provide have a significant place in mental life. Myths continue to be handed down from one generation to the next because they resonate with our unconscious hopes, desires, fantasies, and fears. This paper discusses the Medusa myth. The discourse deals with the cultural context of its time, which implicates the political, social, and especially the gender differences that existed in classical Greece. This myth had an emotional impact on men and women but undoubtedly each group responded in their own particular way. The emphasis in this paper is on the possible effect of this myth on the sexes in ancient times and especially the meanings it may have had for women then and now. Although destructive rage and vengefulness is part of the story, in addition, I focus on the importance of sexuality, power, mastery, and freedom that the myth may offer to oppressed women.