The Transsexual’s Turn: Uncanniness at Wellesley College

A controversy over the admission of transmen into an all-women’s college featured in a recent article in The New York Times, “When Women Become Men at Wellesley” (Padawer, 2014), captures the ways in which transsexuality orients discussions of identity, sociality, at-homeness, and modes of gender self-fashioning. The presence of transmen in an all-women’s college also incites debates over the history of the school’s identity and the challenges of colleges in transition.

Rather than entering the debate of whether transmen should or should not be allowed into the college, my articlearticle addresses the terms of this debate through its arguments over the conceptualization of gender. Whereas transmen at Wellesley College bring to the fore social implications, my discussion approaches conflictive orientations to gender through a psychoanalytic lens with special attention to the fantasy structure of gender. Working with Freud’s (1919) idea of the uncanny, the essay explores the question, How may the presence of transmen in an all-women’s college be thought of as opening an emotional experience and as signifying for the college a transitional time between adolescence and adulthood? Is there something about a segregated community that is desirable for transitioning? In the case of an all-women’s school that carries a historical legacy involving a number of transformations regarding how we approach questions of race, gender, desegregation, and the recognition of the struggle of lesbians, the article argues that the transmen’s request to belong at the college is the college’s historical legacy. The article concludes with the old question that Freud asked about women: What does the transman want?     

The Stackelberg minimum spanning tree game on planar and bounded-treewidth graphs

The Stackelberg Minimum Spanning Tree Game is a two-level combinatorial pricing problem played on a graph representing a network. Its edges are colored either red or blue, and the red edges have a given fixed cost, representing the competitor’s prices. The first player chooses an assignment of prices to the blue edges, and the second player then buys the cheapest spanning tree, using any combination of red and blue edges. The goal of the first player is to maximize the total price of purchased blue edges. We study this problem in the cases of planar and bounded-treewidth graphs. We show that the problem is NP-hard on planar graphs but can be solved in polynomial time on graphs of bounded treewidth.     

Psychological Distress as an Indicator of Co-Occurring Psychopathology among Treatment-Seeking Disordered Gamblers

Disordered gamblers frequently present with concurrent anxiety, depressive, personality, and substance use disorders, which may complicate treatment. Although there is a need for a thorough assessment, some questionnaires may prove lengthy for clients and clinicians. Thus, there is a need for brief screens for identifying co-occurring psychopathology. The present study sought to examine whether a brief, self-report measure of psychological distress could indicate the presence of co-occurring psychopathology among an outpatient sample of disordered gamblers. At intake, 69 participants completed self-report measures of distress and gambling symptomatology, a personality inventory, and a structured interview for the diagnostic criteria for disordered gambling. Gamblers with greater elevations of psychological distress evidenced greater severity of gambling pathology. Clinically significant elevations were present for symptoms of depression, deviancy, and anxiety, but not substance abuse. Greater scores of psychological distress significantly predicted elevations of depression, deviancy, and anxiety. Sensitivity and specificity were evaluated and the findings supported that an average psychological distress score of 16 corresponded with the presence of co-occurring psychopathology. Clinicians treating disordered gamblers should consider screening for co-occurring psychopathology with brief, self-report measures of psychological distress.     

Diversity Regimes in Worker Cooperatives: Workplace Inequality under Conditions of Worker Control

Two major shifts in contemporary work organizations—“employee participation” and “diversity management”—have typically been studied in isolation from one another. Building on theoretical work by Acker (2006a,b), we ask how the interaction of these two constructs has affected the pursuit of workplace democracy at two worker cooperatives in Northern California. Using qualitative methods, we find that distinct “diversity regimes” have emerged at these establishments, substantially affecting the configurations of inequality that evolved. We distinguish two types of diversity regimes—“utilitarian” and “communitarian”—which operate either to obscure the workings of inequality or to foster attention to their presence. Our results suggest that how sociodemographic differences are managed has material consequences for the development of egalitarian structures at work.     

Expensive Children in Poor Families: Out‐of‐Pocket Expenditures for the Care of Disabled and Chronically Ill Children in Welfare Families

A significant minority of poor families care for children with disabilities and chronic illnesses. This study is among the first to explore private costs resulting from children's disabilities among low‐income families. We find that almost half of the sample of California AFDC families with special‐needs children incurred some direct, out‐of‐pocket expenses in the preceding month, and about 20% incurred total costs exceeding $100. We also estimate lost employment income among low‐income mothers caring for children with disabilities. We conclude that both out‐of‐pocket expenses and foregone earnings represent a substantial burden for many low‐income families with special‐needs children, and we discuss the policy implications of these findings.