Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged gender

Smash the Church, Smash the State!: The Early Years of Gay Liberation

Like all good memoirs of the 1960s and early ‘70s, Smash the Church, Smash the State! takes readers back to a time when revolution seemed imminent. Change was in the air and the fifty-one essays comprising Tommi Avicolli Mecca’s important anthology vividly capture the heady exhilaration of queer activists on both U.S. coasts as the possibility of being out-and-proud became increasingly tangible. The book is both a look back and a look forward.

She Likes Girls 4

She Likes Girls 4 is a hilarious compilation of eight short films on various ways in which girls like girls. Topics center around gender, childhood innocence, homophobia, and presumptions. _Babysitting Andy _directed by Pat Mills is a humorous short about a nine-year-old brat who tortures her wheelchair-bound uncle and his partner into schooling her on the definition of fellatio.

Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes

I know a man who wears boots, shaves his face, urinates standing up, fucks women (his term), and still sometimes menstruates. In Between XX and XY independent researcher Gerald N. Callahan briefly and tidily introduces the flaws, silences, and prejudices of the Western sex-binary system expressed as male:masculine:man::female:feminine:woman.

24 City

24 City, a film that expertly mixes documentary footage and fictional reenactments, follows several generations of women living and working in Chengdu City for Xinda Machinery’s Chengfu Group. Factory 420, a not-so-well-kept state secret, has since been turned into residential housing.

The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map

Within the world of Ursula Franklin’s essays, idealism is not naïve, but an appropriate manifestation of consistent ethics. While deeply optimistic about the possibilities for social change, the writings of this Canadian scholar-scientist point out the dangers of settling for less than a total transformation of our social structures. She calls us not only to stand by our beliefs, but also to get more creative in how we live our beliefs.

Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China

On one occasion, gangsters walked into the bar, grabbed me by the arm, and started dragging me up the stairs toward a private room intended for hostesses’ sexual encounters with clients. The women were also sometimes raped there by gangsters. I quickly realized what was going on—that I was in real danger... Whereas safety was a major issue, hygiene was another. Living in a filthy karaoke bar room without bathing facilities, I had lice in my hair and over my whole body.

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

Most of the attention Dr. Leonard Sax gets is for his advocacy of single sex education for boys. In his first book, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, Sax described the developmental and biological differences between the sexes and how contemporary early education puts boys at a disadvantage.

Three Sisters

Three Sisters is part of the Life Series collection which is funded by BBC World and TVE International. The episodes are meant for classroom use from grades seven to twelve, or even college age. This particular episode focuses on the women of Eritrea, a small country near Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia.

Great Expectations: A Father's Diary

Memoirs about preparing for the birth of a first child are easily located on library shelves. What aren’t so common, however, are those books addressing the particular experience of preparing for a second child.

Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming

As I opened this collection, I had just finished shaking my head at a picture a man I know well posted of himself grinning vividly, arms around a young woman clad in a chain mail bikini top at a gaming conference. This “booth babe” photo rests comfortably within the confines of his MySpace page. I cracked the spine of this volume considering how I felt about the girl, the picture, the medium, and my own experiences as feminist scholar who is also an avid gamer.

Bodies

In Bodies, Susie Orbach, best known for her continuous thread of psychoanalytic discussion of the body particularly as rooted in eating disorders and feminism, offers up a broader discussion of bodies in our time.

Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me

I have a love/hate relationship with liberal publications, like the New York Times, that discuss progressive issues and at the same time print articles that seem to use stone age mentality to “prove” the differences between women and men.

Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South

Hannah Rosen's Terror in the Heart of Freedom is an essential historical document. This text is a detailed analysis of the connection between gendered rhetoric, sexual violence, and the oppression and resistance of freed people during the reconstruction era.

I Love You, Man / Duplicity

I can’t remember the last time that I went to the theater and saw two movies in one day. For that matter, I can’t remember the last time that I was even able to afford that; I live in Manhattan, land of the thirteen dollar movie ticket. However, there were two recently released flicks that I was absolutely dying to see.

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

In an episode of the television series Homicide: Life On The Street, detective John Munch muses on how to crack the case of a brutal murder. In his typically caustic, world-weary way he quips darkly about motive, “If it’s not one thing, it’s a mother.” Alice Miller would add “or the father” to that line.

Gender and Class in the Egyptian Women’s Movement, 1925-1939: Changing Perspectives

Gender and Class reads like the last reference book in a lengthy series about the Egyptian women’s movement. I came to this review ready to learn something about a time in history that most people probably know very little about. I came away learning only a few ‘vocab’ words from the glossary. Cathlyn Mariscotti’s book reads more like a thesis essay reflecting on a scholarly course the audience has taken rather than a text written for the general reader.

Taken

Reading this review will tell you all you need to know about Taken. If you haven't see the film, perhaps now is the time for you to cease reading, as spoilers abound.

He’s Just Not That Into You

He’s Just Not That Into You wasn’t a terrible movie. Despite its manipulative moments, this film did manage to skip many of the eye roll-inducing rom-com conventions. This movie just wasn’t that romantic or particularly funny.

Revolutionary Road

In 1997 Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio made cinematic history by starring in the highest grossing film of all time, Titanic.

The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America

Many people are rightfully weary of discussing and analyzing 9/11. While it could be labeled insensitivity, it more likely has to do with a stifled national discourse, repugnant media spin, and a lack of in-depth processing. For the past several years, we’ve all been hibernating, trying to escape the aftermath of the terrorist attacks rather than actively deconstruct their meaning.

Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men

Guyland is less of a place than an attitude, a realm of existence. Occupied by young, single, white men, its main demographic is middle class kids who are college-bound, college co-eds, or recent graduates in the United States. They live in communal housing with fraternity brothers or other recent grads. They work entry-level jobs but act aimless. They have plenty of time to party like they did in college and subsist on pizza, beer, and a visual diet of cartoons, sports, and porn. They hook up with women, but rarely form meaningful relationships.

Margaret Cho’s Beautiful Tour

Margaret Cho’s Beautiful Tour, which began in February 2008, is still scheduled to visit a number of lucky locations throughout the United States. As usual, Cho’s brand of feminist, LGBTQ, activist, and politicized humor was hilarious, raunchy, and thought-provoking. Unlike so much of the comedy gracing television screens lately, Cho continues to infuse her comedy with cutting edge analysis of race, gender, body image, and sexuality.

Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power

Men Speak Out is an important book for feminism.

Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

As a newer reader of and listener to poetry, I often find it overly dramatic or flowery for my tastes. When I started reading Andrea Gibson’s collection, Pole Dancing To Gospel Hymns, I was not drawn to her lyrical love poems, which I read too cynically, but as I read on, I was drawn in by her humor, self-reflection, and earnest political analysis.

The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English and Chair of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books, including The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, and The Anatomy of National Fantasy.

Beyond the Icarus Factor: Releasing the Free Spirit of Boys

It seems that every year for the last fifteen or so, children of one gender or another are considered neglected, voiceless, constrained by social mores. In neither case is the notion wrong, but rarely are all the social implications put together.

Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade

Name-dropping Bono in the first chapter of a book about global trade is not a way to win the trust of activists and critical analysts. For me, it can signal anything from blatant ignorance to a writer’s weak attempt at attaining pop culture credibility.

The Off Season

This book, the sequel to Murdock’s Dairy Queen, may be marketed for young adults, but it’s not the equivalent of Sweet Valley High or The Princess Diaries, as both the book and heroine D.J. Schwenk have their feet planted firmly in reality. D.J.

Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie

In Action Speaks Louder, Eric Lichtenfeld's illuminating history of the action film genre, the author claims that “the action film has deserved the right to be discussed in the same terms as those used to qualify other more established genres.” This idea, while not brought up until the book’s conclusion, forms the basis of Lichtenfeld’s study, which traces action film trends from the early hard-bodied heroes and martial arts stars like Stallone and Seagal all

The Lyrics

Fanny Howe’s poetry collection, The Lyrics, includes poems that thrive on the lyric poem’s conventions; the poems include both the personal world of the speaker, as well as the universal world. Each poem is also a lyric by itself; each lyric comprises The Lyrics spoken about in the title.
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