Routledge

Confronting Global Gender Justice: Women’s Lives, Human Rights

barbara — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Tamara Harvey, Paula Ruth Gilbert, Debra Bergoffen, Connie L. McNeely

Confronting Global Gender Justice provides the reader a refreshing survey, albeit difficult to digest at times, of current issues and debates within the context of women’s rights as human rights. The chapters reflect the lived experiences of women and not just theory masked behind empty words.

Confronting Global Gender Justice is divided into five thematic parts: “Complicating the discourses of victimhood”; “Interrogating practices of representation”; “Mobilizing strategies of engagement”; “Crossing legal landscape”; and “Confronting global gender justice.” With a total of eighteen chapters, each chapter is authored by a different woman or man and thus each has its own tone of voice.

The first part examines the power of myth in the woman-as-victim and looks at the gender dynamics of war crimes. Laura Sjoberg identifies narratives of “the mother, the monster and the whore” used to understand the motivations for women involved in genocidal crimes. The limited agency within violence is also covered, as well as human trafficking and a comparison of how the practice of prostitution and sexuality is viewed through the context of religion.

Using a photographic essay, the poetics of memory, and a discussion of digital storytelling, Part II, “Interrogating practices of representation,” illustrates some ways to process and draw attention to women’s rights as human rights. By looking at human rights through the lens of literature and poetry, author Ricardo F. Vivancos Perez discusses the “vocabulary of human rights” as no longer purely defined in the legal domain. Playing with concepts of production, these chapters widen the discourse of what form the dialogue on human rights may take.

Part III, “Mobilizing strategies of engagement,” combines articles written by people of diverse power locations, from activists and NGO workers in the field to academics. In light of recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, the chapter on “Algerian women in movement” was particularly intriguing due to the interrelatedness of domestic politics and power for women. Part IV, “Crossing legal landscapes,” is comprised of five chapters that range in subject from the plight of women and children with disabilities to the institutionalization of domestic violence in the U.S.

The final chapter is an interview with activist Kum-kum Bhavnani (scholar, activist, filmmaker) that serves not to bring the discussions to a close, but to open them up for further reflection. The volume succeeds in creating a dialogue between theorists and activists. Questions of women’s rights are interrelated with questions of human rights. With its reaffirmation of the feminist commitment to the partnership of theory and practice, I only hope this volume snowballs into more dialogue and action.

Written by: Lakshmi Saracino, March 15th 2011

Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture

mandy — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Hilary Radner

Routledge

In the past decade, America cinema has shown a change towards producing more women-centered movies, depicting independent unmarried women who seek out their own empowerment and gradually changing society’s view of single women. The women of Sex and the City, for instance, celebrate their singledom, showing it not to be the pitiable state it was once thought to be. While these women possess many feminist qualities, they also have attributes that separate them from the traditional ideals of feminism, a perspective which media studies scholar Hilary Radner labels neo-feminist in her current work, Neo-Feminist Cinema.

Radner compellingly opens her book with a discussion of how neo-feminism differs from second wave feminism. Radner traces the start of neo-feminism to Helen Gurley Brown, who wrote the infamous Sex and the Single Girl. Groundbreaking for its time, the book idealized for women a lifestyle in which they maintained their own independent identities and lives from men, encouraging them to seek out both fulfilling careers and sexual experiences. Through her focus on being fashionable, attractive, and forever youthful in appearance, the former Cosmopolitan editor showed an extreme diversion in her views from that of feminists of the same era, including groundbreaker Gloria Steinem.

In Neo-Feminist Cinema, Radner connects Gurley Brown's views to the neo-feminist views expressed in contemporary works in which feminist-seeming ideologies are undercut by a focus on extreme consumerism (Manolo Blahniks, anyone?) and male sexual attention. Radner then dissects such other modern day films as Something’s Gotta Give, Legally Blonde, Maid in Manhattan, and Pretty Woman. Each films' focus on the girlishness of the characters, regardless of their age (even at forty- and fifty-years-old the cast of Sex and the City possess girlish qualities), as well as women's supposed fixation with fashion and extreme consumerism. Radner posits that neo-feminism replaces consumerism, instead of maternalism, as the primary feminine attribute. Radner’s analysis of each film is both compelling and convincing, though her method of devoting a chapter to each film results in redundancies, as many films possess the same characteristics.

Radner's work is most compelling in her definition of neo-feminism and her historical tracing back to show the roots of the term. Radner gives needed attention to how feminism has slowly filtered into popular culture, mutating the movement into a new form, one that furthers consumerism and maintains a woman’s focus on being sexually desirable to men.

Radner seems overly critical of popular culture in her work. While the neo-feminism expressed in popular works today may be a watered down, shallower version of the feminism second wavers expressed, it nonetheless is a positive step forward for the depiction of women in the media. The depictions of these images encourage women to pursue more self-actualized societal roles and encourages both genders to be accepting of women within such roles. Television shows and films have positively depicted empowered single women for over a decade, albeit ones who may not be quite what our feminist fore-mothers idealized as the future for modern women.

In the end, Radner’s work is both compelling and thought provoking, and she successfully pinpoints the media’s version of contemporary society’s ideal woman. Women who can lead successful and challenging lives absent of husbands and children are positive images to influence women, even if they encourage women to also spend undue amounts of time on their appearance.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, January 14th 2011

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

admin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:20:00 +0000

Edited by Shira Tarrant

Routledge

Men Speak Out is an important book for feminism. It's important because, as Jackson Katz writes in the Foreword, "it features the stories of twenty-first century American men whose lives have been shaped in unprecedented ways by the social changes catalyzed by modern, multicultural women's movements." Much space has been given to the myriad ways that women's social, economic, and political lives are affected by feminism while the effects on men's lives tend to be explained with a cursory "and men benefit too." This, of course, is not enough, and so Men Speak Out begins a conversation of just what those benefits (and challenges) are, exactly.

Divided into five sections—Masculinity and Identity, Sexuality, Feminism, Points and Perspectives, and Taking Action, Making Change—that feature a total of thirty-nine essays by men from all walks of life, Men Speak Out is quite ambitious, and there are some real gems in these 295 pages. I thoroughly enjoyed the book's opening essay, Byron Hurt's "Daytona Beach: Beyond Beats and Rhymes," in which he thoughtfully wrestles with the gray areas of sexism in hip-hop culture and feelings of frustration, shame, and guilt that come up for him while shooting footage for his documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, at BET's Spring Bling. Hurt doesn't front like he knows how to make things right, but he does know that he's in a unique and powerful position to try to make things better.

Jacob Anderson-Minshall ("The Enemy Within: On Becoming a Straight White Guy") gets personal about a topic that has created no small amount of friction between feminist, lesbian, and trans communities: the tricky issue of internalized misogyny and gaining male privilege through FTM transition. He is honest about how his transition has shaped his feminism. Haji Shearer embraces traditional masculinity and an anti-sexist stance in "Why I Am Not a Feminist," while Robert Jensen breaks down the roles and responsibilities of men in the consumption of pornography in "Just a John? Pornography and Men's Choices." Ewuare X. Osayande struggles with how to break down "the matrix of oppressions in a way that is both direct and accessible" in order to guide other young black men, including his sons, into manhood; and Kyle Brillante calls out women's studies on the essentialism and elitism that runs rampant in the classroom: "Feeling unsafe and uncomfortable is necessary because it promotes the critical and reflexive thinking that education is all about." This book is where it's at: showcasing men who not only get it, but also get it right.

I have a lot of love for this primer on men's feminism, though I must say that I started to lose interest somewhere around midpoint, and by the end, I had to work hard not to skim. I found the chapter introductions to be fairly dull, and when moving from essay to essay, there was more repetition in the themes than was strictly necessary. The final essay was uninspiring, closing the book with an elementary list of "tools for guys (and others with privilege) who are working for social change" that felt lackluster and unoriginal. Though understandably necessary, it wasn't an ending that made me feel particularly energized.

One major challenge in editing an anthology is that, many times, the editor attempts to create a collection that says everything to everyone. This creates the problem of having too many essays that are too short to go reach any real depth. How can one book provide the varied views of people who are at (sometimes significantly) different points in their experience and analysis and still be appealing, in its entirety, to any given reader? There are few anthologies that have this degree of crossover appeal, so the fact that Men Speak Out falls short of perfection is a small complaint.

This book provides something important in reframing the old debates about women's rights, especially in this supposedly post-feminist time. Pro-feminist men who make their perspectives visible to the world, in addition to the people around them, add men's views to the larger conversation, not to delegitimize women's views, as has historically been the case, but to support what they've been saying all along. So long as they continue to acknowledge the precarious space that they occupy, I'm glad they're finally at the table.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, August 17th 2008

The Social Economy of Single Motherhood: Raising Children in Rural America

admin — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:20:00 +0000

By Margaret Nelson

Routledge

The Social Economy of Single Motherhood is a study of both facts and perceptions of single motherhood in rural Vermont in contrast to more general studies done on urban mothers. It details the circumstances behind every mom interviewed for the study instead of lumping them into the stereotype of single, poor, welfare moms who are just lazy and promiscuous. Many of these women are divorced and left behind husbands for a variety of reasons including abuse or negligence. Most of the single moms in the study were very poor, though a few came from middle class backgrounds and weren’t living in poverty until they had children. The book critiques welfare reform by looking at how it impacts families who aren’t able to make ends meet or don’t have livable wages. What sets this book apart is its focus on the social economy. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not include or acknowledge domestic work in its economic analysis even though, as Nelson writes, our society would collapse without it. Nelson approached this subject in terms of personal exchange and details women who seek friendships with other women of similar circumstances to serve a variety of needs for one another (babysitting, car rides, small loans, etc) with the understanding that everyone will be reciprocal of time and energy given or shared. Nelson chronicles some very disheartening exchanges in this arrangement, including sexual favors for car repairs. The book briefly acknowledges the role that unlivable wages and irresponsible fathers play in these circumstances. The most effective—unintended perhaps—result of this book is that you can’t deny the need these families have. A powerful read.

Written by: Davina Rhine, December 11th 2006

Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction

admin — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:36:00 +0000

Edited by Suzanne Ferriss, Mallory Young

Routledge

You’ve seen it. Unmistakably pink, highly stylized and adorned with images of contemporary (glamorized) femininity – martini glasses, stilettos and Prada handbags. If you’ve stepped foot inside a chain bookstore in the past five years or so, you’ve seen chick lit in all its glory, usually grouped in a flashy eye-catching bunch near the front of the store. Hailed by some as “the new woman’s fiction,” the phenomenon known as chick lit is storming North America, the UK and beyond. Its escalating popularity among the twenty-something, (semi) professional female set is sparking much debate about its place in the literary marketplace. Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction is a collection of essays that attempts to delve to the core of this question, and does so successfully.

Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young have put together a book that effectively gets beyond the brand names, witty banter and loveably disastrous gals that characterize chick lit, in order to explore the more meaningful intersections of gender, class, race and size that are present in this genre. Whether these issues are merely a byproduct of the narrative or explored intentionally remains questionable. Chick lit, on the surface, hardly begs to be taken seriously. What does need to be taken seriously is the economic industry that has sprung up around the genre due to its immense popularity with women of a certain socio-economic status. Chick Lit explores the causes and effects of this popularity and its implications for the publishing industry. In addition, this collection of essays diversifies what chick lit has come to mean, exploring various sub-genres – mommy lit, sistah lit, chick lit Jr, and nanny lit, to name some. This diversification shows the evolution of chick lit from exclusively white and middle- to upper-class to a wider audience.

Although these essays provide fresh and compelling insight into this “new woman’s fiction,” the central question remains unanswered and open to discussion: ultimately, what value does chick lit hold, socially, economically and culturally? While it has been dismissed as pointless froth about frivolous topics like shopping and boyfriends, one has to wonder whether chick lit is automatically devalued because of its “women’s fiction” label. Didn’t Nathaniel Hawthorne delegitimize the writing women of his own time, “the damned mob of scribbling women?” Included in this damned mob is author Jane Austen, whose novel Pride and Prejudice has direct connections with Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary, widely taken to be the mother of all chick lit. This book represents an excellent segway into serious discussion about the chick lit craze in a literary, historical and sociological context. Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction is a must-read for chick lit’s most rabid fans and critics alike.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, December 5th 2006