Making Gender, Making War: Violence, Military and Peacekeeping Practices

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Making Gender, Making War: Violence, Military and Peacekeeping Practices Making Gender, Making War: violence, military and peacekeeping practices Kronsell, Annica; Svedberg, Erika 2011 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Kronsell, A., & Svedberg, E. (Eds.) (Accepted/In press). Making Gender, Making War: violence, military and peacekeeping practices. (Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality). Routledge. Total number of authors: 2 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Making Gender, Making War Making Gender, Making War: violence, military and peacekeeping practices Annica Kronsell and Erika Svedberg (eds) 2 PREFACE 6 Those Difficult War Questions in Feminism 6 Christine Sylvester 6 Acknowledgements 9 1. INTRODUCTION: MAKING GENDER, MAKING WAR 10 Annica Kronsell and Erika SvedBerg 10 Theme I: Conceptualizing gender, violence, militarism 2. GENDER RELATIONS AS CAUSAL IN MILITARIZATION AND WAR: A FEMINIST STANDPOINT 29 Cynthia Cockburn 29 3. MEN/MASCULINITIES: WAR/MILITARISM – SEARCHING (FOR) THE OBVIOUS CONNECTIONS? 47 Jeff Hearn 47 Theme II: Making gender and (re)making the nation 4. WHAT DOES A BATH TOWEL HAVE TO DO WITH SECURITY POLICY? GENDER TROUBLE IN THE SWEDISH ARMED FORCES 65 Maud Eduards 65 5. FRIENDLY WAR-FIGHTERS AND INVISIBLE WOMEN. PERCEPTIONS OF GENDER AND MASCULINITIES IN THE NORWEGIAN ARMED FORCES ON MISSIONS ABROAD 80 Torunn Laugen Haaland 80 6. THE ‘ROTTEN REPORT’ AND THE REPRODUCTION OF MASCULINITY, NATION AND SECURITY IN TURKEY 95 Alp Biricik 95 7. MEN MAKING PEACE IN THE NAME OF JUST WAR – THE CASE FINLAND 103 3 Pirjo Jukarainen 103 Theme III: Institutional practices and travelling concepts 8. ANALYZING UN & NATO RESPONSES TO SEXUAL MISCONDUCT IN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS 121 Laura Hebert 121 9. A GENDERED PROTECTION FOR THE ‘VICTIMS’ OF WAR: MAINSTREAMING GENDER IN REFUGEE PROTECTION 137 Jane Freedman 137 10. EXPERIENCES, REFLECTIONS, AND LEARNING: FEMINIST ORGANIZATIONS, SECURITY DISCOURSE AND SCR 1325. 154 Laura McLeod 154 Theme IV: Gender subjectivity in the organization of violence 11. NORDIC WOMEN AND INTERNATIONAL CRISIS MANAGEMENT: A POLITICS OF HOPE? 175 Elina Penttinen 175 12. WOMEN IN MILITANT MOVEMENTS: (UN)COMFORTABLE SILENCES AND DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES 192 Swati Parashar 192 13. IN THE BUSINESS OF (IN)SECURITY? MAVERICKS, MERCENARIES AND MASCULINITIES IN THE PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANY 210 Paul Higate 210 14. RE-ENVISIONING MASCULINITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION: THE GENDER POLITICS OF DEMILITARIZING NORTHERN IRELAND SOCIETY 228 Fidelma Ashe 228 4 Conclusion 15. IS FEMINISM BEING CO-OPTED BY MILITARISM? 241 Annica Kronsell and Erika SvedBerg 241 CONTRIBUTORS 247 BIBLIOGRAPHY 252 5 Preface Those Difficult War Questions in Feminism Christine Sylvester Erika Svedberg and Annica Kronsell describe themselves and a feminist contingent of PhD students at Lund University in the mid-1990s, as ‘homesteaders’. They graciously tip their hats to early ideas on feminist homesteading that I presented in Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (1994); and then they shape the concept further for use in their particular circumstances. I recently heard Erika explain to a group of women’s studies staff and students at Malmö University, where she teaches, that when the Lund group introduced feminist research themes to the department of Politics and International Relations (IR), they did so with the intent of homesteading Swedish IR. ‘We made it clear to the department and to Swedish scholars of international relations’, she said, ‘that feminist analysis is here to stay: it is not a passing trend but a permanent feature that scholars must accommodate.’ Erika and Annica proved their point by raising funds to host a major feminist international relations conference at Lund in 1995, the first in the Nordic countries, and carried on to produce the first generation of Swedish feminist IR PhD theses and scholarship. As a speaker at their first conference, I could see that this cohort of feminist scholars was indeed there to stay, and stay it has. There are numerous topics that fall under the auspices of feminist IR. Early on, it was clear that Annica and Erika shared an interest in what Annica would later term ‘institutions of hegemonic masculinity’ (Kronsell 2005, 2006: 108) in the Nordic region, the military being a prime subject. They wrote together and separately about gender in the Swedish military and in its conscription practices (Kronsell and Svedberg 2001), drawing attention to the contradictions of a Swedish military intent on breaking the association of armed forces with violence to become a peacekeeper and development-oriented military, and yet carrying forward gendered understandings of bodies best suited to various tasks in a new military. The ‘men’ were the backbone of the peace army as of the previous defense army and there was no debate on the matter at large or within Swedish political circles. Women, citizenship, and military institutions was a silence within a state that was otherwise seeking to homestead inherited military frameworks differently. By tackling this kind of war question in feminism - 6 -what are the gender norms built into the new Swedish military? -- before the phrase ‘war question in feminism’ was introduced in feminist IR (Sylvester 2005), Annica and Erika became pioneers in the field. In their latest collaboration, Erika and Annica raise the bar on gender and military issues and they homestead feminist IR by doing so. War and feminism is a topic of relevance to many around the world; yet until recently it has been assumed in feminism that war and feminism is an uncomfortable if not impossible combination. It is the wrong framing of the problematic of violence in a world that tends to find war a regrettable but acceptable social institution. Thus, many war questions in feminism remained unarticulated, subterranean or couched only in terms of women and the military or women as victims of war. Perhaps one would say that war questions were less systematically raised and examined than issues of peace and feminism --the more usual feminist point of entry to questions of armed conflict (Sylvester 2010a). Once again, though, Annica and Erika launched their own transition in thinking from gender and the military to the larger topic of war and feminism by holding a conference on The War Question in Feminism at the Örebro University in 2008. I was there; and that conference was much more fiery than the first one. Participants argued about whether any shift in focus from peace to war was warranted or constituted a sell-out out of feminist values. The weight of opinion seemed to be that feminists should continue to refuse war talk and war analysis: there was no war question in feminism at all; there was only a continuing peace question to be both asserted and fleshed out. Whether the peace question in feminism was capacious enough to include women who asserted agency through armed conflict, women who made careers out of preparing for conflict, and women who found they gained in other ways from armed conflict, was not the issue for many. Feminism was outside war, above it, and in a position of belligerence to it. By implication, women warriors must be captives of delusion or false consciousness. They could not actually choose violence as a politics, perhaps even a feminist politics. In this volume from the War Question conference, the focus is on gender norms embedded in a variety of locations and practices of war. The editors might not put it this way, but there is a sense that the matter at hand is whether feminism is homesteading wars of our time or war is homesteading feminism by sending out old war appeals to women and men wrapped in 7 gender-equality packaging. Even UN Security Council resolution 1325 could be seen as a way of infusing old gender concerns into post-conflict situations. Warrior men usually make decisions, no matter who sits at the negotiating rounds, and women are encouraged to speak out and then go home to a status quo ante. That is to say, even progressive efforts to bring gender front and center in war-fighting and war-ending can assume that women’s war experiences, war skills, and war labors are inappropriate in peaceful societies. Those who narrate an ended war as history and memory can present progress as a reenactment of stable gender norms that the war disrupted. The degree to which that gendered outcome of many wars (Elshtain 1987), one I watched unfold in its post-independence years, should be heeded today is a war question for feminism and for the institutions and groups that advance peace and reconciliation while also advancing state- and nation-building agendas. And, of course, one of the challenges of the day is to take into account local gender particularisms as they interact with powerful institutions that can protect human rights by waging war -- humanitarian armed intervention --using a kill-to-be-kind logic. The contributors to this book come at these and myriad other questions of war; masculinity; militarization; patriarchy; gender violence, norms, culture, and agency; and feminist security in new ways.
Recommended publications
  • No. 30692 MULTILATERAL International Cocoa Agreement, 1993
    No. 30692 MULTILATERAL International Cocoa Agreement, 1993 (with annexes). Con- cluded at Geneva on 16 July 1993 Authentic texts: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Registered ex officio on 22 February 1994. MULTILATERAL Accord international de 1993 sur le cacao (avec annexes). Conclu a Geneve le 16 juillet 1993 Textes authentiques : arabe, chinois, anglais, frangais, russe et espagnol. Enregistre d'office le 22fevrier 1994. Vol. 1766, 1-30692 1994 United Nations — Treaty Series • Nations Unies — Recueil des Traites 81 INTERNATIONAL COCOA AGREEMENT,1 1993 PART ONE: OBJECTIVES AND DEFINITIONS CHAPTER I. OBJECTIVES Article 1 Objectives The objectives of the International Cocoa Agreement, 1993 (hereinafter referred to as this Agreement), in the light of the resolution 93 (IV),2 of the New Partnership for Development: the Cartagena Commitment and of the relevant objectives contained in "The Spirit of Cartagena" adopted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, are: (a) To promote the development and strengthening of international cooperation in all sectors of the world cocoa economy; (b) To contribute towards stabilization of the world cocoa market in the interest of all Members, by seeking, in particular: (i) To bring about the balanced development of the world cocoa economy by seeking to facilitate the necessary adjustments in production and to promote consumption so as to secure an equilibrium in the medium and long term between supply and demand; 1 Came into force provisionally on 22 February 1994,
    [Show full text]
  • No. 31364 MULTILATERAL Agreement Relating to The
    No. 31364 MULTILATERAL Agreement relating to the implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 (with annex). Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 28 July 1994 Authentic texts: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Registered ex officio on 16 November 1994. MULTILATERAL Accord relatif à l'application de la Partie XI de la Convention des Nations Unies sur le droit de la mer du 10 décembre 1982 (avec annexe). Adopté par l'Assemblée générale des Nations Unies le 28 juillet 1994 Textes authentiques : arabe, chinois, anglais, français, russe et espagnol. Enregistré d'office le 16 novembre 1994. Vol. 1836, 1-31364 United Nations — Treaty Series • Nations Unies — Recueil des Traités 1994 ^. ^ T d^LJl o- <•») J (E) J (V) JS <l_i a•••••x.i.ii <i_k*i ji:... - c ^u a u î- .i l_Jl_. Ijj^. l^JL^JI a ••>! Il Jll Jl (1) (v) _)••' . " i—-IL—11 lyJj ^ _ • ' ^ _ i n • ai» I- 11 Jlj^t JM - . Il ot_l_. Ï^JL^Jl 3 -~ I 'I (i) T Vol. 1836, 1-31364 1994 United Nations — Treaty Series • Nations Unies — Recueil des Traités - A £j_iJl a_JL=_ll Jiii Ji -.--l ^ ^ l_LS-l-> rUkiJl v> (v) _/l >.• H I ,Tl .-. , II j 1 jj» J1 J-»- J '•>. 11 (J) I | k. 11 ji,.-. .11 .-I >^l • . Il .^Jl i-S_*»JI o- <T »jl—Jl 1^2-iJI '-.'•- - T iLSI >j .. » tJ-»' aja» ^_L« aiJl>^J. I -1 . It- l_l_,j J iLlj-Sljj o- To- ••• j -JM a- -Ml ajj.
    [Show full text]
  • Emotions and Relations in Men's Encounters with Feminism in Sweden
    Ashamed of One’s Sexism, Mourning One’s Friends: Emotions and Relations in Men’s Encounters with Feminism in Sweden By Kalle Berggren Abstract One of the most important questions for feminist research on men and masculinity concerns how men can change and become more affected by feminism and less engaged in sexism. Here, men who identify as feminist, pro-feminist or anti-sexist have been considered to be of particular interest. This article contributes to the emerging research on men’s engagement with feminism by analysing contemporary writing about gender relations, inequality and masculinity, more specifically books about men published in Sweden, 2004-2015. Focusing on lived-experience descriptions, the analysis shows how a range of emotions are central to the processes where men encounter and are becoming affected by feminism. The emotions identified include happy ones such as relief, but a more prominent place is given to negative emotions such as alienation, shame, frustration, as well as loss and mourning. Drawing on Ahmed’s model of emotions as bound up with encounters with others, the article highlights how men’s engagement with feminism is embedded within interpersonal relations with others, particularly women partners, men friends, and children. Keywords: Emotions, feminism, men, masculinity, queer phenomenology. Berggren, Kalle: “Ashamed of One’s Sexism, Mourning One’s Friends: Emotions and Relations in Men’s Encounters with Feminism in Sweden”, Culture Unbound, Volume 12, issue 3, 2020: 466–484. Published by Linköping University Electronic Press: http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se Culture Unbound Journal of Current Cultural Research Introduction One of the most important questions for research on men and masculinity concerns how men can change (Segal 2007), i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Question of Gender
    Gender • Cultura-l Studies Butler a- n d “a- rema-rka-ble collection enga-ging with the work of one Weed of the most rema-rka-ble thinkers of our time.” —Bonnie Smith, Rutgers University “This richly stimula-ting book . demonstra-tes in ka-leido- scopic deta-il how feminist thought ha-s come of a-ge.” The —Leonore Davidoff, University of Essex The A generation after the publication of Joan W. Scott’s influential essay, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” this volume explores the current uses of the term—and Question the ongoing influence of Scott’s agenda-setting work in history and other disciplines. How has the study of gender, independently or in conjunction with other axes of difference— Question of Gender such as race, class, and sexuality—inflected existing fields of study and created new ones? To what extent has this concept modified or been modified by related paradigms such as women’s and queer studies? With what discursive politics does the term engage, and with of Gender what effects? In what settings, and through what kinds of operations and transforma- tions, can gender remain a useful category in the twenty-first century? Leading scholars from history, philosophy, literature, art history, and other fields examine how gender has translated into their own disciplinary perspectives. Joa-n W. Scott’s Contributors Janis Bergman-Carton Éric Fassin Elora Shehabuddin Critica-l Feminism Wendy Brown Lynne Huffer Mary D. Sheriff Judith Butler Mary Louise Roberts Mrinalini Sinha Miguel A. Cabrera Gayle Salamon Elizabeth Weed Mary Ann Doane JUDITH BUTLER is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Com- parative Literature and Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
    [Show full text]
  • Othering Processes in Feminist Teaching a Case Study of an Adult Educational Institution Yang, Chia-Ling
    Othering Processes in Feminist Teaching A case study of an adult educational institution Yang, Chia-Ling 2010 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Yang, C-L. (2010). Othering Processes in Feminist Teaching: A case study of an adult educational institution. Lund University. Total number of authors: 1 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 OTHERING PROCESSES IN FEMINIST TEACHING Othering Processes in Feminist Teaching – A case study of an adult educational institution Chia-Ling Yang Lund Dissertations in Sociology 91 A complete list of publications from the Dept. of Sociology, Lund University, can be found at the end of the book and at www.soc.lu.se/info/publ.
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching Meets Gender by Manushi Desai
    Teaching Meets Gender An Exploration and Comparison of India and Sweden’s Efforts into Teaching their Teachers about Gender Equality. Manushi Desai Supervisor's name: Edyta Just, Gender Studies, LiU Master’s Programme Gender Studies – Intersectionality and Change Master’s thesis 15 ECTS credits ISRN: LIU-TEMA G/GSIC3-A—20/001-SE Abstract When it comes to gender equality and education, teachers become the influential element of change as their proximity and classroom interactions with students can facilitate more gender sensitive teaching. This thesis aims to investigate the efforts made by India and Sweden to teach their teachers about gender and intersectional practices and sensitivity training and then analyse what one system can borrow from the other, while investigating the role of geo-politics in all of these. The thesis looks at efforts in forms of guidelines, strategies, and manuals that come from each country. The material is read closely, analysed, and then compared to determine what can be borrowed for both. The thesis presents its analysis from the theoretical lens of gender and intersectionality, transnational feminism, and decolonial feminism. The implications of this thesis are tangible as well as intangible, however - the biggest one is building a bridge between two countries to share knowledge and strategies in order to bring about a change in education systems which will ultimately create a ripple effect of gender awareness. Keywords: gender awareness, intersectionality, teacher education, gender education, Sweden, India, Egalia, NCERT, gender equality. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my thesis guide, Prof. Edyta Just, for the continuous effort that she put in helping me be more critical and be more aware of the gaps I left while writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Reactions to Men's Patriarchal Oppressions in Selected
    European Scientific Journal December 2018 edition Vol.14, No.35 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 Women’s Reactions to Men’s Patriarchal Oppressions in Selected Ghanaian Male and Female Novels Theophile Houndjo, (PhD) Akinola Monday Allagbe, (PhD Candidate) University of Abomey-Calavi (UAC), Republic of Benin Doi:10.19044/esj.2018.v14n35p18 URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2018.v14n35p18 Abstract Social imbalances between men and women are the bedrock of injustices women encounter in the world, particularly in African societies. Patriarchy is identified by womanist and feminist scholars as one of the social practices that give men more privilege and maintain women in peripheral roles. This article examines how female characters in African patriarchal settings of two Ghanaian male and female novels, Asare Adei’s A Beautiful Daughter (2012) and Amma Darko’s The Housemaid (1998) have been able to face/cope with men’s oppressions through womanist and radical feminist theories. The findings have revealed that majority of the female characters are empowered economically and socially in the male and female fictional texts, and this has enabled them to combat men’s patriarchal oppressions. The female characters’ reactions vary from one another. Some of them made use of pacific ways such as dialogue, feminine solidarity or sisterhood in their attempts to address men’s patriarchal oppressions, while others have made use of violence against men and children in their quest for justice and equality. Keywords: Patriarchy, injustice, womanism, radical feminism, women’s reaction Introduction Patriarchy is identified by womanist and feminist scholars as one of the social practices that oppress women.
    [Show full text]
  • Eman Ahmed Khamas Dra. Felicity Hand
    Doctoral Thesis Eman Ahmed Khamas Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Germanística Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Doctorat en Filologia Anglesa Barcelona 2013 Director Dra. Felicity Hand 1 Between patriarch and imperialism, subject-constitution and object- formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the ‗third-world woman‘ caught between tradition and modernization…Imperialism‘s image as the establisher of the good society is marked by the espousal of the woman as object of protection from her own kind. Spivak, ‗Can the Subaltern Speak?‘ 2 Abbreviations CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis CTS: Critical Terrorism Studies ME: The Middle East/ Middle Eastern WOT: The War on Terrorism WTC: World Trade Center 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 I- Introduction 7 II- Theoretical Framework 17 PART ONE III- The Discourse of War on Terrorism: Critical Overview Conceptual Confusion 35 Definitions 44 War on Terrorism 50 The Metaphor of Terrorism as War 58 Writing the Terrorist Identity 63 IV- In Her Name: Targeting Woman in the Middle East Evolution of a Discourse 67 Conceptual and Contextual Frame 86 Orientalism / Neo-Orientalism 99 ME Women in the Neo-Orientalist discourse of WOT 112 Anti-WOT Feminism 135 V- The Mitigating Effect of Soft Power / Case Study: Iraqi Women 141 4 PART TWO VI- The Evolution of an Image Representations of Middle Eastern Women 183 in Anglo-American Narratives: Critical Overview VII- The Victim’s ‘Authentic’ Voice 262 Azar Nefisi Reading Lolita in Tehran & Things I’ve Been Silent About Khali Hosseini The Kite Runner & A Thousand Splendid Suns 309 VIII- Anglo-American Literary Representations of ME Women 313 Ian McEwan Saturday 313 Richard Zimler The Search for Sana 335 John Updike Terrorist 352 IX – Conclusions 368 Bibliography 380 5 Acknowledgements I would like first to thank Qusai Aneed Sultan for making this dissertation possible at all.
    [Show full text]
  • Stockholm Cinema Studies 11
    ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Cinema Studies 11 Imagining Safe Space The Politics of Queer, Feminist and Lesbian Pornography Ingrid Ryberg This is a print on demand publication distributed by Stockholm University Library www.sub.su.se First issue printed by US-AB 2012 ©Ingrid Ryberg and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 2012 ISSN 1653-4859 ISBN 978-91-86071-83-7 Publisher: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Distributor: Stockholm University Library, Sweden Printed 2012 by US-AB Cover image: Still from Phone Fuck (Ingrid Ryberg, 2009) Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 13 Research aims and questions .................................................................................... 13 Queer, feminist and lesbian porn film culture: central debates.................................... 19 Feminism and/vs. pornography ............................................................................. 20 What is queer, feminist and lesbian pornography?................................................ 25 The sexualized public sphere................................................................................ 27 Interpretive community as a key concept and theoretical framework.......................... 30 Spectatorial practices and historical context.......................................................... 33 Porn studies .......................................................................................................... 35 Embodied
    [Show full text]
  • Gerd Brantenberg's Egalias Døtre in Translation
    Lexis Journal in English Lexicology 17 | 2021 Humor, creativity and lexical creation Laughing at “normality”: Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre in translation Luise von Flotow, Ida Hove Solberg and Enora Lessinger Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/5429 DOI: 10.4000/lexis.5429 ISSN: 1951-6215 Publisher Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 Electronic reference Luise von Flotow, Ida Hove Solberg and Enora Lessinger, “Laughing at “normality”: Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre in translation”, Lexis [Online], 17 | 2021, Online since 15 August 2021, connection on 20 August 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/5429 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/lexis.5429 This text was automatically generated on 20 August 2021. Lexis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Laughing at “normality”: Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre in translation 1 Laughing at “normality”: Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre in translation Luise von Flotow, Ida Hove Solberg and Enora Lessinger Introduction1 1 Introduced to feminist wordplay and neologism in the books I read as I was nursing small children in the late 1970s, I remember laughing till the tears came: Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology. The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) was my first exposure to the daringly creative and inventive subversion of conventional language or “malespeak” a subversion she deploys provocatively in the preface and introduction to this book. Her work and other contemporary writers’ disruption of mainstream “malestream” language that had arrogantly placed “man” in first position as the representative of the human race and denigrated women, girls, and female pre-occupations were absolutely hilarious.
    [Show full text]
  • Susan J. Douglas, Enlightened Sexism: the Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done, New York: Times Books, 2010, 368 Pp, $26.00 (Hardcover).1
    International Journal of Communication 5 (2011), Book Review 639–643 1932–8036/2011BKR0639 Susan J. Douglas, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done, New York: Times Books, 2010, 368 pp, $26.00 (hardcover).1 Reviewed by Umayyah Cable University of Southern California With biting wit, Susan Douglas’ Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done sets out to historicize the ever growing divide between the image and the reality of women in the United States. Refusing to fall for the trope of "post-feminism," Douglas is quick to point out that the current state of women's affairs is not reflective of the supposed successful completion of feminism, but is rather an indication of the insidious development of a cultural practice coined as "enlightened sexism." Defined as "feminist in its outward appearance . but sexist in its intent," enlightened sexism takes shape through carefully crafted representations of women that are "dedicated to the undoing of feminism" (p. 10). Douglas’ refusal of the conceptualization of this phenomenon as "post-feminism" stems from an astute observation that the current miserable state of women's affairs in the United States is not to be blamed on feminism (as the peddlers of enlightened sexism would have you think), but on "good, old-fashioned, grade-A sexism that reinforces good, old-fashioned, grade-A patriarchy" (p. 10). Aside from tracing the genealogy of enlightened sexism, this book emphasizes the sociopolitical consequences that are concealed beneath such a mentality, such as the systematic disenfranchisement of poor women and women of color under the so-called liberatory system of consumer capitalism, all while contradictory representations of women are disseminated as "proof" that the liberation of women has been achieved.
    [Show full text]
  • Abandoning the Masculine Domain of Leadership to Identify a New Space for Women's Being, Valuing and Doing
    University of Wollongong Thesis Collections University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Year Abandoning the masculine domain of leadership to identify a new space for women’s being, valuing and doing Diann M. Rodgers-Healey University of Wollongong Rodgers-Healey, Diann M, Abandoning the masculine domain of leadership to identify a new space for women’s being, valuing and doing, PhD thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 2008. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/782 This paper is posted at Research Online. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/782 ABANDONING THE MASCULINE DOMAIN OF LEADERSHIP TO IDENTIFY A NEW SPACE FOR WOMEN’S BEING, VALUING AND DOING A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by DIANN M. RODGERS-HEALEY, B.A. (Sydney Uni), Dip. Ed. (Alex Mackie), M.Ed. (ACU) FACULTY OF EDUCATION JANUARY 2008 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to sincerely thank Professor Stephen Dinham for journeying with me through this study and for his wisdom, proficiency and constructive feedback. I am also extremely grateful to Associate Professor Narottam Bhindi for his unwavering support and guidance and discussion of broader issues of life. My deepest thanks are also extended to my husband, Philip Healey for supporting me in my lengthy quest in every possible way. Sincere thanks to my father Roy Rodgers for his guidance and for ardently encouraging me to be the best I can be. Thank you to my three young sons, Aaron, Benjamin and Matthew whose smiles and cuddles made the tedious juggle so much easier.
    [Show full text]