Zugl.: München, Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2005

No description available.

Female apologetic behaviour in sport includes any behaviour by female athletes that emphasizes a female athlete’s femininity. This behaviour is in response to the masculine and/or lesbian stereotypes associated with female sport participation. This thesis analyzed the female apologetic within Canadian women’s rugby. Attention was paid to the relationship of level of competition, racial identity, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status with female apologetic behaviours. In-depth interviews with nine Canadian, female rugby players from various levels of competition, races and sexual orientations were conducted to explore these negotiations. Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity was used as a research lens. The participants stated that they did not currently engage in any apologetic behaviour, and it was found that level of rugby, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status did not impact female apologetic behaviours. Rugby was found to be a safe place for the participants to perform resistant versions of femininity.

Female apologetic behaviour in sport includes any behaviour by female athletes that emphasizes a female athlete’s femininity. This behaviour is in response to the masculine and/or lesbian stereotypes associated with female sport participation. This thesis analyzed the female apologetic within Canadian women’s rugby. Attention was paid to the relationship of level of competition, racial identity, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status with female apologetic behaviours. In-depth interviews with nine Canadian, female rugby players from various levels of competition, races and sexual orientations were conducted to explore these negotiations. Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity was used as a research lens. The participants stated that they did not currently engage in any apologetic behaviour, and it was found that level of rugby, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status did not impact female apologetic behaviours. Rugby was found to be a safe place for the participants to perform resistant versions of femininity.

Due to the standards and values that characterized our society through history women have had a hidden place in the historiography. By a qualitative media analysis these values have been analysed to find out how   women with the right to vote moved the values and how they were described in newspapers and magazines.  The study is from Judith Butlers interpretation of how the gender perspective went through a process of normalization. The linguistic dimension of women has been analysed for two reasons firstly to discover how women are described as political subjects in 1911 and 1921 and how this can have affected perceptions of gender and value.  In my study I came to the conclusion that their political interests and achievements most often were overshadowed because of their gender 1911 more than 1921.  During 1921 it was still more important that women were women than men were men. Secondly I have studied how the women through magazines tried to tone down the fact that they were ground breakers. The study resulted in that the women often described their female characteristics in relation to their political relevance to give the reader the impression that femininity and politics belong together. These phenomena showed up more often in magazines than newspapers and were interpreted as these connections between femininity and politics were a part woman’s leverage to get the right to vote. The study contributes to the research of women’s history and a wider understanding for how language and journalism can contribute to perceptions of genus.

No description available.

There has been a longstanding fascination with motorcycling culture in popular mainstream North American media, but this culture has only recently become the focus of rigorous, contextualized academic research. While smaller research projects have studied specific aspects of motorcycling culture, few academic researchers have investigated the exclusionary discourses that underpin motorcycling culture and none have done so in a methodical manner. Using a series of columns published over a thirty-five year period in the popular Canadian motorcycle magazine, Cycle Canada, I have analyzed the discourses through which motorcycling culture comes to have meaning to its participants and I have elucidated the socio-historical understandings of masculinity that are present in North American motorcycling culture. This thesis provides a historical sociological analysis of motorcycling discourse through a feminist lens. I view gender as a relation that must constantly be (re)negotiated amongst socially constituted subjects and I pay particular attention to how technological discourse is made socially durable and sustainable by the interface of material (motorcycles) and organic (human) beings. Longitudinal analysis of Cycle Canada illustrates the presence of heteronormative discourses that constrain readers' choices of gender identification and sexual orientation to traditional notions of masculinity. In an effort to create solidarity with their readers, the magazine editors cater to the perceived interests of an idealized male audience by performing these masculine identities. Though motorcycling culture in Canada is increasingly diverse, Cycle Canada has only begun to reflect this diversity in the past two years of publication. Explicating the social, political, economic, technological and historical context which gave rise to particular masculine identities in motorcycling culture allows us to focus on the positive agency involved in the performance of masculine identities, while still recognizing that there remains room to include other figurations of identity beyond traditional concepts of heteronormativity and homosociality. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2008-05-07 06:21:18.665

No description available.

Medieval bodies often push against easy categorization. Hybrids, saints, giants, and transformative bodies are represented in literature as falling between or occupying multiple taxonomic hierarchical positions of divine, human, or animal. / 10000-01-01

The condemnation of suicide is a historical product whose presence has been sealed throughout history. Increased liberal views on humanity and gentle penal codes led to the desecration of the unfortunate dead being strongly questioned and subsequently spared from condemning customs and practices. This study focuses on a time when suicide was decriminalized in Sweden to examine the interpretations of suicide in Swedish newspapers during the period 1864–1904. In the extension, the study intends to contribute to a nuanced theoretical discussion of the subject, which is achieved via Judith Butler’s theory of grievability. A thematic analysis could ascertain four themes – sorrow, carelessness, laconic, and dramatic – which should be understood as representations of the newspapers’, Aftonbladet and Nya dagligt allehanda, view on suicide and as stereotypes of the suicide victims. The results show that condemnatory interpretations of suicide are of a subtle nature anchored in the discourse of history and marked by contemporary class ideals. This means that whoever seeks to understand historical suicide interpretations is dependent on contextualization. However, a homogeneous suicide image does not emerge from the material. The themes demonstrate two extremes that represent each other’s opposites in the hierarchy of grief which also actualizes the question of whether suicide as an act is grievable or whether who commits the act is decisive.