League of Legends is one of the most popular video games in the world, and yet it is also infamously known as being filled with harassment and failure. Why do I continue to play? In this project, a critical autoethnography is used to illustrate what it is like to play in this male-dominated space as a woman. Using feminist and queer game studies as my theoretical framework, this project investigates three distinct, but interconnected concepts: hegemonic masculinity, weaponized failure, and subversive play. In chapter one, I use Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity to analyze League of Legends. I argue that gameplay elements such as champion selection, communication, and role-play make it difficult to challenge hegemonic masculinity in League of Legends. However, I do acknowledge that it is possible to challenge through playing the role of support properly – by concentrating on teamwork and sacrifice. In chapter two, I use queer video game studies, including key texts by Bonnie Ruberg and Jesper Juul, to consider failure in League of Legends. While queer failure can be fun in single-player video games, I argue that failure in League of Legends can be used as a weapon to intentionally hurt your teammates. Finally, in chapter three I consider my own subversive playstyle. While some academics have argued that woman who play masculine video games using male-coded skills cannot challenge the patriarchy, I argue that embracing my femininity in League of Legends allows me to persevere and push against the patriarchy. I argue that my feminine visibility in the form of my gamertag, SJW Queen, my communication style that emphasizes positivity and mediation, and how I play League of Legends are all examples of subversive gameplay. I bring my femininity into League of Legends uncompromised and I embrace it, rather than try to escape from it.

The idea of the human as a rational man is deeply engrained into the thinking and the construction of the human culture within industrialized societies. It enables the domination and commodification of nonhuman species and the natural world (the Other). This has led to the creation of a highly technologized, industrialized and environmentally destructive food system. Such system centers around the production and consumption of meat whereas meat symbolizes the dominant culture. It stands for hegemonic masculinity, rationalism and the subordination of the Other. In the 1970s, the ethical vegetarian movement arose, tackling the environmental destruction from a non-anthropocentric angle. Although the movement has not achieved the value shift it asks for, it identified the commodification of the Other as majorly problematic.Today, human induced climate change puts increasing pressure on humanity. Without inherent social change and restructuring, global warming may cause the extinction of the human and many other species.That is why, a new generation of activists has arisen. They use the environmental vegetarian argument to abolish commodification. It is an anthropocentric argumentation that aims to replace the exploitative, violent rationalist and industrialized society with the creation of a compassionate society that lives temperate lives. Environmental vegetarianism becomes powerful because it threatens the dominant culture daily. It challenges hegemonic masculinity because it embraces feminine virtues which build the basis for an ethics of care that centers around compassion. The argument’s power is reinforced by the natural scientific argument the confirms the reduction of meat consumption as important for the counteraction of climate change.

This research is a qualitative study that explores the gender role ideology of Black and White men between the ages of 18-30. The study found that both groups are moving toward egalitarianism on different pathways. The pathways illustrate the effect of racial identity on gender role ideology. White respondents had a progressive egalitarianism which stemmed from ideas reflected individualism, secularization, and the identification with the grand narrative of the United States. Their respondents also reflected postmodern ideas. Overall their ideas reflect larger White racial identity and shows an overlap between the progressive understanding of modernity and with postmodernist ideas of non-deterministic definitions. Black respondents had a collaborative egalitarianism which stemmed from historical racial and economic deprivation. Subsequently, Blacks gender role ideology illustrates collaboration and communal interdependence between of Black men and women, and the Black church. Blacks tended to view things from a social perspective that was often reactionary. Overall, their ideas reflected the larger Black racial identity which emphasizes collaboration between men and women and a reliance on community based institutions like the Black church.

Despite being considered as the most social infection, there is little data on HIV infection in women. Women have not been considered beyond their reproductive role as subjects with a sexuality that transcends the historical mandate of biological reproduction, maintaining a secondary role in the infection. At the same time, society seems to have forgotten that the infection is still present. This thesis explores the voice of a group of positive women who, with their stories and through the digital narrative, will challenge the discourses that are established as hegemonic. In order to illustrate the potential of new tools as digital storytelling to disrupt and challenge the hegemonic herstory around women with HIV, the starting point for this thesis is Podcast Positivos: Mujeres VIHvas project. Engaging with the theories of intersectionality, performativity and cyborg, it will be argued the use of language, voice and the role of listening. Phenomenological research and narrative discourse analysis will be applied as methodologies to, on the one hand, address the experience of HIV as an important dimension in women's lives and, on the other hand, use their stories as a way to understand the meaning of those experiences. This thesis also discusses the creation of a cyber self, a viralized voice that is introduced into the already institutionalized podcast platform, to construct, deconstruct and challenge silences. Further, this thesis calls for an effort to listen, feel and write the stories of resistance of positive women and to put them into conversation within feminist academic debates.

Författare: David Fogelström Handledare: Kutte Jönsson Examinator: Tomas Peterson Nyckelord: Styrkelyft, kvinnors upplevelser, hegemoni, hegemonisk maskulinitet, heteronormativitet   Syfte: Syftet med det här arbetet är att genom semistrukturerade intervjuer undersöka och förstå kvinnliga styrkelyftares upplevelser av att utöva en traditionellt mansdominerad sport och hur dessa upplevelser kan förstås i relation till hegemonisk maskulinitet.   Metod: Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med kvinnor som tävlar i styrkelyft har jag samlat in och analyserat data för att med denna kunna besvara frågeställningarna.   Teori: Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för arbetet är hegemonisk maskulinitetsteori.   Resultat och slutsatser: Studien visar att det finns såväl likheter som skillnader mellan styrkelyft och andra mansdominerade sporter i hur kvinnor ser på att utöva en traditionellt mansdominerad sport och deras upplevelser av detta. Exempel på likheter är positiva effekter på självförtroende, viljan att vara förebild och bryta mot könsnormer samtidigt som kvinnor upplevde att de blev ifrågasatta och inte tagna på allvar i samma utsträckning som män. Skillnader var upplevelsen av att inom styrkelyft kunna utmana sig själva och hur tävlandet inom styrkelyft var en stark motivationsfaktor. / Author: David Fogelström Supervisor: Kutte Jönsson  Examiner: Tomas Peterson Keywords: Powerlifting, women’s experiences, hegemony, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity   Aim: The purpose of this study is to explore and understand, through semi-structured interviews, female powerlifters experiences of practicing a traditionally male-dominated sport and how these experiences can be understood in relation to hegemonic masculinity.   Method: Through semi-structured interviews with women who compete in powerlifting, I have collected and analysed data to be able to answer the questions.   Theory: The theoretical framework of this study is Hegemonic Masculinity Theory.   Results and Conclusions: The study shows that there are similarities as well as differences between powerlifting and other male-dominated sports in how women experience practicing a traditionally male-dominated sport. Examples of similarities are positive effects on self-confidence, the desire to be a role model and break gender norms while women felt that they were questioned and not taken seriously to the same extent as men. Differences were the experience of being able to challenge themselves in powerlifting and how the competition in powerlifting was a strong motivating factor.

The image of Northern Sweden has long been subjected to stereotyping, and the stereo­typed image of the Northerner is widely spread in various media contexts within Sweden. Historically, Norrland has been regarded as a wide wilderness, and the Norr­landic literature in turn has typically been studied in terms of the pastoral genre, the romanti­cism of the wilderness, or from an eco-critical perspective. The study of masculin­ity within modern Norrlandic literature, however, is largely overlooked, de­spite the undeniable stereotyping of Norrlandic males within other forms of media. This the­sis aims to solve this anomaly by providing insights into the creation processes of masculinity in three contemporary Norrlandic novels. In the novels Smekmånader [Honeymoons, 2017] by Mikael Berglund, Solidärer [Solidarians, 2017] by Anna Jörgensdotter, and Silvervägen [The Silver Road, 2018] by Stina Jackson, the construct of Norrlandic masculinity is examined through close-reading. The questions of how Norrlandic masculinity is constructed is examined through a theoretical framework combining the hegemonic masculinity of R. W. Connell, the gender performativity and queer studies of Judith Butler, the frontstage and backstage perspective of Erving Goffman, and the creation of emotions of Sara Ahmed, in the reading of three contemporary novels following male protagonists—each seeing their identity challenged while on a journey far away from home. Viktor of Honeymoons is constructed as a brave cry-baby or a highly sensitive person whose self is disintegrated in the absence of his wife Maija. He is furthermore constructed as a person offering emotional comfort, despite being deeply void of such comfort himself. Ingemar of Solidarians is constructed as a mummy’s boy or a dreamer who ends up as a martyr, who always requires the presence of a woman—his mother Eivor, Klara whom he is wooing, or Conxa whom he meets in the war in Spain—in order to advance from a mere lust to an actual event of action. His emotions are slightly supressed. Lelle of The Silver Road is constructed as an emotionally blunted vigilant or a nervous wreck, who readily succumbs to aggression and violence towards other men, in his lack of emotional cathexis to a physical person. He is struggling with his perceived failure in his role as a father, and is furthermore driven to action by his need of reconciling with his past. Nonetheless, none of the male protagonists exhibits a lasting hegemonic masculinity. The study concludes that the analysed novels contribute to a new form of Norrlandic literature which challenges the traditional and stereotypical ideas of rural masculinity.

This dissertation deals with various gender aspects of playing computer games. It describes how gender stereotypes are connected with the level of production, content, and with the players themselves. In this sense, it shows that games are still created mainly by homogeneous male teams, in order to attract male players, they contain mainly male characters, while the female ones are created to be attractive to these ideal male players. However, the primary goal of this dissertation is to describe the different ways and intensities of the relationship with the avatar, the playable character in the game. The analytical part consists of two illustrative case studies, one concerning female heterosexual players, the other male heterosexual players. The basic premise is the fact that the player "plays gender" - that is, performs it similarly to social reality. However, this performance is not just a reconstruction and confirmation of hypothetically stable gender identities, but on the contrary their deconstruction ("playing with gender"). In this sense, the work pays particular attention to situations where the player and the avatar have different genders and the heterosexual player, therefore, identifies with the avatar but also objectifies him/her. This dissertation aims to emphasize the uniqueness of...

Anti-hegemonic social movements have historically had a complicated and conflicting relationship with mainstream media, as it consistently undermines the emancipatory potential of these grassroots revolutionary movements, hence serving the interests of the dominant social forces of the hegemonic order. This work develops a comprehensive and critical analysis of the agency of mainstream media throughout the coverage of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) to understand how and why it consciously and relentlessly worked to neutralize the true dimension of the movement and its occupations, and thus to preserve the neoliberal capitalist world order from the ideological threat and the revolutionary challenge that OWS posed to it. Employing a historical materialist approach based on Gramsci's theory of hegemony - and the emphasis in the consensual aspect of power in the production of the hegemony that it entails - and its use in the study of world orders grounded in social relations, this work aims to investigate the mainstream media's active role in the building of the current neoliberal capitalist historic bloc, and its subservience to the hegemonic social forces throughout every stage of the coverage of OWS and its occupations: from the deliberate lack of interest and the total indifference in the movement to the...

This thesis is concerned with expressions of toxic masculinity in television acting, illustrated on the case study of the television show The Big Bang Theory. This work sets the term toxic masculinity in the context of masculinity studies and draws on the theory of hegemonic masculinity formulated by the Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell. Her theory assumes the existence of multiple, hierarchically ordered masculinities, with hegemonic masculinity - considered by some authors tobe synonymous with toxic masculinity - on top. This work also surveys the history of the representation of the male hero from the early days of American cinema up to the present, as the empirical section deals primarily with an American television show. Special emphasis is put on the "nerd" character, who represents non- hegemonic masculinity and thus does not tend to be associated with expressions of toxic masculinity, although he is also guilty of this behavior. The aim of this thesis was to use qualitative content analysis to identify manifestations of toxic masculine behavior by the nerd characters of the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory and to determine how this behavior differs from that of the "jock" character, an embodiment of hegemonic masculinity. This research reached the conclusion that each of these two...

This thesis examines the reproduction of gender norms and the resistance against them in the Swedish reality TV show Paradise Hotel, using Raewyn Connell's theories Hegemonic Masculinity and Gender Hierarchy together with the method multimodal critical discourse analysis. Previous research has shown a reproduction of traditional gender norms in Reality-TV, along with the presence of a power imbalance between the contestants and the production itself, where the production holds the power. Despite discourses of feminist character taking a greater place in western society after the #MeToo movement, Paradise Hotel is yet today a subject of discussion in Swedish media, accused of presenting a sexist discourse. Discourses of hegemonic gender norms and resistance against them has been the subject of study in eight episodes from season 11 of Paradise Hotel. Through the usage of a theoretical framework focusing on gender, culture making and representation, the results show that typical gender norms can be spotted through the contestants' practices of stereotypical traits connected to the traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. The study also shows resistance against these norms, primarily by the female contestants and through their practice of typical masculine traits. The maintenance of the stereotypical gender norms is dominant by the production amplifying the contestant’s actions of resistance as comedy through special effects, reducing women to sexual objects intended for male pleasure and reinforcing the image of the man as the omnipotent gender role.