No description available.

Why study Asian American sexual politics? There is a major lack of critical analysis of Asian Americans and their issues surrounding their place in the United States as racialized, gendered, and sexualized bodies. There are three key elements to my methodological approach for this project: standpoint epistemology, extended case method, and narrative analysis. In my research, fifty-five Asian American respondents detail how Asian American masculinity and femininity are constructed and how they operate in a racial hierarchy. These accounts will explicitly illuminate the gendered and sexualized racism faced by Asian Americans. The male respondents share experiences that highlight how "racial castration" occurs in the socialization of Asian American men. Asian American women are met with an exotification and Orientalization as sexual bodies. This gendering and sexualizing process plays a specific role in maintaining the racial status quo. There are short and long term consequences from the gendered and sexualized racist treatment. The intersected racial and gender identities of the respondents affect their self-image and self-esteem. For the women, femininity has been shaped specifically by their racial identity. "Orientalization" as a colonial concept plays a role in these racialized and gendered stereotypes of Asian American Women. The gendered and sexualized racialization process and "racial castration" has impacted Asian American men in a different way than their female counterparts. Violence is a prevalent theme in their gendered and racial formation. Asian American men begin as targets of violence and sometimes become perpetrators. I also analyze how romantic and sexual partners are chosen and examine the dynamics of Asian American intraracial and interracial relationships. While Asian American "success" as "model minorities" is challenging white supremacy, gender and sexuality become "regulating" forces to maintain both the racial and gendered order. Finally, I offer and discuss the resistance strategies against gender and racial hierarchy utilized by my respondents. Asian Americans must be creative in measures that they take for group and individual survival. Respondents resist in intimately personal ways against ideologies. / PDf file replaced 8-28-2012 at request of the Thesis Office.

No description available.

none

In the years between 1950 and 1965, three significant developments in American culture left women struggling to merge the housewife archetype of the Cold War era with changing attitudes toward sexuality. Because of these cultural shifts, the developments that dominate the research presented here are; first, the changing elements in the lives of the women who pass through the halls of academia during this time of societal flux; second, the impact of the development of the birth control pill; and third, the impact of the publications of Playboy magazine and Sex and the Single Girl. These developments mark a shift from an age of idealism that permeated the consciousness of postwar Americans to an age of realism concerning American sexuality.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo investigar os contornos da política sexual concebida e implementada pela ditadura civil-militar (1964-1988). Marcado centralmente pelo lema da defesa da \"moral e dos bons costumes\", o regime autoritário brasileiro estruturou um complexo aparato repressivo orientado não apenas para eliminar dissidentes políticos, mas também para regular e normalizar os corpos marcados por orientação sexual e/ou identidade de gênero dissidentes. Para isso, foi preciso fazer convergir a atuação de diversas agências estatais que integravam as comunidades de informações, segurança e de censura em torno de uma agenda moral comum, apesar das disputas e tensões entre elas. Segundo essa perspectiva, erotismo, pornografia, homossexualidades e transgeneridades eram classificados como temas e práticas ameaçadores não apenas contra a estabilidade política e a segurança nacional, mas também contra a ordem sexual, a família tradicional e os valores éticos que, supostamente, integravam a sociedade brasileira. Cerceamento da produção cultural, repressão policial nas ruas, vigilância do nascente movimento homossexual e perseguição a seus veículos de expressão e comunicação foram algumas medidas de violência implementadas por diferentes órgãos repressivos e que são examinadas detalhadamente. A partir de uma minuciosa pesquisa nos acervos documentais produzidos pelos próprios órgãos encarregados da repressão, bem como de uma revisão bibliográfica da literatura existente, esta pesquisa pretende demonstrar como as questões comportamentais e sexuais foram centrais para o projeto da \"utopia autoritária\", ressaltando uma dimensão muitas vezes negligenciada tanto nas reflexões acadêmicas quanto no trabalho de memória sobre esse período. / The present thesis aims to investigate the contours of the sexual politics conceived and implemented by the civilian-military dictatorship (1964 - 1988). Centrally marked by the motto of the defense of \"morality and good behavior\", the Brazilian authoritarian regime structured a complex repressive apparatus oriented not only to eliminate political dissidents, but also to regulate and normalize bodies marked by sexual orientation and / or gender identity dissidents. In order to do so, it was necessary to bring together the activities of several state agencies that integrated the information, security and censorship communities around a common moral agenda, despite the disputes and tensions among them. According to this perspective, eroticism, pornography, homosexuality, and transgenderism were classified as threatening themes and practices not only against political stability and national security, but also against the sexual order, the traditional family, and the ethical values that supposedly integrated Brazilian society. The curbing of cultural production, police repression on the streets, surveillance of the nascent homosexual movement, and persecution of its vehicles of expression and communication were some violent measures implemented by different repressive organs and examined in detail. Based on a thorough research in the documentary collections produced by the agencies responsible for repression, as well as a bibliographical review of the existing literature, this research seeks to demonstrate how behavioral and sexual issues were central to the project of \"authoritarian utopia,\" emphasizing a dimension often neglected in both academic reflections and the work about the memory of this period.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores the oppression of women within the gender institution of patriarchy in Margaret Atwood¡¦s dystopian novel The Handmaid¡¦s Tale, and their resistance to this male-dominated society. As a feminist writer, Atwood is very much concerned about the issue of gender, which she foregrounds in The Handmaid¡¦s Tale. In my analysis, I apply some theories of radical feminists and the French feminist who devote themselves to the study of gender--Kate Millett, Adrienne Rich, Catherine MacKinnon, and Hélène Cixous. Millett focuses on women¡¦s subordinated position that leads to women¡¦s oppression in patriarchy. Rich and MacKinnon focus on how women are controlled and oppressed in maternity and sexuality within the patriarchal society of gender inequality. Cixous challenges the validity of gender by pointing out its characteristic fluidity through creating woman¡¦s own writing in order to redefine female selfhood for women¡¦s resistance. The thesis is composed of five chapters. The Introduction presents the background materials about Atwood and The Handmaid¡¦s Tale, the motivation of the thesis, and the resonance between The Handmaid¡¦s Tale and certain feminists¡¦ theories. The first chapter analyzes the formation of the unbalanced power relations between the sexes in which women are subordinated to men through the socialization. Moreover, because of women¡¦s subordination, women are modulated as mothers through socially institutionalized motherhood such as the Wives and the Handmaids in Gilead. The second chapter further analyzes how women are formulated as sexual objects through the experience of sexual objectification within the institution of heterosexuality, such as the mistresses and the prostitutes of Gilead. The third chapter discusses how female orality empowers women to resist their patriarchal society in The Handmaid¡¦s Tale. The protagonist Offred, by ¡§writing her voice¡¨ through storytelling, resists patriarchal oppression, restores her body and self, and transforms herself from a victim in a claustrophobic world of male domination to a heroine of femininity. Moreover, her act of writing by her voice also reflects women¡¦s histories of repression, which should be reconstructed in a culture in which only males are literate. Offred¡¦s oral act of storytelling, to the reader, may also signify her resistance to reconstruct women¡¦s repressed histories. The concluding chapter reiterates the research of The Handmaid¡¦s Tale with a synthesis of Atwood¡¦s and some of the prominent feminists¡¦ points of view, namely Millett¡¦s, Rich¡¦s, MacKinnon¡¦s and Cixous¡¦s, toward the oppression and resistance of women within the institution of gender. This study hopes to explore and thus illuminate the nature, the functioning, the operation of socially constructed male domination, and then proceed to search the possible solution, or the ¡§voice;¡¨ however feeble it is, the author, or the protagonist conceives to defy the oppression imposed on women.

This thesis analyzes the ways how David Herbert Lawrence advocates sexual politics in his novels The Lost Girl and The Plumed Serpent. The thesis argues that although D.H. Lawrence portrays modern women&amp / #8217 / s search for identity in The Lost Girl and The Plumed Serpent, his attitude is that of a very conventional man who advertises his male fantasies through female characters / and the gender role that he finally assigns to women is unquestioning submissiveness to male authority. The power relations between sexes and the depiction of modern woman in both novels are analyzed as propagandas of patriarchy. This thesis makes use of feminist reading which requires analyses of texts with reference to behavioral codes that are incorporated in the novels and to the systematic patriarchal propaganda which is imposed through textual strategies. The reason for choosing this method of analysis for the present study is to trace the ways in which sexual politics operate within the novels The Lost Girl and The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence.