Sex role

During the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, both in the Old and the New World, the patriarchal social structure had created a set of fixed gender rules based on gender roles to control female sexuality, female voices, and their social freedom because it was considered a threat to male superiority. The Venetian Veronica Franco and the Mexican Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz are two extraordinary women from different places and a hundred years apart who, with their elaborated writing and body-related techniques, escape the gender patriarchal constrains and give voice to their new authorial persona in a female liminal environment. Veronica Franco and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz represent the two facets of the same coin that symbolizes the phallocentric patriarchal structure in which these two women happened to live, struggle, and write. These women were pushed to the margins of society, confined in convents, brothels/patrician houses, or the streets, to silence their personae and reinforce their inferiority and, at times, inexistence. There are no works that focus on the comparison between the well-known Mexican nun and the forgotten Venetian courtesan. Therefore, this dissertation aims to analyze the writings of Veronica Franco and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz through the lens of feminist theory (Cixous, Irigaray etc.) and the concept of the body as an instrument of subversion and female liberation. In their respective time and marginal places of confinement (the patrician house and the convent), both women were able to create a liminal space that allowed them to go beyond the rigidity of gender binaries and explore different venues of freedom. In this liminal space both Veronica Franco and Sor Juana stopped “performing” the fixed gender roles imposed by the patriarchal social order and created new female creatures at the margins of patriarchal society; a new type of woman who could, through her body and writing, destabilize the patriarchal gender identities and go from a passive silence object to an active writing subject.

This thesis is a historical comprehensive case study on masculinity that explores stereotypes of masculinity in professional wrestling. Working from theories about gender roles, hegemonic masculinity, misogyny (with its disdain for femininity) and heteronormativity, this study utilizes a content analysis of American professional wrestling to look at the gendered basis of how and why wrestling characters are created and how they are successful. Professional wrestlers historically have created characters based in American popular cultures and specifically American gender ideologies of masculinity that are based in hetero-patriarchal cultural ideals. By looking through the history of masculinity and gender stereotypes in professional wrestling, I uncover how contemporary wrestlers are reworking these stereotypes to create new characters with changing gender inflections based on global cultural ideals, rather than American culture, demonstrating the influence global culture and the globalized wrestling community has on contemporary American wrestling.

Mass Effect is a Science Fiction/Action Role Playing/Third Person Shooter video
game series that takes place in the year 2183, in which the player assumes control of
Commander Shepard. Players can choose to customize the character based on his/her
gender, appearance, sexual orientation, background origin and occupation. The
choices that show up in the game are also based on how the player wants their version
of Shepard to interact with other characters and allows players some leeway to shape
their own narrative. The series also discusses and acknowledges issues of race, gender, subjecthood and sovereignty, politics and sexual orientation within its narrative. This analysis
focuses on the text of the series and its implications concerning hegemonic reinforcement and/or resistance in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, and warfare tactics.

This thesis explores the implications of visibility and invisibility of transgender people, their constructed bodies, and how these bodies are used for both personal
empowerment and education. By using various gender theorists for support, I argue that
the transgender male body obtains power through visibility. Despite the many obstacles
transgender males face, putting their bodies in a space of visibility gives them both
personal power and the power to educate others about their bodies and sexuality. In doing
a study of the human body and the different definitions applied to it, I show how we, as a
society, are restricted by gender binaries and how the transgender body serves as a gap
between the socially-constructed terms. Ultimately, transgender people are able to break
through these barriers by subverting the definitions and meaning of “male” and “female.”

A study of 112 single parents drawn from two populations (one urban, one
rural) was conducted to determine if flexibility across situations, or
androgyny, facilitates adjustment to single parenthood. Life satisfaction
and coping responses were used as measures of adjustment to single
parenthood. Chi square, correlation, and analysis of variance testing
of the results revealed that adjustment to single parenthood is greatest
among those who receive scores of "androgynous" or "masculine" using the
Bern Sex Role Inventory. Length of employment also had a positive effect
on adjustment to single parenthood. Other covariates (e.g., "cause" of
single parenting, length of single parenting, length of "househusbanding")
did not significantly affect adjustment to single parenthood.

A gender self-socialization model was conceptualized, wherein gender identity and idiographic gender stereotypes conjointly influence children's adoption of gendered behavior (i.e., gender typing). Further, children differ in their beliefs of sex differences as immutable versus fluid (entity vs. incremental theory); and it was hypothesized that entity beliefs would moderate the self-socialization process. Children (N=305, M age 10.8 years) responded to gender identity, gender stereotype, and self-efficacy measures. Two kinds of gender typing were computed. Personal gender typing was the correlation between personal stereotypes and self-efficacy; consensus gender typing was the correlation between the same-sex peer stereotypes and self-efficacy. Results indicated that gender typicality and gender contentedness were associated with personal gender typing, and felt pressure against other-gender behavior was related to consensus gender typing. Entity theory strengthened the relation between gender identity and gender typing. Results support the self-socialization model.

Rape play is a type of consensual, ritualistic domination and submission, developed and enacted in a sado-masochistic (S/M) sex culture, which involves the appearance of force. There are two feminist theories that can be employed in a feminist analysis of rape play: dominance/radical feminism and libertarian/"sex positive" feminism. Libertarian/"sex positive" feminism holds that S/M, including rape play, is potentially compatible with feminism because the power dynamic between a dominant/"rapist" and submissive/"victim" does not draw on either practitioners' actual social identity and the power it possesses or lacks. Dominance/radical feminism argues that gender, which is socially constructed, can best be understood as a form of sexualized domination and submission, so social identity could not be dissociated from power in S/M. My reading of guidebooks and narratives about rape play suggests that the dominance/radical feminist position is more accurate in the case of rape play, though not necessarily all of S/M culture.

The effects that Women's political participation in the Middle East has on political parties and regimes have been investigated by the political science community. However, how women's political participation and changing societal roles affect women's lives has not received adequate attention. This is a comparative historical analysis that investigates how women's societal roles and political participation in Iraq changed from 1968 to the present. It examines how factors such as social conservatism, party ideology, war, sanctions, religion, and international pressure during different periods in Iraq's modern history influenced changes in Iraqi women's roles and participation over time. These changes in societal roles and political participation are used to analyze the restrictions and expansions in Iraqi women's civil rights in areas such as family, work and mobility, political and cultural expression, health and sexual control, and education.

This project focuses on, Behind the Green Door, a film that inaugurated and in many ways defined the genre of hard-core pornography. I will examine the subversive modes of sexual behavior created and promoted by society and will argue that pornographic films actively attempt to redefine socially created notions of sexual comportment. I will then examine the notion of sexual fantasy and behavior as represented in two pornographic films, The Masseuse and The Fashionistas, in relation to the models of sexual comportment present in Behind the Green Door. Specifically, I will study the work of two female pornographic stars, Jenna Jameson and Belladonna, and discuss the manner in which their work has reclaimed the notion of femininity and the necessity for female sexual pleasure by presenting women as sexually empowered beings able controlling and creating sexual scenarios specifically designed to garner physical pleasure.