Transfeminism

12 Key excerpts on "Transfeminism"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Bodies in Resistance

  Gender and Sexual Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism

  • Wendy Harcourt(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  At the same time, in the case of trans women, even the expression of traditional feminine stereotypes can be interpreted as a political challenge to the hegemonic gender order because these expres- sions are enacted in bodies that, according to the heteronormative order, are not supposed to look feminine, thereby exposing the plasticity of gen- der. This complexity can be best understood through a notion of intersec- tionality as proposed by Ferree (2009), which goes beyond the idea of a structural location in which subjects are positioned in a hierarchical order, and takes into account how social positions, identities and subjectivities are constituted by already existing and intersecting discourses on gender, sexuality, race, class and other markers of inequality. A meaningful inclusion of trans politics and trans persons into a femi- nist agenda and movements means adopting a perspective that allows us to engage critically, yet empathically, with our taken-for-granted assumptions around gender, sexuality and other social categories that shape our bodies, identities, subjectivities and agendas in complex ways, and are connected to the structures of inequality that pervade our everyday lives. 184 S. HEUMANN ET AL. NOTES 1. For several years, Juana has had a feminine self-presentation and recently she has started to present herself in a more masculine way. Now she has short hair, she has started to grow a beard and she wears jeans and t-shirts, although she still refers to herself as a woman. 2. An important subtext to this debate is the political context in Nicaragua in which the Sandinsita government has been antagoniz- ing the feminist movement while simultaneously trying to co-opt the LGBT movement (Heumann 2014; Kampwirth 2014). REFERENCES Alcoff, Linda. 1988. Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Gender and the Organization

  Women at Work in the 21st Century

  • Marianna Fotaki, Nancy Harding(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Those whose work is judged as low status, low-skill and deserving of only small rewards are often global migrant labourers, so another key theoretical resource we deploy in this chapter, alongside intersectional theory, is transnational feminism. This body of work facilitates our examination of organizations as embedded in global networks of power against which the individual worker is powerless, making a case for collective organizing towards transformation of these exploitative relations. Power is historically conditioned but is also reshaped by transnational movements through which: ‘national spaces/identities of political allegiance [and] economic regulations are being undone and imagined communities of modernity are being reshaped at the macro-political (global) and micro-political (cultural) levels of everyday existence’ (Wilson and Dissanayake, 1996:6 quoted in Suner, 2007:54). Our third aim therefore is to bring transnational feminism to organization studies to better understand what is to be a mobile and precarious worker in transglobal late capitalism.

  Overall, this chapter explores theoretical and practical implications of politically radical articulations within feminism for re-thinking organizations, organizing and work through including an expanded understanding of intersectionality and transnationalism. Combining intersectionality with transnational feminism can bring new perspectives to organizational research. Transnationalism questions and de-centres the preoccupations of management and organization studies with those ‘Western’ concerns, boundaries of knowledge and epistemologies that inform global politics and economics (see also Metcalfe and Woodhams, 2012). With its focus on sociopolitical and economic contexts in which organizations operate and where new organizational forms emerge, transnationalism moves away from a view of organizations as insular and disconnected from global networks of power and culture. This is particularly important since as Braidotti (2006a:134) incisively puts it: ‘Advanced capitalism is a difference engine – a multiplier of de-territorialized differences, which are packaged and marketed under the labels of “new, hybrid and multiple or multicultural identities”’ (quotation marks in the original).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Women and Gender in International History

  Theory and Practice

  • Karen Garner(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Intersectional feminist analyses: assert that there are multiple gender identities affected by an individual’s intersecting race, class, national, and sexual identities. Power and privileges or discrimination and disadvantages adhere to these different identities in different social and global contexts. Consciously performed intersectional analyses can reduce reflexive gender stereotyping and can lead to more nuanced and effective policy making in complex world systems. Sources : Steans, J. (2013), Gender and International Relations: Theory, Practice, Policy , 3rd ed., Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Peterson, V. S. and Runyan, A. S. (2009), Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium , 3rd ed., Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Table 2.1 Continued WOMEN, GENDER, AND IR THEORY 23 Masculine characteristics “such as power, strength, protection, rationality, and warrior” are juxtaposed and privileged over feminine characteristics “such as weakness, protected, emotionality, and passivity” (Tickner 2006: 389). Since the 1980s, feminist IR scholars have applied gender analyses to international studies. They have challenged the assumption that “international politics is a man’s world” (Tickner 1991: 27), and have expanded the subjects of IR studies to include women as international agents. They have engaged in new initiatives to quantify and document “women’s” roles and the presence of “women’s” bodies in international relations. For example, feminist IR schol-ars and researchers associated with the WomanStats Project have produced a database that collects cross-national data on women’s status and women’s relative levels of “security” in 175 societies around the world and collates that data with a society’s level of prosperity and peacefulness. Through its website, the WomanStats Project makes that data freely available to other researchers, national and international policy makers and to global media outlets.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Women, Gender, and World Politics

  Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects

  • Peter R. Beckman(Author)
  • 1994(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  I call this combination "Critical/Feminist Theory," or a "gender-in-International-Relations" per- spective. Liberal feminists have underscored the absence of women from both the practice and study of international relations. This absence has been used in the past to defend the supposed gender neutrality of the study of world politics. Criticizing it is therefore important. Liberal feminists challenge that claim and effectively give voice to women scholars and previously si- lenced practitioners of world politics, as well as expand the boundaries of the field. Similarly, Radical feminism not only challenges the assumption that mainstream International Relations theory has been produced in a value- neutral way, but also points to the importance of expanding the arena of legitimate inquiry in world politics beyond its traditional focus on war and peace. Along with other critics of this tradition, Radical feminism insists on exploring the constitutive elements of all international activity, not merely the surface appearance of interstate rivalry, which has been privi- leged through Realism. Finally, Feminist Postmodernists have emphasized the ways in which identity and meaning are contingent and socially constructed. This is im- portant in International Relations because it underscores the ways in which the topics that are considered important, the ways of posing questions, and the approach to studying them, are created rather than natural. A Critical/Feminist account of world politics that is sensitive to gender relations should attempt to incorporate many of the insights of the above types of feminist theorizing while overcoming their limitations. Like Lib- eral feminists, we are interested in documenting the underrepresentation of women in particular spheres, or describing the unfair burdens borne by women as a result of particular legislative practices.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies

  • Finn Enke(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Temple University Press

    (Publisher)

  Transfeminist Perspectives suggests that trans might be central, not marginal, to gender and women’s studies. At the simplest level, Transfeminist Perspectives offers multidisciplinary models for integrating feminist and transgender theory, practice, and pedagogy. Its authors come from and teach in a wide range of scholarly disciplines, includ-ing English, history, cultural studies, zoology, evolutionary biology, psychology, public health, social justice, economics, law, sociology, sports education, sexual-ity and/or gender and women’s and/or LGBT studies. These same authors also work as performance artists, bloggers, poets, musicians, administrators, grass-roots activists, and nonprofit organizers. Although most articles primarily con-sider U.S. and/or Canadian contexts, transnational circulations and hierarchies are never completely out of sight and are sometimes central. With essays that focus on how gender is practiced (through scholarly disciplines, university administrations, athletics, law, public health, national border control, and other areas), we hope to make the conversation between feminist and trans studies more accessible and more relevant to scholars of gender in general. If the affi nity between transgender studies and gender studies is obvious, we recognize that it is not necessarily easy. Just about everywhere, trans-literacy remains low. Transgender studies is all but absent in most university curricula, even in gender and women’s studies programs. For the most part, institutional-ized versions of women’s and gender studies incorporate transgender as a shad-owy interloper or as the most radical outlier within a constellation of identity categories (e.g., LGBT).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Gender and International Relations

  • Jill Steans(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 10

  Transnational Feminist Politics

  Introduction

  This chapter interrogates feminist practice, feminist politics and possibilities for a feminist project of solidarity across boundaries. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first one interrogates political projects that cross boundaries – specifically, national boundaries. Here, the concept of a social movement is first considered, transnational advocacy networks (chapter 9 ) are then briefly revisited and, finally, the concept of solidarity is unpacked. The second section revisits discussions of the early feminist movement in the Western world. The third section considers how both feminist theorists and activists have grappled with the challenges and dilemmas of difference and, in consequence, rethought both feminist practice and the basis of solidarity. The final part of the chapter grounds these concerns in contemporary projects, re-visiting the women’s human rights agenda and also examining the place of feminist politics in anti-globalization struggles.

  Politics across Boundaries

  Social movements

  Rupp and Taylor1 argue that feminists are ‘social movement actors’ insofar as individual feminist activists are situated within an organizational and movement context. Feminism is based on more than ideology. It is also a collective identity. Social movements are comprised of individuals and groups who embrace a collective identity and shared values. Unlike NGOs, which might be focused on discrete issue areas and/or seek to influence specific policies, social movements are directed towards achieving widespread social change by promoting an alternative set of values, beliefs and practices.2 In Crow’s words, to identify with a social movement ‘is to commit oneself to it in a way that normally involves endorsing its practices and seeking to promote its interests, whilst regarding one’s well-being as intimately linked to its flourishing’.3

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism

  Defending the Discipline

  • D. S. L. Jarvis, Darryl S. L. Jarvis(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of South Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  This also cir-cumscribes the need for a feminist perspective/critique of the discipline and its theoretical approaches. Patriarchy, gender, and masculinism, for femi-nists, become as pertinent to understanding international relations as do strategic studies, nation-states, and military force. “A gender-sensitive lens,” notes V. Spike Peterson, “illuminates mounting tensions and even contradictions between the ‘deeper historical structures’ of masculinism (bequeathed to us by the success of western civilization) and multiple trans-formations in ‘events-time’ (the dimensions of today’s structural crisis).” 25 For feminists, gender is a “central facet of human identity,” and identities are “constructed by others who have a stake in making up certain social cat-egories and in trying to make people conform to them.” In fact, for Jill Krause, gender is the ontological essence of self, being, and identity: “Our view of ourselves, how we relate to others and how we understand our world and our place in it are all coloured by our perception of ourselves and others as gendered individuals.” 26 Gender, in other words, is an indispens-able ingredient in the study of international politics, a means of understand-ing not just the systemic basis of the international system, but of the power structures imbedded in these relations. Without feminist perspectives, International Relations is adduced as being illegitimate, “dominated mostly by white, English-speaking background intellectuals, located mainly within the Anglo-North America academic establishment,” and this dominated by men, asking questions and pursuing interests that affect them.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Feminist Perspectives on Politics

  • Chris Corrin(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In an intersectional and transnational framework considerations of the transformative political projects being undertaken by women in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America point to the ways in which feminist praxis in a global context can emerge within the twenty-first century. This would involve: ‘shifting the unit of analysis from local, regional, and national culture to relations and processes across cultures … [and] a corresponding shift in the conception of political organising and mobilization across borders … The ideologies of “immigrants”, “refugees”, “guestworkers” and “citizens” would need to be reconceived with new definitions of justice’ (ibid). This is not an easy project! However, work is ongoing with feminist reconsiderations of many key political conceptions such as citizenship. Feminist theorists have developed insights into citizenship which highlight that the consistent exclusion of gendered realities is both historically contingent (Pateman 1988, 1989) and/or constitutive in the theory and practice of citizenship, with women having ‘roles’ as ‘women’ in practice and ‘honorary men’ in public life (Yuval-Davis et al 1992; Heinen 1995). Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) argues that as the boundaries of ethnic and national groups often do not overlap those of the state, and exist within and across states, both collective identities and citizenships need consideration. Many feminist struggles contribute to deconstructing binary divisions and ‘engendering citizenship’ by actively recognising the ‘differentiated universalism’ which Ruth Lister (1997) proposes as acknowledging differences and women’s differentiated positioning. These feminist reworkings of considerations around citizenship aim for an inclusive synthesis which allows for women’s agency while challenging structural constraints. The distinction drawn between being a citizen and acting as a citizen is important in the context of feminist analyses and resistance to male violence

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Globalization

  Theory and Practice Second Edition

  • Eleonore Kofman, Gillian Youngs, Eleonore Kofman, Gillian Youngs(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  In this process international alliances are forged. While Pettman recognizes that there is no homogeneous identity among women, she also notes many common experiences that open up opportunities for alliances around key issues. Gender relations are open to bargaining like other forms of social relations and are amenable to change. Gender issues -previously con-sidered private or cultural -have been brought into the realm of politics. For example, violence against women, which has previously been regarded as a private matter, or something that might be condoned in certain cultures under specific circumstances, is now commonly accepted as a violation of human rights (Chinkin, 1999). Recognition of violence against women as a human rights issue necessarily challenges the sanctity of the patriarchal GENDER INEQUALITIES AND FEMINIST POLITICS 131 family structure and the role of men in mediating relations between women and the state (Ashworth, 1988). In foregrounding issues of gender feminist approaches to globalization are careful not to neglect the continuing relevance of the local, specific and cultural in understanding how globalization impacts on specific societies and on gender relations particularly. It is not the status of feminism and feminist analysis as such that is problematic, therefore, but rather a lack of sensitivity on the part of the theorist towards questions of difference. Issues of culture and difference are central to most contemporary feminist analysis. Much Western feminism has, historically, constructed non-Western women as 'Other', implicitly accepting that the advancement of women will be furthered by embracing the values of the West. Historically, development policies built upon neocolonialist assumptions about status of women as dependants and men as breadwinners have served to deprive women of traditional rights.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Globalizing Afghanistan

  Terrorism, War, and the Rhetoric of Nation Building

  • Zubeda Jalalzai, David Jefferess, Zubeda Jalalzai, David Jefferess(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  We define transnational feminism as the spectrum of actors, instruments, policies, and programs that bring gender issues into the fore-front of politics and society in Afghanistan that have either been formu-lated or supported by those located in the West, often within a Western liberal feminist discourse. We distinguish transnational feminism from the Afghan women’s movement. Many Afghan women and Afghan women’s organizations are, however, part of the transnational feminist apparatus, which consists of the gender policies and programs alongside individual consultants, advisors, international women’s rights ngo s, international agencies such as the United Nations Development Fund for Women ( uni-fem ), and international instruments such as the Convention on the Elimi-nation of All Forms of Discrimination against Women ( cedaw ), un Security Council Resolution 1325 ( scr 1325), and the Beijing Platform for Action that have arrived more or less in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban government. Examining the relations that exist between the transnational feminist apparatus and Afghan women’s organizing is critical not only to assess the front lines of collaborative and supportive work practiced among women, but to help identify and overcome gaps in understanding and to promote women’s rights in the country. This analysis is imperative given current discussions within the feminist community over what is increasingly con-sidered a systemic failure of gender mainstreaming in international policy initiatives to secure women’s full participation in conflict and postconflict states. Although aid interventions in Afghanistan may have shifted tradi-tional gender roles to some degree, they do not necessarily indicate re-negotiated gender relations. More research is needed to examine how aid 120 Chishti and Farhoumand-Sims interventions have modified the specific roles of and relations between men and women.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Global Governance

  Feminist Perspectives

  • S. Rai, G. Waylen, S. Rai, G. Waylen(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Finally, the role of international organizations has also been transformed with the move from the Bretton Woods system to a system of global governance, which reveals the consolidation of rules and regulations securing neo- liberal policies, discourses and frameworks essential for the functioning of global capitalism. Also fundamental to this book is a recognition of the importance of gendered links between different international regimes/organizations/institutions, for example, of trade, finance and production; state and non-state actors, the interplay between them and ways in which these are related to the state, materially and discursively. Gender concerns are therefore ‘up front’ rather than having feminist perspectives as an addendum to an ungendered conceptualization of particular issues or frameworks. With these shared themes in common, the contributors to this book use a range of different feminist perspectives informed by different dis- ciplinary and methodological approaches. But perhaps inevitably these are primarily influenced by the burgeoning feminist scholarship in fields of IR and IPE. And in common with feminist scholarship in other areas that emphasizes that one purpose of analysis is to help to effect change, 8 Feminist Perspectives on Global Governance the focus of the collection is both on analysing and understanding how global governance is gendered and on how it can be made more gender- friendly. Transformation is therefore a key part of any feminist agenda regarding global governance. The book uses these more sophisticated analyses that combine insights from the mainstream and feminist work to inform the goals and strategies that are/can be used in attempts to transform global governance. And although there is a danger of dichotomizing process and outcome, this division between analysis and transformation is a useful heuristic device.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Gender and Politics : The State of the Discipline

  • Jane Bayes(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Verlag Barbara Budrich

    (Publisher)

  security studies and interna-tional political economy, and probed feminist interventions. There are other important areas where internationally oriented feminist scholars have made important contributions. In particular, there is a proliferating literature on de-mocratization both at the state level and at the international level. Literatures on global civil society, the role of international advocacy networks and of women’s movements fit into this body of literature, as do writings on femi-nist strategy. They are a central part of contemporary feminist International Relations and my lack of attention to these writings here should not distract from their centrality to the field ( e.g. Jaquette 2003; Naples and Desai 2002; Molyneux and Razavi 2002; Braig and Wölte 2002; Liebowitz 2002; Eschle 2001; Kelly et al. 2001; Ackerly 2000). The purpose of this essay is to document the considerable richness of feminist scholarship in International Relations. It is a self-confident scholar-ship that has moved from talking at the mainstream to constituting itself as a distinct body of knowledge that the mainstream ignores at its own peril. Fem-inist analyses of masculinity, war- and peace-making provide trenchant an-swers to understanding IR’s classic question – why war? Feminist studies of women’s work in all economic sectors and in reproduction complete the par-tial picture of globalization offered by liberal economics. And feminist explo-rations of gendered, racialized, and sexed messages in economic conduct help answer questions about the causes of poverty and inequality. Feminist Inter-national Relations thus has emerged as a field of scholarship central to under-standing the pathologies of our global world. Feminist International Relations – The State of the Field 189 References Abood, Paula, 2003. “The Day the World Did Not Change.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 29, 2: 376-578. Ackerly, Brooke, 2000. Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book