Abstract This paper presents an overview of how transvestites are treated in America today, emphasizing their experiences with hate and discrimination, written in the first person.
From the Paper "They are called transvestites, and sell themselves on the streets in search of money and a future. In Salvador, Brazil, for example, there are almost two hundred transsexual prostitutes on the streets. (Kulick 5) They often live in humble one-room apartments, sharing broken down houses with other transsexual prostitutes. They support themselves mostly by prostitution, dressing as women and taking on female names, hairstyles, clothes, and even hormones."
Abstract This is an opinion paper about the Southern Baptist Convention's stance on gays and lesbians in church. The author looks at the rhetoric used by both sides of the issue and examines the truth behind the rhetoric.
From the Paper "The worst part about this public condemnation and mud-slinging campaign is that Christianity is being portrayed to the world as a religion lacking compassion, love, and forgiveness despite the fact that Christianity is built on these principles. Not only does it negatively affect the feelings of non-Christians, but the problems appear in the church as well. The disparity between the teachings of Christ and the teachings of certain political leaders is certain to cause a great feeling of distress in the lives of the majority of moderate Christians. For the confused Christian seeking answers to the riddle of God's message about homosexuality, Anthony Vaselek confers useful advice : "God Himself does not force us to love Him, nor obey Him. What right do we have to do that which God Himself won't do? Love encompasses free will, the giving of love promotes Christ" (Vaselek par. 5)."
Abstract This essay examines the various psychological, sociological and evolutionary origin theories and the related ethnographic/ historical observations presented by several anthropologists and one psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud. It also discusses the functions which the incest taboos serve, their apparent universality and their influences on social structure.
From the Paper "Sigmund Freud tried to account for the incest taboo in his psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious. According to him, the son desires the mother creating a rivalry with the father. he must suppress these feelings or earn the wrath of his father who is more powerful than him. The Electra complex places the daughter in rivalry with her mother. Freud's theory can be viewed as an elaboration of the reasons for a deep seated aversion to sexual relations within the family."
Abstract This paper looks at the roots of homophobia. The author provides a definition of homophobia and explains the way it is perceived today. Included are examples and case studies.The author attempts to explain how homophobia relates to today's society and draws upon the human subconscious as a source.
From the Paper "Imagine your best friend; now imagine your lifetime happiness with this person. You have had a wonderful time in life. You were born next to this person and your parents have remained friends. You could not picture your life without your best friend at your side. After going through elementary school, junior high school, and high school you both are now in college as roommates. One day you are watching TV and your best friend tells you something you would have never expected? He is gay. How do you deal with this? Is your best friend going to continue to be your best friend, or will he now be your enemy?"
Abstract This paper critiques Laud Humphrey's "Tearoom Trade " book. The author finds fault with the book -- most noticeably in the form of sampling methods.
From the Paper " Laud Humphreys' book Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places examines the homosexual acts between strangers meeting in public restrooms in parks, called tearooms by those who use them for this purpose. Typically, the tearoom encounter involved three people: the two men actually engaged in the homosexual act and a lookout or watchqueen. Humphreys? work focuses on the social organization of same-sex sexual encounters in public places. He found a collective action in tearooms, a silence of interaction and a ritual of non-coerciveness and non-commitment. This collective action includes flexible roles and rules like a game. Collective actions include: positioning, signaling, contracting, foreplay, and payoff. Tearoom Trade . . . also reveals that 54 percent of the men involved were married and 42 percent were Catholic, while 32 percent were politically and socially conservative. Humphreys declares that closeted men hid behind a moral shield and created a self that was presentable and respectable. The book reveals that a thrill was gained from risky, public sex. Humphreys? work raised questions of social control of sex behavior and policy. Police were often harassers out to destroy these men's reputations."
Abstract This paper looks at the growing acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships in society, as well as homosexual marriages. The author focuses specifically on Toronto's Metropolitan Community Church, led by the Reverend Brent Hawkes, which offers the gay community vast support for the lifestyle, and performs controversial marriage ceremonies.
Tags: brent, church, community, hawkes, metropolitan, reverend, toronto
Abstract This paper discuses the issue of gender roles in Charlotte Lennox's book "The Female Quixote". It focuses on the main character Arabella and how she manages to make the world revolve around her. It looks at the issue of female empowerment, relationship between the sexes and how these relate to modern day.
From the paper:
"Charlotte Lennox's "The Female Quixote" decries the influence of romantic novels on its main female protagonist, Arabella. Like Cervantes? Don Quixote, a reading of romance novels, tales of beautiful women and their influence on men, and of their being the center of the world they dwell in, with everything seeming to revolve around their person, ostensibly seeks to expose the delusions of such women. By putting the onus of such delusions upon the romance, they decry fictions, or at least the genre of fiction that goes by the name of romances. However, a reading of the novels brings forth the great truth that it is neither the romantic fiction, nor its misreading and misinterpretation by the main protagonists of these two novels and others of their kind, but the entire gamut of gender relations that can be held responsible and that needs to be probed further as the cause of such delusions. "
Abstract This paper shows the influence of gender on the psychological makeup and behavioral patters of female patients according to studies made by Freud and John Baker.
From the Paper ?Gender can be described as a structure beneath which gender forces bubble. The structure itself is the biological male and female. The forces that bubble beneath this are the cultural and social components of this. These forces can be analysed in relation to Freud's analysis of Dora, as described in Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. In this work, we can see that gender is the force which pushes Dora into her state of hysteria. It is the nature of the role of gender that is at the basis of Dora's problems.?
Abstract The paper defines today's society as "a society of passing," a transitional society with much confusion and mixed beliefs regarding old traditions versus the broken cultural conventions and shattered stereotypes that exist, especially in the areas of sex and gender. The paper sees the characters of the movie "Chasing Amy" as representative of the different viewpoints of today's young generation, and through an examination of the movie tries to generalize about interpersonal communication in today's society.
From the Paper "Society, along with its resultant culture, has undergone an especially massive upheaval and reconstruction during the last half of the twentieth century. During the 1960s and 1970s, conventional societal molds regarding race and gender were broken and subsequently recast as both the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movements swept across the globe. In the latter decades of the century, the Gay Rights Movement further reshaped traditional sexual roles and identities, culminating in society as it is known today, a society that has been described as an environment of 'passing.'"
A look at the claim made by Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Gregg Lee Carter, in the fourth chapter of their book "Working Women in America" that gender is socially determined.
860 words (approx. 3.4 pages), 0 sources, 2001, $ 30.95
Abstract An analysis of this claim with support for the argument that gender is socially determined. It shows how people create own destiny and that people's free choices cause them to be stuck in certain social positions. It examines the "essentialist" argument that believes that significant differences exist between different groups.
From the Paper "One of the most important points that the authors make in this chapter is the fact that the choices that people make throughout their lives contribute to their own imprisonment in conventional gender roles (and thus to the lower status of women, for the gender roles of men and women are not simply complementary but are in fact arranged hierarchically). This is turn makes it easy to blame women for their own lowered status: Well no one made her have children, one can say, or no one made her get a degree in English rather than in engineering. But, as the authors argue, in fact the choices that people make (especially vis-?-vis the biology of childbearing, obviously) are so constrained by both society and socialization that to call them choices at all is deceptive."
Tags: gender, social, essentialist, society, sexual
Abstract This paper is an in-depth examination of the content and messages delivered to the readers of "Maxim Magazine." Using the March 2002 issue as an example, the author demonstrates how the magazine plays upon men's fascination with sex and the drive to succeed to sell its product. The author illustrates how many of the articles and topics discussed in the magazine emphasize this theory. The articles discussed by the author include the type of photo shoot used, the columns, the articles about Impressing women and the articles about self-improvement and electronic gadgets, are geared to grab a man's attention and make them want to buy the magazine in order to feel sexy and successful.
From the Paper "Maxim's penchant for fast reads continues through the whole magazine, interspersed with full articles. The 100 Most Stoopidest Things Ever (133) list begins with pet psychology, handkerchiefs, and mopeds ... cruises through aromatherapy and the Lifetime Network ... and wraps up with bottled water and performance art. Top Gear, stuff every man should own, weighs in with a bar of soap in which is embedded a soap gun, a mountain board with wheels, and a stringless guitar with built-in MIDI. The Entertainment guide, called HotZone, covers movies, music, TV and games. The movies review are, of course, films that appeal to males. The Ask Dr. Maxim column (100) questions run the gamut from the quickest way to lose 10 lbs., to a question on sex, to high colonics. Paired with the column is a sidebar about handling weekend warrior injuries."
An examination of the life of Catalina de Erauso - a Spanish citizen who lived in the 16th century and who broke the gender norms of her country and time period by living her entire life as a man.
Abstract This paper examines the ways in which Erauso violated the gender norms of her time, exploring the reasons that she was permitted to violate such deeply entrenched social norms. This paper begins by examining what she was able to accomplish in her life. But equally important to noting the facts of her life, is understanding how it came about that she was able to live her life as a man as well as how she was able to win official approval for the ways in which she acted.
From the Paper "De Erauso was a distinct cultural revolutionary, and yet it is also possible to see her eventual acceptance by society as fitting in to accepted social norms. While it was certainly unconventional for a woman to don man's clothes and to live the life of a soldier, such a life was also considered by nearly everyone in society an admirable path to choose. In other words, while Erauso's life was certainly not the ideal for a woman, it was the social ideal, and this made her path easier than if she had chosen a life that was not so exalted. Because she chose to talk on a role that was considered highly honorable and desirable within Spanish society in her era other people could at least at some level understand her choices: Who, after all, does not understand the person who wishes to gain a measure of personal power and autonomy?"
Tags: gender, role, norms, Spain, Spanish, patriarchal, women
Abstract History and politics, at least according to most college course catalogues, are separate disciplines. 'Women's Studies' also forms its own separate category, apart from these two disciplines. Yet in her work "Gender and the Politics of History", Joan Wallach Scott makes it clear that for as long as women's studies has existed as a discipline, feminist historians have suggested that all three elements are intertwined in a proper analysis of history.
From the Paper "Scott writes her work both in response to these feminist historians, and as a part of the tradition of the rash of academic and popular womens writing about women in history in recent years. (15) Although it is impossible to reduce these writings on women's histories to a particular political stance she suggests a certain commonality between all of them in their lack of commonality. She pinpoints a problem that arises because of the lack of a tradition of historiography when writing about gender. Historians with political projects, such as Marxists, employ different historiographic techniques than those mainly interested in studying the construction of the feminine narrative of reproduction, and how women have attempted to control their bodies throughout history, for example. (16) "
Abstract The following paper examines the role of women in the Afghan Society, focusing on the economic ravage which is affecting the women and children the worst. The writer discusses how women make the bottom of the social ladder in a patriarchal society and amid the chaos of the economy the result is that the women are the worst affected. This paper examines how many women in Afghanistan are illiterate and uneducated about the society, resulting in a situation in which they do not know what work can be found and are left struggling in a hostile world. The main focus of this paper is that despite the aid and the pledges from developed nations on women rights the Afghan economy is adversely affecting the women.
From the Paper ?Within the paradigm of this debate has arisen the question of the role of women in the Afghani Society. We have seen the pictures of women wrapped in veils of cloth and not even an eye visible in the roles of clothes. We have heard how women were brutally killed for merely showing a finger in public and we know that women played no role in the political or social fabric of the society. They were the silent majority. That has changed after the War on Terror initiated by America. We know it has changed because the media has shown us Afghani women without their 'veil'. We have heard that women have been reestablished in the work place as the Talibans have run for cover. We have heard that women have been emancipated and given the freedom they deserve as humans. Yet, what we do not know is what effect this emancipation has had on women. What sort of economic conditions the women are living under and how they are coping as a result thereof. (Skaine, 2002: 25)?
Abstract The author of the paper argues that the twentieth century has seen significant improvements for women in Britain. The issues and events mentioned in support of this are the Suffragette Movement, the two world wars, the decline of industry and the freedom given to women in all spheres of society.
From the Paper "By the end of the twentieth century women can now go into virtually any job they want, they can serve in frontline armed forces, become doctors, scientists, editors, managers and politicians. In the year 2000, 1 in 5 women earn more than their working partner and on average women earn 75% of a male workers hourly wage. In some professions women still say there is a "glass ceiling" but in time, through the continuing change of peoples attitudes there will be an equal playing field. All this has been made possible because women now have choice, events and people throughout the century have made this possible, from Emmeline Pankhurst's militant tactics to mass employment for women during two world wars." .
Tags: Emmeline, Pankhurst, Social, Political, Union, 1913, Cat, Mouse, Act, World, War, I, Representation, People, World, War, II, feminism
