Let's Talk About Gender
Navigating Masculine Subjectivities: The Primacy of Connection in Social Justice Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nick Sandor
My research challenges the conventional perspective that "boys will be boys;" yet, also situates opportunities for social change through the lived experience of masculinity. The conservative political perspective has failed to challenge the dominant discourse on masculinity, resulting in the maintenance of systems that perpetuate sexism and homophobia in our communities. At the same time, social justice projects are often problematic spaces for males of privilege, and there is a risk that their involvement may disqualify these spaces from being safe or inclusive for other community members. Acknowledging masculinity as a state of ambiguity and precarity, my work considers future implications for social justice education through an analysis of experiential knowledge and life pathways in relation to socio-cultural and anti-oppressive perspectives. My conceptual analysis provides a pedagogical platform that connects subjectivities, social performances, and socio-cultural structures of masculinity. By adopting a framework of post-structuralism, gender theory, and phenomenology, my work maps out future methodological considerations for social justice education directed towards men and boys. This suggests that education can offer a humanist approach to learning about relationships across gender by challenging the use of objectification, shame and complacency, and instead directing resources towards inclusion, empathy, and accountable identity affirmation.
Who Gets to Be Sexual and Why?: Self-sexualization and Empowerment
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wioleta Polinska
Many young women embrace sexualized, often-nude self-representations to celebrate their own subjectivity. By employing social media, they create their own images, and thus participate in what some see as "the democratization of the tradition of looking." Young women who self-sexualize claim that such self-expressions are important means of sexual empowerment and of broadening sexual expectations regarding women’s appearance and demeanor. While recognizing certain benefits gained by women who self-sexualize, this paper examines why such self-representations follow sexualizing conventions present in popular media. In conversation with work by feminist social scholars and Christian sexual ethicists, possible limitations of self-sexualization are explored. In addition, it is argued that a more comprehensive definition of sexuality as well as applying principles of justice, and mutuality to sexual self-expression could offer a helpful corrective. Contemporary examples of reclaiming women’s bodies as sites of social protest as well as sites of pleasure will be also discussed.
Deceptively Free: A Roman Wives' Tale
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bernadette Mc Nary Zak
Contained in the middle part of the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew (ca. 300 CE) the tale of Maximilla’s deceit disrupts prevailing social and religious norms. When Maximilla, the wife of the proconsul Aegeates, is overtaken by the Christian preaching of Andrew, she converts and attempts to live in a state of virginity by paying her slave, Euclia, to serve as a surrogate sexual partner to her husband. Maximilla’s intentional manipulation of Euclia’s physical beauty, and Euclia’s willing acceptance of her own sexual objectification, enable Maximilla’s spiritual growth. Furthermore, why does the text advance the actions of both women as non-competing manifestations of the good only to be denounced when Euclia is overcome by greed and boasting after eight months of service? Aegeates’ reaction to Maximilla’s deceit unleashes fatal violence against the bodies of Euclia and Andrew: severe torture strips the exterior, physical beauty of Euclia, whereas crucifixion symbolically decries the interior, spiritual beauty of Andrew. Maximilla lives to witness these heinous acts of martyrdom committed under the rage of Aegeates. Remaining steadfast in her Christian faith, she buries the body of Andrew before leaving her husband permanently. Why is Maximilla spared? How are we to interpret the havoc wreaked by these women? A response is located in an exploration of freedom and servitude of action in this Roman wives’ tale.
