Critical attention has been paid to the aftermath of second-wave feminism in contemporary Japan, particularly in terms of the current state of twenty-first century feminist activism. Yet, there has been scarce attention paid to the nation’s articulation of postfeminist discourses within popular culture. Drawing on the cultural significance of manga in modern, neoliberal Japan, this article seeks to understand the cultural currency of the highly sexual and highly sexualised representations of the schoolgirl within postfeminism. In this article, I suggest that (...) Kazuto Okada’s Sundome embodies a comparatively positive representational shift for shōjo sexuality, and that this transformation has occurred partly as a consequence of masculine anxieties activated by moral panics surrounding girls’ sexual behaviour in Japan. The article demonstrates how male-authored contemporary manga is progressive in a number of ways, particularly in terms of the representation of girls’ sexual practices and sexual decision-making. (shrink)

Il y a trente ans, évoquant la gynécologie dans l’Antiquité, Giulia Sissa écrivait que l’utérus, « dépositaire insensé et irritable de la reproduction sociale, est le seul organe qui a forcé la connaissance médicale hippocratique à définir en son sein une véritable spécialité ». L’ouvrage de Monica H. Green reprend, en les contextualisant dans un paradigme méthodologique beaucoup plus complexe, ses études précédentes sur la figure historique et littéraire de Trotula et sur la médecine féminin...

A recent judgment by a lower court in Germany brought the problem of ritual male circumcision to the consciousness of the wider public and legal academia. This essay weighs in on this emerging discussion and argues that ritual male circumcision is not covered by parental authority. It first considers and dismisses the best interest of the child test, which is the most widely used test of parental authority in legal practice. Instead, the essay proposes what it terms the (...) autonomy conception of parental authority, according to which parental authority must be exercised such as to ensure that the child will become an autonomous adult. While parents may raise their child in line with their ethical, including religious, convictions, respect for his autonomy requires that this be done in a way that allows the child to later distance himself from these values; this implies, among other things, that irreversible physical changes are impermissible. (shrink)

Relégué à près de trente ans de réclusion après la déposition de son père, Murad V, et l’avènement de son oncle, Abdülhamid II, en 1876, le prince Salahaddin Efendi nous a laissé un corpus impressionnant d’écrits personnels. Cette documentation d’une richesse et d’une nature exceptionnelles rend compte du contexte « familial » de deux hommes vivant en captivité, entourés d’une centaine de femmes. C’est là une rare occasion de se pencher sur cet univers féminin, même à travers des documents éminemment (...) masculins. Presque involontairement, le prince se fait le truchement de bien des sentiments et frustrations émanant des femmes qui l’entourent, à commencer par une de ses concubines, avec laquelle il vivra un véritable enfer sentimental et émotionnel. C’est ainsi que toute la hiérarchie du harem se dévoile, au gré des observations et des sentiments du prince, s’étageant de sa puissante grand’mère, Şevkefza, aux dizaines de modestes esclaves assignées à leur service. (shrink)

Descriptions of Ancient Persian male homoeroticism come mainly from Classical sources, which, however, seem to present divergent testimonies regarding this practice. Some authors apparently provide proof for its widespread acceptance, whereas others, particularly later authors, emphasized its prohibition. Considering the many difficulties involved in the reconstruction of Persian history through the eyes of classical Greeks and Romans, this article aims to provide a brief overview of the subject, with some clues to the question of the origin, form, (...) and tolerance of same-sex love in Achaemenid Persia. We agree that homoerotic practices were attested and likely accepted at some level in Achaemenid Persia. However, we believe that the evidence available to us is not enough to obtain a full understanding of this phenomenon. It is also stressed that not every Greek or Roman reference to Persian male homoeroticism should be taken at face value, as some are distorted and fictitious or lack firsthand knowledge. Finally, we briefly address the image of eunuchs as sexual partners of Achaemenid kings. (shrink)

In Aristophanes' Male and Female Revolutions author Kenneth M. De Luca offers a detailed study of two of Aristophanes' plays and reveals how each illuminates the other and the question of the rule of law through the lens of democracy. De Luca uses classical thought to clarify contemporary and foundational issues in political theory.

Major psychoanalytic thinkers from Freud to Ricoeur to Lacan considered the Oedipus complex the key to explaining the human psyche and human sexuality, even culture itself. But, in fact, they were merely theorizing males. In this title, originally published in 1993, the author reassesses the benchmark concepts of Freudian thought, building on feminist criticisms of psychoanalysis and the new history of sexuality. The psychoanalytic questions become political questions: How do the norms of heterosexuality and masculinity themselves emerge within modern society (...) and culture? How do the institutions of compulsory heterosexuality and modern patriarchy shape identity and desire? What make heterosexuality compulsory in our society? Brenkman argues that the larger social world is part and parcel of the Oedipus complex. He challenges psychoanalysis to reinvent its cultural project, as a therapeutics and an ethics, by recovering the moral-political dimension in its approach to family, sexuality and gender. Straight Male Modern casts a new light on psychoanalysis’s contribution to modern life, revealing the richness of the Freudian tradition’s encounter with modern politics and culture, and the poverty of its response. (shrink)

This symposium includes twelve personal narratives from parents about making the decision whether to circumcise their infant male children. The authors of the narratives include five fathers and seven mothers. Nine of the 12 parent authors opted to circumcise their infant sons, though the reasons they stated for doing so varied. Most of the parent authors relied on cultural or social beliefs, religious guidance, or a desire for sameness with the infant's father. Parents who didn't circumcise (...) their male infants discuss their convictions about autonomy, bodily rights, and the medical benefits of circumcision versus the harm or pain caused by the procedure. The symposium includes four expert commentaries on the narratives that are informed and enriched by the commentators' expertise in pediatric bioethics, healthcare ethics, gender studies, Jewish law and tradition, and the medical and surgical techniques of circumcision. (shrink)

In this paper I ask what it is that adds credibility to Crantor (d. 276/5 BC) as an authority on managing one’s grief, especially grief at the loss of children. At first sight the homoerotic ethos of the Academy in his time made it unlikely that high profile members would have concerned themselves with children of their own. The primary source used is Plutarch’s Consolation to Apollonius, where it is clear that immediate suppression of grief and other natural feelings is (...) not intended, nor must rationality always override them. Rather the consolation helps to produce a pause that allows reason to gradually bring such feelings down to a rational level. Texts associated with Crantor already idealize suspension of judgment at times of pressure, even if his partner Arcesilaus took this epokhê further. (shrink)

In studies on pre-modern South Asian religions, the Brāhmaṇical tradition is often singled out as being particularly restrictive of women’s independent agency, as evidenced in epic and dharmaśāstric passages prescribing men’s guardianship over women. Buddhism and Jainism are assumed to have offered women a greater degree of independence since they allowed women the option of pursuing monastic life. However, this article demonstrates that Jain texts, at least, share the ethos and sometimes even the language of the Brāhmaṇical guarding verses. Examining (...) discussions of male guardianship of women in post-canonical Śvetāmbara Jain monastic commentaries in light of dharmaśāstric treatments of the same theme demonstrates that Jain authors were no less concerned with guarding and protecting women in their communities. In the context of monastic life, monks must fulfill the role of the male guardian and overseer for the female members of their order, even though the resulting close involvement with the nuns presents problems for a community of professedly celibate men. The concern with community honor, and the conviction that women’s honor is intimately interlinked with it, overrides all other concerns even for Jain monastic communities. (shrink)

The authors identify a pervasive tendency, especially in the world of development and humanitarian response, to hierarchize or prioritize certain types of victims of sexual violence in armed conflict over others. Within this broader context, they focus on what a considered feminist acknowledgement of male victims of conflict-related sexual violence should look like. On the one hand, they emphasize that one and the same patriarchal template is used to humiliate and shame male and female victims of sexual (...) violence alike. On the other, they urge that in light of the pervasiveness of patriarchal ideology and its harmful and wide-reaching social effects, the time is not yet ripe to endorse a gender-blind approach to CRSV. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christ's Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi:A New Argument in Favor of the All-Male PriesthoodPaul Gondreau"One must be allowed to think about and discuss the issues.... [And on the issue of women's ordination] the discussion is still with us, it is still alive, and cannot be stifled [ersticken] by a paper [ein Papier]." So declares Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 2020, (...) where "a paper" refers to an apostolic letter, Pope St. John Paul II's 1994 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which definitively rules out the admissibility of women to priestly ordination.1 No doubt the archbishop was drawing inspiration from Cardinal Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who a month earlier had opined that arguments against women's ordination were becoming increasingly "weaker" (schwächer).2 In his capacity as president of the German bishops' conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing [End Page 805] of Limburg also pronounced on the issue in even more unabated terms; after insisting in June of the same year that Catholics can "continue to talk about the issue of women's ordination," he went further in an interview with the German magazine Herder Korrespondenz six months later: "There are well-developed arguments in theology in favor of opening up the sacramental ministry to women," he asserted, after declaring his desire for "change" (Veränderung), a change that he opined could begin with ordaining women as deacons before ordaining them as priests and bishops.3 Two years later, Bätzing remained adamant, going so far as to declare to speak in the name of the faith of the entire Church on this issue: "The sensus fidelium, that is, the sense of the faithful," he stated, "has moved on" (geht weiter).4 Since the deposit of faith, of which the sensus fidelium is expressive, does not and cannot "move on," that is, change, Bätzing's appeal to the sensus fidelium marks a curious—if also audacious—move, to say the least.It appears we are destined ever "to think about and discuss" the issue of women's ordination, no matter if the Holy Father himself, in the person of the John Paul II, should seek to quell this discussion in the strongest and most authoritative of terms: "In order that all doubt be removed regarding [this] matter," writes the Polish Pontiff, "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful" (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis §4).As regards John Paul II's assertion that his judgment is to be "definitively held" by all Catholics, it is worth recalling that, even if one high-ranking German churchman (Hesse) might esteem Ordinatio Sacerdotalis as [End Page 806] tantamount to ein Papier das erstickt, "a paper that stifles," another, Joseph Ratzinger (in his role as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], before becoming Pope Benedict XVI), holds up John Paul II's apostolic letter as expressive of the infallible teaching of the Church's ordinary magisterium and as "belonging to the deposit of faith." As such, the letter requires all Catholics, asserts Ratzinger, to offer their "definitive assent" to the Holy Father's pronouncement.5John Paul II and Ratzinger may as well have been talking to the wind. If Archbishop Hesse and his disparaging attitude—dismissing a papal apostolic letter as a paper that "stifles"—serves to indicate what "definitive assent" looks like, and if Bishop Bätzing can find that the deposit of faith (represented by the sensus fidelium), particularly as it concerns women's ordination, is able to "move on," it is no wonder that we find the issue "still alive." And recall Hesse and Bätzing hardly stand alone among German prelates in their willingness to ignore Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, as Cardinal Marx and the much touted German "synodal way" show (the archbishop of Luxembourg, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, could also be added to the list).6 Further, when Hesse asserts, "one must be allowed to think about and discuss [women's ordination]," there is little doubt that, for him and those... (shrink)

So Lentricchia has fulfilled one of his purposes in this essay. He has subverted the patriarchy from within: that is, he has subverted Bloom’s literary history as well as the essentialist feminism associated with it. But he has not fulfilled his affiliated purpose of establishing a dialogue between feminists and feminized males. The “feminization” of literary studies by patriarchal figures like Bloom does not account for the feminization of Stoddard, Gilder, Van Dyke, Woodberry, or Stedman. Their feminization, like that of (...) the Stevens who felt positively lady-like, was not the result of patriarchal oppression. And it will not disappear as the result of the subversion of the patriarchy by a feminized male. Mistaking the work of feminization with the work of the patriarch eradicates the feminine. By identifying the difference between a feminization produced by the patriarchy and a feminine cultural sphere, Lentricchia has made room for the different cultural conversation he wants to develop. But this conversation can take place only after the backdrop of an oppressive patriarch can drop away.This conversation might begin with an account of that cultural sphere in which women are the agency to which Lentricchia alludes. It might begin when we recall that the model for the culture’s “Emmeline Grangerfords” was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Little Eva. The social change Little Eva helped effect was the emancipation of both slaves and slaveholders. Donald E. Pease is professor of English and American literature at Dartmouth College. His articles on nineteenth-century authors and literature have appeared in a number of journals. He is the coeditor, with Walter Benn Michaels, of American Renaissance Reconsidered, and is the author of Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Contexts, which won the Mark H. Ingraham Prize in 1987. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spiritual AuthorityA Buddhist PerspectiveShenpen HookhamWhom Do Buddhists Look to for Spiritual Authority?I am taking spiritual authority in this context to refer to those to whom the tradition looks for authoritative guidance in regard to following the spiritual path. They constitute a category of people about whom, other than to recount their life stories and teachings, little has been written, even in traditional sources. Whether we call them saints, enlightened (...) or realized people, yogins, practitioners, or gurus, who they are, exactly, is difficult to define, and yet without them the tradition is spiritually dead.Reginald A. Ray, in his groundbreaking work Buddhist Saints in India (1999),1 points out how such people are and have always been important, both in the early tradition and in the developed tradition, even though their place has never been well defined. As we shall see in the course of this paper, it is perhaps impossible to define.Ray chooses to talk in terms of “saints” when referring to enlightened people, since their spiritual authority stems from their exemplary lives and extraordinary spiritual knowledge and powers. There are, however, degrees of enlightenment and realization, so I am choosing to refer to the whole range as yogins, with Mahāsiddhas at the top end in terms of experience and spiritual authority and “practitioners” at the bottom. The term yogin presupposes a yogic process with a body of knowledge and experience in regard to it. “Enlightenment” or “realization,” the fruit of the yogic process, refers to insight into the true nature of reality, which those with realization embody, giving them their spiritual authority.In this paper I shall be writing in general terms for the whole Buddhist tradition on the basis of many personal and in-depth encounters with yogins in all the main traditions. This is an area in need of much further research, and what I propose to do in this paper is to flag the issues and raise pertinent questions. My particular interest is how spiritual authority is going to work in the future, especially in the West now that the Buddhist tradition is establishing itself here. [End Page 121]The tendency in modern scholarship has been to assume that spiritual authority in Buddhism lies with monastics (especially male monastics), who teach and are supported by laypeople who look to them for spiritual guidance. Ray challenges this assumption, pointing out that, throughout history, the most genuine spiritual authority within the tradition is found in the Buddhist saints. These are the yogins, male or female, possibly living within or outside monastic institutions, following any number of lifestyles, be it as wandering renunciates, hermits, householders, or kings. Ray, therefore, in place of the twofold model of monks and lay supporters, speaks of a need for a threefold model, which includes the saints /yogins. This puts into a broader historical perspective, the modern trend for Western Buddhists to not automatically think of themselves as a laity dependent on the spiritual authority of monks.At the time of the Buddha, spiritual authority rested in him and his enlightened disciples. Ray refers to their lifestyle as that of wandering forest renunciates. Over time, Buddhism followed the same pattern as emerged in Brahmanic society with the forest renunciates settling near towns and villages so that a symbiotic relationship could develop between the monks and their lay supporters. As the Buddhist tradition moved from an oral to a written tradition, the monastery became the place of learning, where the texts were kept and a highly organized and ordered lifestyle could develop within and around the monastery, contrasting markedly with the freer, and presumably more diverse and spontaneous, lifestyles of the forest renunciates. Ray argues that, as the writers of texts and commentaries, the learned monks systematically rewrote the values and orientation of early Buddhism in favor of the settled, ordered, lifestyle of the monasteries, regarding the renunciate lifestyle as an exceptional, if not inferior, option. His point is that, in this way, spiritual authority moved from the enlightened wandering, renunciate teacher, such as the person of the Buddha, to scholar monks within the monastic organizational hierarchy. He argues that, in this way, the... (shrink)

The author explores whether Catholic hospitals should be required by law to perform augmentation mammaplasty on male-to-female transsexuals. The case involves a male-to-female transsexual who presented at a Catholic hospital for breast augmentation surgery. The hospital refused and was sued on the basis of aviolation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act. The hospital formulated a policy on how to deal with such cases in the future. It determined that the same standards thatapply to any woman be applied here, (...) since the mammaplasty was not part of the actual transgender surgery. The author argues that augmentation mammaplastyis part of the transgendering process and illicit for a Catholic hospital to perform. Legislation protecting Catholic hospitals from having to perform abortions shouldbe expanded to include transsexual reassignment surgery in all of its stages. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9.3 (Autumn 2009): 453–458. (shrink)

In this article the author argues that men and boys have been historically and structurally rendered an invisible group of victims in international human rights and policy responses towards conflict-related sexual violence stemming from the United Nations. The apparent female-focused approach of instruments on sexual violence is criticized followed by a discussion – through analysis and interviews with legal scholars and champions for the recognition of male survivors’ experiences – of the first ‘emergence’ of male victims in these (...) instruments and key actors involved in this process. The existing serious dichotomy between visible and invisible victims is prominently based on their ‘gender identity’ and leads to structural discrimination of male victims of rape or other forms of sexual violence. To overcome this situation and develop more inclusive instruments, a reconceptualization is needed of the meaning and use of words like ‘gender’ and ‘gender-based violence’. Additionally, a more intersectional approach to sexual violence should be adopted, understanding that victims have a multitude of identities such as ethnicity or religious affiliation that make them particularly vulnerable to suffering. (shrink)

Males are selectively afflicted with the neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders of childhood, a broad and virtually ubiquitous phenomenon that has not received proper attention in the biological study of sex differences. The previous literature has alluded to psychosocial differences, genetic factors and elements pertaining to male “complexity” and relative immaturity, but these are not deemed an adequate explanation for selective male affliction. The structure of sex differences in neurodevelopmental disorders is hypothesized to contain these elements: Males are more (...) frequently afflicted, females more severely; disorders arising in females are largely mediated by the genotype; in males, by a genotype by environment interaction; complications of pregnancy and delivery occur more frequently with male births; such complications are decisive and influence subsequent development. We hypothesize that there is something about the male fetus that evokes an inhospitable uterine environment. This “evocative principle” is hypothesized to relate to the relative antigenicity of the male fetus, which may induce a state of maternal immunoreactivity, leading either directly or indirectly to fetal damage. The immunoreactive theory thus constructed is borrowed from studies of sex ratios and is the only explanation consistent with negative parity effects in the occurrence of pregnancy complications and certain neurodevelopmental disorders. Although the theory is necessarily speculative, it is heuristic and hypotheses derived from it are proposed; some are confirmed in the existing literature and by the authors' research. (shrink)

INTRODUCTIONIs the non-therapeutic circumcision of infant males morally permissible? The most recent major development in this long-simmering debate was the 2012 release of a policy statement and technical report on circumcision by the American Academy of Pediatrics . In these documents, the US paediatricians’ organisation claimed that the potential health benefits of infant circumcision now outweigh the risks and costs. They went on to suggest that their analysis could be taken to justify the decision of parents to choose circumcision for (...) their incompetent children.1Circumcision and ‘health benefits’The AAP's pronouncement unleashed a firestorm of commentary, much of it censorious. In this issue, human rights attorney J Steven Svoboda and Professor of Clinical Paediatrics Robert Van Howe take the AAP to taski for committing numerous significant errors, both in their analysis of relevant evidence and in basic medical-ethical reasoning.3 In addition, an independent international panel—composed of 38 leading paediatricians, paediatric surgeons, urologists, medical ethicists and heads of hospital boards and children's health societies—has likewise condemned the findings of the AAP. Writing in the journal Pediatrics, these authors state: "Only one of the arguments put forward by the American Academy of Pediatrics has some theoretical relevance in relation to infant male circumcision; namely, the possible protection against urinary tract infections in infant boys, which can easily be treated with antibiotics without tissue loss. The other claimed health benefits, including protection against HIV/AIDS, genital herpes, genital warts, and penile cancer, are questionable, weak, and likely to have little public health relevance in a Western context, and they do not represent compelling reasons for surgery before boys are old enough to decide for themselves.4"My own analysis of the AAP documents—and of ‘health benefits’ defences of circumcision generally—can be found elsewhere.5 Let me turn my attention in this editorial, then, to …. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of the recently revised BMA guidance on routine neonatal male circumcision and seeks to challenge the assumptions underpinning the guidance which construe this procedure as a matter of parental choice. Our aim is to problematise continued professional willingness to tolerate the non-therapeutic, non-consensual excision of healthy tissue, arguing that in this context both professional guidance and law are uncharacteristically tolerant of risks inflicted on young children, given the absence of clear medical benefits. By interrogating (...) historical medical explanations for this practice, which continue to surface in contemporary justifications of non-consensual male circumcision, we demonstrate how circumcision has long existed as a procedure in need of a justification. We conclude that it is ethically inappropriate to subject children—male or female—to the acknowledged risks of circumcision and contend that there is no compelling legal authority for the common view that male circumcision is lawful. (shrink)

Black males have been characterized as violent, misogynist, predatory rapists by gender theorists dating back to mid-nineteenth–century ethnologists to contemporary intersectional feminists. These caricatures of Black men and boys are not rooted in any actual studies or empirical findings, but the stereotypes found throughout various racist social scientific literatures that held Black males to be effeminate while nonetheless hyper-masculine and delinquent. This paper argues that contemporary gender theories not only deny the peculiar sexual oppression of racialized outgroup males under patriarchy, (...) but theories like intersectional invisibility actually perpetuates the idea that racialized males are disposable. To remedy the imperceptibility of sexual oppression and violence under the male category, the author gives an historical account of the development of racist (anti-Black) misandry throughout the centuries and proposes a theory of phallicism to describe the seemingly contradictory constructions of Black men as sexually predatory as in the case of the rapist, but nonetheless sexually vulnerable and raped under patriarchy. (shrink)

Across the African continent, women's rights have become integral to international declarations, regional treaties, national legislation, and grassroots activism. Yet there is little research on how African men have understood these shifts and how African masculinities are implicated in such changes. Drawing on a year of ethnographic research in the Ugandan capital Kampala, this article investigates how ordinary men and women in Uganda understand women's rights and how their attitudes are tied to local conceptions of masculinity. The author argues that (...) a new configuration of gender relations is evident in urban Uganda—one that accommodates some aspects of women's rights while retaining previous notions of innate male authority. This article therefore illustrates the complex and often contradictory engagements with human rights that occur in local contexts and how such engagements are shaped by—and are shaping—gender relations, including conceptions of masculinity. (shrink)

This research investigates the representations of gendered social actors within the subversionary discourse of equal educational opportunities for males and females in Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) books. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the theoretical framework, the authors blend van Leeuwen’s (Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis, Routledge, London, 2003) ‘Social Actor Network Model’ and Sunderland’s (Gendered discourses, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, 2004) ‘Gendered Discourses Model’ in order to examine the depictions of male and (...) female social actors within this gendered discourse. The gendered discourse of equal opportunities was buttressed by such representations within a tight perspective in proportion to gender ideologies prevailing in Iran. Resorting to CDA, we can claim that resistance against such gendered discourse in Iranian EFL textbooks militates against such gender norms. These representations of male and female social actors in school books are indicative of an all-encompassing education, reinforcing that the discourse of equal opportunities is yet to be realized in the education system of Iran. (shrink)

A number of recently published studies by reformist-minded Muslim scholars have both questioned the normative nature of and emphasized the need to rethink some of the fundamental assumptions and interpretational models governing traditional Islamic legal theories and ethics. As part of this process they have emphasized the need to develop novel Islamic hermeneutics. One major element in this emergence of novel Islamic hermeneutics is the production of an increased number of what I term ‘gender equality affirmative scholarship on Islam’. What (...) is particularly interesting, if not intriguing, from the perspective of the author of this article is that the scholarship on gender equality affirmative interpretations of Islam is theorized by reformist-minded Muslim male scholars at historically unprecedented levels which is what this study seeks to highlight. This article examines the arguments employed by three prominent contemporary Muslim male reformist scholars, both Shī’ī and Sunnī, in developing gender equality affirmative interpretations of Islam – Nasr Abu Zayd, Mohsen Kadivar, and Khaled Abou El Fadl. The focus on male scholars in this article is intentional and seeks to highlight the most fundamental point and indeed the raison d’être behind it, namely to underscore the historically unprecedented support Muslim male scholars are providing to the development of feminist interpretations of Islam. (shrink)

While it represents a common form of gender-based violence, misogyny is an often-overlooked concept within academia and the queer community. Drawing on queer and feminist scholarship on gay male misogyny, this article presents a theoretical challenge to the myth that the oppressed cannot oppress, arguing that specific forms of gay male subjectivities can be proponents of misogyny in ways that are unrecognised because of their sexually marginalised status. The authors’ interest in the doing of misogyny, and its (...) effects on specific bodies and subjectivities, leads them to discuss the extent to which white gay male misogyny can function to reinforce a particular gender and racial hierarchy that continually confines queer femininities to the status of the abject other, for failing to exhibit their feminine credentials and for making gender trouble. The study also addresses how specific markers of femininity are depoliticised through the workings of this misogyny, exploring what femininity does when it is conceptualised outside a heteronormative framework. To address these ideas, the authors firstly propose a theoretical account of misogyny in order to understand its analytical status as a cultural mechanism within the psychic economy of patriarchy. Secondly, they use queer approaches to effeminacy and subject formation for making the case for gay male misogyny and its connections to femininity within white gay cultures, asking how misogyny might become an essential component of the performance of hegemonic masculinity. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which gay male misogyny reinforces white male dominance over women and queer femininities specifically, advocating for resistance to the reproduction of such patriarchal arrangements. (shrink)

This paper looks at transgender identities and the law in the context of marriage in common law jurisdictions. It particularly focuses on the nature and sources of authority over word meaning as well as the role of language and definition in classifying transgender individuals into a legal category. When it comes to the legal question of who may marry whom, and what the terms “man” and “woman” actually refer to, there is no statutory definition of the terms “man”, “woman”, “ (...) class='Hi'>male” and “female”. This has put the onus on judges, especially those who needed to decide whether a transgender person can marry in his/her affirmed sex, to interpret these terms. Two lines of cases in transgender jurisprudence are examined so as to have a close study of how the courts construed these terms and classified transgender people into a category. The first concerns United Kingdom cases, namely Corbett v Corbett, Bellinger v Bellinger and the Hong Kong case W v Registrar of Marriages, &. The second consists of Australian cases such as Secretary, Department of Social Security v State Rail Authority and Re Kevin. This paper discusses these issues by analyzing and comparing different cases in transgender jurisprudence as well as examining how these issues play out in contemporary Hong Kong. (shrink)

With the active involvement of women in the church and home, there is a need to study God’s design for the relationship between men and women. In reaffirming the divine order of this relationship, discussing the biblical gendered roles has been one of the major contending issues. So emerging ecclesiologies in Africa are beginning to challenge the traditional understanding of male headship in the church. Therefore, the article argues that the ontology of men and women’s relationship provides a better (...) framework for understanding the nature of authority and submission in the church. This article states fairly the biblical foundation for the ontology of male and female relationship in the church from both the complementarian and egalitarian views. Also, this article presents the male and female relationship in contemporary African ecclesiology. Furthermore, the article contends that the application of the biblical foundation for the relationship between men and women provides a strong framework for authority and submission in the church, which reaffirms the male headship. The goal of the article is to use the biblical framework for the ontology of the relationships between men and women to propose a theology of authority and submission in the church without undermining the nature and worth of men and women, who are both created in the image and likeness of God. A qualitative methodology was used for this article, which integrates both primary and secondary sources to delineate the thesis of the study. Contribution: This article contributes to the area of ecclesiology in Africa, which shows that the theology of the church is relevant for engaging cutting-edge issues, such as gender studies, human relations and personhood. It explains the influence and implications of the ontology of gender relationship on authority and submission in the church to affirm human dignity and equality in the church. (shrink)

Autism, typically described as a spectrum neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in verbal ability and social reciprocity as well as obsessive or repetitious behaviours, is currently thought to markedly affect more males than females. Not surprisingly, this encourages a gendered understanding of the Autism Spectrum. Simon Baron-Cohen, a prominent authority in the field of autism research, characterizes the male brain type as biased toward systemizing. In contrast, the female brain type is understood to be biased toward empathizing. Since persons (...) with autism are characterized as hyper-systemizers and hypo-empathizers, Baron-Cohen suggests that, whether they are male or female, most possess an “extreme male brain profile.” We argue that Baron-Cohen is misled by an unpersuasive gendering of certain capacities or aptitudes in the human population. Moreover, we suggest that this may inadvertently favour boys in diagnosing children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. If this is correct, it could also have rather serious consequences for treatment and services for girls (and women) on the Autism Spectrum. (shrink)

The wealthy elite males of nineteenth-century Krummhörn (Ostfriesland, Germany) achieved an above-average reproductive success. Membership in the elite class was determined from a list of the 300 richest men in the Ostfriesland district compiled by authorities in 1812. The main components establishing the link between cultural success and reproductive success aredifferences in the number of offspring owing to differences both in time spent in fecund marriage (mating success) and in rate of reproduction;differences in the probabilities of one’s adult offspring marrying (...) locally vs. emigrating unmarried owing to differential ability to allocate resources that enhance the “social placement” of adult offspring; anddifferences in the probability of total reproductive failure (lineage extinction).Contrary to what might be expected, infant survivorship was lowest amongst the richest families. We conclude that to a great extent females’ reproductive decisions contribute to the greater reproductive success of the elite males. (shrink)

In this volume we provide rich examples of non-western philosophy written by women over the last four thousand years. We begin by defining the scope of our non-western terrain: philosophy created outside the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian traditions. The philosophers who are the subjects of inquiry here hail from places as distant as pre-colonial Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australia. Together with our expert contributing authors we demonstrate through inquiry and analysis how these women philosophers advanced human thought about profound issues, (...) some to include the nature and treatment of women themselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.2 (2001) 35-48 [Access article in PDF] Film, Freud, and ParanoiaDalí and the Representation of Male Desire in An Andalusian Dog Ignacio Javier López An Andalusian Dog, one of the most universally acclaimed films in cinema history, is frequently mentioned by critics as a privileged point of reference for the Surrealist rebellion. The film remains enigmatic to this day. Criticism has concentrated on the validity and effectiveness (...) of its images to exemplify the avant-garde attack against social conventions and against the exclusive dominance of rationality in epistemology and social discourse. But this contextual approach does not take account of the script's fragmented narrative, which finds support in Freud's psychoanalytical theories and articulates a radical proposal for identity and culture. Largely neglected by critics, this narrative has been highly influential in the history of cinema. An Andalusian Dog is central to a long list of films that explore different aspects of the irrational, among them Jean Cocteau's Le sang du poète, Hunt Stromberg's The Strange Woman, Guy Debord's script Howling in Favor of the Marquis de Sade, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs, and Philip Kaufman's Quills. This impressive list underscores the need for an interpretative critical effort that accounts for the authors' proposal in the context of the Surrealist reaction to convention and tradition.Conventionally An Andalusian Dog has been viewed as a film about sexuality; I suggest that sexuality appears in the film as the pretext for a discussion of the threat sexual desire poses for male identity. In this respect, the film develops ideas that begin to appear in paintings completed by Dalí after his initial contact with Freud's works in the mid-1920s. These paintings display male identity as a fragile form of subsistence unfolding between two alternate forces, desire and fear: the desire for sexual realization and the opposed fear that sexual intercourse will conclude in disease and ultimately in death. Given the scarcity of Buñuel's production prior to 1929, I suggest that Dalí's monumental production of paintings during these years served as a preliminary visual point of reference for the design of some of the images in An Andalusian Dog.By concentrating on Dalí's work, I do not mean to suggest that he deserves exclusive credit for the film; a careful examination of Buñuel's writings clearly indicates that the movie included most of his interests as well. Nonetheless, I would like to correct what has become a common trend in the study of An Andalusian Dog. In the early 1940s, Buñuel and Dalí's friendship came to an abrupt end, and in the following years each claimed sole authorship for the ideas in the film. The conflict between the two artists contaminated critical attitudes, which were guided exclusively by Buñuel's pre-1929 writings on cinema. The recurrence of images in the filmmaker's subsequent work was employed to confirm critics' initial intuitions that the film was exclusively Buñuel's. As a result, Dalí's name became increasingly dissociated from the movie, as is illustrated by the absence of the painter's name on the cover of the English edition of the script. However, the antagonism that separated the artists more than ten years after An [End Page 35] [Begin Page 37] Andalusian Dog premiered in Paris on June 6, 1929, should not be a consideration in our critical understanding of this work. Although Buñuel directed the movie and deserves to be recognized for his undeniable input, we should not forget that he eagerly sought the painter's cooperation in writing the script. Moreover, contrary to Buñuel's later practice of frequently altering the initial script during the course of the film's production, An Andalusian Dog closely follows the original plan. This furthers the idea of the importance of Dalí's contribution, and, despite the opposing claims made by both artists in later years, it certainly appears... (shrink)

Routine infant circumcision is one of the most common surgical procedures performed in the U.S. Despite its broad societal acceptance, the practice is not without controversy. The stories included in this symposium offer rich insight into the diverse set of attitudes, values, and beliefs related to the practice of circumcision. They additionally offer insight into the complex web of personal, interpersonal, and social dynamics that inform the circumcision choices parents make for their children, the reasons parents make them, and how (...) others can influence decisional choices. More broadly, these narratives raise important ethical questions mirrored today in broader contemporary bioethical and public discourse on the scope and limits of parental authority to make decisions for their children, power dynamics in medical decision making, and the ethics of healthcare activism. In this commentary, I discuss three sets of themes related to the ethics of circumcision running through the symposium narratives, comment on the ethical tensions and questions which emerge from each set of themes, gently problematize some of the rhetoric surrounding the ethical permissibility of circumcision, and gesture towards the future of bioethical inquiry on circumcision discourse. (shrink)

This article aims to interpret an annual initiation ritual celebrated in Hellenistic Phaistos , at a festival known as the Ekdusia, in which young men had to put on women's clothes and swear an oath of citizenship before they could graduate from the civic youth corps and enter the society of adult male citizens. It begins by reconstructing the ritual and situating it within its historical and social context. It then reviews the two major theories which have been used (...) to explain transvestism in Greek initiation-structuralist and psychological-and attempts to expose their shortcomings. The author remedies the difficulty with the structuralist approach-its focus on abstract symbols divorced from their social context-by understanding the ritual change of clothes at the Ekdusia in terms of the radical gender segregation in Cretan society and the gradual transition Cretan boys made from feminine spaces to masculine spaces in both city and home. The author remedies the main problem with the psychological approach-its focus on the psychological dynamic between mother and son rather than the motivations of the rite's adult male sponsors-by looking at how adult men, particularly in modern non-Greek societies which hold initiation rites, understand male adolescent development and create rituals in accordance therewith. This comparative model shows how men in gender-segregated societies think of boys as feminine themselves and believe that their masculine development is at risk if they are not rescued from the dangerous feminine realm, and forced to undergo a combination of defeminization and masculinization rituals. Although there is no direct evidence to suggest that Greek men thought of boys' transition rites in this way, the myths told about three different figures named Leukippos, related directly and indirectly to the Ekdusia, reveal this pattern of thought in its full form. (shrink)

Surprisingly, when Laurence Sterne’s Yorick sets his head toward Dover, it is with no developed motive of connoisseurship or curiosity: the gentleman dandy ups with his portmanteau at the merest glance of “civil triumph” from a male servant. Perhaps we are in the world of P. G. Wodehouse, with a gentleman’s gentleman who happens, like Jeeves, to be the embodiment of all the prescriptive and opportunistic shrewdness necessary to maintain his master’s innocent privileges—but it is impossible to tell; the (...) servant utters his five words, glances his glance, and disappears from the novel. The prestige that has lent force to his misprision—or is it a sneer?—seems to belong not to a particular personality but to a position, a function , a bond between gentleman and gentleman’s gentleman that, throughout this novel, makes up in affective and class significance what it lacks in utilitarian sense. Yorick’s bond to another valet is the most sustained and one of the fondest in the novel; and, for most of the novel, the bond is articulated through various forms of the conquest and exchange of women.In the discussion ahead, I will be using the “exchange of women” paradigm taken from Claude Lévi-Strauss and, for example, René Girard and Gayle Rubin, to focus on the changing meanings of the bonds between men in a seventeenth-century play and an eighteenth-century novel.1 These discussions are part of a book-length study of what I am calling “male homosocial desire”—the whole spectrum of bonds between men, including friendship, mentorship, rivalry, institutional subordination, homosexual genitality, and economic exchange—within which the various forms of the traffic in women take place. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is associate professor of English at Amherst College. She is the author of Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. (shrink)

In Equal Citizenship and Public Reason, Watson and Hartley dispute the claim that Rawls’s doctrine of political liberalism must tolerate gender hierarchy because it counts conservative and orthodox religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I argue that their defense in fact contains two arguments, both of which fail. The first, which I call the “Deliberative Equality Argument”, fails because it does not establish conclusively that political liberalism’s demand for equal citizenship forbids social practices of domination, as the authors contend. The (...) second, which I call the “Equal Liberties Argument”, fails because it supports a particular version of political liberalism and not the doctrine itself. (shrink)

BackgroundDouble-blind peer review has been proposed as a possible solution to avoid implicit referee bias in academic publishing. The aims of this study are to analyse the demographics of corresponding authors choosing double-blind peer review and to identify differences in the editorial outcome of manuscripts depending on their review model.MethodsData includes 128,454 manuscripts received between March 2015 and February 2017 by 25 Nature-branded journals. We investigated the uptake of double-blind review in relation to journal tier, as well as gender, (...) country, and institutional prestige of the corresponding author. We then studied the manuscripts’ editorial outcome in relation to review model and author’s characteristics. The gender (male, female, or NA) of the corresponding authors was determined from their first name using a third-party service (Gender API). The prestige of the corresponding author’s institutions was measured from the data of the Global Research Identifier Database (GRID) by dividing institutions in three prestige groups with reference to the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) ranking. We employed descriptive statistics for data exploration, and we tested our hypotheses using Pearson’s chi-square and binomial tests. We also performed logistic regression modelling with author update, out-to-review, and acceptance as response, and journal tier, author gender, author country, and institution as predictors.ResultsAuthor uptake for double-blind submissions was 12% (12,631 out of 106,373). We found a small but significant association between journal tier and review type (p value < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.054, df = 2). We had gender information for 50,533 corresponding authors and found no statistically significant difference in the distribution of peer review model between males and females (p value = 0.6179). We had 58,920 records with normalised institutions and a THE rank, and we found that corresponding authors from the less prestigious institutions are more likely to choose double-blind review (p value < 0.001, df = 2, Cramer’s V = 0.106). In the ten countries with the highest number of submissions, we found a large significant association between country and review type (p value < 0.001, df = 10, Cramer’s V = 0.189). The outcome both at first decision and post review is significantly more negative (i.e. a higher likelihood for rejection) for double-blind than single-blind papers (p value < 0.001, df = 1, Cramer’s V = 0.112 for first decision; p value < 0.001; df = 1, Cramer’s V = 0.082 for post-review decision).ConclusionsThe proportion of authors that choose double-blind review is higher when they submit to more prestigious journals, they are affiliated with less prestigious institutions, or they are from specific countries; the double-blind option is also linked to less successful editorial outcomes. (shrink)

This article brings insights from feminist science and technology studies to bear on recent public debates over the human papillomavirus vaccine, which prevents many cervical cancers, and male circumcision as potential HIV preventive. In the United States, attempts to mandate HPV vaccination have activated intense concerns about female “promiscuity,” whereas talk of promoting circumcision against HIV has triggered scant anxiety about American boys’ sexuality. The authors show how intersections among gender, sexuality, race, and age have shaped responses to (...) these two containment technologies—and how the technologies’ deployment both relies on and reproduces meanings of gender and sexuality that constitute the omnipresent “double standard.” The analysis develops an original feminist sociology of containment, explicating how social relations shape the innovation, reinvention, and use of technologies to contain particular sorts of bodies, fluids, and sexual practices—by whom, under what conditions, and for what purposes. (shrink)

Using in-depth interviews, I analyze the military medical inspections that conscripts in Turkey are required to undergo if they request an exemption from compulsory military service based on their homosexuality. The inspections respond to the Turkish military’s two main needs: Through these inspections, on the one hand, the military attempts to exclude feminine/dangerous bodies threatening its order based on homosocial bonding, thereby maintaining its role in the production of hegemonic masculinity in Turkey; on the other hand, through refining and proliferating (...) surveillance mechanisms, the Turkish military seeks to prevent the conscripts from earning unjust exemption by pretending to be homosexual. By complicating Foucault’s account of medical authority, I aim to make sense of the interplay of these objectives and discuss the fragile medical processes through which the military extends its reach into the male population in Turkey. This article makes a contribution to our understanding of how the military, medical, and cultural notions of homosexuality intersect in governing hegemonic masculinity in Turkey. (shrink)

Writing About a Woman Writer's Writing: On Gender Identification and Being a Male Critic of Carol Shields's Work This essay takes as its starting point my experience as a male critic of Carol Shields's work. Throughout the researching and writing of my PhD on Shields, I have noted with curiosity the surprise registered by many people upon discovering that a male critic would choose to write about the work of a female author. This reaction, confirmed by other (...) male academics working on female authors, raises a number of interesting questions. What does it mean for a male critic to write about the work of a female author? Why is this still considered surprising, unusual, even strange? Is this view symptomatic of the kind of disturbing devaluation of women's fiction that Shields herself explores so candidly in her final novel Unless? I suggest that the anti-feminist backlash, and the profitable establishment of popular literary genres such as "Chick Lit" and "Lad Lit," have led to a retrogressive "hardening" of gender roles within popular culture, one which endorses a simplistic relationship between author and audience, presuming that texts "by" women must necessarily be "for" women only. Situated within the context of Shields's own professed ambivalence about her status as a "women's writer," and drawing on the theories of Emma Wilson, the essay attempts to broaden out into a wider reflection upon issues of gender and identification within contemporary literary culture. Shields's work, I argue, subverts assumptions about gendered reading patterns, encouraging through its polyphony and its use of dual narrators a mobile and flexible reading experience which allows the reader to inhabit a range of perspectives and to read productively across gender binaries. (shrink)

This paper explores gender barriers to the formation of the female mentor – male protégé relationship. The authors consider both physiological as well as social gender as a way to help understand the scarcity of these relationships. A number of gender-related factors are considered, including organizational demographics, relational demography, sexual liaisons, gender stereotypes, gender behaviors, and power dynamics. The paper concludes with directions for future research that will help provide further insights into the development and success of the (...) female mentor – male protégé relationship. (shrink)

Let Rhoda Speak Again: Identity, Uncertainty, and Authority in Virginia Woolf's The Waves Performing a rereading of Virginia Woolf's 1931 experimental modernist masterpiece of The Waves, in this article I focus on the elusive and conflicted character of Rhoda, whose significance has been either overlooked or marginalized in the available criticism of the narrative. By pointing out a number of problems in the existing scholarship devoted to Rhoda, I propose to define her as a transgressive figure of uncertainty through which (...) Woolf develops a critique of the unitary self. My point of departure for the following essay is Toril Moi's perspective on Woolf's oeuvre as openly feminist and deconstructive. Consequently, I begin with Moi's emphasis on Woolf's commitment to the problematization of the Western male humanism's underlying concept of the unitary self. Drawing from a number of critical and philosophical perspectives, I turn to Kim L. Worthington's idea of subjectivity as a sustained process of interpersonal narrativization in order to offer a more nuanced account of Rhoda's identity as compound and implicated in the dynamics of inter-subjective processes. I also consider Rhoda's much criticized rejection of identity vis-à-vis Woolf's strategy of impersonality, and, contrasting it with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concepts of the flesh and anonymous existence, I contend that Rhoda renounces the unitary selfhood, which corroborates Moi's critique of Woolf. Through a close analysis of Rhoda's position versus the other characters, as well as by examining how Rhoda's ego boundaries are delineated in the narrative, I demonstrate that Woolf's conflicted heroine emerges as an astute critic of gendered reality, since she is the one who most acutely feels the dualistic nature of selfhood and it is chiefly through her that Woolf points to the need to overcome this dualism. Shannon Sullivan's feminist revision of the Merleau-Pontian perspective on the anonymity and the body as well as the Deweyan notion of transactionality further helps to elucidate the ways in which Rhoda's experimental and subversive discourse engages in a polemic with the Cartesian conceptualization of identity presupposed on the dualism of mind and body simultaneously inquiring about a possibility of a non-dualistic and non-unitary conception of subjectivity. As a consequence, Rhoda gains authority and agency through uncertainty which prompts her to adopt an uncompromisingly and insistently questioning stance. Finally, I suggest reconsidering Rhoda's suicide as a metaphorical act of ‘distancing,’ as discussed by Zygmunt Bauman, via Adorno, in his 2006 Liquid Fear, another context for approaching Rhoda's uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to look at the concept of embodiment in relation to incarnation and the maleness of Christ. It explores how feminist authors continue a critical engagement with Christology trying to carry on the retelling of Jesus' story. It appears that embodiment might play a crucial role as feminist theology tries to theorize the maleness of Christ and to consider it positively. The paper suggests that engagement with the maleness of Christ as prophetic could be beneficial (...) in a further search for symbolization of the divine through male and female bodies. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to examine Aristotle's puzzling and contentious claim inPolitics1.13 that the deliberative faculty in women is ‘without authority’ :The freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different ways. For the slave lacks the deliberative faculty altogether; the woman has it, but it (...) is without authority, and the child has it, but it is immature. (shrink)

Though it is often taken for granted that feminists necessarily must condemn the exclusion of women from the Roman Catholic priesthood, the author demonstrates that the "politics of difference," if pursued consistently, reopens this question. International feminist arguments for honoring gender differences, the teachings of John Paul II concerning women, and Catholic social justice teachings, taken jointly, suggest that the current Catholic exclusion of women from the priesthood is unjust not because the reservation of a social role to a single (...) sex is inherently unacceptable, but because of the asymmetry in power between the roles accorded men and women in the governance of the Catholic Church. To be just, sex-specific reservation of roles must meet the criteria of balance, proportion, power, and particularity. (shrink)

The increased visibility of feminism in mainstream culture has recently been noted, with the presence of both online and offline campaigns embedding feminist claims in a variety of everyday spaces. By granting recognition to women’s experiences, these campaigns continue the feminist practice of generating critical knowledge on the basis of gendered experience. In the post-truth era, however, the norms governing claims-making are being significantly reconstructed, with significant consequences for critiques of gender inequality. It is argued here that these norms are (...) linked directly to a wider context of anti-feminism in which dismissing women’s claims is consistent with the goal that opponents of gender equality have of seeking and consolidating epistemic power in the face of what is perceived as systemic male disadvantage and victimhood. Returning to earlier debates within feminism, it is argued that the kinds of post-truth rhetoric used to dismiss women’s experience provide a challenge that feminism must confront. This rhetoric is often grounded in the authenticity of individual experience; however, experience cannot provide unmediated access to truth and, therefore, cannot provide the foundation for feminist claims. On the other hand, experience cannot merely offer one of many contested versions of ‘reality’. The excesses of both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist epistemology are countered with the argument that cognition is a human practice mediated by theoretical propositions which illuminate the question of what can be known. This is the role played by feminist theory in defending the role of experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prophecy and Authority in the TrachiniaiLaurel Bowman(Tr. 1278)When deianeira goes silently offstage to her death at line 812 of Trachiniai, she removes herself from her husband's story. Her mistake was in thinking it was hers. Despite her emotionally riveting presence at center stage for well over half the play, her focus (and thus that of her audience) is always on Herakles, absent or present. Her only concern, throughout the (...) play, is Herakles' whereabouts, his welfare, and his relationship to her. But the prediction1 which Deianeira thinks she understands, and on which she acts so fatally, concerns his fate and not her own. Even though the prophecies concerning Herakles depend on Deianeira's actions for their resolution, none mention her; their focus is the end of Herakles' labors, and once she has performed her function in their fulfillment her further actions are irrelevant. Her death, like Klytemnestra's in Sophocles' Elektra, is not significant enough to warrant a prophecy of its own. The prophecies of Trachiniai concern only the fates of males.2 [End Page 335]My focus in this essay is the use of predictive speech in Trachiniai. I will show that the speech of Nessos to Deianeira functions as a parallel to the prophecies in the play. A prediction is authorized as a "prophecy" by the same social mechanism which defines a child as "legitimate." Relying on an unauthorized prediction is thus, in Trachiniai, represented as analogous to stepping outside authorized marital bonds. Deianeira's attempt at independent action, in that it relies on the speech of Nessos, is equivalent to infidelity and is therefore destructive, a definition which is strengthened by the description of her behavior as destructive in specifically feminine ways. The final prophecy of the play negates Deianeira's role in previous events. Prophecy in Trachiniai is thus used both to define independent action in women as destructive, and ultimately, to exclude them from it.There are two sources of predictive speech in the play, but only one, Zeus, is said to produce "prophecy" (, 77, 1165). The predictive speech of the other, Nessos, is simply called instructions, or laws (, 568–69;, 682). are a particular kind of predictive speech–act; the term is used in Sophocles and elsewhere to refer specifically to those predictions which come from a source with the appropriate authority for making. In Homer the term is used once (Od. 12.272), of a prophecy made by Tiresias, who is elsewhere (e.g., OT 410) described as inspired by Apollo. In Herodotus and Thucydides only responses from oracular shrines (usually Delphi) are termed (e.g., Hdt. 1.46–1.53, 1.91; Thuc. 1.25, 1.28, and elsewhere). In the tragedians are likewise either responses from oracular shrines (e.g., Aesch. Eum. 716, Eur. Hipp. 236, IT 1255), or, more rarely, speeches of seers inspired by Apollo (Aesch. Ag. 1215, of Kassandra). Sophocles outside the Trachiniai follows the same usage: are most frequently responses from an oracular shrine, usually Delphi (e.g., OT 21, 149, 407, 481, 857; OC 453), or, more rarely, are predictive speeches of an Apollo–inspired seer (OT 394, of Tiresias). To be [End Page 336] termed, in short, it is not enough that predictive speeches come true; they must also have a divine or explicitly divinely inspired source. Just as a child is defined as "legitimate" by reason of his relationship to a father who is authorized3 to produce legitimate children, and who acknowledges the children as his, so predictive speeches become through their relationship to an authorized and acknowledging source. are predictive speeches to which a constructed legitimacy has been attached.Zeus is constructed in the Trachiniai as an authorized source of legitimate predictions,. He occupies the position at the pinnacle of the hierarchical structure in the play, both as ruler of the gods and as Herakles' father. As ruler of the gods in general, and more specifically as the god most nearly concerned with the events represented in Trachiniai, he is called upon more often than any other divinity in the play.4 Zeus is called "father of all" (, 275). He is the god most often invoked in prayer... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the HeroidesGenevieve LiveleyLaurel Fulkerson. The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xii + 187 pp. Cloth, $75.Ovid's Heroides have traditionally received mixed reviews from readers and critics. John Dryden famously regarded them as Ovid's "most perfect piece" of poetry, but he too saw imperfections in the collection. In (...) the preface to his [End Page 286] own English translation of the Heroides, he suggested that Ovid's heroines are not altogether plausible as abandoned women, observing that they "are not too miserable to make puns" and that they frequently "speak more eloquently than the violence of their passion would admit." Grant Showerman, similarly writing "in appreciation of the Heroides," offered the type of qualified praise that has now become commonplace in contemporary criticism of the letters, claiming that "The Heroides are not a work of the highest order of genius. Their language, nearly always artificial, frequently rhetorical, and often diffuse, is the same throughout—whether from the lips of barbarian Medea or Sappho the poetess." L. P. Wilkinson, whose project to rescue Ovid's literary reputation in Ovid Recalled heralded the dawn of a modern renaissance in Ovidian studies, likewise damned the Heroides with faint praise. He notoriously described the work as a stodgy "plum pudding," declaring that "the first slice is appetizing enough, but each further slice becomes colder and less digestible."Cutting against this trend, Laurel Fulkerson's new book shows how tastes in the Ovidian world have changed. Building upon recent studies (specifically those by Efi Spentzou and Sara Lindheim) that have confirmed the status of the written women of Ovid's Heroides as reading and writing women, The Ovidian Heroine as Author offers a new approach to reading Ovid's heroines and their letters. Across seven chapters, with an appendix on "The authenticity (and "authenticity") of Heroides 15," bibliography, index, and index locorum, this slender volume sets out to reevaluate the Heroides as both an inter- and intratextual community of authors and readers.The Heroides are configured unequivocally as love letters from Penelope to Ulysses, Briseis to Achilles, and so on. Yet the heroines' letters frequently appear to be directed to other Heroidean readers: Oenone's letter to Paris posits Helen as a potential (mis)reader, Hermione's letter to Orestes also speaks directly to her mother Helen, and Hypsipyle's letter to Jason seems also to be addressed to her rival Medea. What is more, the heroines repeatedly write of their fears that their letters will never reach their "intended" (male) readers, that they will be deliberately intercepted or fall into the hands of the wrong (female) readers, that they will be misread or—worse still—not read. A love letter's direct and intimate exchange between its writer and addressee is compromised in each of the Heroides, complicating issues of (mis)reading and (mis)interpretation. Fulkerson is convinced that the Heroides deliberately and self-reflexively provoke questions about their own textual and intertextual status. She sees the heroines as puellae doctae who "self-consciously fashion themselves as alluding authors influenced by what they read" (2), namely, the other epistles in Ovid's collection. Fulkerson argues, like Kauffman, that the "correspondences between the correspondents" are key both to understanding the poetics of the Heroides and to redeeming Ovid and his heroines from charges of repetition and reduplication in their writing.Chapter 1 focuses on Heroides 2 and Phyllis' dangerous (mis)reading of the epistles of Dido, Ariadne, and Medea. Here, Fulkerson cleverly exploits Phyllis' own reading strategies (and her resultant self-positioning as an abandoned [End Page 287] heroine just like Dido et al.) to demonstrate the kind of external "misreading" that, Fulkerson claims, this epistle has traditionally invited. Readers who see Heroides 2 (and, indeed, the collection as a whole) as repetitive and imitative repeat Phyllis' reading mistakes: Phyllis erroneously reads her own situation as reduplicating that of Ovid's other hopeless heroines, blind to the subtle and positive differences among them. Phyllis, then, Fulkerson suggests, offers us "a model of how (not) to read the Heroides" (39).In... (shrink)

Academic accounting researchers often offer anecdotal evidence that the publishing process is rife with unfair and unethical practices, and similar contradictory evidence supports accounting journal editors' claims that the process is fair and ethical. This study compares the perceptions of accounting authors and editors on the ethicacy and frequency of specific author, editor and reviewer practices. Both authors and editors are in general agreement about the ethical nature of editors and author practices. However, there are significant differences between (...) the groups regarding reviewer behavior, and regarding the frequency of occurrence of questionable author, editor and reviewer practices. Additionally, the majority of authors believe that codes of publishing ethics are needed, while editors do not. Women authors are significantly more supportive of such ethical codes when compared to their male counterparts. (shrink)