Construction and Reflection of Androgynous Gender in Discourse “A Study of Unique Discursive Practices of Hijra Community of Lahore, Pakistan”

This study is an attempt to shed some light on the distinctive discursive practices of the Hijra (eunuch or hermaphrodite) communities located mostly if not all in the suburb of Lahore. These discursive practices serve as a source to construct and reflect their androgynous gender on different levels of their social discourse, ultimately helps us to identify how they understand reality around them, construct their identities and negotiate their roles as Hijras. A sample comprised 25 members of the hijra communities was selected to investigate what kind of discursive practices they carry out in their everyday interaction within their communities. The data was elicited through interviews and observations of the target communities. The results show that their unique discursive practices, in many ways different from cis genders are characteristics of their hijra world. They prefer to use highly contextual masculine and feminine pronouns as gender is not a fixed category for hijras and they assume masculine and feminine characters according to the masculine or feminine roles assigned to them in their groups.

Use of Metaphors

This chapter reviews major trends and trajectories within previous research on metaphors in Isaiah, including rhetorical, structuralist, redaction-critical, ideological, and feminist approaches. In addition, it surveys recurring types of imagery that inform this prophetic book’s perspective on the relationship between Yhwh and his people. Various images of empires are discussed as examples of propagandistic rhetoric. Some metaphors are analyzed in more detail. It is thus demonstrated that the conceptual metaphor “people are plants,” with its emphasis on the transience of human existence, pervades the book of Isaiah. Among metaphors used about Yhwh, special attention is paid to “God is a parent.” The concluding section discusses the various feminine roles ascribed to personified Zion in several passages in chapters 40–66: daughter, wife, and mother.

Did this really happen?! Analysis of a two-year initiative to draw everyday sexism in academia.

<p>Like any other workplace, academia is not free from everyday gender stereotypes and sexist behaviours. They participate in the feeling of insecurity and devaluation of women and gender non-conforming individuals, which ultimately contributes to a persisting gender imbalance in this environment. Building on this observation, the Did this really happen?! project, born in 2018, aims at reporting real occurrences of everyday sexism experienced within the scientific community. Using comic strips, we raise awareness about such behaviours and their pernicious consequences, which are often difficult to notice. Through our website www.didthisreallyhappen.net, we have now collected more than 100 contributions from researchers all over the world, describing sexist biases that they have faced or witnessed in academia. We have already turned 25 of them into anonymous comics that we publish without any comments on the website. In hindsight, we have identified six repeating categories of sexist behaviours: 1) those that aim at maintaining women in stereotypical feminine roles, 2) those that aim at maintaining men in stereotypical masculine roles, 3) those that question the scientific skills of female researchers, 4) those where women have the position of an outsider, especially in informal networking contexts, 5) those that objectify women, and 6) those which express neosexist views. Here, we present our project in more details, propose a detailed analysis of these sexist situations, and we are happy to discuss further ways to engage with the scientific community on this topic.</p>

The Idea of Femininity in Cinematic Rites of Passage in Bollywood Cinema

Most movies pre-2000 focused on feminine stereotypes conceived within the confined ambit of societal constructs. It is only with the millennium that scriptwriters became bolder in their conception of femininity. Directors and women actors have begun experimenting with unconventional feminine roles which are definitively plausible. The portrayals of new-age peripatetic women like Deepika Padukone's single and successful architect Piku Banerjee, living with her septuagenarian father or Paravathy's urbane, sophisticated, English speaking, corporate executive, the widowed Jaya Shashidharan, prove that fixities have given way to flexibilities in portrayal and form. This chapter seeks to undertake a comprehensive study of the idea of femininity in cinematic rites of passage through an in-depth analysis of Shoojit Sircar's Piku (2015) and Tanuja Chandra's Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017), and show how itinerant women protagonists are negotiating identities by challenging alterity.

Falas entrecruzadas, o viés feminista na produção midiática de Clarice Lispector

O artigo analisa a produção acadêmica de Clarice Lispector publicada na revista A Época de 1941, bem como as narrativas que compõem a página “Entre Mulheres”, do tabloide Comício de 1952. É possível reconhecer nesses textos a preocupação da escritora com os papéis femininos e a influência de Simone de Beauvoir em seu pensamento, ao divulgar, de forma velada, trechos que traduz de Le Deuxième Sexe. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Clarice Lispector. Feminismo. A Época. Comício. Simone de Beauvoir. ABSTRACT The article analyzes the academic production of Clarice Lispector published in the magazine A Época of 1941, as well as the narratives that compose the page "Entre Mulheres", of the tabloid Comício of 1952. It is possible to recognize in these texts the concern of the writer with the feminine roles and the influence of Simone de Beauvoir in her thought, by disseminating, in a veiling way, excerpts that translates from Le Deuxième Sexe. KEYWORDS: Clarice Lispector. Feminism. A Época. Comício. Simone de Beauvoir.

GIRLHOOD AND FEMININE IDEALS: LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION OF FEMININITY IN INDONESIAN FOLKTALES

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linguistic construction of the femininity for girl characters in Indonesian folktales retold in children’s books. During the phase of their lives as girls, female characters in Indonesia folktales are narratively bound up in attempts to confront, fulfill, and sometimes defy, social prescribed feminine roles. Methodology: The data are twenty Indonesian folktales depicting girls as the main characters. The lexical, as well as clausal constructions in the stories in relation to girls are analyzed using content analysis and Halliday’s transitivity within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Results: The results show that ideal femininity attributed to girls in Indonesian folktales are mainly of three dimensions i.e. beauty, virtue, and passivity. The lexical representation of girl femininity reveals that girls in Indonesian folktales are typically stereotyped with either traditional femininity or non-conforming femininity. Implications: The clausal analysis shows how the stories present the attempt of the girls to fulfill the ideal feminine roles. There seems to be a reward for girls who fulfill ‘proper’ feminine qualities and punishment for girls who defy the ideal femininity. However, there are girls who seem to be non-conforming to the ideals of traditional femininity but rewarded as well as girls who fail at feminine roles but not punished with the provision of forgiveness. Thus, this paper contributes to the discussion on the girlhood femininity in contemporary children’s books.

Women at Play in Popular Culture

The story of women’s participation in popular culture is more complex than the struggle to be included. Feminist activists have fought for legislation to end discrimination in leisure, sports, and popular culture. At the same time, advertisers have coopted feminism to sell a variety of products as symbols of emancipation for women, substituting purchasing power for political power. Gaining visibility in the media and as target audiences, and breaking into male spheres have not been the end of these feminist struggles; rather, women who gained opportunities in sport and leisure were often stereotyped as “mannish” or cast in reassuring feminine roles—beauty icons or heterosexual romantic heroines. It is important to trace women’s pathbreaking roles as spectators, fans, performers, and athletes as well as show how sport and popular culture are fundamentally gendered.

The Effeminized Hero or Authorial Projection: Charlotte Bronte’s The Professor

Charlotte Bronte in most of her novels, as suggested by Gilbert and Guber, in The Mad Woman in the Attic (1979), has worked out a vision of an indeterminate, usually female figure (who has often come “from the kitchen or some such place”) trapped—even buried—in the architecture of a patriarchal society and imagining, dreaming or actually devising escape routes, roads past walls, lawns, antlers, to the glittering world outside. Like Charlotte Bronte, many nineteenth century women almost wrote in “a state of “trance”, about their feelings of enclosure in “feminine” roles and patriarchal households. And wrote, too, about their passionate desire to flee such roles or houses” (313).

Celebrating the Feminine Self: An Understanding of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight

The paper examines the celebration of the feminine self in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight through the character- Bella. While most of women’s writings carry a feminist voice asserting women’s individuality, the writers of Gothic romances concentrate more on the celebration of the feminine self rather than challenging the binaries of gender. Stephenie Meyer, by putting her heroine Bella into a traditional feminine frame provides her full scope to exercise her freedom to choose even while carrying out the prescribed feminine roles. Through the analysis of the character, there will be an attempt to demonstrate that while enjoying one’s inequality how one can prove the uniqueness of one’s individuality.