Challenging Discourse Themes Reproducing Gender in Heterosexual Dating: An Analog Study

Societal discourses tied to gender play apowerful role in shaping ideas and views about normalsexual experience. This study investigated whether“male sexual drive” discourse themes inheterosexual dating could be reproduced in a laboratorysetting, and whether these themes could be disrupted bymeans of a laboratory intervention. Young, single,heterosexual adults, most of whom were Caucasian and middle class, role played a series of datingscenarios. In half of the 37 dyads, male participantswere instructed to initiate a first date and then latergreater sexual intimacy, to which their female partners were instructed to say they were notready (the condition designed to reproduce dominantdiscourse themes). In the other half, the instructionsfor the male and female partners were reversed (the condition designed to change or disruptdominant discourse themes). Analysis of the role-playeddialogues indicated that dominant discourse themesassociated with the male sexual drive discourse wereprevalent in both experimental conditions. Ways ofbroadening our understanding of how gender processes arereproduced and disrupted are discussed in the context ofheterosexual dating relationships.     

The Intersections of Dominant Discourses Across Race,Gender, and Other Identities

A discussion of dominant discourses across race, gender, and other identities is provided, especially in terms of consequences. Distinctions are made between consequences of social constructions and identity. An example of a counselor working with a client is provided to illustrate several points made by the author.     

An Investigation of the Discourses Children Draw on Their Constructions of Gender

The mechanisms behind children's constructions of gender are examined in an attempt to identify the various narratives that children draw on. The ways in which these narratives are used in children's talk about gender are analyzed in order to provide a greater understanding of discursive resources available to children. The different types of discourse evident in children's discussion of gender are listed. The discursive contradictions in children's speech and discursive resistance to the construction of gender dichotomy are examined. It is concluded that the children in the sample drew on a wide variety of gender discourses, suggesting that they have a more developed understanding of gender issues than has been recognized previously. Finally, the paper considers the possible methods for deconstruction of dominant gender discourses.     

Invisible Household Labor and Ramifications for Adjustment: Mothers as Captains of Households

We address the issue of invisible labor in the home by examining how the distribution of the mental and emotional labor inherent in managing the household between spouses may be linked with women’s well-being, including their satisfaction with life, partner satisfaction, feelings of emptiness, and experiencing role overload. In a sample of 393 U.S. married/partnered mothers, mostly of upper-middle class backgrounds with dependent children at home, results showed that a majority of women reported that they alone assumed responsibility for household routines involving organizing schedules for the family and maintaining order in the home. Some aspects of responsibilities related to child adjustment were primarily handled by mothers, including being vigilant of children’s emotions, whereas other aspects were shared with partners, including instilling values in the children. Responsibility was largely shared for household finances. Regression analyses showed that after controlling for dimensions of emotional and physical intimacy, feeling disproportionately responsible for household management, especially child adjustment, was associated with strains on mothers’ personal well-being as well as lower satisfaction with the relationship. The implications of our work highlight the need to consider the burden of household management on mothers’ well-being and speak to mothers’ own needs for support and care as the primary managers of the household. In future research on division of labor, it will be useful to measure these critical but often neglected dimensions of who coordinates the household, given potential ramifications of this dimension for the quality of marriages and women’s personal well-being.

     

Rules: The Invisible Family

Family rules occur in groups of five and more. Because they are implicit and multidimensional, family rules are beyond visualization. These characteristics have unsettling effects on clinicians and researchers. Knowing the rules of a family, however, allows precise intervention, and using rules concepts makes learning family therapy techniques less threatening to students. The concept of homeostasis in the context of rules has been examined and placed in an understandable perspective. Rules provide the connection between family process and individual behavior. They also constitute an integrated theory of families and individual personality development.     

Gender Justice v. The “Invisible Hand” of Gender Bias in Law and Society

How does so much gender inequality endure in an era when many laws and policies endorse principles of gender equality? This essay examines this dilemma by considering Susan Moller Okin's criticism of “false gender neutrality,” research on implicit bias, and the shifting relation of gender bias to American law. I argue that these are crucial elements of the modern cycle of gender inequality, enabling it to operate through a perverse “invisible‐hand” mechanism. This framework helps convey how underlying gender bias influences individual behaviors that generate, legitimate, and mask broad patterns of inequality. Contemporary legal conflicts reflect many of these dynamics, which appear in controversies over gender‐based violence (U.S. v. Morrison 2000 ), gender discrimination in pay and promotion (Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire 2007 ), and women's reproductive health care benefits (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 2014 ). This analysis advances our understanding of how the contemporary cycle of gender inequality operates, the complex links between individual behavior and structural bias, and the difficulty of pursuing gender justice through prevailing frameworks of law and liberalism. It also underscores the continued importance of feminists' collective work to address “invisible” as well as visible biases.     

Precarity is a Feminist Issue: Gender and Contingent Labor in the Academy

Feminist philosophers have challenged a wide range of gender injustices in professional philosophy. However, the problem of precarity, that is, the increasing numbers of contingent faculty who cannot find permanent employment, has received scarcely any attention. What explains this oversight? In this article, I argue, first, that academics are held in the grips of an ideology that diverts attention away from the structural conditions of precarity, and second, that the gendered dimensions of such an ideology have been overlooked. To do so, I identify two myths: the myth of meritocracy and the myth of work as its own reward. I demonstrate that these myths—and the two‐tier system itself—manifest an unmistakably gendered logic, such that gender and precarity are mutually reinforcing and co‐constitutive. I conclude that feminist philosophers have particular reason to organize against the casualization of academic work.     

Negotiating Discourses: The Dialectical Identities of Survivor-Therapists

The psychiatric survivor movement is a political movement dedicated to fighting for human rights in the mental health system. People who identify as psychiatric survivors have experienced human rights abuses in the mental health system. A small number of psychiatric survivors have chosen to reenter the system as mental health professionals, and the current project focuses on the experiences of people with this dual-identity. The primary goal is to facilitate further dialogues between psychologists and the survivor movement by exploring the implications of identifying with both discourses. I interviewed five survivor-therapists, and asked how their identities as psychiatric survivors influence their approaches to therapy, and the nature of the relationship between these two identities.     

Systems and Solutions: The Discourses of Brief Therapy

The author describes how brief therapy has evolved in the past 10 to 15 years from ecosystemic to solution-focused brief therapy. SFBT is characterized as a radically constructivist approach to personal problems which emphasizes how troubles and solutions are socially constructed realities.     

Immigrant Women and Counseling: The Invisible Others

The number of women immigrating to the United States is growing because of current global changes (A. J. Marsella & E. Ring, 2003). Understanding and serving the mental health needs of this population is a new challenge for American counselors and counseling scholars. In this article, an ecological model (U. Bronfenbrenner, 1979) is used to describe the mental health needs of immigrant women, outline various counseling strategies and interventions, and systematically explore the sociocultural variables influencing immigrant women's experiences in the U.S.     

The Invisible and the Secret: Of a Phenomenology of the Inapparent

I consider in this article Heidegger’s late characterization of phenomenology as a “phenomenology of the inapparent.” Phenomenology is traditionally considered to be a thought of presence, assigned to a phenomenon that is identified with the present being, or with an object for consciousness. The phenomenon would be synonymous with presence itself, with what manifests itself in a presence. However, I will suggest in the following pages that phenomenology is haunted by the presence of a certain unappearing dimension, a claim that was made by Heidegger in his last seminar in 1973, when he characterized the most proper sense of phenomenology as a “phenomenology of the inapparent.” I attempt to show in what sense for Heidegger the “inapparent” plays in phenomenality and in phenomenology, and to then consider (drawing from Levinas and Derrida) its ethical import.     

Transculturals: Identifying the Invisible Minority

Transculturals spend their formative years in countries other than their country of origin. Specific issues addressed in this article are unique characteristics, prevalence rates, and developmental outcomes of transculturals. The author provides a culturally sensitive treatment model for transculturals, based on G. Roysircar's (2009) Multicultural Relationship Model. Los individuos transculturales pasan sus años formativos en un país distinto a su país de origen. Los asuntos específicos tratados en este artículo son sus características únicas, índices de prevalencia, y resultados de su desarrollo. El autor proporciona un modelo de tratamiento culturalmente sensible hacia los individuos transculturales, basado en el Modelo de Relaciones Multiculturales de G. Roysircar (2009).     

Gender and Job Role Congruence: A Field Study of Trust in Labor Mediators

The extent to which individuals are seen as fulfilling their social roles is related to the extent they are seen as successful in that role. Using social role theory, the congruence of job roles and gender roles was examined among labor mediators, a profession requiring both agentic and communal characteristics. A total of 362 employees and employers involved in a workplace dispute that went to governmental mediation were recruited in Quebec, Canada. Regression analyses assessed how impartiality and empathy contributed to parties’ trust in their mediators for male and female mediators. Comparisons of regression structures suggest that perceptions of gender incongruent job characteristics were better predictors of trust in the mediator than gender congruent characteristics. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

The New Discourses on Educational Leadership: An Introduction

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Body Poly-texts: Discourses of the Anorexic Body

It is now increasingly acknowledged that anorexia nervosa is a ‘culture-bound syndrome’ which must be understood within the context of an increasing idealization of female thinness and a high prevalence of dieting and body dissatisfaction, particularly amongst women and girls. Whilst this socioculturally-oriented perspective is important, it is also simplistic to conceptualize anorexia simply as a ‘slimmer's disease’. The ways in which contemporary Western culture is imbricated in anorexia are both complex and multiple. This paper uses a discourse-analytic approach, informed by feminist Foucauldian theory, to examine some of the multiple and often conflicting meanings and discursive constructions of the (female) anorexic body. The paper is based on a series of interviews conducted with 23 women (21 diagnosed as anorexic and 2 self-diagnosed). The analysis focuses on the explication of two discourses: a romantic discourse and a discourse of Cartesian dualism evidenced in the interviews. By contrasting the very different ways in which these two discourses constitute the anorexic body, this paper aims to provide thereby a socioculturally contextualized and gender-oriented account of the multiple discursive constructions of ‘anorexia nervosa’ and ‘anorexic’ bodies. Implications for psychotherapeutic interventions are discussed.     

The Politics of Ethics in Human Services: Dueling Discourses

How ethics in human services is a political activity, shaping social relationships, is explored through the examination of two opposing discourses, a principle-based and a situated/relational narrative. Factors such as neo-liberalism, managerialism, and the risk-aversive society give a context for the reasons that the principle-based discourse has been the predominant influence, and what interests are served by this trope taking center stage. A delineation and critique of both perspectives are provided, including an explanation of the epistemological underpinnings of these discourses. The piece ends with what needs to be done to strengthen ethics.